Itinerary: Saturday, 5:00 a.m. Peacock departs Gallagher Academy for Philadelphia, PA.
Things You Can Do When the Life of One of Your Best Friends May Be at Risk, and She's Got to Help Her Dad Campaign for Vice President Anyway, and You Really, Really Don't Want Her to Go:
1. Sweet-talk Mr. Mosckowitz into moving up the exercise where the ninth graders (the grade Macey was up to now) are locked in a room and can't get out until they break the Epstein Equation.
2. Hack into Secret Service databases, leaving indications that the aforementioned roommate had been making some incredibly dangerous threats against another protectee, Preston Winters (because she totally had).
3. If the roommate were to have an allergic reaction to her mother's experimental night cream, resulting in a terrible zit outbreak that leaves her very unphotogenic and unlikely to test well with undecided women between the ages of 21 and 42 in the process, then maybe she wouldn't be required on the campaign trail after all!
4. Two words: food poisoning (but only as a last resort).
They really were good plans. After all, Bex and I hadn't just aced Mr. Solomon's Logistical Thinking and Planning for Success midterm for nothing. Logistically speaking, we'd been about as covert as we could possibly be without coming right out and hog-tying Macey to her desk chair (a plan that Bex proposed frequently).
But Mr. Mosckowitz wasn't doing the locked room assignment this year, since he'd developed a case of claustrophobia after a top-secret summer assignment that involved a Porta Potti and two Lebanese hairdressers.
And it turns out the Secret Service doesn't take death threats by protectees all that seriously. Especially if they're girls. Even if they're Gallagher Girls.
And we should have known that Macey would never get a pimple. Ever. It goes against the laws of nature or something.
And worst of all, the last part of our master plan didn't work because a person can't possibly get food poisoning if the person no longer eats food.
I didn't know if it was nerves or fear or if she really was reverting back to the Macey she had been when she came to us a year before, but night after night we sat at the juniors' table in the Grand Hall while our roommate pushed the food around on her plate—not eating, not laughing. Just waiting for whatever would come next.
"This is bad," Liz said Friday morning as we left Culture and Assimilation. The halls were filling up. And time was running out.
"We could always—"
"No!" Liz and I both snapped, not really thinking that was the time or place to be reminded of Bex's "no one can get out of my slipknots" argument, but it was Macey who made us stop.
"It's okay, guys," Macey said. She turned toward Dr. Fibs's basement lab. "Thanks for trying and everything, but I've got to go." The way she said it, I knew that getting her out of her trip wasn't really up for debate. She shrugged and added, "It's the job."
I might have argued; I might have pleaded, but right then I realized that Bex and I weren't the only ones who had been born into a family business—a genetic fate. Macey's first full sentence had been "Vote for Daddy," and not even a kidnapping attempt, midterms, and the three of us could keep her off the campaign trail.
As Bex pulled me toward the elevator and Sublevel Two, the chaos of the halls faded away, replaced by the smooth whirring of the elevator and the lasers and the sounds of a new set of worries in my head.
"What?" Bex asked.
"Zach," I said numbly.
"Cam, he is bloody dreamy—I'm not going to deny you that—but I don't think boys are really the most important thing right now."
"Zach got through."
I thought about him standing behind the bleachers. I thought about me standing behind the bleachers. In the restricted zone. "Zach got through security. If he did …" I trailed off, not wanting to say the worst of what was on my mind. Bex nodded, not wanting to hear it.
A moment later we were stepping out of the elevator. Our footsteps echoed as we ran, around and around and around the spiraling ramp, lower into the depths of the school.
"Don't worry, Cam," Bex said, not even close to being winded. "We'll think of something. If Mr. Solomon doesn't kill us for being late."
But then she stopped. Partly, I think, because we'd finally reached the classroom; partly because our teacher— perhaps our best teacher, our strictest teacher—was nowhere to be seen.
I don't know how normal girls behave when a teacher is out of the room, but Gallagher Girls get quiet. Crazy quiet. Because operatives in training learn very early on that you can never really trust that you're alone.
So Bex didn't say anything. I didn't say anything. Even Tina Walters was speechless.
"You're the juniors?"
The voice was one I didn't know. I turned to see a face I didn't recognize. A man. An older man in a Gallagher Academy maintenance department uniform. His name badge read "Art," and he was glaring at us as if he knew we were personally responsible for the terrible hydrochloric acid spill in Dr. Fibs's lab, which had probably taken weeks to clean up.
"Solomon said you were the juniors," Art told us.
"Yes, sir," Mick said, because 1) We've all been taking culture class since we were in the seventh grade and Madame Dabney does her job well, and 2) at the Gallagher Academy, everyone is more than they appear.
We look like normal girls, but we're not. Our teachers could blend in with any prep school faculty in the world, but they're so much more. Every girl in that room knew that to spend your retirement in the Gallagher Academy maintenance department you must have had high clearance and massive skills—you're there for a reason. So Art was a "sir" to us. No doubt about it.