Mrs. Smith's Spy School for Girls

by Beth McMullen

  “Get out of my office,” she growls. “Now. And next time, make an appointment.”

  There’s a pause. I barely breathe.

  “You’d better find a way out of this mess,” he says. “Your superiors are not going to be as kind as I am.”

  I’m so focused on this heated exchange that for a moment I don’t notice an image now projected on the wall to the right of where Mrs. Smith stands. It plays like a movie, in soft focus, at first blurry, but becoming quickly sharp. A cold sweat breaks out across my forehead. I jam my fist in my mouth. It can’t be. But it is, clear as day. A girl. With white-blond hair. She’s bound at the wrists to a chair. Two tiny holes in her neck, vampire-style, gush blood stark crimson against her pale skin. A deep scar along her chin pulses angrily. Her blue eyes look right at me, which, of course, is impossible.

  “Help me,” she whispers. Do I actually hear her or am I reading her lips? “Help me. Please. Oh, I need help. Yes, I do.”

  And then Veronica Brooks leans her head back and laughs as if this is all just the funniest thing in the world. There’s something about the laugh that’s familiar, but I don’t have time to process it because now blood runs down her face and into her mouth. Her skin transforms into something scaly and rank. She keeps laughing, a hyena mad with the kill. When the laughing finally stops, she’s facing me again, but it’s no longer Veronica. It’s something hateful and terrifying, with black empty eyes and a voice scraped raw as if by broken glass.

  “I see you, Abigail Hunter,” it says, lips pulled back over rotting teeth. “You’d better get out of here fast. Before you get caught!”

  And that’s all it takes to make Batman-pajama-wearing, stealthy-ninja-girl me faint dead away.

  Chapter 3

  Where I Demonstrate a High Level of Stupidity for Someone Who Is Supposed To Be Smart.

  WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, I imagine I’m back in my tidy shoe-box bedroom in New York. But then I see Nurse Willow, an elderly gray-haired lady with deep wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Nurse Willow would never be in my shoe box at home.

  “How are we doing, dear?” she asks. Her voice is sweet, like warm honey, and I let it wash over me. The infirmary sheets are clean and smell of springtime. I nestle down a little deeper. I will simply go back to the nice dream I was having about Quinn Gardener begging me to be his girlfriend. Nurse Willow takes my hand.

  “Now, now, dear, time to wake up,” she coos. “Mrs. Smith would like a word.”

  Mrs. Smith! I give an involuntarily yelp. Quinn goes right out the window.

  “Not to worry,” Nurse Willow says. “I don’t think she’ll be too tough on you. Although there will be consequences.”

  Listen, Nurse Willow, you live here in the cozy bubble of your infirmary. You have no idea how tough it is out there for an invisible Lower Middle. Back at my old school I was never afraid of the principal. Actually, I felt kind of sorry for him. He was always mopping his sweaty forehead with a hanky and shrieking. But Mrs. Smith is something else entirely. She never raises her voice. She never has to. Her mere presence is terrifying enough.

  Maybe she’ll kick me out. Okay, that’s a potential upside I didn’t consider. Sure, my mother will kill me, but she can’t really kill me, right? I don’t have a chance to enjoy the idea of expulsion because suddenly Mrs. Smith looms large, a perfect contrast to Nurse Willow.

  Mrs. Smith is petite and lean, with thick blond curls and blue eyes that give away nothing. No one knows how old she is. Forty? Fifty? A century-old vampire? She wears a preppy khaki-colored suit and four-inch stilettos. A Smith School lapel pin winks at me from her jacket. She peers down over tortoiseshell glasses.

  “Miss Hunter,” she says. Her voice is smooth and deep. “How do you feel this morning?”

  In a perfect world, I’d have a snappy comeback to explain my presence behind her office couch at two a.m. Something about sleepwalking or having zombie apocalypse nightmares—anything to make me appear the sad little boarding-school waif rather than the girl breaking and entering. But for all my apparent smarts, I’m tongue-tied.

  “Um. Well. I. Ah. Gee. Um.”

  “Well then,” she says. “Let’s ask another question, shall we? What might you have heard during your clandestine nighttime trip to my office?” She’s perched delicately on the edge of my infirmary bed, like a butterfly on a narrow stem. “What do you remember?”

  Remember? An image of the Veronica creature rises up before me. I gulp and gesture for the water glass. Mrs. Smith hands it over without ever taking her eyes from mine. I’m being interrogated. It’s not as bad as Chinese History with Mr. Chin or live electrical wires, but I sweat anyway.

  “It’s okay,” she says. “You can tell the truth.”

  I sip my water and decide to go for pathetic. “I couldn’t sleep and I saw your light on and I thought maybe we could, I don’t know, talk about how much I miss my mother,” I say. “But I tripped and fell. I must have hit my head. And I definitely didn’t hear anything.”

  The incredible lameness of this response registers in Mrs. Smith’s eyes because the truth is that Batman-pajama-wearing, stealthy-ninja-girl me took one look at a bloody Veronica and fainted dead away. How completely mortifying.

  Her fingers wrap around my wrist and squeeze, ever-so-gently. “Tell me what you heard, Abigail.”

  The sweat runs freely down my back. “I swear I didn’t hear anything!” I blurt. “I snuck into your office on a dare and tripped over the carpet!” When in doubt, double down on the lame excuses.

  She releases my wrist. “It’s okay,” she says. “Relax. I understand.” Which is not the same as believing, let me tell you. She leans in close and pats me on the head like a dog. I can smell her perfume, a light floral scent much too fun for her.

  I shrink down into my blanket. Mrs. Smith stands, smoothing the invisible wrinkles out of her suit pants. She’s in the doorway when she says, “One more thing.”

  “Yes?” I pull the blanket up to my nose.

  “How did you get out of the locked and alarmed dormitory?” she asks.

  Oh, this one is easy. This one I can answer. I’m even a little proud, which I should immediately recognize as the beginning of my downfall. But sadly, I don’t, and I give her the details.

  “Sheets,” I say. “Tied together and roped around the leg of my desk. I wedged the desk under the window so it wouldn’t slide. No big deal. Plus, I’m only, like, one story up.”

  An arctic wind blows in on Mrs. Smith’s smile.

  “Not anymore,” she says.

  Chapter 4

  McKinsey House Dormitory. Fourth Floor. Yes. Fourth Floor.

  THE SMITH SCHOOL IS A preppy ground zero of ivy-smothered buildings, rolling green fields, well-manicured gardens, inspirational fountains, and orderly stone walls. Except in February, when it resembles an ice cube.

  At Smith, we have our own way of doing things. For example, seniors are seniors, juniors are juniors, and sophomores are sophomores. Makes perfect sense, right? Yes, but after that the whole thing goes off the rails. The ninth graders are Upper Middles, the eighth graders are Middles, and the seventh graders are Lower Middles. However, the middle of what, no one will say.

  But us seventh graders do know that regardless of what they call us, our true status is invisible. We learned quickly that if we want to survive the jungle that is the Smith School’s social hierarchy, we’d better own that invisibility and make ourselves scarce. There is no lower life-form in the universe than a Smith School Lower Middle. I mean, even cockroaches can pull off the neat trick of living for a few months without a head, which is better than what we’ve got.

  The McKinsey House fourth floor has many names, among them the Arctic, Siberia, the Sahara, and the moon. The reason for this is the rooms haven’t been renovated since 1812, the showers never have hot water, and the pipes rattle and hiss so loudly at night yo
u’d swear you were under attack by a pack of angry snakes. The fourth floor is punishment. It’s where dreams go to die. Yesterday I lived on the first floor. Now I live up here. That’ll teach me to pull a Batman out my window.

  Charlotte lies on my bed, Izumi sits on my dresser. When you’re at boarding school, you spend day and night with your friends, so it pays to choose wisely. We liked one another instantly, although physically we’re an odd threesome. I’m tall and skinny with dark eyes and hair that refuses any attempt to subdue it. No matter the season, my skin color is a deep tan that—if you look at my mom—clearly must have come from my father. Not that she’s saying either way.

  By contrast, Charlotte walked right out of the J.Crew catalog with the came-over-on-the-Mayflower family pedigree to match. Her family name is on one of the giant office buildings in New York City that I used to pass on my way to school. I’ve seen her smile and pout her way into privileges the likes of which the rest of us humans never even dream.

  Izumi is short and sturdy, or that’s the way adults describe her. She calls herself a tank, but proudly. She plays a mean rugby game and takes calculus with the seniors. Plus her mother is the ambassador to Japan and her father is some sort of venture capital genius who, according to the Internet, has more money than God.

  It’s evening study hall, and we’re supposed to be doing homework. We’re not.

  “Nice room,” Charlotte says, gesturing to my new accommodations and making a face.

  “This is what happens when you jump out your window,” Izumi points out.

  “I didn’t jump,” I grumble. “I lowered myself. On sheets. For you guys.”

  “You volunteered,” Charlotte reminds me.

  Charlotte was the first person I met at Smith on drop-off day for new students as I lugged boxes to my room. She was lying in the dormitory’s wide front hallway with a copy of Anna Karenina on her face. Just beyond her was another girl, also on the floor, but this girl was twisted up like a Cirque du Soleil performer having a bad day. As I tried to step around Charlotte, she reached out and grabbed my ankle.

  “Don’t,” she whispered.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s Veronica. Don’t disturb her while she’s in twisted lizard pose. It’s really hard. And then she’ll be mean to you. But she’ll probably be mean to you anyway.”

  I squatted down on the floor next to Charlotte. “I once saw a girl wrap both legs around her neck and walk on her hands,” I whispered.

  “Yoga?” Charlotte asked.

  “Nah,” I said. “Khao San Road in Bangkok.”

  “You’ve been to Bangkok?”

  “I’ve been lots of places,” I said, rolling my eyes. I didn’t know it at the time, but my passport full of stamps from exotic locations would be my ticket to street credibility with the girls. They had private-school pedigrees and rich, important parents, but I’d been to Timbuktu. Literally.

  “I have a better view from up here,” I tell my friends, as if exile to Siberia is no big deal.

  “Of what?” Izumi asks.

  Nothing! “The lacrosse field,” I say.

  She eyes me. “You’re acting weird.”

  “I was trapped in the infirmary with Nurse Willow and Mrs. Smith for at least ten minutes.”

  “I can’t believe she didn’t expel you on the spot.”

  “I know.” Despite the room change, I feel as though I got away with something. But the other shoe has to drop. This is Mrs. Smith we’re talking about. Charlotte rolls toward me.

  “Can we cut to the chase, please?” she begs.

  Right. A full reporting of my ill-fated attempt to infiltrate Mrs. Smith’s office in the dead of last night is required. I gave the McKinsey girls a few bits and pieces over lunch, but they want the full story. They have waited all day for this moment, whereas I’ve been mostly dreading it.

  “So I go out the window,” I say.

  “Yes,” Izumi says impatiently. “We know that part. The sheets. Now you live on the moon.”

  “With an awesome view,” I point out.

  “Keep going.”

  “I make it across the quad . . .”

  “No dogs?”

  “I timed it so Betty and Barney were on the other side of the building.” Betty and Barney are the giant Dobermans that patrol the grounds of the Smith School for Children at night. Some dogs are cute and lovable. Betty and Barney are not those dogs.

  “Wow,” Charlotte says. “You’re good.”

  “I cross the quad. I enter Main Building.”

  “Locked?”

  “Nope. Wide open.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “I could have picked the lock. Jennifer taught me how.”

  Here at Smith we refer to our parents by their first names, as if they’re somehow our equals. Or maybe we’re just superangry with them for abandoning us and it’s petty revenge. I even address my mother as Jennifer on the phone now. She sighs but has yet to demand I stop, which just means she’s still guilty about the whole boarding-school thing and I have to continue taking advantage of the situation while I can.

  “Jennifer’s cool,” Charlotte says. I’m always surprised that Charlotte with her Mayflower pedigree and Izumi with her ambassador mom and megarich dad find my single, unemployed mother cool.

  “She’s okay, I guess,” I say with a shrug. “Anyway, I creep along Main Hall.” I spring out of my desk chair to properly reenact my escapades, although my very tiny new room makes this a bit of a challenge. “I hear Mrs. Smith in her office. I don’t think that woman ever sleeps. Anyway, she’s in there talking to some guy. He was giving her kind of a hard time. Kind of yelling.”

  Charlotte sits up. “He was yelling at Mrs. Smith?”

  “I know,” I say. “Shocking.”

  “Terrifying! Who would do that? Who would be brave enough?” She shudders at the thought. “Did you see him? Who was he? So then what happened?”

  Well, then I saw the bloody Veronica projected on the wall and it said I should run and I fainted, if you want the truth. But I can’t tell the girls this. You simply cannot say you’re seeing monsters and expect to maintain any sort of credibility. I’d be done for. Everyone would know that Abigail Hunter couldn’t handle the pressure and lost her marbles. So I do what any girl in my position would do. I lie.

  “And then I tripped and fell,” I say. Fortunately for me, they take it and run.

  “And you hit your head,” Charlotte says.

  Yup.

  “And got busted,” Izumi adds.

  Yup again.

  “And landed in the infirmary.”

  Indeed.

  “But did you learn anything about Veronica?” Charlotte asks impatiently.

  Well, let’s review what we already know about Veronica. First, she’s a senior and beautiful in an ice-princess sort of way, her only flaw being a scar along the left side of her chin. And, of course, Veronica’s smart. Not only does she take all AP classes, she’s the captain of the debate team, and they’re nationally ranked. But that’s not enough. She’s also the captain of the soccer team, the ice hockey team, and the lacrosse team. To make her even more annoying, she’s a monitor. This means she lives in McKinsey House (in a room that’s bigger than my apartment in New York, I might point out) with us invisibles. As a monitor, she is meant to gently guide us with her years of wisdom and experience. When we have problems, Veronica is where we go. Except we don’t because she’s so mean even the mean girls are afraid of her.

  I offer the following example to illustrate Veronica’s character so you don’t think I’m exaggerating. Every morning we have a mandatory school meeting, which I don’t believe has ever been canceled in the history of humankind. During the school meeting, students sit in assigned seats in Main Auditorium. Veronica and I both have aisle seats, although she’s at
the back of the auditorium and I’m in the front. It was the first week of school and an unfortunately dorky girl named Doreen made her way up the aisle. Veronica saw her coming and stuck her foot out, fast as lightning, tripping Doreen. Doreen went down hard, glasses flying, uniform askew, sprawling awkwardly on the ground. As a few students rushed to help her, Veronica looked me dead in the eye. And she smiled, as if saying, See what I can do if I want to?

  Of course, I wanted to curl into a ball and disappear, but I couldn’t break eye contact. It’s as though she’d cast a spell over me. Not that I’m suggesting she’s a vampire or anything, because I don’t believe in that nonsense and you shouldn’t either. But still, Veronica is something to see. If you could, which you can’t, because she’s vanished without a trace.

  Anyway, the word on the street, or, in our case, the manicured pathways crisscrossing the campus, is this: Veronica Brooks was here on Monday afternoon. On Monday night, there was loud screaming heard from one of the empty Main Hall classrooms. Fire trucks and ambulances roared through the Main Gate, screeching to a halt along the large circular driveway. People came in and people went out.

  And then, with the last sliver of moon casting eerie shadows on the buildings, the trucks and the ambulances drove off into the night. The kids in Main Dorm, perched on top of Main Hall, stared out their windows like the little girls from Madeline looking for their dog. Of course, we didn’t hear or see a thing from McKinsey House, but why would the Main Dorm kids lie?

  At Tuesday’s school meeting, Veronica’s assigned seat was empty, but no one in authority saw fit to mention it or the sirens and the flashing lights from the night before. Instead, things went along as if all was normal. The head of the English department announced a fiction contest open to all upper-school students. The dean of students reiterated that the catacombs were strictly off-limits. The Madrigals said they were auditioning new singers Wednesday after classes in the Black Box Theater. And the captain of the boys’ basketball team reminded us to come out and watch the game on Saturday against archrival the Meadows School, after which we all shuffled off to class, crafting and launching at least two hundred rumors about the mysterious disappearance of Veronica Brooks along the way.