Briar Preparatory Academy

What Goes Unsaid

Celeste POV

I climb out of the van at Briar Prep after our trip into town for Covert Operations and check my watch. Just in time for Foreign Language and Encryption. I grab my backpack and walk inside. I see Kate sitting on the 3rd row in the corner in our usual seats. She notices me immediately and gestures to the seat next to her. I slowly walk in and plop down, letting out a big sigh.

"Ah. Miss Blackwood. I'm glad you decided to join us." Professor Walt says.

"I was actually on an Advanced Covert Operations assignment. We went into town." I explain. The room is so silent that you could hear a pen drop.

"I see... Please try to avoid being late to class next time. You have already cost me 4 minutes and 49 seconds of class." He says pointedly. I take my seat and pull out my books for this class and glance at Kate. She is giving me looks. I sit up and make eye contact with her. Now, I don't know about normal girls, but as spies, we can have an entire detailed conversation with our eyes and body language.

"Where were you?" She mouths.

"Cove Ops." I mouth back.

"Details later?" She asks.

I nod in return.

"So today, ladies and gentlemen, we will be reviewing and taking our test over our Morse code unit. I will give you precisely six minutes to review. You were going to get ten minutes, but since Miss Blackwood has decided to not be punctual, I will take that out of your study time." He says. I'm pretty sure his goal in doing that was to make people mad at me, but all of us hate him, so it's pretty self-defeating on his part. Still, I get a few annoyed glances from my peers.

"Break off into groups and study silently. I sure hope you studied well, because I expect you all to be fluent." He informs us. I turn to face Kate and she taps on her desk. I watch carefully and decode what she says.

"This test is going to be super easy," She taps out on the desk.

"Says the girl who never gets anything below an A." I tap back.

We continue tapping back and forth, quizzing each other on material for other classes, and I debrief her on what we did on our covert operations exercise.

"Time is up. I want everything off your desk. Grab a pen with blue or black ink. Preferably not invisible." He says. We all put away our notes and face towards the front of the classroom. Professor Walt starts handing out our tests. I look over the material before glancing up at Kate. She's already writing on her test, her pen moving rapidly across the paper. That's usual... she finishes all her tests within ten minutes max. I look back down at my first question. It is mainly translating, so all that is on the paper is a series of dots and dashes. I sigh and begin writing, glancing up at the clock every so often.

Kate finishes her test first and she stands and gives it to Professor Walt, who scans the pages and gives her a nod of approval. I am about 3/4 of the way through mine. The very last problem commands us to write the motto of Briar Preparatory Academy. I immediately tap out the motto on my desk before writing it on my test.

Courage is mandatory.

As I write the words down on the paper, my mind wanders. I think back to the history of Briar Prep, and how it came to be. The Academy used to be a military base in the early 1900's, but after years of being out of operation, the government composed an idea to open a boarding school that solely focused on training young people to use self-defense and other techniques that couldn't be learned in the average American public school. Thus, the Academy was born.