Cross my heart and hope to spy* by Ally Carter* (bill gates book recommendations .TXT) 📕

housed privileged girls.

Bex and I stepped off the elevator, our footsteps echoing as we passed the CoveOps library, full of books so sensitive you can never ever take them out of the Subs. (They're made out of paper that will disintegrate if it's ever exposed to natural light, just to be on the safe side.) We passed big burly guys from the maintenance department, who smiled and said, "Knock 'em dead, girls." (Knowing the guys from our maintenance department, they may very well have meant it literally.)

I slid into my chair, trying not to think about Liz or the door or anything other than the fact that I was finally back in the one part of the Gallagher Academy that never pretended to be anything other than what it is.

That was before Tina Walters leaned toward me, grinning and snapping her gum as only a third-generation spy-slash-gossip-columnist's daughter can do. "So, Cammie, is it true they sent a SWAT team to drag you out of your grandparents' house on Christmas morning?" Tina didn't wait for a response. "Because I heard you put up a good fight, but that they eventually pulled your Christmas stocking over your head and rolled you up in the tree skirt."

There will probably come a day when national security will rest in the hands of Tina Walters. Luckily, that wasn't the day.

"I was with her, Tina," Bex said. "Do you honestly think they could have taken both of us?"

Tina nodded, conceding the point. Before she could dig further, a deep voice said, "Static surveillance." Mr. Solomon came strolling into class without so much as a hello. "It is the root of what we do, and it has one golden rule--name it!"

And then, despite everything, I half expected to see Liz's thin arm shoot into the air, but of course it was a different voice that answered. "The first rule of static surveillance is that the operative must use the simplest, least-intrusive means possible."

Well, my first thought was that Sublevel One had become contaminated with some kind of hallucinogenic chemical, because the girl who spoke sounded like Anna Fetterman. She looked like Anna Fetterman. But there was no way Anna Fetterman belonged on the Covert Operations track of study!

Don't get me wrong, I love Anna. Really, I do. But I once saw her give herself a bloody nose while opening a can of Pringles. (I'm soooo not even making that up.) And that's not the kind of thing that usually screams Let me parachute onto the roof of a foreign embassy to bug the ambassador's cuff links, if you know what I mean.

But did Mr. Solomon act shocked? No, he just said, "Very good, Ms. Fetterman," as if everything were perfectly normal--which...hello ... it wasn't. I mean, Anna was taking CoveOps, my mom was hiding something from me, and there was an entire section of our school that even I couldn't access! Everything was not perfectly normal!

Joe Solomon had been an undercover operative for eighteen years, so naturally he was completely calm as he relaxed against his desk and said, "We deal in information, ladies. It's not about operations--it's about intelligence. It's not about cool gadgets--it's about getting the job done." Mr. Solomon looked around the room. "In other words, don't bother to plant cameras in the living room if your target never shuts the blinds."

I started writing everything down, but then Mr. Solomon slid Eva Alvarez's notebook off her desk and into her open bag. "No notes, ladies."

No notes? What did he mean no notes? Was he serious? (By the way, it was probably a good thing Liz wasn't on the CoveOps track, because her head would have been exploding about then!)

At the front of the room, Joe Solomon turned to the board and started diagramming a typical static surveillance scenario. Anna was gripping her pen so hard it looked like she was about to pull a muscle, but Mr. Solomon must have that whole eyes-in-the-back-of-his-head thing, because he said, "I said no notes, Ms. Fetterman," and Anna jerked away from her pen as if it had shocked her. (It might have--


we do have some very specialized writing instruments here at the Gallagher Academy.)

"This is not a required course, ladies. You no longer have to be here." Mr. Solomon turned around. His green eyes bore into us, and at that moment Joe Solomon wasn't just our hottest teacher, he was also our scariest. "Six of your classmates have already chosen a relatively safe life on the research and operations track of study. If you can't remember a fifty-minute lecture, then I'd encourage you to join them."

He turned back to the board and continued writing. "Your memory is your first and best weapon, ladies. Learn to use it."

I sat there for a long time, absorbing what he'd said, what it meant, knowing that he was right. Our memories are the only weapons we take with us no matter where we go, but then I thought about the second part of his statement-- Don't make things harder than they have to be. I thought about what I'd overheard the night before. The look in my mother's eyes on the long, quiet ride home. And finally...Josh. And then I realized that my life would be a whole lot easier if there were some things I could forget.
There are many pros and cons to living in a two-hundred-year-old mansion. For example: having about a dozen highly secluded and yet perfectly inbounds places where you can sit and discuss classified information: PRO.

The fact that none of these places are well heated and/or insulated when you are discussing said information in the middle of the winter: CON.

Two hours after our welcome-back dinner, Macey was leaning against the stone wall at the top of one of the mansion's tallest towers, drawing her initials on the window's frosty panes. Liz paced, Bex shivered, and I sat on the floor with my arms around my knees, too tired to get my blood flowing despite the chill that had seeped through my uniform and settled in my bones.

"So that's it, then?" Bex asked. "That's everything your mom and Mr. Solomon said? Verbatim?"

Macey and I looked at each other, recalling the conversation we'd overheard and the story we'd just told. Then we both nodded and said, "Verbatim."

At that moment, the entire sophomore class was probably enjoying our last homework-free night for a very long time (rumor had it Tina Walters was organizing a Jason Bourne-athon), but the four of us stayed in that tower room, freezing our you-know-whats off, listening for the creaking hinges of the heavy oak door at the base of the stairs that would warn us if we were no longer alone.

"I can't believe it," Liz said as she continued to walk back and forth--maybe to keep warm, but probably because...well...Liz has always been a pacer. (And we've got the worn spots on our bedroom floor to prove it.)

"Cam," Liz asked, "are you sure the East Wing couldn't have been contaminated by fumes from the chem labs?"

"Of course she's sure," Bex said with a sigh.

"But are you absolutely, positively, one hundred-percent sure ?" Liz asked again. After all, as the youngest person ever published in Scientific American, Liz kind of likes things verified, cross-referenced, and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.

"Cam," Bex said, turning to me, "how many ventilation shafts are there in the kitchen?"

"Fourteen--unless you're counting the pantry. Are you counting the pantry?" I asked, which must have been enough to prove my expertise, because Macey rolled her eyes and sank to the floor beside me. "She's sure."

In the dim light of the cold room I could see snowflakes swirl in the wind outside, blowing from the mansion's roof (or ... well...the parts of the roof that aren't protected with electrified security shingles). But inside, the four of us were quiet and still.
"Why would they lie?" Liz asked, but Bex, Macey, and I just looked at her, none of us really wanting to point out the obvious: Because they're spies.

It's something Bex and I had understood all our lives. Judging by the look on her face, Macey had caught on, too (after all, her dad is in politics). But Liz hadn't grown up knowing that lies aren't just the things we tell--they're the lives we lead. Liz still wanted to believe that parents and teachers always tell the truth, that if you eat your vegetables and brush your teeth, nothing bad will ever happen. I'd known better for a long time, but Liz still had a little naivete left. I, for one, hated to see her lose it.

"What's black thorn?" Macey asked, looking at each of us in turn. "I mean, you guys don't know either, right? It's not just a me-being-the-new-girl thing?"

Everyone shook their heads no, then looked to me. "Never heard of it," I said.

And I hadn't. It wasn't the name of any covert operation we'd ever analyzed, any scientific breakthrough we'd ever studied. Black thorn or Blackthorne or whatever could have been anyone, anything, anywhere! And whoever ... or whatever ... or wherever it was, it had made my mother miss some quality mother-daughter interrogation time. It had also forced my Covert Operations instructor to hold a clandestine conversation with my headmistress. It had crept inside the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women (or at least its East Wing), and so there we were, not quite sure what a Gallagher Girl was supposed to do now.

I mean, we had three perfectly viable options: 1) We could forget what we'd heard and go to bed. 2) We could embrace the whole "honesty" thing and tell my mother all we knew. Or 3) I could be ... myself. Or, more specifically, the me I used to be.

"The forbidden hall of the East Wing is almost directly beneath us," I began slowly. "All we have to do is access the dumbwaiter shaft on the fourth floor, maneuver through the heating vents by the Culture and Assimilation classroom, and rappel fifty or so feet through the ductwork." But even as I said it, I knew it couldn't be nearly as easy as it sounded.

"So..." Macey said, "what are we waiting for?" She jumped to her feet and started for the door.

"Macey! Wait!" Everyone looked at me. "The security department did a lot of work over the break." I pulled my legs closer, wrapped my arms tighter. "I don't know what kind of upgrades they made, what they might have changed. They were all over those tunnels and passageways, and ..." I trailed off, grateful that Bex was there to finish for me.

"We don't know what's in there, Macey," she said, even though the fact that we didn't know what lay waiting in the East Wing was kind of the point, and I could tell by the look on her face that Macey was getting ready to say so.

"Surprises," I finished slowly, "as a rule ... are bad."

Macey sank to the floor beside me while I told myself that everything I'd said was true. After all, it was a risky operation. We didn't have adequate intel or nearly enough time to prep. I can list a dozen perfectly logical reasons why I stayed on that stone floor, but the one I didn't tell my friends was that I had promised my mother that my days of sneaking around and breaking rules were over. And I'd kind of hoped my vow would last longer than twenty-four hours.

"So, what