Free Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead Page B

you?” Safer asks. “We have work to do. Don’t forget to check the you-know-what on your way up.”
    I start up the stairs, glancing in my most casual spylike way at Mr. X’s doormat as I pass it. But there’s no gum wrapper on the mat—it’s still stuck in the doorframe.
    On six, Candy answers the door.
    “So is it your official job to answer the door?” I ask her while we walk down the long hallway to the living room.
    “Pretty much,” she says. “Pigeon’s at practice, Dad’s at work, and Mom’s busy touching up the photos from last weekend’s wedding.”
    “What about Safer?”
    “Ha!” she says. “Good one.”
    Safer’s mom calls to us from her office, where she’s looking at a picture on a computer screen. It’s a woman’s head, blown up to twice the size of a normal head.
    “What do you think?” she asks. “Too many flyaways? I want it to look natural.”
    “Looks good to me,” Candy says.
    “What’s a flyaway?” I ask.
    “Hair—see how her hair is blowing around a little? They got married on a dock, the wind was crazy. I’m erasing some of the flying hair because it’s a distraction, but I don’t wantto go too far and remove the illusion of movement, you know?”
    I don’t notice anything about the woman’s hair. What I notice is that she has something green stuck between her teeth.
    “Oh, I know,” Safer’s mom says. “That’s broccoli. It’s next on my list.”
    “Are you supposed to make everyone look perfect?” I ask her.
    “It’s part of the deal,” she says. “Believe it or not, you probably won’t want broccoli in your teeth in your wedding pictures either.”
    “I wouldn’t care if there was something green in my teeth,” Candy says. “I think it would be kind of funny. And Mr. Orange won’t care either, I bet.”
    “Who?” I ask.
    “Mr. Orange. That’s who I’m going to marry. Someone who likes orange.”
    “You’re going to marry someone because you both like orange?”
    “No!” She makes a face. “I hate orange. The color and the flavor. It’s the only flavor I don’t like, actually. That’s the whole point. I hate it, he loves it. That way we can always share the pack.”
    “Pack of what?”
    “Starbursts. Lifesavers. Jolly Ranchers. Whatever.”
    “Are you kidding?” I glance at Safer’s mom, but she’s obviously heard this before, and has moved on to the broccoli-teeth problem.
    “Why would I be kidding?” Candy says. “I’ve decided thatthe whole getting-married thing is kind of random anyway. You know how many times my grandparents met before they got married? Once! They met on a train, and that was it. You should see how much they still love each other!”
    “But—”
    “And my friend Joanie from fencing told me her parents went out for like ten years before they got married. And guess what? They got divorced like a year and a half later! So I’m going to make it very simple.”
    She’s almost making sense.
    “I mean, he’ll have to be cute and everything,” she says.
    I nod.
    “Not like, television cute. Real-person cute. Like … a real person.”
    “I guess candy is pretty important to you,” I say.
    She laughs. “You think? I mean, why do you think my name is Candy!”
    “Or maybe you like Candy because your name is Candy,” I say. “Ever think of that?”
    She stops smiling. “No. That makes no sense.”
    Her mom turns to me. “She has it the right way around, actually. Because we let the kids name themselves.”
    “When they were—babies?”
    “Not babies, exactly. But by age two or so they had expressed who they were and what they cared about most. We just sort of—interpreted.”
    She looks completely serious.
    Candy nods. “I’ve been obsessed with candy since birth, practically. And same with Pigeon and—pigeons.”
    “All birds, actually,” her mom says. “But pigeons aremostly what we have in Brooklyn.” She laughs and looks at Candy. “And just think. If we had named you at