by Carter, Ally
That was a cakewalk?! I wanted to scream, but Joe Solomon was already gone. I wanted answers from him. How well had he known my dad? Why did he come to the Gallagher Academy now? Why did I get the feeling there was more to the story?
But then my mom spoke, and I realized we were alone. My defenses fell, and I felt like I could curl up beside her and sleep straight through Christmas.
“Cammie,” she said, moving to sit beside me. “I’m not glad you lied to me. I’m not glad you broke the rules, but there is one part of this that has made me very proud.”
“The computer stuff?” I guessed. “Because, really, that was all Liz. I didn’t—”
“No, kiddo. That’s not it.” She reached down and took my hand. “Do you know that your dad and I weren’t sure we wanted you to go to school here?”
I’ve heard a lot of crazy things in my life, but that one took my breath away. “But . . . you were a Gallagher Girl. . . . I’m a legacy. . . . It’s . . .”
“Sweetheart,” Mom stopped me. “When we came here, I knew I’d be taking away everything that isn’t inside these walls. I didn’t want this to be the only life you know.” She smoothed my hair. “Your dad and I used to talk about whether this was the best place for you.”
“But what . . . how did you decide?” I asked, but as soon as I had said the words, I knew it was a stupid question.
“Yeah, kiddo, when we lost your father I knew I had to get out of the field. . . .”
“And you needed a job?” I tried to finish for her.
She shook me off. “I needed to come home.”
When did I start crying? I really didn’t know. I really didn’t care.
She smoothed my hair and said, “But the thing I worried most about was that you’d spend your childhood learning to be hard and strong and never learn that it’s okay to be soft and sweet.” She straightened beside me, forced me to look into her eyes. “Doing what we do, it doesn’t mean turning off the part of yourself that loves, Cam. I loved your father. . . . I love your father. And you. If I thought you would have to give that up . . . to never know that . . . I would take you as far away from this place as we could go.”
“I know,” I said. Not a lie.
“Good. I’m glad you’re smart enough to know that,” she said, then pushed me away. “Now go on. You’ve got tests to take.”
I ran my hands across my face, searching for stray tears, then I stood and headed toward the door. But before I could leave, she stopped me.
“It would have been okay, you know, kiddo? To mark that other box.”
I looked back at her, and I saw not the headmistress or the spy or even the mother, but the woman I’d seen crying.
And just when I thought I couldn’t love her more.
“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you.”
Josh spun around at the sound of my words. Still, his fingers were perilously close to Gilly’s sword. “We’re pretty good at keeping things protected around here,” I said, inching closer.
He put his hands in his pockets. That was probably the safest place for them, but the gesture reminded me of the first night we’d met. I longed for that dark street, for the chance to do things over.
“So,” he said. “A spy, huh?” His eyes never left the sword. I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t want to look at me, either.
“Yeah.”
“That explains a lot.”
“So they told you?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yeah, I got the grand tour.”
Somehow, I found that really hard to believe, but I wasn’t exactly in a position to say, Did you see the nuclear-powered hovercraft we keep in the basement, so I just nodded, too.
“Josh, you know you can’t ever—”
“Tell anyone?” He looked at me. “Yeah, they told me.”
“I mean, ever, Josh. Ever.”
“I know,” he said. “I can keep a secret.”
The words stung. They were supposed to.
There we were, in a room dedicated to secret lives and secret triumphs. He could see it all from where he stood. My sisterhood was bare to him. I was exposed, but there was more between us than ever before.
“I’m sorry I lied. I’m sorry I’m not . . . normal.”
“No, Cammie, I get the spy thing,” he said, spinning on me. “But you didn’t just lie about where you go to school.” His voice was harsh, but wounded. His eyes seemed almost bruised. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Yes, you do,” I said. “You know everything that matters.”
“Your dad?” he asked.
I froze. “It’s classified—what happened—I couldn’t tell you. I wanted to, but—”
“Then just tell me he died. Tell me your mom can’t cook and you’re an only child. Don’t . . . make up a family. Don’t make up another life.” Josh looked over the railing along the Hall of History, into the towering foyer of the Gallagher Mansion, and said, “What’s so great about normal?”
I might have been the genius, but Josh was the one to see the truth. For a while there, I had needed another life, a trial life—normal on a temporary basis. The problem was looking into the wounded eyes of someone I cared about and telling him that I would never be free to really love him, because . . . well . . . then I’d have to kill him.
Then, I realized where we were—what he was looking at. JOSH KNOWS! I mentally screamed. There doesn’t have to be any more lying. He’s inside. He’s one of us (kind of). He’s . . .
But Josh was heading down the stairs. I bolted forward, yelling, “Wait, Josh. Wait! It’s okay now. It’s . . .”
When he reached the floor, he stopped and pulled his hand out of his pocket. “Do you want these?” I saw the earrings lying in his palm.
“Yes,” I said, nodding, biting back tears. I flew down the stairs, and he shuffled them into my hands so quickly I never even felt his touch. “I love them. I didn’t want to—”
“Sure.” He walked farther away from me. I probably know a dozen different ways to subdue a guy Josh’s size—not that I would have used any of them. (Okay, so I thought about it. . . .)
Oh my gosh, he’s leaving, I thought—not knowing whether to feel sad at his loss or thrilled with the fact that we were letting him walk out that door—his memory of our secrets intact. Surely they’re not going to let that happen, I wondered, unless they trust him . . . unless he’s been cleared . . . unless someone decided that he didn’t need to drink the tea and go to sleep and wake up feeling like he’s had a crazy dream he can’t remember.
Unless it’s okay for me to love him.
He reached for the door, so I blurted, “Josh,” knowing that if the Gallagher Academy was going to take a chance on him, I had to at least try to make things right. “I . . . I go to Nebraska over winter break. My grandparents live there— my dad’s parents. But I’ll be back.”
“Okay,” he said as he reached for the door. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
It was fast—like blink-or-you’ll-miss-it fast—but Josh smiled at me—quickly, sweetly, and that was enough to let me know that he’d meant it when he said he’d be seeing me. More important, it proved that he’d be looking.
I was just starting to imagine what it was going to be like—a new year, a new semester, a new start with no secrets standing between us, but then he stopped and said, “Oh, tell your mom thanks for the tea.”
He opened the door and walked outside. I stood in the middle of the empty foyer for a long time. After all, in the movies, the dramatic good-bye is often followed by the good-bye-er flying back through the door to sweep the goodbye-ee into a very dramatic, very sexy kiss. And if there was any dramatic, sexy kissing potential in my future, I wasn’t going to sway from that spot.
I felt something soft and warm rub against my leg and looked down to see Onyx wrapping her tail around my ankle. She purred, consoling me, sounding like a very lucky cat, and I knew things had come full circle.
Behind me, girls started rushing down the stairs toward t
he Grand Hall and a few last-minute study sessions before the first day of finals, but as they passed me, I knew what the main topic of conversation was going to be over breakfast. (You think regular girls love gossip—try Gallagher Girls!)
Still, I didn’t mind their stares. Instead, I stood swaying in the current of bodies that was floating off to start the day, but I didn’t budge until Bex appeared beside me.
“Hey.” She shoved a book and a bagel into my hands. “Come on,” she said with a tug at my arm. “We’ve got our COW final, you know. Liz made flash cards.”
I followed my friend up the stairs, and I got lost in a sea of girls who were dressed like me, and were trained like I was, and who were entrenched in my same world.
Is this the world I would choose if I could go back—be ignorant and blissful and happy—if I could live a white picket life on a white picket street and be ignorant of the unpleasant deeds that have to be done in places most people can’t find on a map? I don’t know. Maybe I would if my mind was like an Etch A Sketch and I could shake it and erase all that I know. But I’m in too deep now. I know what goes bump in the night, and I know how to fight it.
Bex and I walked up the stairs. Then Liz joined our steps, then Macey. I don’t know what’s going to happen next semester. I don’t know if Josh will ever talk to me again. I don’t know what he’ll remember, or what we’ll face in CoveOps, or even what Mr. Smith will look like come September. But I know who will be beside me, and as every good spy knows—sometimes that’s enough.
Keep reading for a preview of Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy, the next book in the Gallagher Girls series!
“Just be yourself,” my mother said, as if that were easy. Which it isn’t. Ever. Especially not when you’re fifteen and don’t know what language you’re going to have to speak at lunch, or what name you’ll have to use the next time you do a “project” for extra credit. Not when your nickname is “the Chameleon.”
Not when you go to a school for spies.
Of course, if you’re reading this, you probably have at least a Level Four clearance and know all about the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women—that it isn’t really a boarding school for privileged girls, and that, despite our gorgeous mansion and manicured grounds, we’re not snobs. We’re spies. But on that January day, even my mother . . . even my headmistress . . . seemed to have forgotten that when you’ve spent your whole life learning fourteen different languages and how to completely alter your appearance using nothing but nail clippers and shoe polish, then being yourself gets a little harder—that we Gallagher Girls are really far better at being someone else.
(And we’ve got the fake IDs to prove it.)
My mother slipped her arm around me and whispered, “It’s going to be okay, kiddo,” as she guided me through the crowds of shoppers that filled Pentagon City Mall. Security cameras tracked our every move, but still my mother said, “It’s fine. It’s protocol. It’s normal.”
But ever since I was four years old and inadvertently cracked a Sapphire Series NSA code my dad had brought home after a mission to Singapore, it had been pretty obvious that the term normal would probably never apply to me.
After all, normal girls probably love going to the mall with their pockets full of Christmas money. Normal girls don’t get summoned to D.C. on the last day of winter break. And normal girls very rarely feel like hyperventilating when their mothers pull a pair of jeans off a rack and tell a sales-lady, “Excuse me, my daughter would like to try these on.”
I felt anything but normal as the saleslady searched my eyes for some hidden clue. “Have you tried the ones from Milan?” she asked. “I hear the European styles are very flattering.”
Beside me, my mother fingered the soft denim. “Yes, I used to have a pair like this, but they got ruined at the cleaners.”
And then the saleslady pointed down a narrow hallway. A hint of a smile was on her face. “I believe dressing room number seven is available.” She started to walk away, then turned back to me and whispered, “Good luck.”
And I totally knew I was going to need it.
We walked together down the narrow hall, and once we were inside the dressing room my mother closed the door. Our eyes met in the mirror, and she said, “Are you ready?”
And then I did the thing we Gallagher Girls are best at—I lied. “Sure.”
We pressed our palms against the cool, smooth mirror and felt the glass grow warm beneath our skin.
“You’re going to do great,” Mom said, as if being myself wouldn’t be so hard or so terrible. As if I hadn’t spent my entire life wanting to be her.
And then the ground beneath us started to shake.
The walls rose as the floor sank. Bright lights flashed white, burning my eyes. I reached dizzily for my mother’s arm.
“Just a body scan,” she said reassuringly, and the elevator continued its descent farther and farther beneath the city. A wave of hot air blasted my face like the world’s biggest hair dryer. “Biohazard detectors,” Mom explained as we continued our smooth, quick ride.
Time seemed to stand still, but I knew to count the seconds. One minute. Two minutes . . .
“Almost there,” Mom said. We descended through a thin laser beam that read our retinal images. Moments later, a bright orange light pulsed, and I felt the elevator stop. The doors slid open.
And then my mouth went slack.
Tiles made of black granite and white marble stretched across the floor of the cavernous space like a life-size chessboard. Twin staircases twisted from opposite corners of the massive room, spiraling forty feet to the second story, framing a granite wall that bore the silver seal of the CIA and the motto I know by heart:
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.
As I stepped forward I saw elevators—dozens of them— lining the wall that curved behind us. Stainless steel letters above the elevator from which we’d just emerged spelled out WOMEN’S WEAR, MALL. To the right, another was labeled MEN’S ROOM, ROSLYN METRO STATION.
A screen on top of the elevator flashed our names. RACHEL MORGAN, DEPARTMENT OF OPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT. I glanced at Mom as the screen changed. CAMERON MORGAN, TEMPORARY GUEST.
There was a loud ding, and soon DAVID DUNCAN, IDENTIFYING CHARACTERISTICS REMOVAL DIVISION was emerging from the elevator labeled SAINT SEBASTIAN CONFESSIONAL, at which point I totally started freaking out—but not in the Oh-my-gosh-I’m-in-a-top-secret-facility-that’s-three-timesmore-secure-than-the-White-House sense. No, my freak-outedness was purely of the This-is-the-coolest-thing-that’s-everhappened-to-me sense, because, despite three and a half years of training, I’d temporarily forgotten why we were here.
“Come on, sweetie,” Mom said, taking my hand and pulling me through the atrium, where people climbed purposefully up the spiraling stairs. They carried newspapers and chatted over cups of coffee. It was almost . . . normal. But then Mom approached a guard who was missing half his nose and one ear, and I thought about how when you’re a Gallagher Girl, normal is a completely relative thing.
“Welcome, ladies,” the guard said. “Place your palms here.” He indicated the smooth counter in front of him, and as soon as we touched the surface I felt the heat of the scanner that was memorizing my prints. A mechanical printer sprang to life somewhere, and the guard leaned down to retrieve two badges.
“Well, Rachel Morgan,” he said, looking at my mother as if she hadn’t been standing right in front of him for a full minute, “welcome back! And this must be little . . .” The man squinted, trying to read the badge in his hand.
“This is my daughter, Cameron.”
“Of course she is! She looks just like you.” Which just proved that whatever terrible nose incident he’d experienced had no doubt affected his eyes, too, because while Rachel Morgan has frequently been described as beautiful, I am usually described as nondescript. “Strap this on, young lady,” the guard said, handing me the ID badge. “And don’t lose it—it’s loaded
with a tracking chip and a half milligram of C-4. If you try to remove it or enter an unauthorized area, it’ll detonate.” He stared at me. “And then you’ll die.”
I swallowed hard, then suddenly understood why take-your-daughter-to-work day was never really an option in the Morgan family.
“Okay,” I muttered, taking the badge gingerly. Then the man slapped the counter, and—spy training or not—I jumped.
“Ha!” The guard let out a sharp laugh and leaned closer to my mother. “The Gallagher Academy is growing them more gullible than it did in my day, Rachel,” he teased, then winked at me. “Spy humor.”
Well, personally, I didn’t think his “humor” was all that funny, but my mother smiled and took my arm again. “Come on, kiddo, you don’t want to be late.”
She led me down a sunny corridor that made it almost impossible to believe we were underground. Bright, cool light splashed the gray walls and reminded me of Sublevel One at school . . . which reminded me of my Covert Operations class . . . which reminded me of finals week . . . which reminded me of . . .
Josh.
We passed the Office of Guerrilla Warfare but didn’t slow down. Two women waved to my mother outside the Department of Cover and Concealment, but we didn’t stop to chat.
We walked faster, going deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of secrets, until the corridor branched and we could either go left, toward the Department of Sabotage and Seemingly Accidental Explosions, or right, to the Office of Operative Development and Human Intelligence. And despite the FLAME-RESISTANT BODYSUITS MANDATORY BEYOND THIS POINT sign marking the hallway to my left, I’d much rather have gone in that direction. Or just back to the mall. Anywhere but where I knew I had to go.
Because even though the truth can set you free, that doesn’t mean it won’t be painful.
* * *
“My name is Cammie.”
“No, what’s your full name?” asked the man in front of the polygraph machine, as if I weren’t wearing the aforementioned (and supposedly nonexplosive) name badge.
I thought about my mother’s words of wisdom and took a deep breath. “Cameron Ann Morgan.”