Disclaimer: I don't own Gallagher Girls. Gallagher Girls is property of Ally Carter.
Saturday Night Dinners
In her six years at Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, Cammie Morgan had 216 Sunday night dinners with her mother. Exactly. And, sure, those meals were great. Sometimes they had company (though that was rare), sometimes they laughed and stayed together until 10:00 (but only if Cammie didn't have a test the next day), and sometimes the food was actually edible (but only that one time Cammie insisted on cooking). But those Sundays were rarely unique. Years later, when Cammie was old and just wanted to remember, she didn't remember those Sunday night dinners.
No. She remembered the Saturday ones.
See, Saturday night dinners were rare. Something big had to happen for Rachel Morgan to clear her Saturday night of all her engagements and cook. So every time Cammie was summoned to eat dinner with her mother on a Saturday, she knew something important was going to happen.
The first Saturday dinner was actually Cammie's first weekend at Gallagher Academy. She didn't know Saturday dinners would be an abnormal occurrence at the time so she didn't think twice about it until years later, when she was a senior looking over pictures of the last six years of her life. She had worn her favorite jeans and an old sweatshirt, already completely at home in her new school. She couldn't remember what they talked about, just that her mother had tried to make a cake for desert and set off every type of alarm within a 400-foot radius. Hence the "no desert" rule that followed.
The next time Cammie was invited to a Saturday dinner was before her first winter break. Or, more accurately, her first midterms. She had been studying in every second of free time she had the past two weeks, followed Liz's study schedules, and reread every one of her textbooks, but it had made no difference. Come the Saturday before midterms, Cammie had found herself in one of her hiding spots, sobbing over her flashcards. When Cammie made her way to her mother's office that evening she expected burnt food and more tears, but what she found was undercooked macaroni and cheese and a pile of notes. Rachel and Cammie Morgan spend the whole night studying side-by-side and neither ever noticed that the food was undercooked.
The third Saturday night dinner took place on the first day of summer after Cammie's seventh grade year. She was eager at the prospect of staying at her school the whole summer, being able to explore the grounds, socialize with the teachers, and have her mother to herself the whole summer. That Saturday dinner ended in tears and Cammie leaving to pack with a plane ticket to her grandparents' in her hand.
There wasn't a single Saturday dinner during Cammie's second year at Gallagher Academy. She and her mother had found a routine and Rachel found herself busy most Saturdays making sure that girls didn't sneak off the grounds. It was a rather dull year at Gallagher Academy.
The first Saturday of freshman year brought the fourth dinner. Rachel was going to have to leave for Langley the next day and she hadn't wanted to miss her weekly dinner with her daughter. They had made an exception to the rule that Rachel had to cook and had grabbed take-out from one of the restaurants in Rosewood and had a picnic. They had laughed and counted stars and avoided confessing their fears about what might happen at Langley the next day.
The rest of freshman year was the calm before the storm.
Sophomore year didn't see a single Saturday night dinner until the second semester. The whole Josh fiasco came and went and not a single Saturday dinner. The "Zach Drama", as Macey liked to call it, blew over without a single Saturday meal. So Cammie had thought she was in the clear right up until she overheard Mr. Soloman say that he was going to be joining Cammie and her mother that evening for dinner. Cammie's heart had stopped as her mind had frantically searched for reasons why Mr. Soloman might be having dinner with her and her mother, especially dinner on a Saturday. Had she failed CoveOps? Was Mr. Soloman leaving the school? Did Zach tragically die in an airplane crash and Mr. Soloman was going to deliver the bad news? Were he and her mom dating and they were finally going to tell her? It would be an understatement to say that Cammie walked into her mother's office that night more nervous than she had ever been in her life (and that included the time she had to partner up with Bex to learn the Klint maneuver in PE.) Cammie spent the whole night using every technique Mr. Soloman had taught her, fearing that this might be another test. She searched the trash. Tried (and, predictably, failed) to impress the two adults with her skills at noticing things. But for all her precautions and fears, the night was uneventful, which shocked Cammie and depressed Tina Walters.
Junior year brought more Saturday dinners than Cammie had expected. First there was the one at the beginning of the year with Aunt Abby and the gray soup. Then there was the one with Cammie, Bex, Liz, and Macey because they all contracted something highly contagious and Mrs. Morgan hadn't wanted them spreading it to the whole school. The third dinner that year was the highly awkward and unexpected one with Zach, Eva, Cammie, and Professor Buckingham, which went down in infamy and is the reason for the school being shut down for a week that semester.
The last Saturday dinner of junior year was Cammie's last dinner at Gallagher Academy as a junior. She had come in her pajamas and she and her mother had curled up on the couch and eaten popcorn and microwavable French fries and watched old Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. It had almost been like Rachel Morgan had known that it would be the last meal she would have with her daughter for months.
The tenth Saturday dinner was Cammie's first night back. There was no invitation, no official time, Cammie just walked into her mother's office and found dinner on the table. They spent the whole night pretending nothing had ever happened.
Saturday dinners were scattered all throughout Cammie's senior year. Some were just she and her mother, others found them and ten other people crowded around the tiny table. Some were lengthy, others were just Cammie running in to grab a bite of food before she left to finish an assignment. Some were at the school, others were in various countries while Cammie tried to find the members of the Circle. But each and every one was unique and treasured because for the first time, Cammie and her mother realized that each Saturday night might be the last.
The final Saturday night dinner of Cammie's senior year was the day of graduation. All the girls had been sent home and the Grand Hall was clear of the long tables that usually took up the floor space. Instead there was one large, round table in the middle. Despite Cammie's protests, Rachel still insisted upon cooking, so, to lessen the probability of someone being poisoned at dinner, Cammie helped cook. They slaved over stoves and mixing bowls for hours on end, recounting funny stories and looking forward to new possibilities. As Cammie sat down across from her mother at a table surrounded by her friends and teachers, she thought about how fitting it was that her school career had began and was ending with a Saturday night dinner.
There were hundreds of dinners afterward. Dinners on Sundays and Thursdays, on airplanes and in fancy restaurants. But not a single Saturday night dinner.
The last Saturday night dinner of Cammie Ann Morgan's with her mother in Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women life came 14 years after that wonderful dinner senior year, when she came to Gallagher Academy on a rainy night. It was late and none of the students would be arriving till the next day, so Rachel Morgan invited her daughter, now Cameron Goode, to her office. They sat down and talked about Cammie's daughter who would be starting school there the next year, about Abby and Joe (who Cammie still insisted upon calling Mr. Soloman), about Zach. They wondered at how Rachel's cooking skills had improved as they ate macaroni and cheese that was neither burnt nor undercooked. When Cammie's mother passed her a manila folder, Cammie didn't even look at it before agreeing to relieve Joe Soloman of his position teaching Covert Operations. The last Saturday night dinner between Cammie and her mother was when Cammie became a teacher at Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women.
Author's Note: Hi everyone. This is my first story in this fandom and so reviews are even more greatly appreciated than usual. Thank you for reading and giving my story some of your time!
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