He nodded. If it had been another day or I'd been another girl, a hundred other things might have happened. But I had begun the semester with a promise to be myself, and the real me was still a girl on a mission.
I darted for the doors and pushed my way inside, then slipped into a narrow hallway behind the help desk. I watched the entrance, waiting ninety seconds to be sure that I was clear.
"Bex." I tried my comms unit. "Courtney…Mick…Kim …" I told myself there was no way they'd all been made. They were probably downstairs in the ice-cream parlor; or maybe waiting in the van.
I grabbed a visitors' brochure from a stack on the help desk, slipped into a narrow stairwell, and began the three-story climb to the slippers, not really caring that I wouldn't get to see the sights. (After all, the "Julia Child's Kitchen" exhibit didn't even illustrate how she used to send coded messages in her recipes.)
I could feel the ticking clock, almost see the look on Mr. Solomon's face and hear him say well done. I was so close; I scanned the map and took the stairs two at a time until I emerged at the far end of the floor, where the ruby slippers were displayed.
There were no signs of Mr. Solomon or my classmates; not another soul in the great oval room. I felt the clock in my head chime five o'clock. I stepped toward a case, which looked almost exactly like the one that stood in the center of the Hall of History. But instead of the sword that Gillian Gallagher had used to kill the first guy who'd tried to assassinate President Lincoln, this case held a different kind of national treasure.
The ruby slippers were so small, so delicate, that a part of me wanted to marvel in the coolness of being that close to something so rare. The rest of me just wanted to know why seven Gallagher Girls had gone radio silent and my teacher was nowhere to be seen! Then I heard Mr. Solomon's voice behind me.
"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.