by Ally Carter
When you're the daughter of two secret agents, you learn pretty early that spies walk a moral tightrope. We do bad things for good reasons, and for the most part we can live with that. But that Sunday night, when I sat in my mother's office eating microwavable crab puffs and fingering my new custom-made spy watch, I thought about my cover: hungry daughter bonding with her mother-slash-mentor. Then I thought about my mission: do a basic recon of the headmistress's office and hope there will be a report titled Operation Black Thorn or Contents of the East Wing just lying around.
Sunday-night supper in my mother's office is something I've been doing ever since Mom and I came to the Gallagher Academy. Usually, however, I don't feel nauseous until after I've eaten (because even though Mom once manufactured an antidote for a rare poison by using the contents of a hotel minibar, she has yet to master microwaves and hot plates).
"So," Mom said, gesturing to the small silver tray of puffs, "how are they?"
(Note to self: research bioweapon potential of microwavable crab puffs.)
"They're great!" I lied, and my mother smiled. No, scratch that—she glowed. And at that moment I seriously wanted to back out, to put the watch in my pocket and forget how I'd already memorized the exact position of everything on her desk in case I got a chance to snoop and then had to put things back. I wanted to stop being a spy and start being a daughter. Especially when Mom glanced at my wrist and said, "You're wearing Grandma's watch."
I rubbed my thumb over the smooth glass that now doubled as a telephoto lens. "Yeah."
"That's nice," she said, and smiled happily. Even though she seemed to be fine now, I thought about the worried woman I'd shared a limo with from D.C., and the conversation I'd overheard. I wasn't the only operative in that room clinging to her legend.
And then, before I could stop to think, I blurted, "Do you have any fingernail clippers?" Mom looked at me for a second, and I knew I couldn't back out now, so I held out my right hand, which thankfully, wasn't shaking. "I've got a hangnail that's driving me crazy."
"Sure, sweetie," Mom said. "In my desk. Top drawer."
So see, I didn't even have to pick the lock or fake the fingerprint-activated drawers. I was perfectly within my daughterly rights as I moved to my mother's desk and rummaged around for the clippers.
A brief search of the headmistress's desk revealed the following:
Headmistress Morgan had ten different lipsticks in her desk (only three of which were for purely cosmetic uses).
Mom carried a small pan into her private bathroom and turned on the water, and that's when I took pictures of every single thing in her trash can. Headmistress Morgan had, evidently, been fighting off a cold, because her trash contained fourteen used tissues and an empty bottle of Vitamin C.
I knocked a paper clip dispenser off her desk and channeled Liz with a loud "Oopsy daisy." Then I huddled on the floor as I picked up paper clips with one hand and rifled through her bottom desk drawers with the other.
Of all the items the Gallagher Academy receives royalty revenues from, Band-Aids are surprisingly the most profitable.
I could hear my mother on the far side of the room, stirring things, pouring things. "Did you find them?" she called out.
I held up the nail clippers with one hand while I closed her bottom drawer with the other.
I smiled and waved my manicured fingers and thought, I am a terrible daughter.
But my mother only smiled in return, because maybe I'm also a pretty good spy.
Ironically, the one person who could explain the difference was the one person I totally couldn't ask.
I placed the nail clippers back where I'd found them and looked down at a desk that even an expert would swear had never been touched. I placed my palms against the middle drawer and felt my fingertips brush against the smooth wood of the underside, the cool metal track on which it ran. But something else, too. Something thin and worn.
"I know this semester is going to be a big adjustment for you, kiddo," Mom said. She stirred a bubbling concoction in a Crock-Pot while I pressed a finger against the paper—felt it move.
"And last semester. Well, I can only imagine what it must have been like—the reports, the debriefings."
I probably hadn't found anything important; after all, the underside of a drawer isn't a preferred hiding place for a spy—nothing about it is secure or protected. But it is a good hiding place for a woman—a place to keep something you want nearby but out of sight.
"And I want you to know," Mom went on, "that I am so proud of you."
Yes, that's right, not only was I invading my mother's personal space right under her nose, but that's the moment she chose to tell me how proud she was of my new-and-improved behavior! It was official:
I was a terrible person.
Then I felt the paper give. It fluttered through the air and landed right on my lap. And from that point on I barely heard a word my mother said.
Dad. It was a picture of Dad—but like no picture I'd ever seen, because for starters, he looked older than he did in the pictures Grandma had given me, and younger than he did in the pictures of him and my mom. And in this picture, my father wasn't alone.
Mr. Solomon's arm was around my father's shoulders. They stood on a baseball field. They were young. They were strong. And if I hadn't known better, I would have sworn they were both immortal.
But I did know better. And that, I guess, was the problem.
"Did you find what you needed, sweetheart?" Mom asked, and I thought it was a really good question. I aimed my watch at the photo, imagined the faint click as I took a picture. "Cam," Mom said again, moving toward me.
"I'm not feeling too well," I said, and slipped the picture back to where my mother kept it hidden. From me. From herself. From whoever. I moved away from the desk, toward the door. "Can I maybe have a rain check on supper?"
"Cam," Mom said, stopping me. She put her hand against my forehead like Grandma Morgan always does. "It could be a cold—you know something has been going around." I did know. I'd already seen the proof in her trash can.
"I think I just need to go to bed," I said. "It's pretty late."
But then I opened the door, and there, in the Hall of History, I saw Bex.
And Liz was sitting on her shoulders.
Chapter Five
Time's a strange thing at the Gallagher Academy. Usually it flies. But sometimes it gets really, really slow. Needless to say, this was one of those times.
The Operatives modified a Mobile Observation Device (aka Macey's new digital camera) and attached it to the bookcase across from the entrance to the headmistress's office with a Retractable Adhesion Unit (aka duct tape) and programmed it to take pictures at ninety-second intervals.
Down the corridor, I saw Macey kneeling in front of the mysteriously locked door to the East Wing.
The Operatives secured an Entry/Exit Detection Device (aka a piece of string) to the doorknob in question, knowing it would fall off if the door was opened in The Operatives' absence.
For a split second, everything seemed to freeze, but then I heard my mom say, "What is it, Cam?" She walked toward me.
"Nothing." I closed the door and leaned against it. "It's just…" It's just that my friends are completely insane and on the other side of this door right now, doing things that they really aren't supposed to be doing, and if you catch them you'll be really mad—or proud—but probably mad.
"It's just … I wanted to tell you that I think I'm really in a good place this semester." (Because technically, at that moment, the best possible place was between the headmistress and my roommates.) "And I was thinking about what you said," I went on. "I'm committed to—"
But then a bang on the door cut me off, and I had a bad feeling that Liz had fallen from Bex's shoulders and knocked herself unconscious on the doorknob.
"Cam," Mom said, inching closer. "You gonna get that?"
But I didn't dare turn around. "Get what?" Another knock. "Ooooh. Thaaaat."
I opened
the door. Please let it be Bex, I prayed. Or Liz … Or Macey … Or …
Anyone but Joe Solomon!
Oh my gosh! Could the night get any worse? Yes, it turns out—it could. Because not only was one of the CIA's best secret agents standing in front of me, but my best friends in the world were twenty feet behind him, being secretive and agenty! (I know because I could see Macey's hand holding a compact around the corner to see whether or not the coast was clear. Which, obviously, it wasn't!)
I had to buy some time—a minute, thirty seconds at least—so Bex, Liz, and Macey could pull themselves from their hiding places and get out of there.
So I said, "Oh, hello, Mr. Solomon," because Madame Dabney has trained me to be socially gracious, and Mr. Solomon himself has trained me to act normal under the most abnormal circumstances.
"Ms. Morgan, I hate to bother you, but…" Mr. Solomon looked past me toward my mother. "Those records you asked for, Rachel." He handed Mom a plain brown envelope.
An envelope bearing the word Blackthorne in Mr. Solomon's careful writing.
And then time got really slow again.
"Cam?" Mom said behind me. "You really aren't feeling well, are you sweetie?"
"No," I muttered. I was staring at the first piece of concrete evidence that Blackthorne wasn't some weird dream I'd had, and yet I just stood there, looking at my Covert Operations instructor but seeing the man in the picture—my father's friend.
"Okay, I'm going to go," I said with a glance at my mother. "And you guys have probably got… stuff… to do. And …"
I could have said a dozen things in a dozen languages, but before I could blurt a single one I heard a voice at the end of the Hall of History call, "There you are!"
And then the thing that I'd been fearing happened: Mr. Solomon turned around.
But there's a difference between getting caught and allowing yourself to be found, and right then, Macey, Bex, and Liz were walking through the Hall of History, hiding in plain sight.
"We can't hold movie night forever, Cam," Bex said.
So I turned my back on my mom and Mr. Solomon, and then, envelope or not, I walked away.
Do you know how many things I was feeling as we got to the room? A lot. A lot. For starters, there was the crab-puff thing. And then there was the envelope thing. But as soon as our door was closed and our stereo was on, I turned to my best friends and cried, "You planted surveillance equipment in the Hall of History while my mother was in her office!" because I guess that was the thing I felt the loudest.
"Oh, Cam," Bex said, shrugging slightly. "It was just a little recon."
Deep down, all I really wanted to do was put on my comfy pajamas and go to sleep and brush the crab-puff taste out of my mouth (but not necessarily in that order.) But instead I snapped, "Yeah, well you almost got caught—you almost got me caught. And getting debriefed by the security department isn't as much fun as it sounds, guys." I forced a laugh. "Trust me."
I said it kind of snotty, but Bex didn't answer. She didn't even get mad. Instead, she looked at me as only a best friend-slash-spy-slash-person-who-has-been-trained-on-reading-body-language can do. She climbed onto her bed and crossed her long legs. "You found something."
I could have denied it. I could have lied. But right then I was in the one room in the mansion where I could never disappear.
"Actually, I did." I told them what I'd found in my mother's desk. I listed the contents of her trash—even the shades of her lipstick. And finally, I told them about the envelope.
"We've got to get it!" Bex exclaimed, sounding as excited as a kid on Christmas morning. "We can wait until everyone goes to bed and then break into the office."
"That's not a good idea, Bex," I said as I slipped on my pajamas, took off my watch, and pulled my hair into an old stretched-out hairband.
"Come on, Cam," Bex pleaded, while Macey and Liz looked on. "If anyone can get into the headmistress's office, it's you!"
"No!" I snapped, maybe because I knew better than to let Bex work up any momentum; maybe because I was still completely on edge. But maybe because sometimes a girl just really needs to snap at someone who she knows will forgive her later.
I started for the bathroom, but Bex was right behind me. "Why not?"
"Because it's not a game," I said, talking louder than I wanted, but somehow unable to lower my voice. "Because sometimes spies get caught. Because sometimes spies get hurt. Because sometimes—"
"We've got pictures!" Liz cried triumphantly. Thin wires ran from my new watch to her computer. Images flashed across the screen. Crab puffs. File folders. And finally…
Dad.
Because sometimes spies don't come home.
The picture I had taken filled the screen. My jeans were like a denim border—a frame behind the snapshot that had landed on my lap. Liz zoomed in. She magnified.
"Ooh," Macey said. "Who's the hottie?"
"That's Mr. Solomon, Macey," I said, starting for the bathroom because, well, I didn't want to cry in front of my friends. And one of the advantages of the face-washing process is that you have an excuse for squinting your eyes and looking away.
"Not Mr. Solomon," Macey said. "The other guy. Is he Blackthorne?"
"No, Macey," Bex said, saving me the trouble. I glanced in the bathroom mirror and saw Bex turn from the screen and catch my eye in the glass. "That's Cam's dad."
We study a lot of dangerous stuff at the Gallagher Academy, but there are some things so feared that they're never, ever mentioned. Everyone knows my dad was in the CIA. That he went on a mission and never came home. Now there's an empty grave in the family plot in Nebraska. Everyone knows, but no one ever asks to hear the story. And that night, Macey was no different.
I splashed cold water on my face and flossed my teeth, clinging to my routine—to normal. I might have stayed in there, flossing forever, if I hadn't heard Liz say, "Oh. My. Gosh."
In the mirror I saw her staring at the picture on the screen with the eyes of a scientist, taking in every detail of the faces of the two boys.
"Cam," Liz called, without taking her eyes from the screen. "You've got to look at this!"
I moved from teeth-flossing to face-moisturizing— anything to stay busy. "I've seen it already," I told her.
"No, Cam," Liz said, pointing at the bright screen in the dim room. "Look! Look at his shirt! Mr. Solomon's T-shirt!"
But she didn't have to finish, because there…magnified—enhanced—I saw what I hadn't noticed in my mother's office. I read the words BLACKTHORNE INSTITUTE FOR BOYS.
"It's a school," Macey said slowly.
"A boys' school!" Liz cried.
I looked at the picture and said what everyone else was thinking. "For spies?"
Chapter Six
I've always heard that the hardest thing for a spy isn't knowing things—it's acting like you don't know things you're not supposed to know. But I'd never really appreciated the difference until then. Looking at Mr. Solomon was hard, talking to my mom was impossible, and the whole next day felt like a dream. A very weird there's-a-boys'-school-for-spies-that-nobody-ever-told-me-about nightmare.
Blackthorne was a school! That Mr. Solomon had gone to! A school where they make more Mr. Solomons! It was officially the strangest day of my entire covert life. (And that includes the time Dr. Fibs's lab was temporarily gravity-free.)
I told myself that maybe it was just coincidence that Tina Walters had been swearing for years that there was a boys' school in Maine. After all, Tina also swore that Gillian Gallagher was a direct descendant of Joan of Arc. Tina swears a lot of things. Tina is frequently wrong.
But by the time Professor Buckingham took the podium and announced, "Today we will be reviewing the origins of the clandestine services, beginning with the Montevellian Theory of Operative Development," I knew I wasn't going to be waking up anytime soon.
I love Professor Buckingham. She's cool and strong and the most amazing role model, but her teaching style could probably best be descr
ibed as … well…boring.
"Since its publication more than two thousand years ago, The Art of War has been the definitive thesis in warfare and deception …" she read from her notes as warm sunlight drifted through the windows and lunch grew heavy in my stomach. Her voice was soothing, like white noise, and my eyelids felt like they weighed about a ton, since, for obvious reasons, there hadn't been a whole lot of sleeping in our room the night before.
(Have I mentioned that we had evidence that strongly suggested there is a boys' school? For spies!)
But was Professor Buckingham filling us in about our long-lost band of potential brothers? No. She was talking about the 1947 Council of Covert Operatives, which, let me tell you, isn't nearly as interesting as it sounds.
Then Buckingham stopped talking. The sudden silence jolted me awake as my teacher looked over the top of her reading glasses. "Yes, Ms. McHenry?"
And then, maybe for the first time that semester, Patricia Buckingham had our full attention.
"I'm sorry, Professor," Macey said. "I was only wondering— and I'm sorry if everyone else already knows this—I'm still a little new, you know."
"That is fine, Ms. McHenry," Buckingham said. "What is your question?"
"Well, I was just wondering if there are other schools." Macey paused. She seemed to study our teacher a moment before adding, "Like the Gallagher Academy."
Liz almost fell out of her chair. Tina's eyes got really, really big, and I'm pretty sure the entire sophomore class stopped breathing.
"I mean," Macey went on, "is this the only school of its kind, or are there—"
"There is only one Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, Ms. McHenry," Buckingham said, throwing her shoulders back. "It is the finest institution of its kind in the world."
Buckingham smiled and returned to her notes, totally not expecting Macey to continue.
"So there are other institutions?"
Buckingham sighed, and an almost pained expression crossed her face as she carefully chose her words. "During the Cold War, the concept of recruiting and training operatives at a young age was not an uncommon practice. And there may have been institutions formed for that purpose." Then she straightened her glasses and looked around the room as if to see exactly how far off course we'd forced her to stray. "For obvious reasons it is impossible to determine if any such schools are in existence now. If they ever existed at all, of course."