Cross My Heart And Hope To Spy (8 page)

My nose was running. My feet were killing me. All I really wanted to do was get to Dorothy’s slippers, click my heels together, and go home. But instead I had to put up with a boy who assumed I needed protecting. A boy with whom I could never “be myself.” A boy who was staring at me as if he knew a secret—and worse—as if the secret was about me.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

At this point I should point out that I was pretty sure the boy was flirting with me! Or at least I
thought
he was flirting with me, but without running it by Macey (and maybe plugging a sample into the voice-stress analyzer that Liz had developed for this very purpose), there was no way I could be sure. Last semester I’d thought I was learning how to interpret boy-related things, but all I’d really learned was that Gallagher Girls shouldn’t flirt with normal boys—not because we won’t like them. But because we might like them too much. And that would be the worst thing of all.

“Look, thanks for the chivalry and all, but it really isn’t necessary,” I muttered what may have been the understatement of the century, since I’m pretty sure I could have killed him with my backpack. “It’s just up here.” I pointed to the Museum of American History, which stood gleaming twenty yards away. “And there’s a cop over there.”

“What?” the boy said, glancing at the D.C. police officer that stood at the corner of the street, “you think that guy can do a better job protecting you than I can?”

Actually, I thought
Liz
could have done a better job “protecting” me than he could, but instead I said, “No, I think if you don’t leave me alone, I can scream and that cop will arrest you.”

Somehow the boy seemed to know it was a joke…mostly. He stepped away and smiled. And for a moment I felt myself smile, too.

“Hey,” I called to him, because, despite how annoying he was right then, a pang of guilt shot through my stomach. After all, he had been all knight-in-shining-armory. It wasn’t his fault I’m not the kind of girl who needs saving. “Thanks anyway.”

He nodded. If it had been another day or I’d been another girl, a hundred other things might have happened. But I had begun the semester with a promise to be myself, and the real me was still a girl on a mission.

I darted for the doors and pushed my way inside, then slipped into a narrow hallway behind the help desk. I watched the entrance, waiting ninety seconds to be sure that I was clear.

“Bex.” I tried my comms unit. “Courtney…Mick…Kim …” I told myself there was no way they’d
all
been made. They were probably downstairs in the ice-cream parlor; or maybe waiting in the van.

I grabbed a visitors’ brochure from a stack on the help desk, slipped into a narrow stairwell, and began the three-story climb to the slippers, not really caring that I wouldn’t get to see the sights. (After all, the “Julia Child’s Kitchen” exhibit didn’t even illustrate how she used to send coded messages in her recipes.)

I could feel the ticking clock, almost see the look on Mr. Solomon’s face and hear him say well done. I was
so
close; I scanned the map and took the stairs two at a time until I emerged at the far end of the floor, where the ruby slippers were displayed.

There were no signs of Mr. Solomon or my classmates; not another soul in the great oval room. I felt the clock in my head chime five o’clock. I stepped toward a case, which looked almost exactly like the one that stood in the center of the Hall of History. But instead of the sword that Gillian Gallagher had used to kill the first guy who’d tried to assassinate President Lincoln, this case held a different kind of national treasure.

The ruby slippers were so small, so delicate, that a part of me wanted to marvel in the coolness of being that close to something so rare. The rest of me just wanted to know why seven Gallagher Girls had gone radio silent and my teacher was nowhere to be seen! Then I heard Mr. Solomon’s voice behind me.

“You’re four seconds late.”

The shoes glistened as I spun around. “But I’m alone.”

“No, Ms. Morgan. You’re not.”

And then the boy from the elevator, the boy from the bench, stepped out of the shadows.

And looked at me.

And smiled.

And said, “Hi again, Gallagher Girl.”

There are changes that come slowly—like evolution. And letting your hair grow out. And then there are changes that happen in a second—with a ringing phone, a well-timed glance. And in that moment I knew the Gallagher Academy wasn’t alone. I knew there was a school for boys. And, most of all, I knew one of them had just gotten the best of me.

This can’t be happening, I chanted in my head. This can’t be—

“Nice work, Zach,” Mr. Solomon said. “Zach” winked at me, and I thought, This is totally happening!

I’d been sloppy. I’d been distracted. And worst of all, I’d let a boy stand between me and my mission objectives…again.

The whole thing might have been too awful—too humiliating—to endure if I hadn’t summoned the courage to say, “Hi, Blackthorne Boy.” Since I wasn’t supposed to know the Blackthorne Institute for Boys even existed, there was a split second when I had the upper hand.

Mr. Solomon blinked. Zach’s mouth gaped open, and I was the person smiling when my teacher said, “Very good, Ms. Morgan.” But then he looked at the boy who had beaten me at my own game, and my face went as red as Dorothy’s shoes. “But not good enough.”

I saw the day like a movie in my mind: Zach and his friend watching Bex twirl in the breeze; the boys standing on the long escalator ride into the Metro station. They’d been there—we’d seen them! But we’d thought they were just…boys. And they were. Kind of like we’re just girls.

“Your mission was…what?” I started, amazed by how even my voice sounded, how steady my pulse felt. “To keep us from achieving our mission?”

The boy cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. “Something like that.” Then he smirked and exhaled a half laugh. “I thought I could just make you late for your meeting. I didn’t think you’d actually tell me where it was and walk me halfway there.”

I thought I was going to be sick—seriously—right there in front of eight security cameras, my favorite teacher, and…Zach.

I’d thought he was chivalrous (but he wasn’t). I’d thought he was cute (but tall, dark, and handsome is highly overrated when you think about it). And worst of all, I’d thought he’d been flirting…with me.

A group of tourists wandered into the shoe exhibit and pressed closer to the case. I was jostled by the crowd, then blinded by a flashing camera. Mr. Solomon put his arm around my shoulders and guided me to the doors.

I looked back toward the slippers.

But Zach was already gone.

How weird was the helicopter ride home? Let me count the ways:

In an effort to make themselves less tailable, Mick and Eva had traded their school uniforms for jumpsuits from the National Park Service maintenance staff.

Kim Lee had fallen down the stairs at the National Gallery, so she had to sit with her ice-packed ankle propped on Tina’s lap.

Courtney Bauer was still wet, following a very unfortunate Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool incident.

And Anna Fetterman kept staring into the dark with her mouth open because, of all the Gallagher Girls on the Mall that day, she was the only one to achieve our mission objective (yeah, you read that right, Anna Fetterman!), and she was the most shocked person of all.

Even Bex had picked up a tail on her way out of the Metro station and didn’t make it to the museum on time.

So that’s why the entire sophomore CoveOps class from the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women sat in silence, watching the Washington Monument fade into the dark night while the helicopter rose, carrying us home.

I thought there would be questions. And theories. But even Tina Walters—the girl who had once hacked into a National Security Agency satellite in order to look for the alleged boys’ school—didn’t have a thing to say.

After all, it’s one thing to learn there’s a top-secret school for boy spies.

It’s another to find out they might be better than you.

The countryside shimmered beneath us, and the mansion finally came into view, lights shining through the windows and reflecting off the snow.

I felt the helicopter touch down, saw the snow swirl around us as Mr. Solomon reached for the helicopter door, then paused.

“Today I asked you to do something that maybe fifty people in the entire world can do,” he said, and I thought, This is it—a pep talk, a debrief. Or at least an explanation of who those boys were and why we were meeting them now. But instead, Mr. Solomon said, “By the end of this semester, there had better be fifty-eight.”

“You really saw some?” Liz said an hour later. Sure, we had the stereo blaring and the shower running, but Liz still whispered, “They really…exist?”

“Liz,” I whispered back. “They’re not unicorns.”

No,” Bex said flatly, “they’re boys. And they’re…good.”

Dampness weighed my hair, steam fogged the bathroom mirror, but the four of us kept the door closed, because A) Steam is excellent for your pores. And B) The biggest news in the history of our sisterhood was sweeping through the halls of a place where eavesdropping is both an art and a science. So needless to say, my roommates and I weren’t taking any chances.

“Maybe it’s not what you think,” Liz said. “Maybe they weren’t from Blackthorne at all. Maybe they just looked young. Maybe—”

“Oh,” Bex said simply, “it was them.”

As I dropped to the edge of the bathtub and rested my head in my hands, I knew nothing hurt as much my pride.

“I can’t believe I actually talked to him,” I finally admitted. “I can’t believe I actually
told
him where I was going!”

“It couldn’t have been that bad, Cam,” Liz said, dropping to sit beside me.

“Oh, it was worse! He was…and I was…and then…” But I gave up because, in all of my fourteen languages, there wasn’t a single word that could express the anger-slash-humiliation that was coursing through my veins.

“So,” Macey said, hopping onto the counter and crossing her long legs, “just how hot was this guy?”

Oh. My. Gosh.

“Macey!” I moaned. “Does it matter?”

Bex nodded. “He was pretty hot.”

“Guys,” I pleaded, “the hotness is really beside the point.”

“But exactly what kind of hot was he?” Liz asked as she pulled open her notebook and grabbed a pen. “I mean, would you say he was pretty-boy hot, like Leonardo DiCaprio the early years, or ruggedly-handsome hot, like George Clooney the later years?”

I was about to remind her that neither kind of hot could justify my revealing the location of a clandestine rendezvous, when Bex answered for me. “Rugged. Definitely rugged.” Macey nodded her approval.

Down the hall, the rest of the sophomore class was hacking into the Smithsonian surveillance system and running the pictures of every male between the ages of twelve and twenty-two who had been on the Mall that day through the FBI’s facial recognition program. At least a dozen girls were in the library scouring the very books we had abandoned days before.

Still, no one had said the name Blackthorne. No one had mentioned the East Wing.

Liz closed her notebook. “Well, now we know what your mom and Mr. Solomon were talking about. And it’s over.” She smiled. “You never have to see him again.”

Then she seemed to consider the naiveté of what she’d just said. “Do you?”

By four a.m. I was seriously starting to resent Joe Solomon and all of his “use your memory” training, because at that point I would have given my entire life savings (which were $947.52) to forget what had happened.

Bex was lying in the light of the window, smiling a devilish smile, probably dreaming of hostile takedowns and elaborate covers. Liz was curled up against the wall, taking up no more room than a doll, and Macey lay on her back sleeping peacefully despite the wheezing sound of air rushing past the great big diamond in her nose. But me? All I could do was stare at the ceiling and pray for sleep, until I finally threw off my covers and brought my bare feet to the cold hardwood floor.

I swear I didn’t know where I was going. Seriously. I didn’t. I just slipped on a pair of tennis shoes—no socks— and crept toward the door.

Every spy knows that sometimes you just have to go on adrenaline and instinct, so when I found myself wandering the dark empty hallways, I didn’t ask why. When I started down the second-floor corridor, I didn’t tell myself to turn around.

Moonlight fell through the stained glass windows at the far end of the corridor. I crept toward the tall bookcase at the mouth of the Hall of History and the hidden passageway it conceals. Then I heard the floor creak behind me and saw the beam of a flashlight burn through the hall before shining in my face. I threw my hands over my eyes and started preparing alibis. (I was sleepwalking. ... I needed a glass of water. ... I’d dreamed that I hadn’t turned in my
COW
homework for Mr. Smith and was going to check…)

“You didn’t think we’d let you go without us, did you?” Bex asked.

When Macey finally lowered the flashlight, I could see Liz shivering in her thin nightgown and Bex holding open a small black case; her trusty silver lock picks shimmered in the light.

No one had to say where we were going. We’d started down the path days before and were finally going to see where it ended. While Bex worked on the lock to the East Wing, I didn’t look into the Hall of History; I didn’t look at my mother’s dark office; and most of all, I didn’t think about all the promises I was no longer in the mood to keep.

“Got it,” Bex said in record time, and then the door swung open.

We stepped into a hallway we used to know. Now it led to a large open room. Deserted classrooms ringed the space, but the desks were gone. A door stood open, and I could see that a bathroom had been modified to stand between two…bedrooms? The scent of sawdust and fresh paint filled the air.

“They look like…” Liz started but trailed off. “Suites?” she said, her genius mind trying to wrap itself around such a simple fact.