by Ally Carter
Mom and Mr. Solomon looked at each other, then my mother got up and sat next to me on the leather sofa, pulled me down beside her, and said, “Cammie, do you know what’s in this mansion?”
For a second I thought it must be a trick question, but then I remembered what the mansion contained . . . the experiments, the prototypes, the mission summaries, and . . . most of all . . . the names and traces of every Gallagher Girl who had ever lived.
“Do you have any idea what would happen if the general population—much less our enemies—had access to what is contained within these walls?” my mother asked. I seriously didn’t want to think about the answer. And the truth was, I didn’t know the answer—no one did. And the most important thing in the world was that we kept it that way.
“Ms. Morgan, you were in the halls tonight prior to the security breach,” Mr. Solomon stated. “We need you to tell us exactly what you saw and heard.”
I could have asked what was going on—who they suspected and why—but when you’ve lived your whole life on a need-to-know basis, you eventually stop asking the questions that you know no one will answer.
So I sat on the leather couch in my mother’s office knowing that more was riding on my memory than it had for any test I’d ever taken. I closed my eyes and told the story straight through—from Zach’s dance to the doors swinging open. I left nothing out.
“You saw Zach?” Mr. Solomon asked.
“Yeah. He was waiting for me. You should ask him if he saw or heard anything,” I said, but my mother’s gaze never left Mr. Solomon’s. “Mom . . .” I started, but my voice cracked.
“Everything’s fine, sweetie, don’t worry.” She smiled at me and rubbed my back. Rachel Morgan is probably the best spy I have ever known, so when she stood and opened the door and said, “The mansion’s secure, it was probably just a false alarm,” I tried to believe her. When she hugged me good night, I tried to wipe the worry from my mind.
But then I risked a backward glance at my teacher, who had removed his jacket and loosened his tie, and I couldn’t help but think that the party was officially over.
After I left my mother’s office I made my way through the red glow of the emergency lights. The halls were empty. The windows were covered. I expected to see running girls, to hear debriefs and a thousand crazy theories, but the halls echoed with silence as I slowly pushed my bedroom door open.
It seemed to take forever for Bex to say, “What did your mom want?”
Sure, they’d all traded their ball gowns for flannel pajamas, but one look at my roommates told me they were anything but comfortable.
“She wanted to know where I was and what I saw.” I kicked off my tight shoes and felt my feet instantly swell up to twice their normal size.
“Well . . .” Bex said slowly. “Where were you?”
And then I told the story—the whole story. Again. And when I was finished, two things were clear. A) I seriously needed to remember to go pick up that bra from the floor first thing tomorrow morning. And B) My roommates had been expecting a very different story.
Liz sat up straighter on her bed. “So you didn’t decide to sneak out and go see Josh at the spring fling?”
“No!” I said. “It wasn’t me! You guys know I wouldn’t breach security like that.”
“Of course it wasn’t you,” Bex huffed. “You wouldn’t get caught.”
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly the vote of confidence I’d been hoping for, but it was a start.
“And besides, you’d never leave in the middle of a test,” Liz added. “So you aren’t in any trouble?”
“No.”
“And Zach just disappeared?” Macey asked. “He didn’t even go with you to your mom’s office?”
“No.”
“Cam,” Liz said, and for the first time tonight, I could detect fear in her voice, “what do you think happened?”
Despite all my training, experience, and instincts, all I could do was crawl into bed, pull the covers tightly around me, and admit, “I don’t know.”
And then the lights came on.
I’ve had some very challenging days since coming to the Gallagher Academy (like the time our archery midterm happened to fall on nondominant hand day, for example), but the day that followed the ball was the most difficult yet—for a lot of reasons:
Even though it was Saturday, no one slept in, so that meant girls were walking up and down the halls, talking in front of our door by seven a.m.
Even if it hadn’t been for all the noise, I still probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep.
The kitchen staff had gone to such extremes the night before that our only option for breakfast was cereal.
Extensive ball preparations during the previous week meant that everyone was behind on their homework.
My elaborate, twisty updo from the night before made the hair-washing and detangling process very difficult and painful.
Even though the teachers were busy passing along the official story that the Code Black had been a false alarm due to faulty wiring—the unofficial story was about . . . me.
The lights were on. The steel shutters had disappeared, and everything in the mansion was back to where it always was, but as soon as I stepped into the library, I knew things were different. The weird thing wasn’t that fifteen teenage girls were in there at nine a.m. on a Saturday morning. The weird thing was that as soon as I walked in, everyone stopped talking.
Even Tina Walters dropped her book and gaped at me as I walked past the fireplace on my way to the section of the library devoted to world currencies (we had a paper due for Mr. Smith). I ran my hand across the spines of books, looking, until I heard a whisper filter through the shelves.
“Well, of course they’re going to say it was a false alarm,” said I voice I didn’t recognize.
I froze.
“Obviously her mom is going to cover for her.”
And my heart stopped. “It’s not like it’s the first time, either.”
I’m used to people talking about me . . . sort of. I mean, I am the headmistress’s daughter, and my chameleoness is rather legendary, and my secret boyfriend had followed me to my CoveOps final and driven a forklift through a wall. So you could say I’ve never been entirely under the radar. But none of those things were ever followed by pulsing sirens and spinning bookshelves and a mansion-wide lockdown three times more secure than what would happen to the White House in the event of a nuclear war.
By lunchtime it was all I could do to maintain a brave, unguilty-looking face as I sat in the Grand Hall, feeling entirely unchameleony.
I couldn’t blame them, entirely. After all, my ex-boyfriend had invited me to a party in Roseville. I have, on occasion, violated school security to see that particular boyfriend. So it shouldn’t have come as a total surprise that, as I sat in the Grand Hall at lunch that day, eating my lasagna, the entire school was staring . . . at me.
“How did this happen?” I whispered to my friends.
“Well, everyone knows you used to sneak out to see Josh; and they know he invited you to a party,” Liz said, not really getting the whole rhetorical question thing. (Liz likes questions too much to ever let one go unanswered.) “And then there was a security breach, and the next thing we knew, you were there—looking . . .”
“Guilty,” Bex said, summing the night up nicely.
“Cam,” Liz said, leaning closer. “It’s not so bad. No one thinks you did it on purpose.”
Bex shrugged. “But everyone does think you did it.”
There have been Gallagher Girl traitors before, but no one ever talks about them. Very few people even know their names. But right then I felt like one of them—or at least like people thought I was one of them.
“So, Cammie,” Tina said, taking a seat beside me, “is it true that you weren’t actually sneaking out to see Josh—”
“That’s right, Tina, I wasn’t,” I said, kinda relieved to get it off my chest. Tina didn’t even seem to hear me, though
, because she just plowed on.
“—Because according to my sources, instead of going to that dance in town, you were really sneaking out to participate in a rogue mission for the CIA.”
“Tina! Of course I wasn’t.”
“Really?”
“No, Tina. I wasn’t sneaking out to go to the dance in Roseville; I wasn’t sneaking out because the CIA needed me; I wasn’t sneaking out!”
Tina rolled her eyes.
“Tina, I’m serious,” I snapped. “You can ask my mom,” I offered, but she didn’t look terribly convinced. “You can ask Zach.”
And this got her attention.
“You were with Zach?” she whispered. “You were with Zach!” Tina yelled, and then she was off to where the boys sat at the end of the long table.
I tried to pretend I wasn’t watching, that I didn’t care. But I was. And I did.
“So, Zach.” Tina leaned over him while he ate. “Is it true that you were with Cammie last night during the Code Black?”
“Cammie?” Zach asked, sounding confused. “Morgan?” he asked again, then laughed. “Why would I be with her?”
I thought my throat was going to swell up. I thought my head was going to explode from all the anger and embarassment that was sending blood to my cheeks. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that Tina believed him. She took one look at Zach and then at me and seemed to know that a boy like Zach wouldn’t be with a girl like me.
“Yeah, sure, I saw her at the party,” Zach went on. Then he laughed that little half-laugh of his again. “But I wasn’t with her.”
The spy in me wanted to utilize some highly illegal interrogation tactics (or perhaps the whole-body-waxing thing) and force him to admit the truth. The girl in me . . . well . . . she just sat there, too stunned and embarrassed to do anything at all.
“Zach,” I started, but he just got up and left the table.
“See ya later,” he said, as if he barely saw me.
I could feel every eye turning toward me, and at that moment I was the least invisible Gallagher Girl in the room.
There are many things I love about the P&E barn, like the way the light filters through the skylight, and how sometimes in winter birds nest in the rafters and you can hear chirping and singing in between all the grunts and kicks. (I don’t necessarily like the landing in bird poop part, but that’s just another incentive to keep you on your feet.) That day, however, the thing I loved most about the P&E barn was that it’s a place where you’re allowed—even expected—to hit people.
“You liar!” I yelled as I walked into the barn. Light bathed the old timbers, and the whole room seemed to glow.
But Zach just stopped punching the heavy bag for a second and said, “Spy,” as if that made everything all right. Which, let me tell you, it didn’t.
First, there was the fact that he’d lied to a member of the sisterhood, and even though he technically isn’t a sister, that is simply not done. Plus, there was the fact that he’d completely humiliated me in front of the entire school.
And then there was the thought that had haunted me all the way from the Grand Hall to the P&E barn. Either Zach didn’t want to admit to being alone with me, or he knew more about what had happened last night than he was willing to admit. At the moment I don’t know which answer I preferred; all I really knew was that, in either case, Zachary Goode had something to hide.
His fists were sure and steady as they beat the heavy bag. Small beads of sweat ran down the side of his face and onto the mat beneath us.
“Zach!” I yelled as if maybe he’d forgotten I was there. “You know I didn’t breach security last night. You know I didn’t cause the Code Black.”
He looked at me and said, “Oh, I thought it was a false alarm,” in the manner of someone who didn’t think it was a false alarm at all.
I hit the bag with all my might, and Zach raised his eyebrows. “Not bad.” He stepped around to hold the bag. “Put your shoulder into it now.”
“I know how to do it,” I snapped.
“Do you?” he asked, smiling that same winking, mocking smile. And then, I don’t know if it was nerves or PMS or just the fury of a woman scorned, but I hauled off and kicked the heavy bag—hard—and it flew back and hit him in the stomach. For a second he stood there, doubled over, trying to catch his breath. “Nice one, Gallagher Girl.”
“Don’t call me—”
“Look,” Zach cut me off as he stepped around the bag and placed his hands on my shoulders. “Do you really want everyone knowing we were together?” He paused. “Do you think that maybe what happened last night isn’t any of Tina Walters’s business?”
Honestly, twenty-four hours earlier I would have hated the thought of Tina Walters thinking that Zach and I were off somewhere together, but everything looks different after you’ve seen the world go black.
“Besides,” Zach said as he smiled and wiped sweat from his upper lip with the back of his hand, “I thought you liked your interludes secret and mysterious. Your boyfriends private.”
“We weren’t having an interlude. And you are not my boyfriend.”
“Yeah.” He hit the bag harder. “I noticed.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Zach stopped. The bag swung back and forth, keeping time as he shook his head and said, “You’re the Gallagher Girl. You figure it out.”
Boys! Are they always this impossible? Do they always say cryptic, indecipherable things? (Note to self: work with Liz to adapt her boy-to-English translator into a more mobile form—like maybe a watch or necklace.)
“Besides,” Zach said, “at my school, we learn how to keep a secret.”
“Yeah. I know. I go to a school like yours.”
He looked at me. “Do you?”
I’ve found a lot of secret passageways in my time as a Gallagher Girl. During my seventh grade year I was almost always covered in dust and cobwebs as I pulled levers and pushed stones until I unearthed a version of my school that probably hadn’t been seen since Gilly herself had roamed our halls. But when I’d found the narrow tunnel that led to a hidden room outside my mother’s office, I’d kind of made an unspoken promise to myself that I wouldn’t use it—that I’d never eavesdrop. But that night felt like an exception.
Dust hung heavy in the tunnel. My shoulders grazed old stones and rough wooden beams. Light fell through gaps in the stones as the passageway widened, and soon I was looking for my mother through the cracks—but seeing Mr. Solomon. “Do you think any of the girls have guessed?” he asked.
“About Blackthorne?” Mom asked, and Mr. Solomon nodded.
“No. But if one of them knew the truth, then they’d all know the truth.”
Mr. Solomon laughed. “You’re probably right.” He straightened out on the couch. “You still think this is a good idea?”
Mom walked to her desk. “It’s what we have to do.” She turned and looked into the distance. “For everyone.”
On the way to our suite I avoided the busy staircases and crowded hallways—not because of the stares and whispers, but because I wanted to think about the way Zach looked during the Code Black; I wanted to remember the long, quiet ride from D.C. and my mother’s worried face. And more than anything, I wanted to ask myself the question that had been looming in the back of my mind since I’d first seen Zach in D.C.: Who were those boys, really?
All we had was a picture of Mr. Solomon in a T-shirt and my mother’s word that we needed to forge friendships for the future. That didn’t change the fact that the Gallagher Academy hadn’t had a Code Black since the end of the cold war—until they showed up. That didn’t change the fact that Zach had looked Tina in the eye and lied.
Twenty-four hours before, I’d stood in that cold, empty corridor and thought that Zach knew me; but I didn’t know him. I didn’t know any of them. And I didn’t like it. At all.
I pushed open the door to our suite and announced to my roommates, “We’ve got work to do.”
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I know what you’re thinking. And the truth is, I might have thought it, too. I mean, it’s not like we had a lot of free time on our hands and were looking for an extra project. It’s not as if I enjoy getting summoned to D.C. and debriefed by the CIA. I don’t go looking for trouble, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that trouble might have found us—walked through our front gates and moved into the East Wing. So even though there were about a million reasons to forget the whole thing . . . we didn’t. Instead we waited, and we watched, and a week later we were ready. Sort of.
“Tell me again why this isn’t an incredibly bad idea,” I muttered in the dark passageway. Cobwebs clung to every inch of me. My equipment belt was on too tight, and Liz kept stepping on my heels and making high-pitched squeaks (everyone knows she’s afraid of spiders).
“Well, I think it’s bloody brilliant,” Bex replied. It was also bloody risky, and that, I knew, was part of its appeal for Bex.
I hadn’t meant for it to come down to this. Seriously. I thought we might look up their birth certificates or do other least-intrusive-means-necessary things. But as I stood in the secret passageway that led to the East Wing, I couldn’t help but feel pretty intrusive.
“Guys, maybe breaking about a dozen rules isn’t a good way to . . . you know . . . prove I didn’t break any rules,” I suggested.
But Bex just smiled through the dusty dim light. “It is if we don’t get caught.” She stepped over one of the thin motion-sensing lasers that the security department must have installed over winter break. “And I don’t plan on getting caught.”
I stopped in the corridor, felt Liz, then Bex bang into me as I listened for something—anything—to give us an excuse to turn around.
“But what if they aren’t really gone?” I asked.
“They are,” Bex said.
“But shouldn’t we wait? We’ve only had a week of prep work. We don’t know their patterns of behavior yet. We don’t—”
“Cam, I told you,” Liz said. “Dr. Steve is making the boys do some kind of group-bonding thing. It has to be tonight.”