"You're four seconds late."
The shoes glistened as I spun around. "But I'm alone."
"No, Ms. Morgan. You're not."
And then the boy from the elevator, the boy from the bench, stepped out of the shadows.
And looked at me.
And smiled.
And said, "Hi again, Gallagher Girl."
Chapter Ten
There are changes that come slowly—like evolution. And letting your hair grow out. And then there are changes that happen in a second—with a ringing phone, a well-timed glance. And in that moment I knew the Gallagher Academy wasn't alone. I knew there was a school for boys. And, most of all, I knew one of them had just gotten the best of me.
This can't be happening, I chanted in my head. This can't be—
"Nice work, Zach," Mr. Solomon said. "Zach" winked at me, and I thought, This is totally happening!
I'd been sloppy. I'd been distracted. And worst of all, I'd let a boy stand between me and my mission objectives…again.
The whole thing might have been too awful—too humiliating—to endure if I hadn't summoned the courage to say, "Hi, Blackthorne Boy." Since I wasn't supposed to know the Blackthorne Institute for Boys even existed, there was a split second when I had the upper hand.
Mr. Solomon blinked. Zach's mouth gaped open, and I was the person smiling when my teacher said, "Very good, Ms. Morgan." But then he looked at the boy who had beaten me at my own game, and my face went as red as Dorothy's shoes. "But not good enough."
I saw the day like a movie in my mind: Zach and his friend watching Bex twirl in the breeze; the boys standing on the long escalator ride into the Metro station. They'd been there—we'd seen them! But we'd thought they were just…boys. And they were. Kind of like we're just girls.
"Your mission was…what?" I started, amazed by how even my voice sounded, how steady my pulse felt. "To keep us from achieving our mission?"
The boy cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. "Something like that." Then he smirked and exhaled a half laugh. "I thought I could just make you late for your meeting. I didn't think you'd actually tell me where it was and walk me halfway there."
I thought I was going to be sick—seriously—right there in front of eight security cameras, my favorite teacher, and…Zach.
I'd thought he was chivalrous (but he wasn't). I'd thought he was cute (but tall, dark, and handsome is highly overrated when you think about it). And worst of all, I'd thought he'd been flirting…with me.
A group of tourists wandered into the shoe exhibit and pressed closer to the case. I was jostled by the crowd, then blinded by a flashing camera. Mr. Solomon put his arm around my shoulders and guided me to the doors.
I looked back toward the slippers.
But Zach was already gone.
How weird was the helicopter ride home? Let me count the ways:
In an effort to make themselves less tailable, Mick and Eva had traded their school uniforms for jumpsuits from the National Park Service maintenance staff.
Kim Lee had fallen down the stairs at the National Gallery, so she had to sit with her ice-packed ankle propped on Tina's lap.
Courtney Bauer was still wet, following a very unfortunate Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool incident.
And Anna Fetterman kept staring into the dark with her mouth open because, of all the Gallagher Girls on the Mall that day, she was the only one to achieve our mission objective (yeah, you read that right, Anna Fetterman!), and she was the most shocked person of all.
Even Bex had picked up a tail on her way out of the Metro station and didn't make it to the museum on time.
So that's why the entire sophomore CoveOps class from the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women sat in silence, watching the Washington Monument fade into the dark night while the helicopter rose, carrying us home.
I thought there would be questions. And theories. But even Tina Walters—the girl who had once hacked into a National Security Agency satellite in order to look for the alleged boys' school—didn't have a thing to say.
After all, it's one thing to learn there's a top-secret school for boy spies.
It's another to find out they might be better than you.
The countryside shimmered beneath us, and the mansion finally came into view, lights shining through the windows and reflecting off the snow.
I felt the helicopter touch down, saw the snow swirl around us as Mr. Solomon reached for the helicopter door, then paused.
"Today I asked you to do something that maybe fifty people in the entire world can do," he said, and I thought, This is it—a pep talk, a debrief. Or at least an explanation of who those boys were and why we were meeting them now. But instead, Mr. Solomon said, "By the end of this semester, there had better be fifty-eight."
"You really saw some?" Liz said an hour later. Sure, we had the stereo blaring and the shower running, but Liz still whispered, "They really…exist?"
"Liz," I whispered back. "They're not unicorns."
No," Bex said flatly, "they're boys. And they're…good."
Dampness weighed my hair, steam fogged the bathroom mirror, but the four of us kept the door closed, because A) Steam is excellent for your pores. And B) The biggest news in the history of our sisterhood was sweeping through the halls of a place where eavesdropping is both an art and a science. So needless to say, my roommates and I weren't taking any chances.