A Night To Remember

Chapter 1

     First off, my name is Jax McKinley. I live in a top secret location in the state of Texas. I am fifteen years old, and I've been training to be a spy since I was old enough to talk. Now, my life isn't the most interesting, but my parents want me to start writing reports. Because when you've just found out that the president of the United States is going to be kidnapped by Russian spies, the last thing on your mind is the five page essay you'll have to write about saving them.

     My school is very special. In fact, it's the only one of its kind. Sure, Russia and Great Britain have their own special institutes, but they don't come close to being as elite and successful as Grey's Academy for Exceptional Young Men. I had been preparing for my first day back to school for almost a week, yet I found myself completely lost and confused the third Monday of August. In fact, all one hundred and eighty-six students that attended Grey's Academy were confused. As a sophomore, I had known that the confusion was a result of the chemicals the 9th grade chemistry teacher, Dr. Riley, had been mixing in the lab. You would assume that a school as high-end as ours would at least have proper venting from the lab. However, your assumption would be incredibly wrong, and you would soon learn, as Dr. Riley would put it, never assume anything.

     One hundred and eighty-six fumbling young men (including myself) were walking down the hall, our room guide listing off two names at each door. "Jax McKinley and Hunter King, room 115." I grabbed my suitcase and walked into the room. The Hunter kid sat his bag on the bed closest to the window before I got the chance, so doing the polite thing, I picked up his bag and tossed it onto the other bed. "Newbies get the bed by the door. Sorry kid." It was really too bad that I got stuck in a room with a freshman. With my parents owning the school, you would most likely assume that I could chose my own roommate, or at least be paired with another sophomore. To this, I would say go back and read the last paragraph.

     Dinner is another thing that is different from normal family activity. All students and staff members sit at a table of their choice and order one of the best meals you'll ever eat in your entire life. Sure, the lasers and darts and acidic ink in the highlighters are all really great, but nothing compares to Chef Tanner's food.

     When your school teaches you fourteen different languages, you have to practice them occasionally to be fluent in them. The way our school makes sure we practice, is Languages of the World. This program is set up so that each day, students are required to speak a certain foreign language. Because of this, it wasn't surprising that on the second day of school, my Covert Operations teacher spoke in Slovak. I looked around the room, checking the facial expressions of each student that sat in the room. No one knew what he had just said. Or that he told them they had thirty-seven seconds to explain who really shot John F. Kennedy and why. Well, this is going to be a fun year. I thought silently.

     The teacher walked directly to Jackson Reid's desk and repeated the same question in Portuguese. He answered quickly in the same language. The teacher nodded and turned to the board, writing another ten questions that the outside world would never be able to know the answers to, yet I had known them since my 7th grade year. That was when I finally understood the importance of my position. Despite the fact that I had never owned a single cell phone or talked to a girl my own age, I knew this exactly where I was supposed to be.

     That night, I sat on my bed and recorded all the information I thought I would need over the coming year, and I put away the notes and went to sleep, completely ignoring the younger boy sitting in the bed next to me, probably wondering why he was even here. Probably missing his former life. I had never gotten the chance to have a life to miss. This was all I knew, and all I ever wanted to know.