If captured by the enemy, play along and be agreeable. Lie if you have to. You will not get in trouble.
— Rule Number 18 from Rules for a Successful Life as an Undercover Secret Agent
I woke up, sniffed, and, smelling nothing, I smiled. Aunt Gertie wasn’t baking pity buns, which meant my parents were on their way home. I snuggled into the flannel sheets, hoping I had a few more minutes before my alarm sounded.
Today was day two of my parents’ latest mission, or thirty-eight hours since they’d left me with three half-eaten grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches and a bunch of dirty dishes. Aunt Gertie and I had spent Sunday following protocol — while she worked at the Star’s Tale, I spent four hours in the Spoon with no visitors, just listening to the rain. I’d gotten most of the week’s homework done already.
I rolled over. Just then, my floor creaked. I tensed, keeping my eyes closed and my breathing as steady as possible. Then I heard it once more. The footsteps sounded wrong — different from Aunt Gertie’s. The person hesitated too much between steps, as if trying to avoid the piles of books I’d been meaning to re-shelve. A soft click-click-click and a whoosh meant the curtains had been pulled open using the bead chain. Aunt Gertie would have draped them on the side hooks by hand.
The person stayed by the window, blocking some of the weak October sunshine filtering into my bedroom. Perhaps the gold and brown leaves of the wild apple tree had caught his or her attention. I heard soft metallic clinking, like when a woman wears a lot of bracelets on one arm. Lighter footsteps than Aunt Gertie? Jewelry? My mystery visitor was probably female.
She walked toward me, quicker this time. A familiar woodsy scent instantly brought memories of mountain hikes. Trying to keep my breath even, I listened for more movement. Without any warning, I felt a sharp poke on my forehead. I flinched.
“I know you’re awake,” came a girl’s voice. I opened my eyes slowly. A shock of long red hair caught my attention first, and then a pair of sparkly pink rhinestone eyeglasses, which the girl pushed up to the bridge of her nose before snapping a photo of me on her purple smartphone. She pushed a few buttons, smiled, and said, “Mabel, you snore like a lumberjack. You also drool a lot.”
One of my actual nightmares had come to life and was standing over me. “Give me that.” I jumped out of bed and tried to grab the phone.
Victoria Baies, my least favorite cousin, who happens to be a lot taller than me, dangled the phone just out of my reach. “Who’s gonna make me?”
“Me.” I tripped on the bed sheets, which had snaked themselves around my legs.
“Poor Moppet. Such short little legs.” In addition to being my least favorite cousin, Victoria’s also my only cousin. “I wonder who else would like to see this.” I tried jumping, but Victoria batted me down with her free hand. A tuft of yarn from her sweater floated by, tickling my nose. She waved the purple phone like a victory flag. “Maybe your boyfriend?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.” I leaped onto my bed, just missing a grab at the purple menace as she side-stepped me.
Victoria’s metallic bangles clinked and clanked as she tossed her phone from hand to hand, just out of my reach. “Come on, Mabel, you played in the woods with him during our visit in June instead of hanging out with me.”
“Stanley is a classmate. We had a project, photographing trees on the mountain.” I wasn’t going to mention that the project was just for fun, since school was out for summer vacation. “If you remember, I invited you to hike with us, but you weren’t interested.”
“Your parents made you invite me, Moppet. Anyway, nature walks are stupid.” Victoria shook her head, her shoulder length, well-behaved red hair swinging behind her. “Who else would like to see what you look like first thing in the morning with drool on your chin?”
If those photos made the rounds anywhere near Bluewater-Silverton Unified Elementary School, I’d be a laughingstock for sure. Or worse, one of the HEGs would try to cure me of my drooling and snoring.
I grabbed on to the pink and purple yarn monstrosity Victoria was wearing and pulled. Fluff from the sweater showered down on me. She swung her arm backward, knocking into my origami model of the solar system. Poor dwarf planet Pluto fluttered to the ground.
“Mom.” Victoria’s voice sounded like a sad kitten. “Mabel has my phone and won’t give it back.”
“What?” I stared up at her. “I don’t have your phone.” Not for lack of trying, though.
Victoria tossed the phone to me just as Aunt Stella walked into my bedroom. For some stupid reason, I caught it.
Despite her bony frame, Stella managed to block the entire doorway with her attitude and elbows. “This is not a good way to start our visit, Mabel Opal.” Quicker than seemed possible, she moved toward me and snatched the phone from my hand. “There you go, Vicky-girl,” she said as she handed it to Victoria. Turning her attention back to me, she said, “In our family, we respect other people’s property, young lady.”
“I — I — I didn’t take her phone,” I spluttered. Chill out, Sunflower, I told myself.
“I saw you holding it,” Stella said. “Are you calling me a liar?”
“No, ma’am.” I rubbed my eyes, but the nightmare wouldn’t go away. “Victoria took photos of me while I was sleeping.”
“Oh, Momma. You know I would never take photos of someone sleeping.” Victoria looked so innocent, I almost believed her myself.
“I know. We’ll forget this happened and start over.” Stella tried fluffing up her fire-engine red hair, but her efforts fell flat. “Get dressed, Mabel. Breakfast in five minutes.”
Thoughts formed in my brain, and before I knew it, I’d blurted out, “Why are you in my house?”
“Get dressed.” Stella smacked her lips together. “Four minutes, thirty seconds until breakfast.”
“Mabel, where did your parents go in such a hurry?” Victoria asked.
“Monaco.” (Monaco: small principality on the Mediterranean Sea bordered by France. Stable government. Its famed Oceanographic Museum had leafy seahorses and a collection of early twentieth century research yachts.) That was the cover story, anyway. I had been annoyed Saturday night and hadn’t bothered to figure out where they were really headed. I wasn’t sure how detailed the cover story was, so I simply added, “On a work trip.”
“An old baroness died,” Stella said to Victoria. “Jane and Fred were invited to an exclusive estate sale featuring a massive collection of fancy spoons and other silver. All Jane could talk about was acquiring some of the spoons. She kept saying it would be a big deal for their museum.”
Lie, Sunflower. Lie if you have to. “Mom gets real excited about new spoons.” I shook my head, trying to focus. Spoons were not top of my list. “Where is Aunt Gertie?” I asked.
“Gert is currently otherwise occupied,” Stella said with obvious disdain for her sister-in-law. Little diamond and sapphire clusters flashed in Stella’s earlobes.
“Mom has earrings just like those,” I said.
“Does she?” Stella’s voice was as sharp as her elbows.
This morning was not going according to protocol, which made me uneasy. There were only two civilians (non-Agents) who knew the truth about my parents — my aunt Gertie and me. Before I said or did the wrong thing, I needed to talk to Aunt Gertie, but I couldn’t remember if she had come in last night. I had been reading The Fulton Sisters’ Adventure and must have fallen asleep.
Choice time, Sunflower. Go along with Stella or make a fuss? While I wanted to say something like, “I think those are my mom’s earrings,” I knew the correct answer was Rule Number 8 of the original Rules: “Don’t harass the opposition.” If I hadn’t figured out my parents were Cleaners, I would be making the wrong choice right now. To think, Mom freaked out big time when she found me reading The Moscow Rules, an old list that was typed in purple ink and smelled funny. Is it my fault she’d left her ratty old spy worksheet where I could find it?
To be fair, the worksheet was in one of her small suitcases, hidden in the basement. I did have to move lots of boxes to get to it. And I took a key from her key ring to open the suitcase. What was really interesting was hidden in the suitcase’s false bottom: dozens of used passports with false names, but all with pictures of either my mother or father. So, not my fault I’d stumbled across it on a rainy day. They told me to go amuse myself, and I did. Secretly, I think they were happy I found out. I mean, living a secret life can be very stressful. Now I know.
I made up Rules for a Successful Life as an Undercover Secret Agent all by myself. Well, some I’d borrowed from odd sayings Dad had learned at the Agent Academy, but the Rules, all thirty-six of them, were mostly my creation, some based on The Moscow Rules. OK, the rules were like… 63 percent mine, but I put everything in my own words — except for a few quotations — so it’s not cheating. Dad said the Rules were awesome and he could have used them when he first started working undercover.
“Are you going to stand around gawking in your pajamas all morning?” Stella asked. “Frank does not like to be kept waiting.”
“Monaco?” Victoria was staring at the world map tacked on the wall. “That’s near Cannes, where the film festival is. All those movies stars. Oh, Momma. I wanna go to Monaco too. It isn’t fair. Will they see anyone famous? Was the baroness who died famous?”
This was the most animated I had ever seen my cousin, except for when she was teasing me.
Since my parents had to give false intel when they were on a mission, it was a safe bet that they were in any one of the other 195 counties on earth, except for Monaco. I responded the only way I knew how — by avoiding any details that might give my parents away. “I don’t know anything about the trip. I wasn’t listening.”
“It’s obvious your mother hasn’t paid attention to you, either,” Stella said. She looked around my room, the frown lines on her forehead deepening with each pile of books and clothing she took in. “It’s a wonder you can find anything in here. Four minutes.”
I wasn’t sure what Stella meant, but I knew I didn’t like it. “I know where everything important is.”
“I hope so,” Stella said. “While we’re here, there will be rules. You must follow them or face the consequences. Rule number one is to keep your room clean.”
I snorted. My Rules were much better than her rules.
“Is there something funny, young lady?” Stella asked.
“No, ma’am.” I glanced at the wall, about two feet away from Stella’s head. The Rules for a Successful Life as an Undercover Secret Agent were framed and hanging right there beside her, but she’d never be able to read them. They were written in ultraviolet ink, invisible to the naked eye. Even with special sunglasses or contact lenses, she wouldn’t be able to see the Rules. All anyone could see was a tiny yellow and black sunflower (painted by me in the first grade) surrounded by lots of blank space. The Rules were as safe from detection as they could be — unless someone happened to swing the beam of an ultraviolet or black light flashlight directly across the paper. But who carries one of those around?
“So Mom called you?” OK, maybe not the friendliest question, but I’m almost eleven years old. I could’ve taken care of myself for the morning if Aunt Gertie was busy. Mom hadn’t seemed especially concerned about leaving me alone on Saturday night.
“You can say that.” Stella shook her head again at the piles of stuff dotting my floor.
“Really?” I couldn’t hide the disbelief in my voice. Would Mom really have called them after the terrible fight she’d had with Frank during the summer?
“Jane called yesterday, begging for us to babysit you.”
“On Sunday?” I asked. So much for my parents maintaining radio silence while out on a mission. Why hadn’t they transmitted the intel directly to me if they were phoning people? I wondered. Of course, all of my questions would have to wait until I saw Aunt Gertie. I had to keep up protocol, like a good spy. “Did they say when they’d be back?”
“The auction might last days. A week, even.” Stella’s grin revealed yellow-stained, crooked teeth. “Your parents couldn’t bear to lose this opportunity to add to their precious spoon collection.”
They must have gotten more details about the mission. A week was much longer than Dad’s original promise of forty-eight hours. And something about the mission must have made Mom nervous. “Mom called you yesterday and then the three of you flew in from Alaska?”
“We’re here now.” Stella backed out of the doorway. “Frank really doesn’t like to be kept waiting at mealtimes, so get dressed.”
Even for my unusual life, this Monday morning was weird. “What exactly is Aunt Gertie doing right now?” I asked.
“Three minutes, thirty seconds.” Stella turned to go. “If you’re not dressed in time, you’ll go to school in your pajamas without breakfast.”
She hadn’t answered my questions. I didn’t need super spy senses to know something was wrong.
“Tick tock. Three minutes.” Victoria tapped her wrist even though she wasn’t wearing a watch.
Since Stella didn’t seem to be joking about sending me to school in my PJs, I grabbed my day-old jeans off of the floor. Victoria wrinkled her nose in disgust. I pulled the first T-shirt I found out of my dresser. “Privacy, please,” I said. No way was I going to change in front of her and her phone.
Pulling the door shut behind her, Victoria sang in a whispery voice, “Snoooore. Snooooore. I tooook viiiideeeooo of sleeeeping Moppet.”