"Yeah, well Tina Walters says a lot of things. Tina Walters is usually wrong," Bex replied. But I thought about how close Tina had been with her campaign button theory; I remembered that Tina had been saying for years that there was an elite boys' school for spies, and we'd all thought that was a crazy rumor until last semester when a delegation from the Blackthorne Institute had moved into the East Wing, just a few feet from where we now sat.
So I looked around the empty dusty space and said, "Not always."
Last spring, finding out who those boys were and whether or not they could be trusted had seemed like the most important mission of our lives. Charts of surveillance summaries and patterns of behaviors still lined the walls of our former operation headquarters, but the tape was starting to lose its hold. The wires still ran to the East Wing, a reminder of the days when boys from the Blackthorne Institute had seemed like a mission—back when missions had been about getting us ready for the real world; before the real world cornered us on a rooftop in Massachusetts.
Liz must have followed my gaze and read my mind, because I heard her say, "Have you heard from…you know…Zach?"
I thought back to the swirling images that had filled my mind before I'd blacked out, and almost asked, "Do hallucinations after a head injury count?" But I didn't because A) I may very well have been going crazy. And B) for a Gallagher Girl, "Boy crazy" might be the most dangerous kind of crazy there is.
So instead I turned to look out the window and watched the long line of limousines winding down Highway 10, carrying my classmates back to the safety of our walls.
It was the same scene I'd witnessed for years—the same cars, the same girls. But in the next instant the scene totally changed. Vans—dozens of them—sped down the highway, skidding into ditches on the side of the road. People bolted out and started adjusting satellite dishes and equipment. Helicopters swarmed around the school.
"Oh. My. Gosh," I mumbled, still staring, feeling Bex and Liz crowd around the window on either side of me. I looked at my best friends as sirens began screeching through the still, quiet air: "CODE RED CODE RED CODE RED."
"What does it mean?" Liz screamed. Bex and I just smiled.
"Macey's coming home."
Chapter Six
It doesn't take a genius to know that the whole world can change in an instant, and as soon as I hurried out of the secret passageway and into the second-floor corridor I could see and hear and feel the difference. For days the halls had felt like a tomb. But now, instead of stone silence, the whole school was on fire (without actually burning, of course).
Red lights flashed and blurred. To my right, a poster advertising the chance to spend a semester in Paris slid down over a display of secret writing techniques used through the ages (which wasn't entirely necessary since, this month, it was featuring invisible ink).
As we ran past the Encryption and Encoding department, I saw the plaque on the door flipping over to read Ivy League Liaison Office.
Our school was going undercover, pulling on its disguises as deftly as any seasoned operative can do, and as Bex, Liz, and I ran against a current of eighth graders on their way to stand guard outside the Protection and Enforcement barn, I couldn't help but smile. After all, it had been three hundred and sixty-four days since Macey had come to us during a Code Red. It seemed only fitting that she would come back to us in one.
But as we ran through the Hall of History, I watched Gillian Gallagher's sword disappear into the case that holds our deepest treasure, and something hit me: we wouldn't have a Code Red for Macey,
We were having a Code Red for Macey and whoever was coming with her.
The door to my mother's office eased open. Inside, I saw our headmistress, wearing her best suit and a grim expression. "I guess we're ready for our close-ups?" she was saying.
As soon as we stepped into the office I heard more voices.
"Now America waits for its first glimpse of Macey McHenry, the brave young woman who has so recently been thrust into the spotlight—and into danger."
(Evidently, one of the Code Red precautions for making the headmistress's office look like a regular school is to add a TV.)
Bex flipped through channel after channel until we came to the image that made us all freeze.
"And here we are," a tall correspondent said into a microphone as she strolled down a familiar stretch of Highway 10, "outside the gates of the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, where one exceptional young woman will be returning shortly, after the most traumatic incident of her life. And the question remains: Will these walls be enough to keep Macey McHenry safe?"
The sirens finally stopped. My mother said, "It's time."
Okay, here's the thing you need to know about spy schools— it's not about hiding them. Nope. Because, let's face it, spy schools have students, and students have parents, and parents are going to ask questions. According to Liz, non-spy parents are really big on obvious questions like "so where exactly is your school?" (Spy parents are far more likely to hack into a government database or put a GPS unit in your tooth or something.) In any case, you kinda need an actual school to present to the world; but like everything else about my life, my school wasn't exactly what it seemed.
Following my mother down the sweeping Grand Stairs, I couldn't help but think that our first line of defense was about to be put to the test, because even though the Gallagher Academy has never exactly hidden (it is a big, honking mansion, after all), my school has never gone looking for the spotlight.
When Gillian Gallagher converted her family's home into a school where young women could learn the covert skills that no men would ever teach them, she'd had the good sense not to put "The Gallagher Academy—Educating Government Operatives Since 1865" on the sign. Instead she'd called it a finishing school for the most outstanding girls of the day. Our cover has evolved with the times, but our ultimate mission has stayed the same: make sure no one ever knows just how exceptional we really are. Which, let's face it, is a whole lot easier when there aren't two dozen national news crews videotaping your every move.