by Ally Carter
I felt the helicopter touch down, saw the snow swirl around us as Mr. Solomon reached for the helicopter door, then paused.
“Today I asked you to do something that maybe fifty people in the entire world can do,” he said, and I thought, This is it—a pep talk, a debrief. Or at least an explanation of who those boys were and why we were meeting them now. But instead, Mr. Solomon said, “By the end of this semester, there had better be fifty-eight.”
“You really saw some?” Liz said an hour later. Sure, we had the stereo blaring and the shower running, but Liz still whispered, “They really . . . exist?”
“Liz,” I whispered back. “They’re not unicorns.”
“No,” Bex said flatly, “they’re boys. And they’re . . . good.”
Dampness weighed my hair, steam fogged the bathroom mirror, but the four of us kept the door closed, because A) Steam is excellent for your pores. And B) The biggest news in the history of our sisterhood was sweeping through the halls of a place where eavesdropping is both an art and a science. So needless to say, my roommates and I weren’t taking any chances.
“Maybe it’s not what you think,” Liz said. “Maybe they weren’t from Blackthorne at all. Maybe they just looked young. Maybe—”
“Oh,” Bex said simply, “it was them.”
As I dropped to the edge of the bathtub and rested my head in my hands, I knew nothing hurt as much my pride.
“I can’t believe I actually talked to him,” I finally admitted. “I can’t believe I actually told him where I was going!”
“It couldn’t have been that bad, Cam,” Liz said, dropping to sit beside me.
“Oh, it was worse! He was . . . and I was . . . and then . . .” But I gave up because, in all of my fourteen languages, there wasn’t a single word that could express the anger-slash-humiliation that was coursing through my veins.
“So,” Macey said, hopping onto the counter and crossing her long legs, “just how hot was this guy?”
Oh. My. Gosh.
“Macey!” I moaned. “Does it matter?”
Bex nodded. “He was pretty hot.”
“Guys,” I pleaded, “the hotness is really beside the point.”
“But exactly what kind of hot was he?” Liz asked as she pulled open her notebook and grabbed a pen. “I mean, would you say he was pretty-boy hot, like Leonardo DiCaprio the early years, or ruggedly-handsome hot, like George Clooney the later years?”
I was about to remind her that neither kind of hot could justify my revealing the location of a clandestine rendezvous, when Bex answered for me. “Rugged. Definitely rugged.” Macey nodded her approval.
Down the hall, the rest of the sophomore class was hacking into the Smithsonian surveillance system and running the pictures of every male between the ages of twelve and twenty-two who had been on the Mall that day through the FBI’s facial recognition program. At least a dozen girls were in the library scouring the very books we had abandoned days before.
Still, no one had said the name Blackthorne. No one had mentioned the East Wing.
Liz closed her notebook. “Well, now we know what your mom and Mr. Solomon were talking about. And it’s over.” She smiled. “You never have to see him again.”
Then she seemed to consider the naiveté of what she’d just said. “Do you?”
By four a.m. I was seriously starting to resent Joe Solomon and all of his “use your memory” training, because at that point I would have given my entire life savings (which were $947.52) to forget what had happened.
Bex was lying in the light of the window, smiling a devilish smile, probably dreaming of hostile takedowns and elaborate covers. Liz was curled up against the wall, taking up no more room than a doll, and Macey lay on her back sleeping peacefully despite the wheezing sound of air rushing past the great big diamond in her nose. But me? All I could do was stare at the ceiling and pray for sleep, until I finally threw off my covers and brought my bare feet to the cold hardwood floor.
I swear I didn’t know where I was going. Seriously. I didn’t. I just slipped on a pair of tennis shoes—no socks— and crept toward the door.
Every spy knows that sometimes you just have to go on adrenaline and instinct, so when I found myself wandering the dark empty hallways, I didn’t ask why. When I started down the second-floor corridor, I didn’t tell myself to turn around.
Moonlight fell through the stained glass windows at the far end of the corridor. I crept toward the tall bookcase at the mouth of the Hall of History and the hidden passageway it conceals. Then I heard the floor creak behind me and saw the beam of a flashlight burn through the hall before shining in my face. I threw my hands over my eyes and started preparing alibis. (I was sleepwalking. . . . I needed a glass of water. . . . I’d dreamed that I hadn’t turned in my COW homework for Mr. Smith and was going to check. . . .)
“You didn’t think we’d let you go without us, did you?” Bex asked.
When Macey finally lowered the flashlight, I could see Liz shivering in her thin nightgown and Bex holding open a small black case; her trusty silver lock picks shimmered in the light.
No one had to say where we were going. We’d started down the path days before and were finally going to see where it ended. While Bex worked on the lock to the East Wing, I didn’t look into the Hall of History; I didn’t look at my mother’s dark office; and most of all, I didn’t think about all the promises I was no longer in the mood to keep.
“Got it,” Bex said in record time, and then the door swung open.
We stepped into a hallway we used to know. Now it led to a large open room. Deserted classrooms ringed the space, but the desks were gone. A door stood open, and I could see that a bathroom had been modified to stand between two . . . bedrooms? The scent of sawdust and fresh paint filled the air.
“They look like . . .” Liz started but trailed off. “Suites?” she said, her genius mind trying to wrap itself around such a simple fact.
There were beds and desks and closets. The rogue-florists theory didn’t seem scary anymore. “You know what this means?” Bex asked.
There was only one thing it could mean.
“Boys,” I said. “Boys are coming to the Gallagher Academy.”
“Yeah.” Bex smiled. “And we’re going to get a rematch.”
The Gallagher Academy is a school for exceptional young women for a reason. Actually, lots of reasons.
For example, by having only girls’ bathrooms (not counting the faculty lounges), the mansion is able to devote valuable square footage to things like chemistry labs and TV rooms.
Also, the average teenage girl in a coeducational environment is likely to spend one hundred hours a year getting ready for school, when that time could be used for sleeping or studying or debating the merits of foot vs. vehicular surveillance in an urban setting.
But the biggest reason the Gallagher Academy is a school for girls is that in the late 1800s it was perfectly acceptable for boys to learn math and science and how to hold their own in a duel, while girls like Gillian Gallagher were forced to master the fine art of needlepoint.
Gilly couldn’t join the Secret Service—even after she’d saved the life of a president—because the other agents were afraid her hoopskirt might get in the way (when, in truth, hoopskirts were excellent for smuggling sensitive information and/or weapons).
So Gilly did the next best thing: she opened a school where proper young ladies could learn all the things they were never supposed to need, a place where young women were free to become exceptional without the pressure or influence of boys.
But now . . . more than a century later . . . all of that was going to change.
At breakfast the next morning, my roommates and I stared at our plates, not really listening as Anna Fetterman recounted the day before in detail.
“Und dann sah ich ihn in den Wandschrank gehn and ich wusste, dass ich ihn dort einschliessen musste um dann die Stufen hin unter gehen zu koennen.” she said, and I have to admit, lo
cking the agent on her tail inside a closet at the top of the Washington Monument was pretty ingenious of her, but I was in no mood to take notes.
“Cammie. When do you think they’ll . . . you know . . .” Liz whispered, despite the sign telling us we were supposed to be speaking in German. “ . . . come?”
I didn’t have a clue. In the last twenty-four hours, the entire world as I knew it had changed, so I wasn’t in a hurry to give the boys’ arrival a time frame—to make it in any way real.
But then the reality of the situation stopped being an optional thing.
My mom rose from the staff dining table and took the podium. “Excuse me, ladies, but I have an announcement to make.”
The doors at the back of the room swung open.
I knew that nothing at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women would ever be the same again.
Forks dropped. Heads turned. For the first time in twelve hours, there wasn’t a single whisper inside our stone walls.
Gallagher Girls are supposed to be prepared for anything and everything. Even though I’m pretty sure we could handle an invasion by enemy forces, one glance at my classmates told me that not a single Gallagher Girl felt fully prepared for the sight of fifteen boys standing in the doorway of the Grand Hall.
Boys were looking at us. Boys were walking toward us. It’s one thing to know that boys are coming . . . someday. It’s quite another to be enjoying a nice, relaxing meal and then turn around to see a mob of teenage testosterone moving your way! (I mean, hello, I was wearing the skirt with the stain on the butt.)
But did my mother seem to care about that? No. She just gripped the podium at the front of the room and said, “The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women has a proud history. . . .” I’m pretty sure no one was listening.
“For more than a hundred years, this institution has remained secluded, but yesterday, some of your classmates were able to meet another set of exceptional students from another exceptional institution.” I guess meet is code for be humiliated by.
“Members of the Gallagher trustees, along with the board of directors from the Blackthorne Institute, have long thought that our students would have a lot to learn from each other.” She smiled. A strand of dark hair fell across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear before looking across the massive room. “And this year we’re going to see it happen.”
Tina Walters looked like she was going to pass out; Eva Alvarez was holding her orange juice halfway between the table and her mouth—but Macey McHenry seemed to have barely noticed that boys were walking past the sophomore table. She glanced up from her organic chemistry flash cards for about a millisecond and said, “That’s them?” She shrugged. “I’ve seen cuter.” And then she went back to her notes.
“When Gillian Gallagher was a girl, this hall had been home to balls and cotillions, friends and family, but it hasn’t had many guests in the last century,” Mom said. “I’m so glad today is an exception.”
Then for the first time, I realized that the boys were not alone. There was a man ushering them to the front of the room. He had a round, reddish face and a bright, wide smile, and as he walked down the center aisle, he actually waved and shook hands with the girls he passed, as if he were a game-show contestant and my mother had just asked him to “Come on down.”
“It’s my pleasure to introduce Dr. Steven Sanders. Dr.
Sanders . . .” Mom started, but trailed off as the little man walked behind the staff table, tilted the microphone toward his mouth, and said, “Dr. Steve.”
“Excuse me?” Mom asked.
“Call me Dr. Steve,” he said with a punch at the air.
I looked at Liz, suspecting that the thought of calling a teacher by his first name would send her into shock, but she didn’t seem to notice anything beyond the boys who stood near the head table.
“Of course,” Mom told him, then turned to face us. “Dr. Steve and his students will be spending the remainder of the semester with us.”
At this, a low chorus of whispers grew inside the hall. “They will be attending your classes, eating with you at meals.” Sleeping in the East Wing, I thought.
“Ladies, this is a wonderful opportunity,” Mom finished. “And I hope you will use this time to forge bonds of friendship that you can carry throughout your lives.”
“I wouldn’t mind being bonded to him,” Eva Alvarez said, gesturing to a boy at the edge of the pack. A boy with dark brown hair and broad shoulders.
A boy who crossed his arms and leaned against the head table.
A boy who was smiling.
At me.
“Members of this tribe can be identified by what physical characteristic, Ms. Bauer?” Mr. Smith asked an hour later, but I’m pretty sure I speak for the entire sophomore class when I say that we were far less interested in the countries of the world than we were in what was going on in our own school. I mean, how were we supposed to focus when there were extra chairs at the back of our classroom? Chairs that were waiting . . . for boys.
Even Liz kept looking around as if the boys were going to teleport into the back of the room or something. But Mr. Smith kept lecturing like this was an ordinary day—right up until a deep voice called “Knock knock,” and Dr. Steve pushed open the door.
Dr. Steve exclaimed, “Good morning, ladies,” except that, if you ask me, it wasn’t. And I was just getting ready to say so, when the morning got worse. Way worse. Because, not only had Dr. Steve barged in, interrupting a perfectly nice lecture, but he hadn’t come alone.
Three boys stood behind him: one was skinny with glasses and thick black hair. One bore a striking resemblance to your average Greek god. And standing between them . . . was Zach.
My friends call me the Chameleon—I’m the girl who blends in, who goes unseen—but I have never wanted to be invisible as much as I did then.
I mean, I get the interschool cooperation thing; I can totally grasp the concept of camaraderie and teamwork. But the spy in me had been beaten the day before, and the girl in me had been flirted with and used. I slumped in my chair, wishing Bex were still using that volumizing conditioner, because at the moment, I needed all the cover I could get.
“Can I help you, Dr. Sanders?” Mr. Smith asked, not even trying to hide the impatience in his voice, but Dr. Steve just looked at him and held one hand in the air as if he were trying to put his finger on something.
“I say, your voice sounds so familiar.” Dr. Steve said. Mr. Smith is one of the most wanted (not to mention paranoid) ex-spies in the world, and every summer he goes to the CIA’s official plastic surgeon and gets a whole new face, so there was no way Dr. Steve was going to recognize him. “Have we met before?”
“No,” Mr. Smith said coolly. “I’m quite sure we haven’t.”
“Never did any work at the Andover Institute, did you?”
“No,” Mr. Smith said again, then started back toward the board as if his lecture had been delayed long enough.
“Oh well,” Dr. Steve said with a laugh. Then he pointed to the boys behind him. “Shall we have the boys introduce themselves?”
“I have learned, Dr. Sanders—”
“Steve,” Dr. Steve corrected, but Mr. Smith carried on, not even pausing for breath.
“—that ours is an occupation where names are—at best—temporary,” Mr. Smith finished. Which, when you think about it, is putting it mildly coming from a man who (according to Tina Walters) has one hundred and thirty-seven aliases registered with the CIA. “But, if they must . . .” Mr. Smith rolled his eyes and sat on the corner of his desk.
The skinny boy stepped forward, pulling nervously on his tie as if it were an entirely new kind of torture.
“Um . . . I’m Jonas,” he said, shifting from foot to foot. “I’m sixteen. I’m a sophomore—”
“Thus your enrollment in this class,” Mr. Smith said drily. “Welcome, Jonas. Please have a seat.”
“Excellent job, Jonas.” Dr. Steve said, ignoring Mr.
Smith, who had started to hand out a pop quiz. “Excellent job. Now, Jonas here is on the research track of study. I don’t suppose any of you young ladies could show Jonas around?”
“Humph!” Liz exclaimed, which probably had less to do with the fact that she was eager to show Jonas around than the fact that Bex had just kicked the back of her chair (hard). But Dr. Steve didn’t see any of that. He pointed at Liz and said, “Excellent!” again.
(Note to self: “excellence” at the Blackthorne Institute is probably graded on a very different scale than the one we use at the Gallagher Academy.)
“Jonas, you can spend the day with Ms. . . .” Dr. Steve looked to Liz.
“Sutton. Liz Sutton.”
“Excellent,” Dr. Steve said one more time. “Now, Grant, if you would—”
“I’m Grant,” said the boy on Zach’s other side. Grant didn’t look like a high school sophomore—Grant looked like Brad Pitt’s body double.
He slid into the seat beside Bex, who smiled and tossed her hair in a move that they don’t teach in P&E.
Oh my gosh! Is this what it’s like to have class with boys? I mean, I know I used to go to school with boys before I started at the Gallagher Academy, but there really isn’t that much hair-tossing in kindergarten through sixth grade. (Although, I do remember some hair-pulling that resulted in some real tossing, but then Mom forbade me from using the Wendelsky Maneuver on civilians ever again.)
One boy remained at the front of the room, but instead of waiting on Dr. Steve, Zach walked to the back of the class. “I’m Zach,” he said, sliding into the chair behind Grant—the one next to me—“and I think I’ve found my guide.”
From the front of the room I faintly heard the word. “Excellent!” but I didn’t necessarily agree.
Gallagher Girls have missions—hard ones. All the time. But as soon as COW was over, I gathered my books and fought the feeling that I was completely unprepared for what I had to do. As I started for the door I told myself all the reasons I shouldn’t feel the way I was currently feeling: