I couldn't ignore it.
I really, really wanted to ignore it, but I couldn't. It was like this constant buzzing in my mind—a permanent shadow looming over a single, empty spot in my heart.
This was the first year of my life that my mother wouldn’t be there to drop me off on the first day of school. I know it’s not a lot—just another checkmark on the long list of absent firsts—but sitting in the limo, on the way to my mother’s school without my mother at my side, I couldn’t ignore it.
Aunt Bex was with us. She was around a lot more. Matt sat beside her, his carryon bag leaning over in his lap. When they were done here, the two of them were headed straight to the airport and Aunt Bex was going to show Matt all of London. He was, after all, on his way to becoming an official member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. That’s right. It had taken him all summer, but now my brother was just one more interview away from being an active member at MI6. He was going to be elite. He was going to be powerful.
He was going to wet himself.
“What’s the matter, Matt?” I teased from the leather bench opposite him. “Scared?”
“Morgan Ann,” Dad scolded from beside me, using that signature dad-voice. “I’m sure your brother is very excited for his future. Some consider MI6 to be the most honorable career choice that a young spy can make.” Then he looked at Aunt Bex and half his mouth turned to smile “Well, second most honorable.”
“Hilarious, Zachary,” she said, turning up her nose. “Tell me, who was it that saved the CIA’s butt during the Cuban Missile Crisis?”
Dad just huffed at her, arms crossed. “It always comes back to Cuba, doesn’t it, Baxter?”
“As it should,” she argued back. “Considering the fact that Florida still exists, we reserve the right to hang that over your unjustifiably large heads. MI6 is the most efficient intelligence agency in the world and you know it.”
“Efficient.” Dad raised his eyebrows, falsely impressed. “Isn’t that what you’ve always dreamed of, Matt? Joining the most efficient intelligence community that this fine universe has to offer?” He said that last bit with his hand over his heart as he looked off into the distance, stretching out every last word until it became aggressively sarcastic. I could almost see the massive starts and stripes waving behind him, the national anthem playing as he brought a finger to his eye and swiped away an invisible tear. “I must say, as a father, I am so very proud.”
Which might’ve been a pretty good rebuttal. That is, if not for the fact that Dad actually was ridiculously proud.
“You go on and laugh,” Aunt Bex said. “I’ve already convinced one of your children to cross over to my side. It’s only a matter of time until I have them both.”
Dad waved his hand at her, sticking an arm around my shoulders. “Puh-lease,” he said, drawing out the word into two syllables. “Maggie’s been CIA-bound since her first backflip.”
It was true. To me, the CIA was endgame. It was where my mother had served and my grandmother before her. It was where both of my grandfathers—biological and not—had served. My aunt. My father. Nearly my whole family. Almost everyone I had ever looked up to. My family had too many roots in the CIA. Too much history to be apart of. To me, the CIA was more than an agency. It was the very definition of success.
But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t poke fun at my father before I got there. “I don’t know, Dad. They have a really nice lounge. And their training room is the best in the northern hemisphere, and—”
“And all of the boys have cute accents,” Aunt Bex added with a wink, catching on to my game and very much wanting to play.
“And those boys can all buy me drinks when we get off work,” I said with a nod. Aunt Bex grinned at me.
Dad wore the look of a man who suddenly smelled a stink bomb and glared at me like I was the source. He looked personally insulted as he said, “MI6 does not have the best training room in the northern hemisphere—who told you that?”
Aunt Bex and I just rolled our eyes at each other. “Really?” she said, knocking her knees with Dad’s. “Boys and drinking, but all you walk away with is the status of the training room?”
Dad shrugged, crossing his arms again. “I’m just saying that the CIA training room is way better.” He cut his eyes to me. “Way better.”
“They are both excellent training rooms,” Aunt Bex settled, looking between my brother and I. “And wither agency would be luck to have either of you. You’re fine operatives.” Which is one hell of a compliment to receive from Rebecca Baxter. “You should be very excited, Matthew. You’re going to be brilliant.”
“I think I’m going to be sick, actually,” Matt said, rolling down the window beside him and sticking his head out. As he did, I peaked out the window and saw the line of limousines and town cars that stretched out behind us, bringing in a sea of girls from around the world.
Aunt Bex let out a laugh. I love it when she laughs. It’s light and bouncy and exactly the sound you’d expect to come out of such a gorgeous woman. “Don’t you worry,” Aunt Bex said, patting him firmly on the back. “You’ve got backup.”
“Thanks, Aunt Bex,” he said, but he didn’t sound thankful. He sounded queasy.
“Sir,” said our government-approved driver to my government-approved father. “We’ve reached our destination.”
But we didn’t need our resident Michael Caine to tell us that we had reached our destination because Alice had already opened the door and stuck her head in before the car had even stopped. “Hey everyo—oh god. Is Matt okay?”
“No,” Matt groaned.
“Hi, Alice,” Dad said, ignoring the melodramatics of his oldest child.
“Hey there, Uncle Zachy,” she said, her perfect southern manners shining as brightly as he perfect southern smile.
Dad looked at her through the tops of his eyes. “How many times have I told you, Alice? It’s Zach.” Alice didn’t look like she was paying much attention to him, and that’s probably because she wasn’t. She had heard this speech hundreds of times and didn’t have any intention of changing her ways this time around. Dad seemed to know this, smirking at her as he said, “Just Uncle Zach.”
“It’s just easier,” she said, repeating the same defense she had been using for the past sixteen years. “I’ve always called you Uncle Zachy. That’s how they introduced you to me.”
“Your parents introduced me as Uncle Zachary,” he reminded her.
She rolled her big eyes at him. “Okay, but how many eight-month-olds do you know that can say Zachary?”
“Speaking of,” Dad said, giving up on the battle. “How’s your dad?”
“Just dandy,” she replied, a twinge of an accent slipping through in the way that it always did when Alice spent time with her mom. “He and mom dropped me off yesterday, so I’ve been here. Waiting.”
I tried to imagine Alice waiting around the Gallagher Academy. She had probably been swinging from rafters in the P&E barn. Practicing backhand springs across the long tables in the Grand Hall. She must’ve driven Grandma up a wall. It must’ve been completely awesome.
“But listen,” she said suddenly, her mind always three steps ahead of her mouth. “It’s nice to see you and all, but you can probably guess that I’m not here for you—considering your superspy instincts and all that.”
“Actually, I did have that figured out,” he told her. Then he looked to me, my patience dwindling, ready to join my friend in her mischievous covert escapades. “Well, go on,” he said with a smile. “I can’t keep you in the car forever. I’ll see you soon, okay?”
It took me a second to remember that he was telling the truth. Dad wasn’t flying off to Buenos Aries or any other far off place in the world. I wouldn’t have to rely on scattered phone calls as my only means of communication. Dad would be an hour away in Nokesville, Virginia. I’d get lectures from him—go on ops with him. Dad was going to be around all the time and so I started to wonder which was better. Having one parent all of the time or having two parents some of the time.
“Yeah,” I said, chocking down a lump in my throat. I couldn’t let the question fall into my words. I knew that once Dad heard those kinds of questions, he would start asking them too. “Yeah, of course.”
And then, desperate to draw the attention off of me, I threw it to my brother. “Break a leg in London.”
He held out a fist behind him, heaving out the window. I met it with a reluctant bump, but then Alice grabbed at my wrist and yanked me straight out of the limo. She may be half my size, but she has twice my strength. “Goodbye, girls!” Aunt Bex called. “Oh, and Alice. Say hello to your mother for me.”
“Sure thing,” Alice shouted over her shoulder, but I doubt Aunt Bex heard her because we were already halfway through the front door (but, then again, Aunt Bex hears an awful lot of things).
My best friend dragged me through the foyer, the sounds of a new year echoing off high ceilings and stone stairways. She shoved through squealing seniors and ecstatic eighth graders. She cut through wide-eyed students and buzzing faculty until we finally reached the Grand Hall.
The air smelled of a fresh feast—roast and veggies mixed in with those little potato wedges that taste like buttery heaven. Girls of all shapes and sizes spoke to one another in their native languages, each voice ringing off of our hallowed halls. I think, maybe, that was what I liked most about our school. Every single voice could be heard, even in a crowd of many.
Alice and I hunted down our roommates who had already found a spot at the junior table. As we went to join them, a part of me couldn’t ignore how close to the senior table we had suddenly become. It was so close I could almost touch it (well, okay, I’ll admit it. I did touch it—but only to prove my own metaphorical point to my self and only for a very brief period of time).
I slid onto the mahogany bench, eying the steaming rolls at the center of the long table and resisting the urge to grab one then and there. It was, after all, against the rules and I am totally not one to break the rules.
Alice, on the other hand, felt no such obligation to table manners and took not one, but two rolls, barely sneaking them under the table just as the doors at the rear of the hall opened and our teachers made their way in. Grandma led the pack, as always. I recognized all of the faces as they—wait.
I recognized all of the faces, but there was a new faculty member walking the stretch to the head table this year.
I blinked twice, rubbed my eyes, and then looked to my best friend who was too busy pulling apart her warm bread to notice that there was anything out of the ordinary going on. Great. The one time Alice Anderson doesn’t notice absolutely everything and anything about her surroundings is the one time that she, of all people, needs to. “Hey, um, Alice?” I said, glancing back up to the face that was in the wrong place. To the person who was in the wrong part of my world.
Alice looked up, her cheeks puffed with fresh carbs. She managed to mumble a sound that was vaguely similar to the word, “What?”
“Am I crazy or is that…?” I couldn’t finish my sentence, so I just pointed.
Alice followed my finger and when she saw our newest faculty member, her jaw opened so wide that the roll actually fell out of her mouth. “Oh god.”
The two of us sat in shocked silence as we watched the teachers take their seats. When my grandmother approached the podium, the entire hall stood and recited the oath of our sisterhood, but really, all Alice and I could focus on was that familiar face directly beside Charlotte Woods, pledging the oath along with us.
“Welcome back, ladies,” my grandmother said over the sound of a hundred girls settling themselves into their seats. Silverware clanked. China scratched at the finished wood. “I hope that you have all had a restful summer vacation, because we will be getting straight back to business. To our newest students”—she turned towards the seventh graders—“this will be the hardest year of your educational careers by far, but rest assured, you would not be asked to accept such a challenge if you were not suited for it. As for the rest of you”—she turned to look right at Alice and I—“there are many new and exciting challenges in store.”
It was a line that she fed us each and every year. New challenges. New adventures. But I had a feeling that this year would be so, so much different than years past. One look at Alice and I knew that she was thinking the same.
“As you have no doubt noticed, Dr. Fibs is not in attendance tonight,” Grandma told the hall. “That is because after fifty years of educating the bright young minds of the Gallagher Academy, Dr. Fibs has decided to retire.” There was a smattering of applause, but Alice and I were not among the girls clapping. Instead, we both turned to look at the person who, apparently, would be Dr. Fibs’ replacement. “And so, ladies, it is with great pleasure that I announce the new head of the Research and Development track, Elizabeth Anderson.”
Alice nearly fell out of her seat.
At the head table, Aunt Liz stood, waving a hand to the clapping crowd. She made sure to shoot a special wave at Alice and it was as if somehow their roles had been reversed, making Aunt Liz the excited kid on the first day of school.
Aunt Liz went to sit back down, but at some point between all the waving and the smiling, she must’ve lost track of where her chair was. I watched her eyes widen as she realized that she was only landing on air, grasping at anything even remotely close by that might help her steady herself. Professor Woods caught her before she hit the floor, but not before she reached out and snatched the tablecloth, pulling on the elegant floral swirls that lined the entirety of the head table.
I winced as plates shattered one by one, watching on with horror as the destruction ran down the line. Three baskets of the best bread in Virginia toppled over onto the floor. Faculty raced to grab their water glasses before they spilled. Silverware clanked as it hit hardwood while Madame Baudin let out a vicious screech. Shattering and catastrophe rang throughout the room until one last, lonely piece of the Gallagher Academy’s best china fell to the ground, and Aunt Liz managed a weak laugh. “Oopsie Daisy.”
Next to me, Alice’s head fell into her hands. “Oh god.”