“Well, I…”
“Please?” my mother asked.
“Oh, of course. Of course.” Dr. Holt looked at me. “What do you say, Cammie? Meet us back at the quad in an hour or so?”
Something seemed so strange about that moment. For months, there had always been someone by my side. My mother. My roommates. My (and I don’t use this word lightly) boyfriend. Someone was always there, watching out for me. Or just watching me. It felt more than a little strange for my mother to nod her head and say, “It’s okay, kiddo. Go on. I’ll be here when you get back.”
So I stepped away, reminding myself that when you’re a spy, sometimes all you can do is go on. One foot in front of the other, wherever the narrow path might lead.
Before I turned the corner, I heard Dr. Holt say, “What a…charming girl.”
My mother sighed. “She’s had a hard year.”
But Mom didn’t try to explain. I mean, how do you tell someone, Oh yes, my daughter used to be a real sweetheart, but that was before all the torture? So she didn’t say a thing, which was just as well. Dr. Holt didn’t have the clearance to hear it anyway.
I walked by myself around the corner of the grand old building. There was an arbor covered with ivy. A statue of someone whose name I didn’t know. The air was moist and cool around me. I felt alone as I walked between two buildings and found myself staring down at the river again. Another single rower slid across the water, looking backward, moving forward. It seemed to go against all logic, but the man kept pushing on against the current, and I wondered how he made it appear so easy.
“Fancy seeing you here.”
The voice cut through my train of thought, but I didn’t startle; I turned.
“So did you get it?” my best friend, Bex, asked. Her British accent was even thicker in her native land, and her smile was especially mischievous when she crossed her long arms. The wind blew her black hair away from her face. She looked alive and eager, so I held up the key card I had slipped out of Dr. Holt’s pocket.
“Are you ready?” I asked.
She looped her arm through mine. “Cammie, my dear, I was born ready,” she said, and then she walked up to Crawley Hall and swiped.
When the light flashed green she said, “Come on.”
Chapter Two
Crawley Hall seemed empty as Bex and I closed its doors behind us. Our footsteps echoed in the corridor. We passed heavy wooden arches and stained glass windows. It felt more like a museum than a school, and not for the first time in my life I walked down the hallowed halls of education, totally breaking the rules.
“So, what do you think, Cam? Are you a Cambridge girl? Or do you fancy yourself as more Oxonian?”
“Oxonian?” I repeated.
“It’s a word. Now, answer the question.” Bex shrugged and leaned against a door that was unlike the others we had passed—not heavy wood, but steel. Security cameras were trained on it, and it took Bex a second to finagle her way inside.
“Cambridge is nice. It could use better locks, though,” I said.
“So, no Cambridge.” Bex nodded. “How about Yale? Or you could always join me at MI6. The two of us together, out in the real world.”
“Bex,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We don’t have time for this.”
“What?” Bex asked. She put her hands on her h*ps and squinted at me. “It’s winter break.”
“I know.”
“And we’re seniors.”
“I know,” I said again.
“So aren’t you…curious?”
“About what?”
“About life. Out there. Life!” she said again. “Tell me, Cameron Ann Morgan, what do you want to be when you grow up?”