"Cammie," Mom said calmly. "I need to know why you left the Grand Hall tonight."
Okay, it's one thing to tell your mother about undergarment emergencies, but it's quite another to share them with your teacher—especially a teacher like Joe Solomon, so I shrugged and said, "I … uh … had a clothing…malfunction."
"Oh," Mom said, nodding.
"And you left the Grand Hall?" Mr. Solomon asked, not stopping to ask which article of clothing. "Where did you go? Who did you see?"
"Mom," I pleaded as I searched my mother's eyes through the glow of the emergency lights that filled her office, "what's this all about?"
But Mom didn't answer.
"Did you try to leave the mansion tonight, Ms. Morgan?" Mr. Solomon demanded.
"No," I said.
"Cam," Mom said. "You won't be in trouble, but we need to know the truth."
"No!" I exclaimed again. "I didn't leave. Something happened to my dress, and I left for a second, and then…" But they already knew about the sirens and the lights, and for some reason I couldn't bring myself to remind them. "What's going on?" I asked one final time.
Mom and Mr. Solomon looked at each other, then my mother got up and sat next to me on the leather sofa, pulled me down beside her, and said, "Cammie, do you know what's in this mansion?"
For a second I thought it must be a trick question, but then I remembered what the mansion contained…the experiments, the prototypes, the mission summaries, and…most of all… the names and traces of every Gallagher Girl who had ever lived.
"Do you have any idea what would happen if the general population—much less our enemies—had access to what is contained within these walls?" my mother asked. I seriously didn't want to think about the answer. And the truth was, I didn't know the answer—no one did. And the most important thing in the world was that we kept it that way.
"Ms. Morgan, you were in the halls tonight prior to the security breach," Mr. Solomon stated. "We need you to tell us exactly what you saw and heard."
I could have asked what was going on—who they suspected and why—but when you've lived your whole life on a need-to-know basis, you eventually stop asking the questions that you know no one will answer.
So I sat on the leather couch in my mother's office knowing that more was riding on my memory than it had for any test I'd ever taken. I closed my eyes and told the story straight through—from Zach's dance to the doors swinging open. I left nothing out.
"You saw Zach?" Mr. Solomon asked.
"Yeah. He was waiting for me. You should ask him if he saw or heard anything," I said, but my mother's gaze never left Mr. Solomon's. "Mom…"I started, but my voice cracked.
"Everything's fine, sweetie, don't worry." She smiled at me and rubbed my back. Rachel Morgan is probably the best spy I have ever known, so when she stood and opened the door and said, "The mansion's secure, it was probably just a false alarm," I tried to believe her. When she hugged me good night, I tried to wipe the worry from my mind.
But then I risked a backward glance at my teacher, who had removed his jacket and loosened his tie, and I couldn't help but think that the party was officially over.
After I left my mother's office I made my way through the red glow of the emergency lights. The halls were empty. The windows were covered. I expected to see running girls, to hear debriefs and a thousand crazy theories, but the halls echoed with silence as I slowly pushed my bedroom door open.
It seemed to take forever for Bex to say, "What did your mom want?"
Sure, they'd all traded their ball gowns for flannel pajamas, but one look at my roommates told me they were anything but comfortable.
"She wanted to know where I was and what I saw." I kicked off my tight shoes and felt my feet instantly swell up to twice their normal size.
"Well…" Bex said slowly. "Where were you?"
And then I told the story—the whole story. Again. And when I was finished, two things were clear. A) I seriously needed to remember to go pick up that bra from the floor first thing tomorrow morning. And B) My roommates had been expecting a very different story.
Liz sat up straighter on her bed. "So you didn't decide to sneak out and go see Josh at the spring fling?"
"No!" I said. "It wasn't me! You guys know I wouldn't breach security like that."
"Of course it wasn't you," Bex huffed. "You wouldn't get caught."
Okay, so it wasn't exactly the vote of confidence I'd been hoping for, but it was a start.
"And besides, you'd never leave in the middle of a test," Liz added. "So you aren't in any trouble?"
"No."
"And Zach just disappeared?" Macey asked. "He didn't even go with you to your mom's office?"
"No."
"Cam," Liz said, and for the first time tonight, I could detect fear in her voice, "what do you think happened?"
Despite all my training, experience, and instincts, all I could do was crawl into bed, pull the covers tightly around me, and admit, "I don't know."
And then the lights came on.
Chapter Eighteen
I've had some very challenging days since coming to the Gallagher Academy (like the time our archery midterm happened to fall on nondominant hand day, for example), but the day that followed the ball was the most difficult yet—for a lot of reasons:
Even though it was Saturday, no one slept in, so that meant girls were walking up and down