Disclaimer: I don't own The Clique or I'd Tell You I Love , But Then I'd Have to Kill You.
Happy?
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Mysterious
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So, I'm writing this in the case that paperwork is the worst part of spying – danger is not the worst part of spying, paperwork is. Or so my mom, a retired CIA operative and headmistress of Gallagher Academy, says. After all, the last thing you want to do when you're on a plane ride home from Istanbul with a nuclear warhead in a hatbox is write a report about last semester.
So, I'm writing it for the practice. The practice of spying.
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I stepped into Gallagher Academy and felt a sense of home rush through my blood. Gallagher Academy, commonly mistaken for a snooty boarding school for bored heiresses with no place else to go, which if you look at the manicured grounds and ivy-colored walls, it does look like a high class boarding school. But Gallagher Academy is a school for girl spies. If you've got a Level Four clearance or higher, you probably know all about us Gallagher girls, since the school's been around for more than 100 years. If you don't have that kind of clearance, then you probably just think we're just an urban spy myth with jet packs and invisibility suits.
We are totally fine with being classified as a snotty boarding school – being a spy means you have to keep your identity. Keeping your identity means keeping your life.
As the long, black limousines circled into Gallagher, nobody in the town of Westchester, New York thought twice, because we were considered rich.
I watched the lines from my room as I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my legs. The red velvet curtains blocked out some of the scene, but that was all right.
I smelled something burning and immediately thought of the new 7th graders and the sword Gillian Gallagher used to slay the guy who was going to kill Abraham Lincoln – the first one, that is. The one nobody talks about or nobody hears about.
"Girls! I told you not to touch that!" Professor Bleen's distinguished voice cried.
Confirmed.
Professor Bleen continued to swear in French, words the 7th graders wouldn't learn or understand for three semesters. I remembered how every year during student orientation, one of the newbies got cocky enough to show off by grabbing the sword of Gillian Gallagher.
But what the newbies don't know is that Gilly's sword is charged with enough electricity to…light your hair on fire.
Professor Bleen's voice started getting louder, "Stand still! Stand still, I say!"
I just love the start of school.
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I hid in the corner of my room when I heard the distinctive thud of luggage crashing into the wall.
"Oh, Massie…come out, come out, wherever you are."
I peered around the corner and saw Kristen posing in the doorway, trying to look like Miss New York, but bearing a greater resemblance towards a toothpick. A very red toothpick.
She smiled as she saw me and said, "Did you miss me?"
Of course I missed her, she was my best friend. I was just totally afraid to hug her.
"What happened to you?" I asked.
"Don't fall asleep by a pool in California," she said as if she should have known better – which she totally should have. We're all technically geniuses and everything, but at age nine, Kristen had the highest score on the 5th grade achievement tests ever. And she wasn't even in 5th grade. She was in third grade.
The government keeps track of that kind of thing, so her parents got a visit from some big guys in dark suits and three months later, Kristen was a Gallagher Girl – just not the kill-the-man-with-her-bare-hands variety. If I'm on a mission, I want Alicia and Dylan by my side and Kristen far, far away with about a dozen computers and a chessboard – a fact I couldn't help but remember when Kristen tried to fling her suitcase on my bed, but missed and ended up knocking over my bookcase, demolishing my stereo and flattening a perfectly-scaled replica of DNA that I'd made out of papier-mâché in eighth grade.
"Oopsy daisy!" Kristen's hand flew up to her mouth, and even though she knew hundreds of cuss words in different languages, but when faced with a minor catastrophe, Kristen said oopsy daisy.
At that point, I didn't care how sunburned my friend was, I had to hug her.
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At exactly six thirty, we were in our uniforms, sliding our hands over the smooth mahogany banister, and descending down the stairs that spiral gracefully toward the foyer. Everyone was laughing, but Kristen and I kept looking at the door in the center of the atrium below.
"Maybe there was trouble with the plane?" Kristen whispered. "Maybe they're just late?"
I nodded and continued glancing down to the foyer, as if, on cue, Alicia and Dylan were going to burst through the doors. But they stayed closed, and Kristen's voice got squeakier as she asked, "Did you hear from them?"
I shook my head.
"Oh my gosh, what if they dropped out?" Kristen's eyes widened. "Did they get kicked out, Mass?"
"Why would you think that?" I rolled my eyes. "Don't be ridiculous, Kris."
"Well…." she said, stumbling over the obvious. "They always have been rules-optional."
Sadly, I couldn't disagree, and I shrugged it off.
"They're probably just late," I concluded.
As we approached the massive doors of Grand Hall, I involuntarily looked up to the screen that flashed "English-American" even though I knew we talked in our own language and accents for our welcome-back dinner. Our mealtime conversations wouldn't be taking place in "Chinese-Mandarin" for at least a week.
Layne Abeley squeezed onto the bench next to Kristen and asked, "Have you seen it? Did you look?"
Layne was holding a blue slip of paper that instantly dissolves when you put it into your mouth. I don't know why our school always puts our schedules on Evapopaper – probably so they can make better tasting ones like Chocolate and Mint.
But Layne wasn't thinking about the Evapopaper when she yelled, "We have Covert Operations!"
She looked absolutely terrified, and I remembered that she was the only one who could take Kristen in a fist fight.
"I'm sure it will be fine," Kristen sighed, and she even rolled her eyes at Layne's hysterics. "Professor Bleen doesn't do anything hard. Ever since she broke her hip she's—"
"But Bleen is out!" Layne exclaimed, and even this caught my attention.
"Professor Bleen is still here, Layne." I stared at her for a second or two, and I knew this because I spent more than half the morning coaxing her cat, Onyx, out of the top shelf of the library.
"No, Mass," Layne said, "you don't understand. Professor Bleen is doing some kind of semiretirement thing. She's gonna do orientation and acclimation for the newbies, but that's it. She's not teaching anymore."
Wordlessly, our heads turned, and we counted seats at the staff table. Sure enough, there was an extra chair.
Just then a loud murmur rippled through the enormous room as my mom strolled through the doors at the back of the hall followed by the teachers.
Twenty teachers.
Twenty-one chairs.
I know I'm the genius, but you do the math.
Kristen, Layne, and I all looked at each other.
"Who's teaching CoveOps?" I asked, trying to comprehend that extra chair.
One face was new, but we were all expecting that, because Professor Smith always returns from summer vacation with a whole new look – literally. His nose was larger, ears more prominent, and a small mole had been added to his left temple, disguising what he claimed was the most wanted face on three continents.
The teachers took their seats, but the chair still stayed empty.
"Welcome back—" but just as quickly as my mom started talking, the door swung open.
Just as my attention shifted to the door, Dylan sat down next to me.
"Where have you been?" I asked her.
"Late plane ride. Sorry, Mass!" Dylan smiled brightly as she hugged me. "But, better yet, who is that?"
Dylan raised her eyebrows and sighed dramatically while I watched the stranger.
And no amount of training could have prepared us for this. A man who would have made James Bond feel insecure, a man who would have made Indiana Jones look like a momma's boy compared to the man in the leather jacket with two days' growth of beard walked to where my mother stood.
Then, in horrors of all horrors, he winked at my mother.
"Sorry I'm late," he said to my mother as he slipped into an empty chair.
His presence was so unprecedented, so surreal, that I didn't even realize Alicia had slid in between Kristen and I, and I had to double take when I saw her, for I remembered that five seconds before she'd been MIA.
"Trouble, ladies?" Alicia asked.
"Where have you been?" Kristen demanded.
"Forget that," Layne cut in. "Who is he?"
But Alicia was a natural-born spy. She just clucked her tongue and cocked an eyebrow, "You'll see."
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Did you like it? Review. I kind've liked the idea…