Ally Carter - [Gallagher Girls 02 ] - Cross My Heart & Hope To Spy

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…)