by Ally Carter
"Did you hear that?" Zach whispered. "I'm special."
"That's a matter of—" I started, but before I could finish, Madame Dabney said, "Oh, Cameron dear, would you and your friend like to demonstrate for the rest of the class?"
What I wanted to do was disappear, but Madame Dabney pulled us into the center of the tea room. "You must be Zachary Goode. Welcome to the Gallagher Academy. Now, I must ask that you place your right hand firmly in the center of Cameron's lower back." Even a highly trained pavement artist can't hide when the person they're hiding from has his arm around her waist.
"Okay, now. Everyone find a partner," Madame Dabney instructed. "Yes, girls, some of you will have to take turns being the boy."
I heard my friends scurrying around me. There was laughing and giggling, and I saw Jonas and Liz manage to step on each other's feet at the exact same time, while Zach and I stood in the center of the room, waiting for further instructions.
"Ladies," Madame Dabney said, "you will place your right hand firmly in your partner's palm." I did it.
"What's the matter, Gallagher Girl?" Zach said, eyeing me. "You're not actually mad about yesterday, are you?"
The music grew louder; I heard my teacher say, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, we will begin with a basic box step. No, Rebecca, if you're going to dance with Grant, then you must let him lead!"
But Zach was smiling at me, and a knowing look filled his eyes. "It was a cover, Gallagher Girl. An op. Maybe you're familiar with the concept?"
But before I could say anything, Madame Dabney placed one hand on Zach and the other on me and announced, "Hold your partners tightly." She pushed us closer together, and before I knew it, we were dancing.
Chapter Thirteen
Life at spy school has never been boring (for obvious reasons), but the next two weeks were some of the busiest of my entire future-government-operative existence. It was practically all I could do to A) Avoid Zach. B) Keep up with my classwork. And C) Keep all the rumors separate from the facts. For example:
The Blackthorne delegation consisted of fifteen boys ranging in age from eighth grade to senior. FACT.
One of the boys was the son of an infamous double agent, and the CIA had faked his death and legally adopted him in order to develop him as a sleeper operative. RUMOR.
Dr. Steve had broken Madame Dabney's heart in a bitter love triangle with a Pakistani belly dancer in the Champagne region of France. RUMOR (probably).
And two things were absolutely, positively true: 1) There was so much talking in the common room at all hours of the night that even a highly dedicated operative couldn't get much sleep. And 2) Early morning grooming rituals start way earlier at a school where actual boys attend.
So that's why I was struggling to keep my eyes open as I sat down beside Macey in the Grand Hall one Friday morning.
"Did you know that Jonas was a finalist for the Fieldstein Honor last year?" Liz asked in Japanese but then switched to English. "Isn't that really…wow."
At the end of the table, Courtney Bauer and Anna Fetterman were making plans to highlight each other's hair using materials from the chemistry labs. (Note to self: never let Courtney Bauer and Anna Fetterman near your hair.) Mick Morrison and Bex were talking about a truly impressive Mankato Maneuver that Grant had demonstrated the day before in P&E.
Then someone pushed onto the bench beside me. "Ne, Cammie, Zach toha donattenno?" Tina Walters asked.
Okay, at this point I should probably point out that it was early, I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep the night before, and different phrases can take on very different meanings in foreign languages; but despite all that, I could have sworn that Tina Walters had just asked me if there was "something going on" with me and Zach. And I'm pretty sure that by "something," she wasn't referring to any kind of extra credit assignments!
"Tina!" I gasped, because I could see that Zach was only twenty feet away, deep in conversation with Mr. Solomon at the waffle bar. "What are you talking about?"
"You know," Tina said, nudging me. "Don't look now. He's staring at you."
Well, I don't know how normal girls react to the "Don't look now" command, but spy girls are trained to find the nearest reflective surface (which was the sterling-silver orange juice pitcher) and look.
Zach was studying me. But Mr. Solomon was, too.
"So," Tina asked again, "do you like him?"
She couldn't be serious. Then I looked up and down the long table of eavesdropping girls, and realized she was totally serious!
I couldn't believe she was asking me that. In the Grand Hall. With boys…everywhere! It was as if Tina didn't know that it's standard protocol to do a basic security sweep and activate a bug scrambler before engaging in conversations that classified. I mean, sure, it was pretty loud in here, but the Blackthorne Institute could very well have an excellent lip-reading curriculum.
But did Tina consider that? No. She just leaned closer, looking almost as excited as the time she'd found out Professor Buckingham had spent the summer organizing security for Prince William, and said, "Because, according to my research, you technically have dibs on Zach, since you talked to him first. If you want him."
Gallagher Girls study. We prepare. We never do anything halfway. But most of all, we don't let anyone—not even fifteen Blackthorne Boys—come between us.
"Tina," I said slowly as I leaned over the table and practically whispered the words, "I officially relinquish my claim to Zach."
Tina smiled and nodded. Everyone went back to breakfast.
"They'll get over it."
The voice was so faint I thought I might have dreamed it. Then I saw Macey McHenry—the girl who had actually been stopped on the streets of New York and offered a shot at being on the cover of Vogue—sitting there in a wrinkled uniform with her hair in a ponytail, reading the newest Journal of Extreme Extractions.
"The boy thing—the new—it'll wear off," Macey said, not noticing that three boys at the eighth grade table were staring at her, not caring that she was the only girl in the entire room without a trace of makeup.
It was as if a virus had been injected into our school, but Macey'd known about a thousand boys before she'd come here. And I'd known Josh. The two of us had been exposed to boys before, so we had built up antibodies. We were, in a word, immune.
I'm not completely sure, and this isn't scientific or anything, but I think the most exciting words in the English language might be CoveOps class, let's go. Or at least that's what I thought as the elevator opened into Sublevel One that day, and I saw Mr. Solomon walking toward us, pulling on a jacket.
He didn't tell us to open our textbooks; he didn't have us take our seats; instead, he led us upstairs and through the open doors, into the crisp cool air toward one of the ruby-red shuttle vans with the Gallagher crest on its side. I know this might sound a little anticlimactic after the helicopter thing, but to be honest, being in a helicopter with seven of my sisters was relaxing compared to the feeling of sitting in the back of the van…with boys.
Grant sat beside Mr. Solomon at the front of the van. Zach was on the other side of Mr. Solomon, his breathing steady and even, and I knew that the Blackthorne Institute had either trained him very well or very poorly, because he seemed indifferent to the fact that he was locked in the back of a van with eight expertly trained teenage girls, a man who (according to Tina) had once strangled a Yugoslavian arms dealer with a pair of control-top panty hose, and … Dr. Steve.
"I say, Mr. Solomon," Dr. Steve droned on, "you've done an excellent job with these young ladies. Just excellent."
Mr. Solomon had lectured on rolling exits the week before, and for a second I wondered if he'd brought us here to illustrate how to throw someone out of a moving van; but then I remembered that Dr. Steve was driving.
"You ladies need to pay attention to this man," Dr. Steve said. "He's a living legend."
"Just as long as they remember the most important part of that is the living," Mr. Solomon said.
"Today's about the basics, ladies and gentlemen," Mr. Solomon said easily, as if the gentlemen had always been there. "I want to watch you move; see you work together. Pay attention to your surroundings, and remember—half of your success in this business comes from looking like you belong, so today your cover is that you're a bunch of private-school students enjoying a trip to town."
I thought about the Gallagher Academy logo on the side of this particular van, then glanced down at my uniform— made a mental note of what version of myself I was supposed to be, while, beside me, Bex asked, "What are we really?"
"A bunch of spies"—Mr. Solomon pulled a quarter from his pocket and gave it a flip—"playing tag." Before the quarter had even landed in his palm, I knew it wasn't a matter of heads or tails.
"Brush pass, Ms. Baxter," Mr. Solomon said. "Define it."
"The act of covertly passing an object between two agents."
"Correct," Mr. Solomon said. I glanced at Zach, half expecting him to roll his eyes or something, because, frankly, brush passes aren't that much more complicated than learning to waltz with Madame Dabney. If you want to be technical about it, brush passes are about as low tech as you get; but they're important, or else Mr. Solomon wouldn't have loaded us into the van that day. "The little things can get away from you, ladies and gentlemen. The little things matter."
"So right you are," Dr. Steve chimed from the front seat. "As I was telling Headmistress Morgan just this—"
"It's you and the street today," Mr. Solomon said, ignoring Dr. Steve. "Today's test might be low tech, but this is trade craft at its most essential."
He pulled a small box from beneath his seat, and I instantly recognized the cache of comms units and tiny cameras that were concealed within pins and earrings, tie clips and silver crosses exactly like the one I'd worn last semester.
"Watch. Listen," Mr. Solomon said. "Remember to communicate. Observe."
Kim Lee was struggling to pin an American flag-pin-slash-camera onto her coat, and then Grant said, "Allow me," and Kim batted her eyelashes and swooned a little (yes—actual swoonage) as he helped her.
"Pair off," Solomon continued his instructions as the van stopped. "Blend in, and remember, we'll be watching."
I looked at Bex and started for the doors, but before I could put a foot outside, Mr. Solomon said, "Oh no, Ms. Morgan. I believe you already have a partner."
It shouldn't have been that hard—not the brush passes, not the questions Mr. Solomon fired through our comms units at regular intervals. None of it. But as I climbed out of the van I knew this was going to be one of the toughest assignments I'd ever been on. Because, for starters, at eleven a.m. on a Friday morning, there isn't a lot of pedestrian traffic on the town square in Roseville, Virginia, and everyone knows pedestrian traffic is key when trying to covertly pass something between two agents.
Also, despite the bright sun and cloudless sky, it was still pretty cold outside, so I could either wear gloves and potentially inhibit my quarter-handling ability, or go gloveless and allow my hands to freeze.
And, of course, there is the fact that your partner is your lifeline during covert operations, and at that moment, my partner was Zach.
"Come on, Gallagher Girl," he said as he headed for the square. "This should be fun."
But it didn't sound like fun—at all. Fun is movie marathons; fun is experimenting with fourteen kinds of ice cream and creating your own custom flavor. Fun is not hanging out in the place where I had met, kissed, and broken up with the world's sweetest boy. And participating in a clandestine training exercise with a different boy who wasn't sweet at all.
The gazebo still stood in the center of the square. The movie theater was behind me, and the Abrams and Son Pharmacy—Josh's family's business—was exactly where it had been for seventy years. Things are supposed to look different when you come back, but despite the sight of my classmates walking two by two down sidewalks, everything was exactly as I'd remembered. Not even the purses displayed in the Anderson's Accessories window had changed; for a second it felt like the past two months hadn't happened.
"So," Zach said as he stretched out on the steps of the gazebo, "come here often?"
The loose stone where Josh and I had hidden our notes— my first dead-letter drop—was just a foot away so I shrugged and said, "I used to, but then the deputy director of the CIA made me promise to stop." Zach laughed a quiet, half-laugh as he squinted up at me through the sun.
In my earpiece, I heard Mr. Solomon say, "Okay, Ms. Walters, you're it. Be aware of your casual observers, and let's make those passes quick and clean."
I saw Tina and Eva walking past each other on the south side of the square; their palms brushed for a split second as the quarter passed between them. "Well done," said Mr. Solomon.
Zach tilted his head back, closed his eyes, and soaked in the sun as if he'd been coming to that gazebo his whole life.
"So what about you?" I asked, once the silence became too much. "Exactly where does the Blackthorne Institute call home?"
"Oh." He cocked an eyebrow. "That's classified."
I couldn't help myself: I got annoyed. "So you can sleep inside the walls of my school, but I can't even know where yours is?"
Zach laughed again, but it was different this time, not mocking but deeper, as if I were on the outside of a joke I could never hope to understand. "Trust me, Gallagher Girl, you wouldn't want to sleep in my school."
Okay, I have to admit at that point my spy genetics and teenage curiosity were about to overwhelm me.
Through my comms unit, I heard Mr. Solomon say, "Two men are playing chess in the southwest corner of the square. How many moves from checkmate is the man in the green cap, Ms. Baxter?"
Bex replied "Six" without even breaking stride as she and Grant strolled along the opposite side of the street.
"What do you mean? Why can't you tell me?"
"Just trust me, Gallagher Girl." He straightened on the gazebo steps, placed his elbows on his knees, and something more substantial than a quarter seemed to pass between us as he stared at me. "Can you trust me?"
A torn and faded movie ticket blew across the grass. Mr. Solomon said, "Ms. Morrison, you just passed three parked cars on Main Street; what were their tag numbers?" and Mick rattled off her response.
But Zach's gaze never left mine and I thought his question might have been the hardest of them all.
In the reflection of the pharmacy window I saw Eva drop the quarter in the open bag at Courtney's feet while, through my comms unit, Mr. Solomon warned, "There was an ATM behind you, Ms. Alvarez. ATMs equal cameras. Tighten it up, ladies."
Zach nodded and said, "Solomon's good." As if it didn't go without saying.
"Yeah. He is."
"They say you're good, too." And then, despite some very rigorous P&E training, I think a feather could have knocked me over, because A) I had no idea who "they" were or where they got their information. And B) Even if it was reliable intel, I never dreamed Zachary Goode, of all people, would say so.
"Okay, Zach," Mr. Solomon said. "Without turning around, tell me how many windows overlook the square from the west side."
"Fourteen." Zach didn't miss a beat. His eyes didn't leave me for a second. Then to me he said, "They say you're a real pavement artist."
Zach leaned back on the steps again. "You know, it's probably a good thing we got to tail you in D.C. If you'd been following me, I probably never would have seen you."
It was supposed to be a compliment—I know it was. After all, for a spy, there's probably no higher praise. But right then, as I stood in the place where I'd had my first date—my first kiss—I didn't hear it as a spy; I heard it as a girl. And for a girl, having a boy like Zach Goode tell you that he would never notice you isn't a compliment. At all.
I should have said something sassy. I should have made a joke. I should have done anything b
ut turn around and walk away from the gazebo and my partner and my mission. Bex and Grant veered onto the sidewalk and headed straight toward me. I felt Bex bump into me, heard her say "I'm sorry" as her hand slid softly over my own.
"Nice pass, Ms. Baxter," Mr. Solomon said as I held the quarter in my palm.
I turned down a side street on the far side of the square, passed the pharmacy, and thought for a second about the one boy who had seen me—once—and I wondered if life were just a series of brush passes—things come and go.
Then I heard a familiar voice say, "Cammie, is that you?"
Then I realized that sometimes things come back.
Chapter Fourteen
Josh.
Josh was standing in front of me. Josh was stepping closer. Josh was looking at me, smiling at me. "Hey, Cammie, I thought that was you."
Now, I know I'm new to this whole ex-girlfriend thing, but I'm pretty sure exes aren't supposed to talk to each other. In fact, I'm pretty sure exes are supposed to hide when they see each other, which totally sounded like a great idea to me, because, well, hiding's what I do best.
But Josh had seen me. Josh always saw me.
"Cammie?" Josh said again. "Are you okay?"
I honestly didn't have a clue how to answer, because, on the one hand, Josh was there—talking to me! On the other hand, I had broken up with him. And lied to him. And the last time I'd seen him he'd shown up during a CoveOps exercise, driven a forklift through a wall, and had his memory modified, so okay wasn't necessarily the word the came to mind when describing how I felt right then.
Spies are good at multitasking—we observe and we process, we calculate and we lie, but I didn't think it was possible to feel so happy, scared, and generally awkward all at the same time, so I muttered, "Hi, Josh," and tried to keep my voice from cracking.
"What are you doing here?" Josh asked, then looked up and down the narrow street as if he were being followed (which, when you think about it, wasn't all that far-fetched).