The Tiara on the Terrace (2 page)

I
grasped the cold metal rung of the scaffolding and pulled myself up, the steel frame clanking and swaying beneath my feet like a wobbly ladder. The warehouse floor far below spun dizzily toward me and away again. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. My mouth was dry. My heart hammered. But I couldn't stop now. Not with our target in reach.

Grace and I should never have accepted the mission. What had we been thinking? It was too dangerous, even for expert spies like us. It was too late. We were in too deep.

And up too high.

“T-minus one minute and counting!” Grace panted as she scrambled up behind me. “Keep going, Sophie!”

“Roger,” I called back, my voice hoarse. In my free hand I held our mission supply box—a long, shallow, open cardboard container. I reached for the top rung of the scaffolding,
struggling to keep the carton level. If I spilled it, the mission would be doomed.

I heaved myself onto a narrow wooden plank stretched over the warehouse floor like a balance beam. The target was only twenty steps away, tops. Twenty steps across a splintery, wobbly board tied in place by a fraying rope—but still, only twenty steps.

“Approaching target. Prepare to take position,” I said.

“Affirmative,” Grace said. “T-minus thirty
seconds!” Grace's watch beeped frantically. “Go ahead without me!”

My stomach churned. A drop of sweat trickled down the back of my neck. The mission was scary enough without having to face it alone.

“Roger,” I said, trying to hide the quaver in my voice. “I'm going in.”

I gritted my teeth and inched out onto the shaky plank, holding the cardboard flat in one hand. I took one small step, and another. Then I bent my knees and side-shuffled faster, hoping the momentum would make it easier to balance. It did—for a few steps. Then my ankle buckled. My weight tipped. I swayed and rocked on the board like a beginning surfer. But it was too late.

Wind whistled past my ears as I sailed into the emptiness.

“Sophie! No!” Grace's shriek echoed in the rafters.

Time really does slow down when you're about to die. Years fold up inside of seconds and your brain has time to replay every memory—twice, if they're awful. Laughing too hard and peeing on Stacy's down comforter at her sleepover birthday party. Getting caught giving my American Girl doll a buzz cut with my dad's shaver. Gagging down a cold heaping spoonful of liver-flavored Whiskas. (Tip:
Truth
, not
dare
. Never
dare
.)

I was starting to imagine Grace's teary tribute at my funeral when it hit me that, if time had slowed down that much, I should probably try saving myself.

I thrust up my hands and managed to catch the wooden plank one level below, my body jerking like a piñata as my arms nearly yanked out of their sockets. Our supply box cartwheeled overhead, sending thousands of red flower petals shimmering into the air. I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and let them shower over me like confetti.

It was a Winter Sun Festival miracle.

Who knew that decorating parade floats could be so dangerous? My muscles burned as I tried to hold my grip. Splinters pierced my fingers. I opened my eyes again and stared at the giant fake ice cream scoop on Luna Vista's Root Beer float looming over me. I deserved a better final sight. Something more noble. More meaningful. Something
that wasn't an oversized imitation dairy product. I wondered if I should shout for Rod Zimball so I could finally profess my undying love. It wouldn't matter if he didn't say anything back.

I'd already be hurtling to my death.

“Hang tight!” Grace hollered. I cringed as my fingers started to slip. Over my head, a banner sagged from the rafters, counting down the happy moments I might never live to see: 6 MORE DAYS TILL PARADE DAY!
it mocked.

“I'm trying!” I called back to Grace. The scaffolding rocked as she climbed faster to reach me. Below me volunteers dashed around, too distracted by their own float decorating to notice me dangling. Kids shouted for cranberry seed refills and lugged buckets of strawflower and silverleaf through the “float barn,” as everyone called it. Once upon a time there had been an actual barn on the Ridley Mansion grounds where the Festival was headquartered. Now the “barn” was a big drafty white warehouse that housed the parade floats. Most of them still looked like oversized papier-mâché projects speckled with paint-by-number patches of color. Eventually, we'd decorate them all with fresh flowers, but for the time being we were gluing a color base of seeds and finely chopped petals onto them.

“Let yourself fall, if you have to!” Grace shouted.
Let myself fall?
Ten seconds was all it took for my best friend in the world to give up and let me die? Then I remembered. The nets! Relief rushed through my aching limbs. The town of Luna Vista would never let a bunch of seventh-grade volunteers prance around on rickety scaffolding decorating parade floats without at least
trying
to make sure we didn't kill ourselves. Marissa and Kendra Pritchard's dad would have already filed, like, ten trillion lawsuits.

As I loosened my grip and braced myself for the fall, Grace's footsteps pounded against the plywood scaffolding one level below. A second later, her arms reached up and wrapped themselves tightly around my hips. “I gotcha. Go ahead, let go,” she said as she gently eased me down. I sighed as my feet met the solid, wide boards.

“All clear, Agent Yang,” I said, trying to keep up our pretend spy lingo. My voice shook.

“Over and out.” Grace smiled, but she kept a steadying hand clamped on my shoulder. “You're getting good at that.”

“Dangling from ledges?” I grinned back. “Practice makes perfect.” Two months earlier I'd nearly tumbled out of my second-story window while creeping out on one of our missions. Things had changed a lot since then. That was before our spy games turned real and we'd nearly gotten ourselves
killed trying to capture a dangerous fugitive who'd been hiding out right in Luna Vista. We were town heroes now.

Town heroes who were laughingstocks, apparently. A chorus of giggles had broken out behind us. I turned to see Marissa Pritchard covering her mouth and twirling a lock of honey hair around a finger as she huddled on the Root Beer float with the identical twins from my homeroom, Danica and Denise Delgado. Big puffs of cotton spilled from the box next to them as they worked on creating the “foam” on top of the giant root beer mug. For a while I'd thought Marissa and I had finally made our peace. We'd even been lab partners in earth science. But she'd figured out that I liked Rod Zimball, and since then she took every opportunity to embarrass me whenever Rod was within a five-mile radius.

Marissa wrinkled her nose. “Are you playing spy? What, are you, like, in preschool?” she asked loudly.

If Rod still had ears, he'd heard her for sure. He was standing on the float not far behind us, gluing flaxseed to the giant root beer mug. Marissa smiled slyly at Danica and Denise. “I thought Festival volunteers had to be at least twelve years old. Am I wrong?”

I felt my cheeks turn red as the twins erupted into giggles again. Ordinarily, I would have shrugged it off, but that
morning we were on their home turf—Winter Sun Festival territory. In a few years they'd probably even be princesses in the Festival's Royal Court. I could already see them sporting sparkly tiaras as they waved from their parade float. In fact, Marissa's older sister, Kendra, was probably going to be chosen as a Royal Court princess that very afternoon. She'd already beaten out hundreds of girls in the interview rounds to be a finalist. And Marissa and her friends were shoo-ins for royal pages, the mini-princesses whose job it was to buff and powder and spray tan their royal highnesses. But just because they thought they were royalty didn't mean that
I
had to.

“Yeah, we're playing spy games. So?” I asked, puffing up my chest to look taller. “Maybe you remember when those little ‘spy games' helped catch a killer?”

Marissa rolled her eyes. “Not that again. Please. How long are you going to ride that? ‘Ooh, remember when I caught the Tilmore Eight fugitive?' Whatever. It was forever ago.”

She shifted her eyes to Rod Zimball. His brown curls hung over his eyes as he painted a new layer of glue on the mug. My stomach sank. When I'd captured a killer, I'd thought I would capture his heart, too, but it hadn't worked out that way. Yet.

“Yeah, forever ago,” I repeated, trying to stay calm. “Like when you threw up raspberry slushy all over the ice rink last weekend?”

Danica and Denise gasped, and Marissa flushed redder than, well, a raspberry slushy. Target acquired. Direct hit.

Marissa hooked arms with the twins and glared at me. She flashed a smile at Grace before they turned away. “Those jeans are supercute, Grace,” she said sweetly. “
You
always
look supercute.”

“Thanks.” Grace straightened in surprise. “You, too.”

You, too
? I was about to ask Grace what the heck she was thinking when a voice thundered from the warehouse floor below. “Young! Yang!”

Grace groaned. The Floatator—aka Ms. Barbara “Barb” Lund—had spotted us. I swear that woman had cameras sewn into every inch of her denim overalls, and possibly into the eyes of the Winnie the Pooh patch plastered on the front of them. There was a reason we all called her the Floatator. A direct descendant of Festival founder and former root-beer magnate Willard Ridley, she ruled Winter Sun Festival float decorating with an iron fist—and a totally unnecessary megaphone.

Her staticky voice blared through it now. “Sundae inspection in five!” she called.

Ms. Lund wasn't all bad, really. Her round, plump face peeked out below a goofy mushroom cloud of short dark-blond hair, and she looked almost friendly on the rare occasions she smiled. She even chuckled at her “Floatator” nickname and proudly made up new ones for herself like “Chairman Barb,” “Barbarossa,” and—Grace's favorite—“the Grand Pooh-Bah.” She also thought it was fun to toss around what she thought were popular slang terms, but which we suspected were either from 1994 or made up entirely. Still, she flipped out if she thought someone wasn't living up to her crazy high standards for the Festival. That morning her face had actually turned purple when she saw that my petals on the ice cream sundae had clumped messily over the glue.

Barb lifted her megaphone again. “Quit yer chit-chattin' or I'm going viral on you two!”

Grace shot me a puzzled look.

“I really don't want her to go viral,” I said.

“No kidding.” Grace stifled a laugh. “I think I'd rather land on her Watch List.” There were a lot of rumors about what being Barb's Watch List involved, and death sounded like a nicer option.

Barb narrowed her eyes at us, pointed her megaphone into the air, and whooped its built-in siren three times.

“Okay, Agent Yang,” I called out, nudging Grace. “Sounds like it's time to wrap up this mission and head back to headquarters.”

“Uh-huh,” she said, distractedly. Her eyes flicked to Marissa and the twins gluing cotton root-beer “foam.”

“What's wrong?” I asked, but as soon as the words had left my lips, I noticed her cheeks had turned a shade darker. I knew exactly what was wrong. She was embarrassed. Of me.

“Nothing,” Grace said. Her eyes stayed locked on the girls as if she were memorizing the details of their too-short jean cutoffs to incorporate into one of her own outfits.

“Jeez, you think those cutoffs can be any shorter?” I asked. “They're like, loincloths or something.”

Grace shrugged. “I think they're supercute.”

I flinched. Heaviness settled over my chest as I wondered what else was on the list of things she and Marissa agreed were
supercute
.

“I can't believe I forgot to tell you,” I said, trying to shove the feeling away and distract her. “I found out about the coolest code. Have you ever heard of a Polybius cipher?”

Grace sighed and picked up another empty cardboard flat. “I'm getting bored with the spy games, Soph. Aren't we beyond all that now?”

A couple of months didn't seem like long enough to be “beyond” anything, let alone something that'd made us heroes. Judging from the face she'd made, though, you'd have thought I'd suggested we drag out our old Barbie collections to play with in front of everyone.

I ignored her. “Anyway, it's this cool knocking code that prisoners used to communicate with. It's kind of like Morse, but everyone knows Morse, so with this one—”

Grace's eyes flashed. “Soph, seriously! Let's take a break on the spy stuff, okay?”

I snapped my mouth shut. A sick, sad feeling poured through me as Grace pressed the cardboard flat into my hands. “We'd better hurry on that petal refill. I heard that last year Barbarossa made kids on the Watch List scrub down the parade port-a-potties.” She arched an eyebrow. “With
toothbrushes
.”