by Carter, Ally
“What?” I asked, not understanding.
“You’re the Gallagher Girl,” she mocked again. “If you can’t figure that out, then who am I to tell you.”
I thought about my mother—my beautiful mother, who had recently been winked at by my sexy CoveOps teacher, and I thought I would never eat again.
There are many excellent things about having three girls sharing a four-girl suite. The first, obviously, is closet space— followed by shelf space, followed by the fact that we had an entire corner of the room devoted to beanbag chairs. It was a very sweet setup (if you’ll pardon the pun), but I don’t think any of us really appreciated what we had until two guys from the maintenance department knocked on our door and asked where we wanted the extra bed.
Now, in addition to our teachers and our chef, the Gallagher Academy has a pretty extensive staff, but it’s not the kind of place that advertises in the want ads (well . . . you know . . . except for coded messages). There are two types of people who come here—students looking to get into the AlphaNet (CIA, FBI, NSA, etc.), and staff members looking to get out. So when two men built like refrigerators show up with long metal poles and vise grips, it’s fairly likely that those have been the tools of their trade for a while now—just in a very different context.
That’s why we didn’t ask any questions that night. We just pointed to a corner and then the three of us made a beeline for the second floor.
“Come in, girls,” my mother yelled as soon as we entered the Hall of History—long before she could have seen us. Even though I’d grown up with her, sometimes her superspy instincts scared me. She walked to the door. “I’ve been expecting you.”
I’d been working on a doozy of a speech, let me tell you, but as soon as I saw my mother silhouetted in the door frame I forgot it. Luckily, Bex never has that problem.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” she said, “but do you know why the maintenance department has delivered an extra bed to our room?”
Anyone else asking that question in that tone might have seen the wrath of Rachel Morgan, but all my mom did was cross her arms and match Bex’s scholarly inflections.
“Why, yes, Rebecca. I do know.”
“Is that information you can share with us, ma’am? Or is it need-to-know?” (If anyone had a need—it was us. We were the ones losing our beanbag corner over the deal!)
But Mom just took a step and gestured for us to follow. “Let’s take a walk.”
Something was wrong, I realized. It had to be, so I was on her heels, following her down the grand staircase, saying, “What? Is it blackmail? Does the senator have something on—”
“Cameron,” Mom said, trying to cut me off.
“Is he on the House Armed Services Committee? Is it a funding thing, because we could start charging tuition, you—”
“Cammie, just walk,” Mom commanded.
I did as I was told, but I still didn’t shut up. “She won’t last. We can get rid of—”
“Cameron Ann Morgan,” Mom said, playing the middle-name card that all moms keep in their back pockets for just such an occasion. “That’s enough.” I froze as she handed the large manila envelope she’d been carrying to Bex and said, “Those are your new roommate’s test scores.”
Okay, I’ll admit it—they were good. Not Liz-good, or anything, but they were far better than Macey McHenry’s 2.0 GPA would indicate.
We turned down an old stone corridor, our feet echoing through the cold hall.
“So she tests well,” I said. “So—”
Mom stopped short, and all three of us nearly ran into her. “I don’t run decisions past you, do I, Cammie?” Shame started brewing inside me, but Mom had already shifted her attention toward Bex. “And I do make controversial decisions from time to time, don’t I, Rebecca?” At this, we all remembered how Bex came to us, and even she shut up. “And, Liz.” Mom shifted her gaze one last time. “Do you think we should only admit girls who come from spy families?”
That was it—she had us.
Mom crossed her arms and said, “Macey McHenry will bring a much-needed level of diversity to the Gallagher Academy. She has family connections that will allow entry into some very closed societies. She has an underutilized intellect. And . . .” Mom seemed to be pondering this next bit. “. . . she has a quality about her.”
Quality? Yeah, right. Snobbery is a quality, so is elitism, fascism, and anorexicism. I started to tell my mom about the eight-hundred-calorie-a-day thing, or the B-word thing, or to point out that Code Reds were fake interviews, not real ones. But then I looked at the woman who had raised me and who, rumor has it, once sweet-talked a Russian dignitary into dressing in drag and carrying a beach ball full of liquid nitrogen under his shirt like a pregnant lady, and I knew I was sufficiently outgunned, even with Bex and Liz beside me.
“And if that isn’t enough for you . . .” Mom turned to look at an old velvet tapestry that hung in the center of the long stone wall.
Of course I’d seen it before. If a girl wanted to stand there long enough, she could trace the Gallagher family tree that branched across the tapestry through nine generations before Gilly, and two generations after. If a girl had better things to do, she could reach behind the tapestry, to the Gallagher family crest imbedded in the stone, and turn the little sword around, then slip through the secret door that pops open. (Let’s just say I’m the second type of girl.)
“What does this have to do with . . .” I started, but Liz’s “Oh my gosh” cut me off.
I followed my friend’s thin finger to the line at the bottom of the tapestry. I’d never known that Gilly had gotten married. I’d never known she’d had a child. I’d never dreamed that child’s last name was “McHenry.”
And all this time I thought I was a Gallagher legacy.
“If Macey McHenry wants to come here,” Mom said, “we’ll find a place for her.”
She turned and started to leave, but Liz called after her, “But, ma’am, how’s she gonna . . . you know . . . catch up?”
Mom considered this to be a fair question, because she folded her hands and said, “I admit that, academically, Ms. McHenry will be behind the rest of the sophomore class. For that reason, she will be taking many of her courses with our younger students.”
Bex grinned at me, but even the thought of Macey’s supermodel legs stretching her high above a class full of newbies couldn’t change the fact that two guys with bald heads (that may or may not have prices on them) were at that very moment making room for her in our suite. The question on my mother’s face was whether we would make room for her in our lives.
I looked at my best friends, knowing that our mission, should we choose to accept it, was to befriend Macey McHenry. The good girl inside of me knew that I should at least try to help her fit in. The spy in me knew I’d been given an assignment, and if I ever wanted to see Sublevel Two, I’d better grin and say “Yes, ma’am.” The daughter in me knew there wasn’t any choosing involved here.
“When does she start?” I asked.
“Monday.”
* * *
That Sunday night I met Mom in her office for Tater Tots and chicken nuggets. We had one hard-and-fast rule about Sunday night suppers—Mom had to make them herself, which is nice and all, but not exactly good for my digestion. (Dad always said the most lethal thing about her was her cooking.) Directly beneath us, my friends were dining on the finest foods a five-star chef could offer, but as my mom walked around in an old sweatshirt of my dad’s, looking like a teenager herself, I wouldn’t have traded places with them for all the crème brûlée in the world.
When I first came to the Gallagher Academy, I felt guilty about being able to see my mother every day when my classmates had to go months on end without their parents. Eventually, I stopped feeling bad about it. After all, Mom and I don’t have summers together. But mostly, we don’t have Dad.
“So how’s school?” She always asked as if she didn’t know—and maybe she didn’t. Maybe, just
like every good operative, she wanted to hear all sides of the story before making up her mind.
I dipped a Tater Tot in some honey mustard dressing and said, “Fine.”
“How’s CoveOps?” the mother asked, but I knew the headmistress was in there somewhere, and she wanted to know if her newest staff member was making the grade.
“He knows about Dad.”
I don’t know where the sentence came from or why I spoke it. I’d spent six days dreading Macey McHenry’s arrival into our little society, but that was what I said when I finally had my mother alone? I studied her, wishing Mr. Solomon would have covered Reading Body Language that week instead of Basic Surveillance.
“There are people in this world, Cam—people like Mr. Solomon—who are going to know what happened to him. It’s their job to know what happened. I hope someday you’ll get used to the look in people’s eyes as they put two and two together and try to decide whether or not to mention it. Am I right to assume Mr. Solomon mentioned it?”
“Kinda.”
“And how did you handle it?”
I hadn’t yelled, and I hadn’t cried, so I told my mother, “Okay, I guess.”
“Good.” She smoothed my hair, and I wondered for the millionth time if she had one set of hands for work and another for moments like this. I imagined her keeping them in a briefcase and swapping them out, silk for steel. Dr. Fibs could have made them—but he didn’t.
“I’m proud of you, kiddo,” she said simply. “It’ll get easier.”
My mom’s the best spy I know—so I believed her.
When we woke up the next morning, I remembered that it was Monday. I forgot that it was The Monday. That’s why I stopped cold on my way into breakfast when I heard Buckingham’s powerful “Cameron Morgan!” echo through the foyer. “I’ll need you and Ms. Baxter and Ms. Sutton to follow me, please.” Bex and Liz looked as lost as I felt, until Buckingham explained, “Your new roommate has arrived.”
Buckingham was pretty old, and we did have her outnumbered three-to-one, but still I didn’t see many alternatives. We followed her up the stairs.
I thought it would just be Mom and Macey in her office—Macey’s parents having already been sent away in the limo if they’d bothered coming at all (which they hadn’t)—but when Buckingham threw open the door I saw Mr. Solomon and Jessica Boden sharing the leather couch. He looked so completely bored I almost felt sorry for him, and Jessica was perched eagerly on the edge of the sofa.
The guest of honor was seated across the desk from my mother, wearing an official uniform but looking like a super-model. She didn’t even turn around when we walked in.
“As I was saying, Macey,” my mom said, once Liz, Bex, and I had positioned ourselves in the window seat at the far side of the room while Buckingham stood at attention in front of the bookshelves, “I hope you’ll be happy here at the Gallagher Academy.”
“Humph!”
Yeah, I know heiress isn’t one of the languages I speak, but I’m pretty sure that translates into Tell it to someone who cares because I’ve heard it all before, and you’re only saying that because my father wrote you an enormous check. (But that’s just a guess.)
“Well, Macey,” an utterly repulsive voice chimed. I’m not sure why I hate Jessica Boden, but I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that her posture is way too up-and-down, and I don’t trust someone who doesn’t know how to properly slouch. “When the trustees heard about your admittance, my mother—”
“Thank you, Jessica.” How much do I love my mother? Very much. Mom opened a thick file that lay on her desk. “Macey, I see here that you spent a semester at the Triad Academy?”
“Yeah,” Macey said. (Now, there’s a girl who knows how to slouch.)
“And then a full year at Wellington House. Two months at Ingalls. Ooh, just a week at the Wilder Institute.”
“Do you have a point?” Macey asked, her tone just as sharp as the letter opener-slash-dagger that Joe Solomon had been absentmindedly fingering while they spoke.
“You’ve seen a lot of different schools, Macey—”
“I wouldn’t say there was anything different about them,” she shot back.
But no sooner had the words left her mouth than the letter-opening dagger went slicing through the air, no more than a foot away from her glossy hair, flying from Mr. Solomon’s hand directly toward Buckingham’s head. It all happened so fast—like blink-or-you’ll-miss-it fast. One second Macey was talking about how all prep schools are the same, and the next, Patricia Buckingham was grabbing a copy of War and Peace from the bookshelf behind her and holding it inches from her face just as the dagger pierced its leather cover.
For a long time, the only sound was the subtle vibration of the letter opener as it stuck out of the book, humming like a tuning fork looking for middle C. Then my mom leaned onto her desk and said, “I think you’ll find there are some things we teach that your other schools haven’t offered.”
“What . . .” Macey stammered. “What . . . What . . . Are you crazy?”
That’s when my mom went through the school history again—the unabridged version—starting with Gilly and then hitting highlights like how it was Gallagher Girls giving each other manicures who had figured out the whole no-two-fingerprints-alike thing, and a few of our more highly profitable creations. (Duct tape didn’t invent itself, you know.)
When Mom finished, Bex said, “Welcome to spy school,” in her real accent instead of the geographically neutral drawl, which is all Macey had heard until then, and I could tell she was about to go into serious information overload, which, of course, wasn’t helped by Jessica.
“Macey, I know this is going to come as a big adjustment to you, but that’s why my mother—she’s a Gallagher Trustee—has encouraged me to help you through this—”
“Thank you, Jessica,” Mom said, cutting her off yet again. “Perhaps I can make things a little more clear.” Mom reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like an ordinary silver compact. She flipped up the lid and touched her forefinger to mirror inside. I saw the small light scan her fingerprint, and when she snapped the compact closed, the world around Macey McHenry shifted as the whole Code Red process went into reverse. The bookshelves had been facing wrong-way-out for a week, but now they were spinning around to show their true side. Disney World disappeared in the photo on Mom’s desk; and Liz broke out her Portuguese long enough to say, “Sera que ela vai vomitar?” But I had to shake my head in response because I honestly didn’t know whether or not Macey was going to throw up.
When everything stopped spinning (literally) Macey was surrounded by more than a hundred years of covert secrets, but she wasn’t stopping to take it all in. Instead, she screamed, “You people are psycho!” and bolted for the door. Unfortunately, Joe Solomon was one step ahead of her. “Get out of my way!” she snapped.
“Sorry,” he said coolly. “I don’t believe the headmistress is finished quite yet.”
“Macey.” My mom’s voice was calm and full of reason. “I know this must come as quite a shock to you. But we’re really just a school for exceptional young women. Our classes are hard. Our curriculum unique. But you may use what you learn here anywhere in the world. In any way you see fit.” Mom’s eyes narrowed. Her voice hardened as she said, “If you stay.”
When Mom stepped forward, I knew she wasn’t talking as an administrator anymore; she was talking as a mother. “If you want to leave, Macey, we can make you forget this ever happened. When you wake up tomorrow, this will be a dream you don’t remember, and you’ll have one more dismal school experience on your record. But no matter your decision, there is only one thing you have to understand.”
Mom was moving closer, and Macey snapped, “What?”
“No one will ever know what you have seen and heard here today.” Macey was still staring daggers, but my mom didn’t have a copy of War and Peace handy, so she reached for the next best thing. “Especially your parents.”
By the third week of school, my backpack was heavier than me (well, maybe not me, but probably Liz), I had a mountain of homework, and the sign above the Grand Hall was announcing that we’d all better dust off our French if we intended to make small talk over lunch. Plus, it was almost a full-time job keeping rumors separated from facts. (No big surprise who the rumors were all about.)
Macey McHenry had gotten kicked out of her last school because she was pregnant with the headmaster’s baby. RUMOR. At her first P&E class, Macey kicked a seventh grader so hard she was out cold for an hour. FACT. (And also the reason Macey’s now taking P&E with the eighth graders.) Macey told a seventh grader that her glasses make her face look fat, a senior that her hair looks like a wig (which it is, thanks to a very unfortunate plutonium incident), and Professor Buckingham that she really should try control-top panty hose. FACT. FACT. FACT.
As we walked between Madame Dabney’s tea room and the elevator to Sublevel One, Tina Walters told me for about the tenth time, “Cammie, you don’t even have to steal the file. . . . Just take a little—”
“Tina!” I snapped, then whispered because a crowded hallway full of future spies isn’t the best place to have a covert conversation, “I’m not going to steal Macey’s permanent record just to see if she really set the gym on fire at her last school.”
“Borrow,” Tina reminded me. “Borrow the permanent record. Just a peek.”
“No!” I said again, just as we turned into the small, dark corridor. I saw Liz standing there, staring into the mirror that concealed the elevator as if she didn’t recognize her own reflection. “What’s wrong with . . .” Then I saw the little slip of yellow paper. “What? Is it out of order or—”
