Listen Between the Lines - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-One

The library was packed. Like, so packed that I couldn't even write without accidentally elbowing the girl next to me. That's what happens when you put a bunch of ambitious geniuses into one school. Come finals week, they cram into the library and some of them don't leave until it's over (which does some really unfortunate things to the general air flow of the room). Even the maintenance staff had a hard time getting in to clean, but the library must've been desperate for a vacuum, because there were seven uniformed men and woman lining the wall that night, all using their trained eyes to find a table that needed wiping.

Deciding that I prefer inhaling actual oxygen to breathing in the leftover air from my classmates, I left the library.

It had been exactly two weeks since my discussion with the pharmacist. Two weeks of training with Blackthorne and Madam Baudin's dinners. Two weeks of punching bags and CoveOps lectures. Two weeks of Will and Bill each insisting that they were better than one another. So much had happened in the past two weeks, and yet not a day had gone by without thinking of my conversation with the Abrahams and Son pharmacist.

I walked down the Hall of History, past the picture of my mom, past the sword of Gillian Gallagher, and past the closed door of Grandma's office. It was just starting to get dark out, but the moon had been in the sky for hours. Dad had always said that it was good luck to see the moon during the day. He'd never really told me why though. I'd have to ask him if I saw him again.

No. When I saw him again. I'd have to ask him when I saw him again.

God, I missed my parents.

I tried to think back to when all of this worrying had started. I'd always been nervous about my parents not coming home from a mission, even before I knew what they were doing. When I was really little I used to think that Mom and Dad just traveled a lot. Maybe Mom had even traveled more than Dad, I couldn't remember.

I just remembered the night I stumbled in on their conversation about a trip to Istanbul and even though I'd had no idea what a gun smuggler was, I had gotten the impression that they weren't the good guys. When I asked Mom and Dad about it the next day, they requested official permission to tell me about their lifestyle.

Ever since then, I've been sneaking around and listening in on conversations that weren't meant for me. I think that's how it started. I wanted to know everything I could about my family, classified or not. I always felt like there was something missing. Like there was this big puzzle in front of me, but I had to dig for the pieces that were buried in the couch cushions or stuck at the bottom of the toy box.

But I had never wanted to know something as bad as I did now. Mom and Dad always went on ops together. Sometimes they called in a favor from Aunt Bex and when I was younger they used to ask Grandpa Joe to come along, but they always—always—went together. At least, for as long as I could remember.

But now, all of a sudden, Dad was in Buenos Aries and Mom was who-knows-where. It just didn't seem like things were where they were supposed to be. Like I was looking at a Where's Waldo picture without a Waldo. Like the first time I'd ever seen Charlotte Woods in the Grand Hall.

On the bright side, I'd been living with that feeling for so long that it almost seemed normal now. It had started on that first day when Mom and Dad dropped us off and now—only three short days from the end of the semester—it was still looming over me. Which only added to the stress that came with the fact that I had to make the biggest decision of my short-lived life and I had no idea what I was going to choose.

Which brought me back to the pharmacist. He had needed to go with his gut, and now it was time to follow mine.

My attention was drawn from my thoughts when somebody threw a bag over my head. Out of instinct, I kicked and hit somebody's kneecap. Then I realized what was going on. I thought back to the library and remembered that there had been seven maintenance workers and, not-so-coincidentally, seven sophomores as well. I cursed myself for not putting it together sooner. It seemed as though it was time for my CoveOps final to begin.