When Maddie reached her suite, only one of her three roommates was actually there, a wispy girl with dark hair and dark eyes, who carried herself with the kind of confidence Maddie imagined she must have had back in the days when she and Logan roamed freely around 1600 Pennsylvania Ave without a care for the outside world.
The girl lifted her eyes to examine Maddie, but didn't move from where she sat on the floor, pouring over a textbook. "Tiffany," she said, casually raising a hand in a half-hearted wave.
"Hi," Maddie started with a smile. "I'm-"
"Madeleine Manchester," Tiffany cut her off. "I know. Your bed is that one." Tiffany gestured to the bed farthest from the door and closest to the bathroom without looking up from her textbook.
"You can call me Maddie," she said warmly, her smile becoming a bit forced.
Tiffany nodded, but didn't respond, and so Maddie busied herself with unpacking her duffel bag and putting sheets on to her mattress.
She changed into her uniform, a plaid skirt and button down that was very catholic-school-girl inspired in Maddie's opinion. She pulled on her new pink leggings under her skirt and tried not to fiddle nervously with the hem.
Maddie's dad had bought her the leggings during their trip to the Pentagon City Mall the day after landing in DC. Maddie had been desperately searching for anything to make her feel more like her old self. Besides, people would actually see her now. Including one objectively handsome President's son. The bears in Alaska had thought Maddie looked tasty no matter what outfit she was wearing, so she hadn't much bothered with her wardrobe in years. And survival gear seemed to come in surprisingly few fun colors.
After their shopping excursion, Maddie's dad sat her down in the food court and broke the news.
"Those are going to look great under your new uniform, Mad Dog," he mumbled around a mouth of soft pretzel.
Maddie tried to hide her surprise as she looked up at her father.
"I've enrolled you at the Gallagher Academy in Roseville starting three weeks from today," he continued. "I know how badly you wanted to go back to a real school when we were in Alaska, and I think this will be the perfect fit for you."
Maddie gulped down some lemonade and tried not to choke on the sickly chemical taste, or at least the way it mixed with the adrenaline that had just flooded her mouth. Her father was sending her off to boarding school in Virginia. The name clicked in Maddie's head, but she couldn't quite place where she'd heard it before.
Maddie knew she should be excited. Instead, she was apprehensive at the idea of being away from her father for the first time in six years. It wasn't like they'd been joined at the hip in Alaska. Her father had been gone the majority of the time. But he never went more than 48 hours without coming home. It was their unspoken rule, and Maddie had liked that. Maddie had needed that.
"What are you going to do?" she asked calmly. Her father had been exiled from the secret service after a particularly unpleasant near-kidnapping of the First Lady six years ago. Even if his reception in DC was warmer now, Maddie strongly doubted that he still met the field requirements after the injuries he'd sustained that day, and his more recent injuries during the incident in Alaska. Michael Manchester's right arm was still in a sling, and he was in the process of scheduling a series of surgeries to repair injuries to his back and shoulder.
"I've got a job in private security," Michael Manchester responded. "I'll be around. And I'll write to you when I'm not." Maddie had some particularly bad experiences to consider when it came to that particular promise, but she reminded herself that in sixteen years, her father had never made her a promise he couldn't keep.
Michael Manchester smiled as he looked at his daughter. "I did this for you, Mad," he assured her. "Gallagher isn't your average boarding school," he explained. "It's a school for girls like you." Maddie wasn't sure what her father meant, and her expression betrayed it. "I have one more stop to make before we go home," her father told her. "We'd better get going."
Maddie's father stood, and she followed him toward the teen section of a department store, where he confidently selected a pair of jeans Maddie wouldn't be caught dead wearing and handed them to a sales associate.
"My daughter would like to try these on," he said firmly, and though Maddie didn't know where this was headed, the expression on her father's face told her not to argue.
"Of course," the sales associate said with a wink at Maddie. She showed them to a dressing room, and Maddie's father gestured her into a changing booth. He stepped in after her and closed the door, noticeably leaving the horrible jeans with the sales associate.
Maddie wasn't entirely surprised when the booth began to shake and a retinal scan laser passed over them. The booth flashed white, and fell for what felt to Maddie like at least 30 stories.
Then the doors opened, and Maddie stared out at a black and white checkered lobby in what was certainly an underground bunker of some type. She was ushered away from her father and into a briefing room with one way glass, where she sat at a metal table across from a kind but persistent mid-thirties secret service agent by the name of Abigail Cameron, who asked her 453 questions about what had happened in Alaska. By the end of the story, Agent Cameron's expression rested somewhere between unsurprised and impressed, so Maddie concluded that she had done a perfectly adequate job protecting the President's son. Really, the results spoke for themselves.
"I hear you'll be attending Gallagher this spring," Agent Cameron said casually, as she escorted Maddie back to her father. "I'll look forward to seeing you around." She must have sensed Maddie's confusion, because she continued. "My sister is headmistress, so I guest lecture fairly frequently."
A school for girls like her. Maddie was only just beginning to grasp what her father had meant as the dressing-room-turned elevator hurtled back toward ground level.
AN: I hope you're enjoying this story so far! I was planning to come up with a regular posting schedule, but I have historically not been great at sticking with them, so I'm just going to post all the chapters as I finish doing final edits. Please leave me reviews if you're liking it, I love hearing from you.
