Spy School: Chapters 9–14

My step faltered in surprise.

I was expecting a quick immersion into hand-to-hand combat or perhaps a scintillating discussion of how to incapacitate an armed man.

My fellow students had shrewdly filled all the back rows, leaving the front rows a desert of open seats.

“Depends on the class. In Psychological Warfare, Miss Farnsworth has nasty halitosis. In Arms and Armaments, there’s shrapnel. In this one...well, it’s soporific. Crandall doesn’t appreciate seeing students passed out in the front row. Luckily, he can’t see much beyond that.”

It was a pair of cheap glasses, though he’d cut out the eyes from a magazine photo and pasted them over the lenses. While I’d been unconscious, he’d slipped a similar pair on himself. They were ineffective and disconcerting at close range, but you could see how, to someone lecturing eighty feet away, you’d appear wide-eyed and rapt with attention, even while sound asleep.

Not just the clump of students I’d spied outside the building on the way to class. There’d been other clumps in the mess that morning and a gaggle in the hall on the way to class...and now, as I studied the class from the last row, there were an awful lot of students with their necks torqued around, studying me right back.

Now that the green-eyed girl had begun talking to me, everyone within earshot had turned their attention my way, blatantly ignoring Professor Crandall.

Only a few hours before, I’d been mortified, embarrassed, frightened, and depressed by everything that had transpired at spy school.

Zoe acted as though she’d had nothing to do with the conversation. Even Hauser feigned innocence.

“It hurts,” I said. My forehead right between my eyes was the worst. I touched it gingerly and found a lump the size of a robin’s egg.

Alexander stared into the fire wistfully. “Ah, memories.”

“You’re still on campus. There was some discussion of taking you to the infirmary, but given your precarious situation vis-a-vis enemy agents, I felt it’d be safer to keep you here, in my personal quarters.”

I think it’d be best if we keep this between us for now. It’ll be our little clandestine operation.

But I only decided to enter the fray today. You’ve been in the thick of this.

“No, but that could all be a ruse. He could be so clever, he’s extremely good at appearing not clever at all. After all, he was smart enough to get into the academy, wasn’t he?”

“So he has classified knowledge about you, and he quickly tries to use your skills for nefarious purposes. Anything else suspicious about him?”

Alexander cinched a wool scarf over my eyes, plunging me into darkness.

My attacker sprang from behind a rock, blasting her gun indiscriminately.

I careened down it headfirst, leaving my attacker behind but quickly picking up speed.

Algebra—and its uses in calibrating one’s aim—might have been challenging if I wasn’t gifted in it; Professor Jacobi said I ought to be bumped up to calculus, but the paperwork hadn’t gone through yet.

And after the excitement of my pop quiz, Crandall's self-preservation lectures had slipped back into a series of doddering reminiscences.

But since not many people liked or trusted Chip, this only served to give Zoe’s version of the story more credence.

The majority thought I was Smokescreen, some kind of covert superspy who occasionally pretended to be inept. The rest suspected I actually was inept.

As tedious as the classes were, I’d thrown myself into my studies, tearing through my textbooks, trying to learn everything I could.

Her messages generally instructed me to leave my updates on various pieces of paper secreted around campus, which was embarrassing because I never had anything to report.

A log had suddenly sprung to life and was charging headlong toward the mill, firing its gun indiscriminately.

As both Chip and Hauser were at least six inches taller than me, I had to clamber onto a sack of fertilizer to reach it.

Water dripped through the cracks, puddling on the floor, giving the whole place a dank, mildewy smell, like the showers in our middle school gym.

The concrete square rose back up, allowing me to see how it worked. A pneumatic column lifted it, silent except for the hiss of air, quiet enough that Chip and Hauser didn’t hear it over their own voices.

I ducked behind a cart loaded with sacks of powdered eggs just as Chip furtively glanced in my direction.

For all I knew, a real bomb looked like a sprig of posies.

He snagged the hood of my snow jacket, though my inertia pulled him forward too.

But then I also considered that, if Chip was as incompetent as Erica said, he wouldn’t have any idea if the bomb was live or not—and thus, fearing for my life was still prudent.

He was so caught up in his pontificating, he wouldn’t have noticed a herd of elephants stampeding through the room.

It looked like he wanted to expel me on the spot—only, he couldn’t, and so he could only grow more apoplectic at the situation.

“All right, you little wisenheimer. You don’t think I can get tougher? Then let’s bring the hammer down. From now on, you’re sleeping in the Box.”

My last answer, true as it may have been, had revved up his ire. His entire body trembled with rage.

“Well, you can’t!” the principal snapped petulantly.

“This boy’s behavior has been downright mutinous. An example must be made.”

“Mark my words, Ripley. You will rue the day you ever met me.”