"The forbidden hall of the East Wing is almost directly beneath us," I began slowly. "All we have to do is access the dumbwaiter shaft on the fourth floor, maneuver through the heating vents by the Culture and Assimilation classroom, and rappel fifty or so feet through the ductwork." But even as I said it, I knew it couldn't be nearly as easy as it sounded.
"So…" Macey said, "what are we waiting for?" She jumped to her feet and started for the door.
"Macey! Wait!" Everyone looked at me. "The security department did a lot of work over the break." I pulled my legs closer, wrapped my arms tighter. "I don't know what kind of upgrades they made, what they might have changed. They were all over those tunnels and passageways, and …" I trailed off, grateful that Bex was there to finish for me.
"We don't know what's in there, Macey," she said, even though the fact that we didn't know what lay waiting in the East Wing was kind of the point, and I could tell by the look on her face that Macey was getting ready to say so.
"Surprises," I finished slowly, "as a rule … are bad."
Macey sank to the floor beside me while I told myself that everything I'd said was true. After all, it was a risky operation. We didn't have adequate intel or nearly enough time to prep. I can list a dozen perfectly logical reasons why I stayed on that stone floor, but the one I didn't tell my friends was that I had promised my mother that my days of sneaking around and breaking rules were over. And I'd kind of hoped my vow would last longer than twenty-four hours.
"So, what do we do now?" Liz asked.
Bex smiled. "Oh," she said mischievously, "we'll think of something."
Covert Operations Report Summary of Surveillance By Cameron Morgan, Rebecca Baxter, Elizabeth Sutton, and Macey McHenry (hereafter referred to as "The Operatives")
When faced with the knowledge that faculty members of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women were planning a rogue operation, The Operatives began a research and recognizance mission to determine the following:
What was such a big freaking deal that no one wanted
The Operatives to know about it?
Why were The Operatives no longer allowed in the East
Wing? (A change that had added ten and a half
minutes to their average daily commute between classes!) 3. Who or what was Black Thorn? Or maybe Blackthorne?
(Is it possible that Headmistress Morgan and Mr. Solomon were taking on a group of terrorists-slash-florists?)
4. What does Mr. Solomon look like with his shirt off?
(Because, if you're going to set up an observation post,
you may as well be thorough.)
When I woke up the next morning I tried not to think about the night before, but it's kind of hard to forget covert and potentially dangerous missions when A) The dirty tower floor left a stain on your best school skirt. B) At breakfast, your mother says, "Good morning, Cam. Did you girls have fun last night?" which everyone knows translates to I'm acting perfectly normal because I totally have something to hide. And C) Avoiding the mysteriously off-limits East Wing means you have to find alternate routes to sixty percent of your daily destinations.
On my way downstairs I walked slowly past the door that opened into the East Wing. It was just another door—dark, solid wood, an old brass knob. There were hundreds of doors like it in the mansion, but this one was forbidden, so like any good spy, I wanted to open that one.
I felt Kim Lee fall into step beside me as she glanced at the door and said, "Going around is such a pain." Of course she didn't think about the fact that half of our teachers could have been behind that very door at this very moment, planning an attack on some rogue florists!
I, of course, was having trouble thinking about anything else.
Not even the sight of Mr. Smith appearing in Countries of the World (COW) with a jar of coins, telling us to make change for a dollar in eight different currencies while factoring in exchange rates, could make me stop obsessing about that door and the secrets it was masking.
Even Madame Dabney's lecture on the art of perfect thank-you notes and their obviously underutilized coded message potential couldn't pull my mind away from the East Wing.
We already had two hours' worth of homework and the promise of a pop quiz on the poisonous plants of Southeast Asia; all the teachers were acting like they either had no idea what was going on, or had sworn to take the secret to their graves (which could have been true, actually).
It was business as usual at the Gallagher Academy, and as we started downstairs after Culture and Assimilation (C&A), it almost felt like the break had never happened.
Almost.
"Well, this is it," Liz said. Bex and I started for the elevator that was concealed in the narrow hallway beneath the Grand Staircase.
"What is it?" I asked. Then I turned and saw that Liz wasn't following us to our next class.
Instead, she hooked her thumbs in the straps of her backpack and took a step away. "I've got Advanced Organic Chemistry."
But Bex and I didn't have Advanced Organic Chemistry. Bex and I had Covert Operations. From that moment on, the two of us were going to be training for a life of missions and fieldwork while Liz prepared for a career in a lab or an office. I thought about the forms we'd filled out last semester, the choice I'd made to walk away from any hope of a safe, normal life—from boys like Josh. So it wasn't any wonder that my voice cracked when I said, "Oh. Okay."
Bex and I stared into the mirror that hid the elevator's entrance, then waited for the red beam to scan our retinal images and clear us for our second semester in Sublevel One. I tried not to think about how, for the first time since seventh grade, Liz wouldn't be beside us.