I remember the first time I ever saw Sublevel One. I remember the smooth, clean interior. The feel of the glass beneath my fingers and the glare of silver desks. I remember thinking that it was endles—that eternity was nothing compared to the sheer size of that lower level.
Sublevel Two is nothing like that. It's built out of dirt, stone, and secrets. Rock crumbled around us while wet air from the lake seemed to be the only thing holding the place together. I was reminded of the days at the beach when my brother and I had spent hours constructing our elaborate moats. That's what this place was. Someone had stolen one of our little red shovels and used it to carve out this maze of tunnels and zigzags and all the things that people who always want to run, never want to see. I felt something buzz in my chest and I had to swallow the lump in my throat before I choked on it. Trapped. This was what it felt like for an animal to live in a cage.
It was dark and dust, but I'm pretty sure that I saw Woods look down at me through the corner of her eyes. But no. That can't be right. Charlotte Woods never looks anywhere but straight ahead. "Pay attention, ladies," she said, her chin high. "The first day is the last day you get a tour."
We followed her through that rocky labyrinth. We passed doors that were labeled as Holocaust and another labeled Kennedy. We passed the largest library I'd ever seen and I lingered, peaking into the doorway and wondering what sort of information was held in the depths of the most secure building in the world and just how much of it was secrets, rigged to explode with a single touch.
Woods cleared her throat. I'm not sure if it was meant for me or not, but that's what it felt like as I ran to catch up with the pack of girls that was rapidly moving away from me.
Sublevel Two might not have been so ominous if it actually had a stable lighting system. The few lights that it does have are few and far between, casting two seperate shadows—one in front you and one behind. Looking ahead, our path seemed to extend into nothingness. Over my shoulder, it was the same. The chill of fall seemed to seep through the walls as I shuffled along, thinking that if Sublevel One was the public image of Covert Operations, then Sublevel Two was undoubtably its dark, mysterious shadow.
We made a sharp turn down a tunnel that led directly to a pair of sleek metal doors, these ones larger than any of the others we had passed. As we stepped in, lights flickered on, one right after another, lighting farther and farther into that massive room. Pice by illuminated piece, our surroundings started to make sense. Smooth doors slid open to reveal coats and shirts. Dresses, skirts, and pants of every color. A collection of hair lined the walls, each color sitting atop different plastic heads. Necklaces and bracelets. Watches and earrings. Any sort of accessories that a group of sixteen-year-old girls could dream up, waiting at our fingertips.
It was a closet. A very big closet with a very covert purpose. But the weirdest thing about that closet was not the bulletproof bras or the shoes with the knives in the heels. The weirdest thing about the closet was that there was a man standing at the back of it.
It was an old man, hunched over against his shaky cane, his eyebrows almost too busy to see his eyes. He looked like a grandpa—or, well, what I'm pretty sure grandfathers are supposed to look like when their name isn't Joe Solomon. "Ladies," Woods said, ignoring our guest. "What do we know about disguises?"
We hadn’t read the chapter yet—it was only our first day back, after all—but Alice had no problem with the question. “Disguise isn’t about hiding yourself,” she told the room. “It’s about creating someone else. Eyes, hair, and nose are the most important features to change—and, obviously, any distinguishing marks. Moles and scars, for example. Sometimes it’s crucial to change the lips as well, but that depends on who you’re trying to dodge and”—she gave me a playful jab with her elbow—“how well they know your lips, if you get what I’m saying.”
The girls around us gave a giggle, very much getting what Alice was saying. Alice practically soared. She lived off of making the room laugh.
Except I didn’t laugh. I watched the old man at the back of the room. He stood oddly on his left foot, almost like he didn’t quite know where the ground was. I couldn’t tell if he was looking at Alice through his thick glasses or if his eyes were wandering, completely oblivious to her as she went on to say, “The most important part is to develop a character. Add scars to make onlookers as questions. Add a limp to invoke pity. Create a story and then you can—”
“How d’you know all this, young lady?” asked the old man in a dry cockney accent, cutting off the girl who looked like she could have gone on a lot longer than she actually had.
Next to me, my best friend gave Woods a sideways glance, seeming to ask what sort of clearance level the man had. Our professor gave a firm nod and Alice stood tall, pride in her thin stature. “My aunt is a D.A.—that’s a Disguise Artist,” she told the man. “I’m sure you’ve never heard of her work,” she added, just as proudly as before, because, in this business, that’s one of the highest compliments someone can receive.
The old man smiled. He seemed especially youthful in that moment. "Your aunt ain't just a Disguise Artist," he said. And then—get this—the man peeled off his face. Yeah. He peeled off his face. Or, I guess, she peeled off her face. That's right. The old man was a girl and this time when she spoke, we could hear it. "She's the Disguise Artist."
The woman straightened her back and flattened her foot. "Ladies," Professor Woods began as the woman pulled back a stiff grey wig. "Eleanora Sutton. Top disguise consultant for the FBI, CIA, MI6, and Scotland Yard."
Each of us watched in amazement as the old man transformed into a woman who couldn't be any older than Woods was. It was like watching the ugly duckling grow into a beautiful swan right before my eyes. She chucked the cane aside and stripped herself of the fraying maroon sweater. Her real hair (or, well, I'm pretty sure it was her real hair) was blonde and bouncy. Her smile was far less crooked than the old man's had been and when she put her hand on her hip, I noticed that she had stopped shaking.
“Eleanora is my great-grandmother’s name,” she said in a perfectly appropriate southern accent, fluffing up her curls. “Everyone calls me Ellie. Ellie Sutton.”
I looked from Ellie to Alice, then back to Ellie again. The blonde curls and the smile straight from the heart of Dixie. The tiny frame and the exact same nose. “Alice,” I whispered through the side of my mouth. “Isn’t Sutton your mom’s maiden name?”
“Oh. my. god. Oh my god,” was all she said, so I took that as a yes. “If we get any more Suttons in here we might as well call Grandma and skip Thanksgiving this year.”
“Ah,” Ellie said with smile fit for the belle of the ball. “So I take it you’ve seen Lizzie already—I've got to be honest, A. I didn't think you listened when I went on about disguises, but clearly I was wrong. Guess who's getting an extra present at Christmas this year." Alice always got extra presents at Christmas, especially from her Aunt Ellie, but I didn't think that this was the right time to point that out. Not while Agent Eleanora Sutton was standing right in front of us saying, "Here, Char. Hold this, would you?”
Ellie handed the end of an ace bandage to Professor Woods, spinning herself out of it until the shape returned to her body. She took a deep breath in. “That’s so much better—I tell you what, girls. Go under cover as a girl whenever possible. Brest binding blows.”
“How charming,” Woods said, but she didn’t sound very charmed at all.
Ellie was quick. It was the first thing I noticed about her. Everything she did was a bounce. Even when she spoke you could tell she was thinking about something else—already four steps ahead. It reminded me of Alice. “Oh, Charlotte,” she teased. “What have I told you about the cargo pants?”
“They’re comfortable,” Woods replied. “And besides, I switched to the leather jacket. What more do you want?”
“I see that.”
“You like the leather, remember?”
“I do. It almost makes up for the awful boots. And would it kill you to wear your hair down every now and again?”
Woods rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Did I bring you here to make fun of my fashion sense or to teach my students?”
Ellie clicked her tongue. “Oh, Charlotte,” she said. “Always so jealous of my fashion sense.”
But Alice had endured enough of whatever was going on in front of us and so, as she frequently did, she spoke up. “Hi. Yeah. It’s your niece here—just wondering what’s going on.”
Ellie smiled her perfect belle smile once more. If the sun were a person, it would look like her. “Hakuna Matata, short stuff,” she told Alice. “This is temporary. I’ve got a plane to catch in”—she looked up at the sky, swaying with calculations—“two hours. Two hours? Charlotte how long does it take to get to the airport from here?”
“The helicopter’s picking you up here, remember?” Woods said, grabbing both of Ellie’s shoulders and turning her back towards my classmates and I. “Now would you please focus, for once in your life? I flew you in to teach my students, so it would be nice if you actually, you know, taught my students.”
“Right,” Ellie said, pointing a determined finger at all of us. She clapped once, smiling as she started her lecture. “Well, as you’ve heard, I have an impressive resume. I’ve worked with nearly all the agencies—including the ones you haven’t heard of.”
I could practically hear the minds of my classmates turning, all trying to count the agencies they knew and guess the ones that they didn’t. “Not to mention,” Ellie continued. “I have Peter Jackson’s personal cell on speed dial.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” said Erin Cross. “You mean Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson?”
“That’s the one,” Ellie said, because she knew that somehow, out of all of her credentials, this was the most important one. “The Hobbit, too.”
“On speed dial?” Erin challenged.
“What kind of D.A. would I be if I didn’t have a hand in make-up design?” she said. I couldn’t help thinking that having a hand in make-up design would consist of covering up pimples on the five o’clock news or maybe dabbling in the local theater. Not actively participating in the design of one of the biggest franchises since Harry Potter.
Erin didn’t challenge her again and that’s probably because Erin’s jaw was about to fall off of her face. Ellie saw this as her chance to continue. “Your professor called in a favor—”
“ A favor?” Alice asked, vocalizing exactly what I had been thinking. Ellie shifted her attention to her niece and Woods brought her hand to her forehead. “You owe Professor Woods a favor?”
Ellie shrugged. “I owe her a few,” she said. “Saved my life a couple of times—figure it’s an even trade.”
“If those are the standards we’re going by, then you owe me way more than just ‘a few’ favors,” Woods teased.
By the roll of Ellie’s eyes (what was done in exactly the same way as Alice, by the way) I could tell that we had entered an age-old debate. “If those are the standards we’re going by, then I only owe you five favors.”
“Six.”
“Six?”
“Guatemala.”
Ellie nodded, remembering. My classmates all looked at one another, each of us trying to imagine Charlotte Woods and Ellie Sutton together in Guatemala. “Okay fine. Six—well actually you only half-saved my life that time.”
Woods laughed, accompanying the sound with a word that would have earned her detention in Madame Baudin’s class. “A little more than half, I think.”
“Fine, what do you want for it? Three-quarters? I owe you five and three-quarters favors then.”
“If you don’t start teaching these girls something soon, then this is going to count as the three-quarters,” Woods threatened, sounding more like usual herself than whatever version she had been since Ellie had taken off her wig.
“Alright, alright,” Ellie replied, sticking her hands up. “I’m teaching—Alice is right. Don’t try to get rid of yourself. Try to replace yourself.” It took me a moment to realize that she was talking to us again. “But that’s simple enough. You’re smart girls. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here and neither would I—are you sure they said helicopter?”
That last part was to Woods who, by the looks of it, was regretting any and all decisions she had made regarding Ellie Sutton. Ever. “Ellie!”
“Right. Okay.” This whole scene felt entirely too familiar. Alice brushing her hair in our bathroom, but getting distracted and starting on her teeth with a comb stuck in her hair. Me reminding Alice that maybe pyrotechnics weren’t her area of expertise. It was almost like I was looking in on the future—our future. It was almost like Ellie and Woods were some distant, hyped-up version of Alice and I.
“Professor Woods called me in to teach you the tricks of basic disguise, but basic disguise is boring.” Ellie put her hand against the side of her mouth, blocking the sound from Professor Woods. “Even Miss Cargo Pants over here could teach you those tricks.”
The class laughed and, just like her niece, Ellie beamed with excitement. “I can still hear you,” Woods said sternly. There was an odd break between her voice and her expression. She sounded angry, but she was smiling. I found myself wishing that I had her mindreading capabilities so that I could know what she was thinking.
But Ellie ignored her (as it would seem Ellie often did) and said, “Would you girls like to know how to disguise yourself as a Secret Service agent with nothing but a little black dress and some bobbi pins?”