Gallagher Girls and Blackthorn Boys
Disclaimer: Ally Carter owns everything.
Chapter One: Bex
Bex practically lives for school. The Gallagher Academy is on her mind every minute she's away from it and important to her every minute she's there. Because she was meant to do this.
It's in her blood and beyond that well… look at her. Watch her.
She's very good. It's something that she's known since the seventh grade when she broke Erin's nose automatically when the girl was trying to wake her up. Only Cammie wakes her up now because Cammie's the Chameleon. And Cammie understands. Cammie moves just as fast. Cammie's her best friend.
Which is why she's a little anxious about going to school this semester. This semester changes everything.
They'll be juniors. This year, when the career fair comes the suits won't just clap and mentally remember you. This year they start to write down your name and they fight for you. This year it's Cove Ops 3 and firing guns and doing real… well, spying. The Gallagher Academy makes Gallagher Girls, who become Gallagher Women, who are fought for and courted by the best intelligence agencies in the world. Gallagher Women are the best.
Gallagher Women are many things.
But they are not best friends.
She loves school because she can pretend that everything will always be one for all here. They fail as a class and they succeed as one too. In school she is always Cammie's partner. She is Duchess but everyone knows that Duchess is Bex and Bex is with Cammie and Cammie is the Chameleon.
She is a best friend. She is a Gallagher Girl.
But now she's that much closer to being a Gallagher Woman.
Cammie is the best pavement artist that Bex has ever seen. Even better than Mr. Smith—she beat him after all. Cammie's name has been remembered as much as hers, if not more. The same people that write down Bex's will write down Cammie's.
She's not a fool, no matter what Mr. Solomon thinks. Solomon thinks that they all live in this perfect dream where they think it'll be one for all forever. But most of them, they aren't stupid. She can see what he's been slowly doing, with the training and the boys and the harshness. It was just—she really didn't think of it until recently—didn't really imagine it.
The best names on those lists don't miraculously end up in the same agency. People are lucky to get one of the top five—she's looked at some of the recruitment lists—don't ask how. So she knows. Chameleon won't be with Duchess. They'll be on opposite sides.
Initially everyone tries to convince you that its not like that—that really the common good is all everyone wants; really aren't you all on the same side? The right side?
Liars. They're lying. But after all, they are spies, so really it isn't such a big deal. The lie helps people adjust, helps them live in a happy denial world where everyone isn't screwing over everyone else to be the best, to know everything.
Look at them even now. Even still as Gallagher Girls. Look at the Blackthorn thing. There was a good side, our side, and as far their superiors—their teachers—were concerned they on the good side. But wasn't it still just a big game—a big struggle—to see who knew the most about who? To see if they were really with them? For gods sake they bugged their dorms.
That would probably gain them style points on the lists.
The lists that would tear everything school was about, apart.
She and Cammie would not be best friends once the lists were finalized. Because as much as she loves her friend, if it came down to her or Cammie, she would chose herself. That's what Cove Ops will teach her in the end.
That day when the information she needs to be the best is between Rebecca and Cameron, she will do anything—anything—to get it.
She'll be a Gallagher Woman.
She lives for her school.