Free Harriet the Spy, Double Agent by Maya Gold Page A

handing the clerk the red sketchbook.
    That evening, she cut the marigold papers and sewed them together, using the bookbinder’s stitch she’d learned from her art teacher, Mrs. Nussbaum. Now all she needed to do was select the poems. Which would give her a perfect excuse to spend Saturday in the library, waiting for Annie to leave her apartment. This time she had a prearranged cover: she’d told her parents she would be spending a couple of hours with Sport in the park.
    By midafternoon she had three times as many poems as she could fit into the book she had made. She was flipping through a volume of poems by Edgar Allan Poe with woodcut illustrations, kind of creepy for Christmas but hard to put down, when she saw Annie leave through the side alley gate. She was wearing her red beret and clutching something Harriet recognized as the ticket envelope she’d seen in the lavender box.
    Harriet jumped to her feet, grabbed her backpack and parka, and yelled up to her parents, “I’m going to Sport’s now, okay?” She rushed out before they could answer.
    Harriet tailed Annie’s footprints west in the new-dusted snow, even though she was certain where Annie was heading. Sure enough, she walked straight to the Papaya King stand. This time the surfer guy with the blond beard met her right at the door, flashing a crooked grin that made Harriet flush unexpectedly. He’s kind of cute, she was startled to find herself thinking; I would have picked him over P. There was no time to dwell on this unexpected sensation—she had to move quickly before Annie saw her. She bent to the pavement, pretending to tie her shoe, and was rather embarrassed to realize, slightly too late, that her boots had no laces. That’s pretty lame, thought Harriet, with her ears flaming. I hope he’s not paying attention.
    She stole a glance up from the sidewalk as the surfer waved down a cab with long-armed grace. Harriet’s heart raced when she realized that he wore fingerless gloves, just like hers. Whoever he is, he has great luck with cabs, she thought as Annie slid into the back and he followed her, shutting the door.
    Harriet’s heart sank. Tailing a bus on foot had been almost impossible; she could never keep up with a Manhattan cabbie. She looked at the oncoming block of traffic and was astonished to see, amid dozens of occupied cabs, one that was just clicking its roof light back on after letting a passenger out at the corner. Her hand shot up like a basketball player’s, and she waved her fingerless glove as the stoplight turned from yellow to red.
    Come on, she prayed silently. Do it.
    The cab driver floored the gas pedal and ran the red light, squealing up to the curb. Harriet leaped into the backseat and shouted the order she’d longed to give for her whole spy career: “Follow that cab!”
     

Chapter 8

    The two taxicabs hurtled downtown. Harriet’s driver was a jovial man with a pointy black beard and a lilting West African accent; his license tag named him as Quiah Sissoko. He was listening to zouk on the radio, and the air in the cab smelled improbably of strawberry perfume, probably from one of the charms that hung from his rearview mirror. “Where they going?” he asked Harriet.
    “Downtown,” she said hastily, then added, in case that sounded incomplete, “My sister forgot something I need to give her.”
    “Ah,” said the driver. “You want me to honk at the next light?”
    “ No !” she practically shouted, and then added limply, “She might be embarrassed.”
    The cabdriver shrugged. “It’s your dollar.”
    They drove down Fifth Avenue, past Central Park and the Plaza Hotel. There were glittery garlands and Christmas-themed shop windows everywhere. Finally Annie’s cab pulled over, just outside the entrance to Rockefeller Center. Harriet’s cab pulled over behind it. “You go see the big tree?” asked the driver, beaming at her. “It’s fantastic. I took my three kids on the first night they lit