I told myself he was there to "forge friendships." I reminded myself that I'd promised my mother I wouldn't break any more rules (and I'm pretty sure pushing visiting students down the stairs is frowned upon). I called on every ounce of strength and composure I possessed as I started toward the fourth floor, pushing through the crowds. "Culture and Assimilation has been a part of the Gallagher curriculum for more than a hundred years, Zach."
We turned down the corridor to the tea room. "A Gallagher Girl can blend into any culture—any environment. Assimilation isn't a matter of social graces." I stopped in the hallway with my hand against the door frame. "It's a matter of life and death."
I thought I'd made a pretty good point, and the condescending look had just started to fade from Zach's face when gentle strains of music came floating into the hall. I heard Madame Dabney say, "Today, ladies and gentlemen, we will be studying the art of … the dance!"
And then Zach leaned down; I felt his breath warm against my ear as he whispered, "Yeah…Life. And. Death."
I stepped into the tea room and saw that the silk curtains had been pushed away from the tall windows that lined the room's far side, and a bouquet of fresh orchids sat atop the grand piano. Chairs and linen-covered tables circled the edge of the room, and Madame Dabney stood alone beneath the crystal chandelier. Our teacher floated across the gleaming parquet floor, a monogrammed handkerchief in her hands, as she said, "I have been saving this very special class for the arrival of our very special guests."
"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.
I felt the van stop at our front gates then turn right and start down a road I knew well.
"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."