"Got it," Bex said in record time, and then the door swung open.
We stepped into a hallway we used to know. Now it led to a large open room. Deserted classrooms ringed the space, but the desks were gone. A door stood open, and I could see that a bathroom had been modified to stand between two…bedrooms? The scent of sawdust and fresh paint filled the air.
"They look like…" Liz started but trailed off. "Suites?" she said, her genius mind trying to wrap itself around such a simple fact.
There were beds and desks and closets. The rogue-florists theory didn't seem scary anymore. "You know what this means?" Bex asked.
There was only one thing it could mean.
"Boys," I said. "Boys are coming to the Gallagher Academy."
"Yeah." Bex smiled. "And we're going to get a rematch."
Chapter Eleven
The Gallagher Academy is a school for exceptional young women for a reason. Actually, lots of reasons.
For example, by having only girls' bathrooms (not counting the faculty lounges), the mansion is able to devote valuable square footage to things like chemistry labs and TV rooms.
Also, the average teenage girl in a coeducational environment is likely to spend one hundred hours a year getting ready for school, when that time could be used for sleeping or studying or debating the merits of foot vs. vehicular surveillance in an urban setting.
But the biggest reason the Gallagher Academy is a school for girls is that in the late 1800s it was perfectly acceptable for boys to learn math and science and how to hold their own in a duel, while girls like Gillian Gallagher were forced to master the fine art of needlepoint.
Gilly couldn't join the Secret Service—even after she'd saved the life of a president—because the other agents were afraid her hoopskirt might get in the way (when, in truth, hoopskirts were excellent for smuggling sensitive information and/or weapons).
So Gilly did the next best thing: she opened a school where proper young ladies could learn all the things they were never supposed to need, a place where young women were free to become exceptional without the pressure or influence of boys.
But now … more than a century later … all of that was going to change.
At breakfast the next morning, my roommates and I stared at our plates, not really listening as Anna Fetterman recounted the day before in detail.
"Und dann sah ich ihn in den Wandschrank gehn and ich wusste, dass ich ihn dort einschliessen musste um dann die Stufen hin unter gehen zu koennen," she said, and I have to admit, locking the agent on her tail inside a closet at the top of the Washington Monument was pretty ingenious of her, but I was in no mood to take notes.
"Cammie. When do you think they'll…you know…" Liz whispered, despite the sign telling us we were supposed to be speaking in German. "… come?"
I didn't have a clue. In the last twenty-four hours, the entire world as I knew it had changed, so I wasn't in a hurry to give the boys' arrival a time frame—to make it in any way real.
But then the reality of the situation stopped being an optional thing.
My mom rose from the staff dining table and took the podium. "Excuse me, ladies, but I have an announcement to make."
The doors at the back of the room swung open.
I knew that nothing at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women would ever be the same again.
Forks dropped. Heads turned. For the first time in twelve hours, there wasn't a single whisper inside our stone walls.
Gallagher Girls are supposed to be prepared for anything and everything. Even though I'm pretty sure we could handle an invasion by enemy forces, one glance at my classmates told me that not a single Gallagher Girl felt fully prepared for the sight of fifteen boys standing in the doorway of the Grand Hall.
Boys were looking at us. Boys were walking toward us. It's one thing to know that boys are coming…someday. It's quite another to be enjoying a nice, relaxing meal and then turn around to see a mob of teenage testosterone moving your way! (I mean, hello, I was wearing the skirt with the stain on the butt.)
But did my mother seem to care about that? No. She just gripped the podium at the front of the room and said, "The Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women has a proud history…" I'm pretty sure no one was listening.
"For more than a hundred years, this institution has remained secluded, but yesterday, some of your classmates were able to meet another set of exceptional students from another exceptional institution." I guess meet is code for be humiliated by.
"Members of the Gallagher trustees, along with the board of directors from the Blackthorne Institute, have long thought that our students would have a lot to learn from each other." She smiled. A strand of dark hair fell across her face, and she tucked it behind her ear before looking across the massive room. "And this year we're going to see it happen."
Tina Walters looked like she was going to pass out; Eva Alvarez was holding her orange juice halfway between the table and her mouth—but Macey McHenry seemed to have barely noticed that boys were walking past the sophomore table. She glanced up from her organic chemistry flash cards for about a millisecond and said, "That's them?" She shrugged. "I've seen cuter." And then she went back to her notes.
"When Gillian Gallagher was a girl, this hall had been home to balls and cotillions, friends and family, but it hasn't had many guests in the last century," Mom said. "I'm so glad today is an exception."
Then for the first time, I realized that the boys were not alone. There was a man ushering them to the front of the room. He had a round, reddish face and a bright, wide smile, and as he walked down the center aisle, he actually waved and shook hands with the girls he passed, as if he were a game-show contestant and my mother had just asked him to "Come on down."