“Zach…” I started, but the word caught. Was it smoke in my lungs—in my eyes? Because I was crying. I couldn’t stop crying.
I could hear my mother’s voice, yelling, “Cammie! Has anyone seen Cammie?”
“Mom! Mom, I’m here!”
Tears streaked down her face, mixing with the soot and the ash.
“Is everyone okay?” I asked. “Did everyone get out?”
“Yes.” My mother hugged me. “Cammie, are you okay?”
And for the first time in two years I said, “Yes,” and I absolutely meant it.
The fire grew. Flames swept upward, smoke spiraling toward the sky, but I just held tightly to my mother and watched the windows shatter, the floors collapse.
We stood for hours, watching as the fire raged and the sky brightened. I stood in the middle of a crowd of girls with soot-stained faces and bloody knees, living to spy another day.
Chapter Thirty-nine
“Courtney Elaine Bauer,” Madame Dabney said.
Applause filled the stands. Someone whistled. And Courtney looked like an angel as she walked across the stage to take her diploma and shake my mother’s hand.
“Rebecca Grace Baxter,” Madame Dabney said, and this time Bex climbed onto the stage.
I glanced at her parents, who sat in the front row of folding chairs. Her dad had a video recorder out, documenting the entire thing. Her mother smiled and clapped and waved, and I remembered that for a truly exceptional school, graduation at the Gallagher Academy is pretty much like graduations everywhere. There are smiling parents and gushing girls, shapeless black gowns and new graduates standing on the verge of a brave new world.
The only difference is that our worlds are slightly braver than average.
One by one we crossed the stage and shook my mother’s hand. Gilly’s sword had been shielded in its protective case and had come through the fire without a scratch, and like all Gallagher graduates before us, we stopped and kissed its blade. We held our diplomas and moved our tassels and when my turn came I was frozen for a moment, looking back over the crowd.
There were Mr. Solomon and Zach and Agent Townsend, who held tightly to Aunt Abby’s hand. My teachers smiled back at me. The underclassmen looked up at the senior class in awe. And I squinted against the sun, looking across the grounds at the scaffolding that rose in the distance. I saw the mansion growing, stretching up from the ashes. I saw our fresh start.
“And now a few words from our valedictorian, Ms. Elizabeth Sutton.”
Liz looked especially short as she stood behind the podium. Macey had forced her to wear heels, and she shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot as she adjusted the microphone and started to speak.
“What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked.
She looked nervously down at the papers in her hand even though I knew for a fact she had memorized every word.
“When I was eleven I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when the recruiters came to see me. They showed me brochures and told me they were impressed by my test scores and asked if I was ready to be challenged. And I said yes. Because that was what a Gallagher Girl was to me then, a student at the toughest school in the world.”
She took a deep breath and talked on.
“What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked again. “When I was thirteen I thought I knew the answer to that question. That was when Dr. Fibs allowed me to start doing my own experiments in the lab. I could go anywhere—make anything. Do anything my mind could dream up. Because I was a Gallagher Girl. And, to me, that meant I was the future.”
Liz took another deep breath.
“What is a Gallagher Girl?” This time, when Liz asked it, her voice cracked. “When I was seventeen I stood on a dark street in Washington, D.C., and watched one Gallagher Girl literally jump in front of a bullet to save the life of another. I saw a group of women gather around a girl whom they had never met, telling the world that if any harm was to come to their sister, it had to go through them first.”
Liz straightened. She no longer had to look down at her paper as she said, “What is a Gallagher Girl? I’m eighteen now, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that I don’t really know the answer to that question. Maybe she is destined to be our first international graduate and take her rightful place among Her Majesty’s Secret Service with MI6.”
I glanced to my right and, call me crazy, but I could have sworn Rebecca Baxter was crying.
“Maybe she is someone who chooses to give back, to serve her life protecting others just as someone once protected her.”
Macey smirked but didn’t cry. I got the feeling that Macey McHenry might never cry again.
“Who knows?” Liz asked. “Maybe she’s an undercover journalist.” I glanced at Tina Walters. “An FBI agent.” Eva Alvarez beamed. “A code breaker.” Kim Lee smiled. “A queen.” I thought of little Amirah and knew somehow that she’d be okay.
“Maybe she’s even a college student.” Liz looked right at me. “Or maybe she’s so much more.”
Then Liz went quiet for a moment. She too looked up at the place where the mansion used to stand.
“You know, there was a time when I thought that the Gallagher Academy was made of stone and wood, Grand Halls and high-tech labs. When I thought it was bulletproof, hack-proof, and…yes…fireproof. And I stand before you today happy for the reminder that none of those things are true. Yes, I really am. Because I know now that a Gallagher Girl is not someone who draws her power from that building. I know now with scientific certainty that it is the other way around.”
A hushed awe descended over the already quiet crowd as she said this. Maybe it was the gravity of her words and what they meant, but for me personally, I like to think it was Gilly looking down, smiling at us all.
“What is a Gallagher Girl?” Liz asked one final time. “She’s a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: A Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.”
Thunderous, raucous applause filled the student section.
Liz smiled and wiped her eyes. She leaned close to the microphone.
“And, most of all, she is my sister.”
Chapter Forty
Six Months Later
Some girls are looking at me as I write this. Well, not me, exactly. I think they want this table. I can’t really blame them. It’s warm here in the sun with the cool breeze washing over these pages. Every now and then I reach down to smooth my plaid skirt, but then I remember that my plaid skirt days are behind me.
Some guys throw a Frisbee across the quad. A man in a tweed jacket parks an old-fashioned bicycle near the library. And I sit here, alone and unseen.
A chameleon.
Turns out, you can take the girl out of the spy school, but you can never take the spy school out of the girl.
“Here you go,” I tell the guys and send the Frisbee back to them, harder than they must have expected.
“Hey, thanks,” one of the guys tells me. “Wow. You’re really strong.”
He has no idea.
He’s cute, Bex would say. But Bex isn’t beside me. None of my friends are here, so I’m alone when the guy asks, “Have I seen you before?”
I gather my things and have to smile.
“Nope,” I tell him.
“See you around?” the guy asks.
I doubt it.
He doesn’t know my story. He hasn’t seen my scars. To him, I’m just another freshman, another girl. He can’t possibly understand why I blend so easily into the wave of backpacks that fills the sidewalk. He doesn’t know me, and I realize that maybe I don’t know myself. That I have a lifetime to figure that out.
People say Georgetown University is prettiest in spring, but the autumn air feels sweet to me. It’s the closest thing to freedom that I have ever felt. When the path branches, I can either walk along the main road to and from campus or go down an overgrown path that runs along the river. Most coeds would be afraid to go down the dark, twisting trail alone, but I don’t think twice about it. I walk on, sun streaking through the falling leaves until I pass beneath a stone archway.
Overhead, cars and pedestrians and cyclists make their way to campus. They don’t think about what’s down below, but I walk on without another thought.
When I find the derelict-looking door, I punch a code into a cleverly hidden box and turn the knob. Once inside the cold space, I don’t blink as the red line sweeps across my eyes, reading my retinas. I hold my hand to the sensor and wait for another steel door to swing open. Then I step inside and start down the stairs, two at a time.
“Ms. Morgan,” Agent Townsend yells from below. “You’re late.”
“Sorry,” I tell him. I hold up my report. “Almost finished,” I say, but he doesn’t care about the paperwork.
He nods toward the boy who looks like him. “We have a lead on a rogue asset outside of Kabul. CIA wants the two of you. If you have the time?” Townsend asks, almost condescendingly.
The boy looks at me and smiles. “What do you say, Gallagher Girl. Do you?”
I take the file from Townsend’s hand.
“Let’s go.”
