Along Came a Spider Read Free Page A

car
,” they sang along with Ms. K. and her piano.
    “
And I got a plan to get us out of here
.”
    As Maggie sang “Fast Car,” she really tried to imagine what it would be like to be poor like that. She’d seen enough poor people sleeping in the cold on Washington streets. If she concentrated, she could visualize terrible scenes around Georgetown and Dupont Circle. Especially the men with dirty rags who washed your windshield at every stoplight. Her mother always gave them a dollar, sometimes more. Some of the beggars recognized her mom and went apeman crazy. They smiled like their day had been made, and Katherine Rose always had something nice to say to them.
    “
You got a fast car
,” Maggie Rose sang out. She felt like letting her voice really get up there.
    “
But is it fast enough so we can fly away
    “
We gotta make a decision
    “
We leave tonight or live and die this way
.”
    The song finished to loud applause and cheers from all the
    kids at assembly. Ms. Kaminsky took a queer little bow at her piano.
    “Heavy duty,” Michael Goldberg muttered. Michael was standing right next to Maggie. He was her best friend in Washington, where she’d moved less than a year ago, coming from L.A. with her parents.
    Michael was being ironic, of course. As always. That was his East Coast way of dealing with people who weren’t as smart as he was — which meant just about everybody in the free world.
    Michael Goldberg was a genuine brainiac, Maggie knew. He was a reader of everything and anything; a gonzo collector; a doer; always funny
if
he liked you. He’d been a “blue baby,” though, and he still wasn’t big or very strong. That had gotten him the nickname “Shrimpie,” which kind of brought Michael down off his brainiac pedestal.
    Maggie and Michael rode to school together most mornings. That morning they’d come in a real Secret Service town car. Michael’s father was the secretary of the treasury. As in
the
secretary of the treasury. Nobody was really just “normal” at Washington Day. Everybody was trying to blend in, one way or another.
    As the students filed out of morning assembly, each of them was asked who was picking them up after school. Security was tremendously important at Washington Day.
    “Mr. Devine — ,” Maggie started to tell the teacher-monitor posted at the door from the auditorium. His name was Mr. Guestier and he taught languages, which included French, Russian, and Chinese, at the school. He was nicknamed “Le Pric.”
    “And Jolly Chollie Chakely,” Michael Goldberg finished for her. “Secret Service Detail Nineteen. Lincoln town car. License number SC-59. North exit, Pelham Hall. They’re assigned to
moi
because the Colombian cartel has made death threats against my father.
Au revoir, mon professeur
.”
    It was noted in the school log for December 21.
M. Goldberg and M.R. Dunne — Secret Service pickup. North exit, Pelham, at three
.
    “C’mon, Dweebo Dido.” Michael Goldberg poked Maggie Rose sharply in her rib cage. “I got a fast car. Uh huh, uh huh. And I got a plan to get us out of here.”
    No wonder she liked him, Maggie thought. Who else would call her a dweebo? Who else but Shrimpie Goldberg?
    As they walked out of the assembly hall, the two friends were being watched. Neither of them noticed anything wrong, anything out of the ordinary. They weren’t supposed to. That was the whole idea. It was the master plan.

CHAPTER 4

    AT NINE O’CLOCK that morning, Ms. Vivian Kimdecided to re-create Watergate in her Washington Day School classroom. She would never forget it. Vivian Kim was smart, pretty, and a stimulating American history teacher. Her class was one of the students’ favorites. Twice a week Ms. Kim acted out a history skit. Sometimes she let the children prepare one. They got to be really good at it, and she could honestly say her class was never boring.
    On this particular morning, Vivian Kim had chosen Watergate. In her third-grade class were