Page 17 of Spies Don’t Fall for Their Best Friend

CHAPTER 5

TINY FLYING THERAPISTS

REESE

By the time I get home from school, I have misplaced my phone twice—once on my own book cart, and once in the return bin— showed up late to a meeting simply because I forgot about it, and spent twelve full minutes looking for my super cute cardigan. It looks like one of those old library cards where they stamp the date on the line and usually don’t actually get it in the right spot, and it’s one of my favorites.

So, really, an average day. Possibly even a successful one, if you count the fact that I got five things crossed off my to-do list. Less so if you consider that I added a significantly higher number of items to it.

I’ve gotten exactly one text from Miles today that came in about noon.

Miles: Still alive. Just got home from work, about to collapse in bed. If Mateo has put your mystery display on trial, I object to the prosecution’s tone.

When it came in, I leaned against the nearest stacks and read the message twice. Which is a completely normal thing to do when one’s best friend disappears into a business solutions emergency and then goes silent for most of the next day.

Reese: The prosecution was vicious but well-organized. I lost on three counts of improper genre clustering.

It’s been four hours, and there still isn’t a response from Miles. I mean, yes, he’s making up for the sleep he didn’t get last night, and people tend to need more than four hours. But unless he’s traveling for work and is either on a plane or in a set of meetings where he knows he won’t have cell service, I’m used to getting multiple texts from him a day.

The first is usually within the first thirty minutes I’m awake, and the last is right before I go to bed. Today has felt way too Miles-free, and I don’t like it.

I’m just setting my lunch bag on the counter to empty it out when I hear Charlie’s bedroom door open, and I look up way too fast.

She comes down the stairs and into the kitchen wearing leggings, an oversized tee, yesterday’s mascara, and an expression like she just returned from a short trip to the afterlife. Even her hair looks like the last few hours have been rough—it’s gathered on top of her head in a knot that has lost its will to continue.

“Good morning,” I say.

Charlie squints at the light coming through the living room windows, then at the clock on the stove that says it’s almost four, before shuffling toward the kitchen. “I require water and food.”

“Was work okay?”

She pauses with her hand on the refrigerator door, just for a fraction of a second, before saying, “Work was work.”

“Ahh.” The non-answer. “I’m guessing your work-through-the-night-extravaganza was courtesy of a client who made everyone at Lancaster Business Solutions sign an NDA?”

“Yep.”

I finish emptying my lunch bag as Charlie pulls a container of leftover tortellini Alfredo from the fridge, grabs a fork, and starts eating it cold, like it's way too early to be concerned about things like microwaves. After the first bite, she asks, “Are you still going over to check on your bees?”

“Yep. Want to tag along?”

She nods and lifts the container of pasta a bit. “As long as I can eat on the way. I think I need to be outside if I want my body to have any chance of figuring out what time of day it is.”

I nod. “The bees don’t care what you’re dressed like or what your hair is doing, but I do recommend you put on a second sock before we go.”

Charlie looks down at her feet like she had no idea until that moment that only one foot was all cozy and the other was exposed to the elements. “Give me five minutes to become a person who can stand upright near insects, then we can leave.”

“Take six,” I say. “I’m feeling generous.”

She points her fork at me. “That is why the bees respect you.”

Twenty minutes later, we are in my car with the windows down, driving through Cipher Springs toward my mom’s house. The early September sun is still bright but lower in the sky, casting a bit of a golden glow on everything. Charlie has sunglasses on, an iced water bottle pressed to the side of her face, and the brittle expression of someone running entirely on leftover pasta and a minuscule amount of sleep.

I, meanwhile, am not checking my phone.

Well, except for once at a stop sign.

And one other time when Charlie said, “Are you checking your phone for a text from Miles?” and I said, “No,” even though my phone was literally in my hand, which was not my strongest courtroom moment.