Free Also Known As by Robin Benway Page A

interest from any of the other pedestrians. “This is so perfect!” I told Roux, but she had no idea how perfect it was.Make nicey-nice with Jesse Oliver? Check! Get into his house so I can scope out his father’s office and see what his safe situation was? Check, check! Foil Dad Oliver’s plan, save the world, and be promoted to head spy of all time? CHECK, CHECK, AND CHECK!
    “Are you there?” Roux’s voice crackled over the phone. “Maggie? I hope you didn’t get hit by a bus.”
    “I’m here. No bus casualties.” I straightened my coat and tried to brush my hair out of my face. “I’m cool. I’m just so happy!”
    “Have you never been to a party before?”
    “Um, you mean, like, ever?”
    “I mean as a teenager. Oh no,” she moaned when I hesitated, “you haven’t.”
    “I’m a really fast learner!” I protested. “Just come with me.”
    “Uh-oh, you’re breaking up!” she said, even though the reception was crystal clear. “What terrible timing! Don’t you just hate the cell phone area near Central Park? Bye!”
    I just smiled to myself and tucked my phone back in my pocket. Getting Roux to the party would be a piece of cake.
    Did I say a piece of cake? I’d like to amend that statement. It was like an ant trying to haul a boulder up a hill. Twice. That’s what it was like.
    I begged, cajoled, and pleaded with her for a full week, but she refused to attend. “There’s no way I’m dressing up as a social outcast for Halloween,” was her answer every time I asked.
    “But that was last year,” I protested as we walked through school on Tuesday, three days before Halloween. “I’m serious, you know how people are. They forget about things.”
    “Oh, really?” Roux said, then turned and smiled at a brunette passing us. “Hey, Julia, what’s up? How are things?”
    “Slut,” Julia responded, and kept walking.
    Roux just looked back at me knowingly. “You were saying?”
    “Roux …”
    “Here’s how it works,” Roux said, not even slowing her pace. “Once you fall, you fall. You’re like that ring thing in the lava. You’re not coming back.”
    “The ring thing?”
    “With the short guys.”
    “Oh, you mean The Lord of the Rings .”
    “Yeah, that. I don’t get to climb the social ladder anymore. Maybe if I move to Poughkeepsie, then I’ll have another shot at glory, but for now, I’m not going anywhere. I’m dirt. And dirt,” she concluded just before she ducked into her English class, “isn’t exactly welcome at parties.”
    “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I told Angelo on Wednesday as we drank hot chocolate in front of the New York Public Library. (He had summoned me there with a quick pencil sketch of two lions reading books.) “I’ve tried everything.”
    “Flattery?”
    “Duh.” I poked at the marshmallows in my rapidlycooling cup. “Why don’t we ever meet somewhere warm? Why can’t we meet at the movies?”
    Angelo raised an eyebrow. “I was unaware that you enjoyed films.”
    “I can learn if it means I’m warm.”
    “You are a fast learner, I’m sure you’d be quite proficient in French—”
    “Quit the flattery. You’ve heard my accent.”
    Angelo smiled and adjusted his scarf a little. “Well noticed. So your friend Roux—charming name, by the way—”
    “Ha. Wait till you meet her before thinking that.”
    “—refuses to go along with you to this Halloween party. And you’re upset. Can you go by yourself?”
    I guess my face gave it away because Angelo kept talking. “Obviously not. Well, then, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
    “That’s it?”
    Angelo merely shrugged. “I don’t know this Roux as well as you do. I can only tell you what I would do if I had to convince you to do something.”
    I waited but he didn’t say anything. “And?” I prompted. “Throw me a rope here.”
    “I would tell you that you couldn’t do it.” He was getting a bit of a hot chocolate mustache, which looked hilarious