It is the summer before my senior year. I have a part-time job at a store: name classified. We sell clothing, accessories, purses, shoes, hats. We (the employees) are friendly and know most of the customers by their first names; in fact, if someone walks into the store that we don't know, we are instructed to learn their name ASAP. It's a normal, average, one-stop clothing store. But as it is with most of the things in a spy's life, this small-town store is more than it appears.
Of course, if you're reading this you must have at least a Level 5 clearance and know all about the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, the school that I attend, a school that pretends to be a school for snobby rich kids but is really a school for spies.
You might be wondering why I, Cameron Ann Morgan, would want to spend my summer break working at a clothing store. As a teenage girl, it is nice to have a little extra cash. As a student at a school for spies, this part-time job is bound to get me extra credit in every class. But most importantly, as a spy-in-training, it is possibly the coolest thing in the world to be given an official mission before graduating from the aforementioned spy school.
My cover: Hello, my name is… Cammie. Cashier. I am a normal small town girl working a normal part-time job. Well, as normal as a job can be when the stacks of cardboard boxes are bullet-proof and the wooden panel underneath the countertops hides a secret escape route that most of the employees don't know about.
My mission: to protect fellow co-worker, Heather Lowe, while making sure that she doesn't know that I am protecting her.
Heather's family is rich. Her grandparents invented some machine that is still used today in countries around the world. Her father owns a successful insurance company and her mother is a designer for a fashion-forward clothing line. Needless to say, small, beautiful, and blonde Heather Lowe, heiress to family fortunes and only daughter of Montana's most secretly hated families, can't just be a normal girl working a normal part-time job without some protection (at least, that is what her parents believe). That is where I come in.
The novelty of being on my first official mission wore off after the first ten minutes. Every day is the same at work. Heather talks nonstop, I pretend to listen, she pauses only to talk to the customers she is ringing up. I stand, ringing up customers, memorizing faces, glancing in mirrors, checking to make sure I know where everyone in the store is and what they are up to.
This day was no different. With a bright, "Hey Cammie!" Heather started to chatter. Through one of the store mirrors I saw a boy in the back of the store pick his nose. I left my register to investigate a suspicious-looking man (excessive sweating and dilated pupils indicates an inexperienced liar) under the pretense that I was grabbing a pair of shoes from the backroom for his wife. It wasn't until the middle of my shift that the monotony of my day was shattered.
Sure, the hostility coming from the woman I was ringing up should have been enough to kill me (I have yet to meet someone more upset than a woman who is told that her credit card was rejected), but she seemed like a mouse compared to the innocent-faced woman that had just entered the store.
To any normal girl, this woman wouldn't have looked any different from any other woman shopping in the store. But, let's face it, I'm not a normal girl, I'm a spy-in-training, so I knew the ring on the woman's finger wasn't simply there for decoration. It is a ring I have seen twice in my life, the ring that hung on the hand of another woman on another day in another city. It marked her as a member of the Circle of Cavan. Not just an enemy, my enemy.
I was suddenly aware that my register was surrounded by people. A man was crouched by a rack of suits picking up hangers he had knocked over. A woman was walking behind my register in the general direction of the maternity section. Yet another woman stood at the back of the store looking at the collection of shoes.
I turned to face the front of the store where the woman with the ring was looking at a jewelry display. I felt safer; my back was protected by the counter, and I could see almost every customer in the store from that position. Almost.
I realized a second too late that one customer was still out of my line of site. The woman in the back of the store was standing in a blind spot that wasn't supposed to be there. Call it instinct or paranoia, but I knew that I had made a big mistake turning my back on that woman.
Everything slowed down then. I ducked just as I heard the unmistakable bang of a gun being fired. I felt the bullet rustle my hair as it brushed over the top of my head. I saw strands of my hair flying away from my face as I spun on the spot, turning to face the threat, one arm stretched to pull Heather down with me, the other reaching for a couple of bullet-proof boxes. Realizing, again too late, that the woman with the ring, the real danger, was still at the front of the store.
Screams filled the store as the woman from the shoe section ran out the side door. No one was left standing in the back of the store. I twirled again to face the front of the store, shoving Heather behind me where her back would press against the wooden panel, pulling a box in front of my chest, clinging hard to the mission I had been given.
The woman wearing the ring was livid, glowering first at the side door where the woman with the gun had left, and then at me. Something about the woman's face was familiar, even though I was sure she had never shopped in the store before. Stupidly, in one part of my mind, I wondered why I hadn't asked her what her name was. The other part of my mind was seeing the bright lights of the Roseville football field and girls in long, shimmery dresses and smelling corn dogs and sweat. I waited, body tensed, ready to fight, but the woman merely turned and ran, instantly lost in the crowd flooding away from the store.
Shock. My mind seemed to go into shock as I tried to reconcile what had just happened with the mission I had been given. Heather was blabbering away behind me, obviously in shock herself. I didn't hear a word that she said.
All I know is that the Circle of Cavan seemed to want me alive the last time they had come looking for me.
My mission had been to protect Heather from harm.
But that bullet had been unmistakably aimed at me.
So I don't plan on continuing this into a full story. There might be one more chapter, depending on if I feel like writing it. But I would still like reviews to see what you think, so please review. Thanks for reading.