That for the time being, all I could do was wait.
"Seventh grade!" Patricia Buckingham's voice carried through the foyer as the newest Gallagher Girls followed behind her, out of the Grand Hall. "We will proceed in a group to the lab for your examination. Do not enter until I have given you your—" She stopped suddenly and yelled to the girls at the front of the pack, "Emily Sampson! I saw that!"
I wondered if I had ever been that small. I saw the innocence in their eyes, and I knew somehow that I would never feel that way again. I'd seen too much—I knew too little. And for reasons I didn't even know at the time, I raced after them.
"Professor Buckingham," I called, stepping closer to the woman who was both the oldest member of the Gallagher Academy faculty and also the only member whose appearance hadn't changed at all since I was in the seventh grade.
"Yes, Cameron?" Buckingham said, and in that moment she seemed timeless. As if some great twentieth-century spymaster had carved her out of stone.
"I have a question…about history."
"History of Espionage is a course on the spring semester curriculum, Cameron. I expect you to know that." She ushered another seventh grader down the long hall. "Right now, as you can see, I am quite busy helping our newest students acclimate. Sissy!" Buckingham yelled as she pushed them along, farther from me, while the wind howled louder outside.
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I can see that. It's just that I was wondering … about the Circle of Cavan." When she turned, her blue eyes pierced into mine.
"I need to know …" I called after her, my voice cracking under the weight of the fears that I'd been carrying for weeks. "I need to be ready."
"I'm sorry, Cameron. It's not something…I'm sorry." She took a step. The voices of the seventh graders faded away as they turned the corner—disappeared from sight.
I turned to stare out the windows, watched the first flakes of winter start to fall and blow across the grounds. In a few hours, everything would be covered, as if the earth itself were pulling on its best disguise.
"Perhaps in the spring." Buckingham's voice cut through the drafty corridor, chasing after me like a strong wind. I turned to look at her. "Yes," she said again, and for a split second—nothing more—she looked like an old woman. The hallway felt like time itself, and Patricia Buckingham and I were standing at opposite ends—her looking back on all she'd seen, me wondering what lay ahead.
Then Professor Buckingham nodded once more and said softly, "Perhaps in the spring."
I watched her disappear down that long corridor while outside the sky turned gray and the ground turned white and winter settled in.
Zach's jacket was in my arms, so I put it around my shoulders. It hung there, heavy and warm, and the cold seemed a little farther away. As I put my hands in the pockets, I felt something brush against my fingers. I pulled out a small piece of Evapopaper and studied the handwriting I'd seen twice before:
Have fun in London
-Z
And then, despite everything, I smiled and looked at the note and knew that spring would come—it always does. So I stared out that cold window, watching my breath collect on the glass, trying not to think about my life after the thaw.