Chapter I
Evie's Notes: Hey y'all, welcome to my take on the Reading the Books and Time Travel Tropes! Let me know what you think and if you want to see more. Enjoy the chapter :)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in bold, only my OCs
Cammie's morning had actually been going relatively ok. She was a little (read a lot) stressed about her upcoming COW exam, but the girls night she, Bex, Liz and Macey had thrown the night before went a long way in calming her nerves.
Plopping down beside her best friend at the sophomore table in the great hall, Cammie helped herself to a generous plate of blueberry pancakes, the chef only made them once a month after all.
Her perfect morning was interrupted by two things though, Bex stealing bacon off her plate and the bright flash above the teacher's table and the sound of terrified screams filling the hall.
When the bright light cleared and her sight returned, Cammie looked up to see a young woman lying flat on the teacher's table groaning in pain.
"Ugh. I'm going to kill Zach. He swore that I wouldn't end up falling face first this time" complained the woman rubbing her head. "I'm totally going to have bruises from that fall".
"Excuse me. But who are you and how did you get past the guards" asked Cammie's mother calmly. But she could see that the headmistress was prepared to fight as soon as the stranger made a wrong move.
"Sorry for crashing in here Headmistress Morgan… literally. I'm agent Ginny Barron of the CIA, I was just recently assigned to the time travel division. Like really newly assigned… this my first mission"
"Uh huh… so Jacob finally got his pipe dream of a time travel device to work?" Asked Professor Buckingham.
"Yup! We've done a couple shorter trips but this is the longest one by far!" chirped Ginny.
"And just far have you come agent Barron" asked Mr. Mosckowitz
"Ummm… if it worked I should have traveled 5 years. Cammie you're finishing your sophomore year right?"
Her? "Uhh yeah? The Blackthorne contingent left a couple days ago and our first exams are supposed to start in a couple minutes".
"Well y'all are going to love me then" sang the girl. "You see this" she asked, holding up an ancient pocket watch which was glowing blue… "this lovely device designed by one Miss Elizabeth Sutton allows me to control time. I can, and have, set it so that no time is passing outside of this building. As soon as we finish with the task I have been assigned, everything will reset back to when I crashed in here. Which means extra study time!".
"Wohoo! I am officially team time travel" yelled Bex excitedly.
"And what exactly is this task Agent Baron?" sighed Mr. Solomon
"Oh Joe, don't you worry, it's a fun one! I was sent back to deliver a warning and prepare you all for what's coming… Trust me it isn't pretty!"
"Ok. So what's this warning?"
"Nope! That's not how this works".
"Well how does it work?" huffed Anna Bates, one of the seniors.
"Thank you for asking Anna! In my bag here I have 4 books. Each book includes a covert operations report with vital information to stop a terrible future full of death and destruction from occurring. We will each take turns reading different sections of the books. When we finish you will have the necessary information to change the events".
"And you can't just tell us the info because…"
"Because time travel. Plus this is more fun!" snapped Ginny.
"Very well Miss Barron. Shall we begin our reading now?" asked the headmistress.
"Good idea! Everyone should get comfortable since we will likely be here for a while" instructed Ginny as she climbed off the staff table that she had been standing on. "I'll read the first chapter to start us off!".
Cammie exchanged intrigued looks with her three roommates as the time traveling girl made herself comfortable at the front of the room.
"Don't judge a Girl by Her Cover" read Ginny.
""We're moving." The man beside me spoke into the microphone in his sleeve, and I knew the words weren't for me. The August air was hot and thick with the smell of sea salt and bus exhaust. The roads were packed for miles, and everywhere I looked I saw shades of red, white, and blue. Everywhere I turned, I felt the eyes of trained professionals staring, seeing, recording every word, analyzing every glance within a dozen miles. Part of me wanted to break free of the big men in the dark suits who flanked me on either side; another part wanted to marvel at the bomb-sniffing dogs who were examining boxes twenty meters away. But most of all, I wanted to lie when another man, with a clipboard and an earpiece, asked for my name. After all, I've spent a lot of time learning how to whip out false IDs and recite perfectly crafted cover stories in situations just like these, so it was harder than I thought to say, "Cammie. Cammie Morgan."
The hall broke into startled whispers as Cammie's name was revealed.
"What!" Shrieked Cammie! "Why are we reading my journals?"
"Well your journals are key to saving the future" explained Ginny. "Plus you have an annoying habit of getting wrapped up in dangerous things and let's face it… you really don't grow out of it".
"Only you, Cammie, would write journals that were key to saving the future" teased Liz.
"Well if they're my journals that means all of you are going to be in it" shot back Cammie.
Bex's retort was cut off by Ginny loudly clearing her throat. "If you all are done I can continue".
At my mother's nod, Ginny continued to read:
"It was weirder than I would have guessed as I waited for him to scan the clipboard and say, "You can go right in." As if I were simply a sixteen-year-old girl. As if I couldn't possibly be a threat. As if I didn't go to a school for spies. Walking through the hotel lobby, I couldn't help but remember the first assignment my covert operations teacher ever gave me: Notice things".
"Aww you do listen when I teach" snarked Mr. Solomon.
Lights and cameras shone from every angle. A massive net full of red, white, and blue balloons snaked through the cavernous space like a patriotic python. Up on the mezzanine level, the Texas delegation was singing about yellow roses, while a woman walked by wearing a big foam hat shaped like a Georgia peach. I scanned the masses of old women and young girls. Husbands and wives. College kids and senior citizens. The last time I'd been in a crowd like this was in a different season and a different city, so maybe it was the hotel's frigid air-conditioning or just a memory of a chilly day in D.C., but for some reason, I shivered and fought against a serious case of déjà vu as I looked around and said the name I hadn't spoken in weeks. "Zach."
"Ooohhh!" Teased the room of Cammie's sisters.
Cammie felt her cheeks grow warm as she buried her head in her arms growling for them all to just shut up.
"Then I blinked and wondered if a part of me would always worry that he might be on my tail".
Why on earth did future her include that in an official report?!
"This way," the man beside me said, but we didn't stop at the end of the line, which twisted and turned in front of the marble-covered registration desk. We didn't even slow down as we passed between two rows of elevators. Instead we turned down a narrow hall that seemed half a world away from the bright lights and tall ceiling of the lobby. Plush carpeting gave way to chipped linoleum tiles until finally we were standing before an elevator that I'm pretty sure hotel guests were never intended to see. "So, you're a friend of peacocks?" the Secret Service agent asked while we waited for the doors to open.
"Oh! Who's peacock?" asked Sarah Jane, one of the seventh graders.
"Excuse me?" I asked, because even though I'd never been in a really nice hotel, I was pretty sure they wouldn't have exotic birds on the penthouse level.
"Probably not Cam". joked Bex.
"Peacock," the agent said again as we stepped into the service car that was soon carrying us, nonstop, to the top floor. "See, we use code names," he explained as if I were… a sixteen-year-old girl, "when we talk about the protectee. So you and Peacock, you're… friends?" he asked, and again I realized that he wasn't looking at me the way a well-trained, well-armed security professional looks at a potential threat (because I know a thing or two about well-trained and well-armed security professionals!). Nope. He was looking at me like I was… a Gallagher Girl.
"But we are threats" pouted Marisa Stevens, another seventh grader.
"Yeah I can do a roundhouse kick" piped in her friend Rachel.
Of course, if you're reading this you must already know that there are two types of people in this world—those who know the truth about what goes on inside the walls of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, and those who don't. Something in the way the agent was trying to weigh my slightly out-of-style clothes against the snooty reputation of my school told me that he was definitely the second type—that he assumed we were all rich; that he thought we were all spoiled; and that he had no idea what it really meant to be Gallagher Girl. And that was before I heard the screaming.
"Who's screaming?!" "Careful Cammie!" came various calls of caution.
As the elevator doors slid open, a high-pitched "I am going to kill someone!" echoed from behind the double doors at the end of the hall. And then I was one hundred percent certain that the man beside me didn't know the truth about my sisterhood, because he didn't draw his weapon; he didn't even flinch as a second Secret Service agent opened the double doors and whispered, "Peacock is angry."
The frank way Ginny stated the line sparked laughter throughout the room.
Instead, he walked toward the screaming girl—even though she was a Gallagher Girl. Even though her name was Macey McHenry.
"Macey!" cheered the student body.
Before that day, I'd never been to Boston. I'd never had a Secret Service escort. And I'd definitely never been a VIP (or the friend/ roommate/ guest of a VIP) at a national political convention. But walking into what I'm pretty sure was the hotel's second-nicest suite, I added another first to the list: I'd never seen Macey McHenry as mad as she was then.
"Yikes, cause I thought we had all seen "Peacock" pissed" teased Liz.
"Really, Macey, I think it's an adorable little puff piece." Cynthia McHenry's cool, mannered tone could not have been more different from her daughter's. "He's the only son of a future president…. You're the only daughter of a future vice president…. If people want to read about the possibility of a White House wedding eight years from now, I don't see any reason to stop them. Really, I don't know why you have to be so dramatic." Right then I made a mental note that if Mrs. McHenry thought Macey was too dramatic then she should probably never be left alone with the better part of our junior class.
"Rude!" called the sophomores.
If that boy—" "That boy," her mother corrected, "is Governor Winters's son—" "—tries to flirt with me—" Macey went on, but Mrs. McHenry talked over her. "And if appearing with that boy is going to give us a two-percent bump in Ohio, then you will appear with that boy."
"Yikes! That sucks… sorry Mace" commiserated Tina. She had difficult parents too.
"Percentages." Macey gave an exasperated sigh. "You know I don't do math."
Well, I have personally seen Macey McHenry do linear algebra without a calculator (after mastering our roommate Liz's system, of course), but the girl in front of me wasn't the Macey I knew from school. She wasn't the girl on the suite's TV either, smiling and waving and holding hands with her father on the national news. Instead she was the other kind of Gallagher Girl—the kind the agent had been expecting: the snobby kind, the spoiled kind, the kind who had crawled out of her parents' limousine and into our school nearly a year before with combat boots and a diamond nose stud.
"Yup. Going home sucks" sighed Macey
"This was the scene this morning as Senator James McHenry and his family arrived here in Boston to join Governor Winters and officially accept the vice presidential nomination," the TV anchor was saying.
"Huh… I guess he decided to go through with it" remarked the beautiful girl.
But I doubt that Macey or her mother were even listening as they stared daggers at each other. "You will do this, Macey," her mother said. "You will—" But then my escort cleared his throat, and Mrs. McHenry turned. I expected her to gush like she had on the phone when Macey had called to invite me to join them, but instead she waved in my direction and said, "There, your littles friend is here." Something in the way her mother spoke about me made Macey draw a breath.
"Oh man… you better watch out Mrs. McHenry or shit is going to go down" taunted Alyssa, one of the freshman girls.
I was relieved that no one else noticed how my roommate's fists clenched tighter for just a moment before she spun around and snapped, "We're going for a walk."
"Good call, the headmistress is a stickler about using our skills outside of school" lamented Perry.
"Miss Everton, we must keep our cover" called Rachael, but she had an understanding smile all the same.
"Don't forget the rehearsal!" her mother called, but Macey was already pulling me through the double doors. I caught the agent's eye one final time as he tried to figure out what I could possibly have in common with the girl who was pulling me along.
"Plenty!" intoned Macey shooting Cammie a grin.
On the TV, someone said, "Cynthia McHenry is a well-known businesswoman and philanthropist. The couple has one daughter, Macey, a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, in Roseville, Virginia." Our school. National television.
Well that's going to lead a ton more applications. Hope you're ready to deal with that Rachel" cackled Joe.
"Who do you think is actually teaching them Joe" shot back the headmistress.
thousand thoughts raced through my mind before Macey slammed the doors behind us, as if trapping my worries on the other side. She smiled a mischievous smile, and for the first time that day I recognized my friend in the girl who stood before me. "So, how do you like my cover?""
Ginny closed the book with a snap, "So… first impressions?"
"Are all the books from Cammie's point of view?" asked Laura.
"Good question. Yes, they are. Now would anyone like to read next?"
"I will read the next chapter" declared the headmistress. "Let's see what my daughter gets up to next!".
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