Hello Everybody,
Just wanted to let everyone know that no matter how much I dream I do not own any of the characters or stories of the Gallagher Girls Books

While everyone was at dinner, all Macey McHenry could do was sit in the room she shared with her three best friends in the world, (Only two of which where actually in the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women. aka Spy school.) and stare blankly at the empty, and freshly made bed, of Cameron Morgan. Only two weeks ago did she find out the Cammie had ran away from the Gallagher Academy to pursue the mission that her father never returned from.

Slowly Macey moved her eyes from the bed and something on the bookshelf behind the bed, caught her eye. It was a set of books that where completely different from the rest. Completely curious she took the four books off the shelf and realized that they weren't books, that they were actually journals. Cammie's CovOpps Journals that she occasionally saw Cam writing in. Opening the cover of the Blue journal (Blue was the color of the first GG book in America) She read the words Covert Operations Journal: By, Operative Morgan.

Just as she was about to read further, Rebecca Baxter and Elizabeth Sutton walked through the door. "What you got there?" Liz asks. "Cammie's CovOpps Journals." Macey answered. "Let's read them!" Bex shouts, like a kid on Christmas morning. "I agree but we should get Headmistress Morgan and Abby to read them too. They could give us some clue to where Cam might be."

Five minuted later Macey, Bex, Liz, Rachel Morgan, and Abigail Cameron were all sitting in the girl dorm. "Ok now what was SO important you dragged us in here for?" Abby asked "Macey found Cam's journals from the past four semesters, we thought they might give us some clues and we thought we thought we should read them!" Bex said. "Ok... why not, but I think one person is missing." Mrs. Morgan says. "Who?" Liz asks. "Zach." Macey, Bex, Abby, and Rachel say at the same time.

After finally finding Zach they all sat down and Macey picked up the first book and began to read...

Chapter One.

I suppose a lot of teenage girls feel invisible sometimes, like they just disappear. Well, that's me-Cammie the Chameleon.

Everyone in the room just rolls their eyes at her first two sentences.

But I'm luckier than most because, at my school, that's considered cool.

"Yah 'cause we are super awesome spies!" The three Gallagher Girls yell (Bex, Liz, and Macey)

I go to a school for spies. Of course, technically the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is a school for geniuses-not spies-and we're free to pursue any career that befits our exceptional educations.

"It's True." Rachel said, all sophistic like.
The only response to her comment was a roll of the eyes from Abby.

But when a school tells you that, and then teaches you things like advanced encryption and fourteen different language, it's kind of like big tobacco telling kids not to smoke;

Everyone bursts out laughing at the comparison. But the laughter quickly dies out.

so all of us Gallagher Girls know lip service when we hear it. Even my mom rolls her eyes but doesn't correct me when I call it spy school, and she's the headmistress. Of course, she's also a retired CIA operative,

"Of course!" Zach says sarcastically. Surprising everyone else in the room. They had forgot he was even there.

and it was her idea for me to write this, my first Covert Operations Report, to summarize what happened last semester. She's always telling us that the worst part of the spy life isn't the danger-It's the paperwork.

"It's true." Abby and Rachel say. Haven been on hundreds of missions before and have personal experience with tons of paperwork!

After all, when your on a plane home from Istanbul with a nuclear warhead in a hatbox, the last thing you want to do is write a report about it. So that's why I'm writing this-for the practice. If you've got a Level Four clearance or higher, you probable know all about us Gallagher Girls, since we've been around for more than a hundred years (the school, not me-I'll turn sixteen next month!).

Another small amount of chuckles.

But if you don't have that kind of clearance, then you probably think we're just an urban spy myth-like jet packs and invisibility suits-and you drive by our ivy-covered walls, look at our gorgeous mansion and manicures grounds, and assume, like everyone else, that the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women is just a snooty boarding school for bored heiresses with no place else to go. Well, to tell you the truth, we're totally fine with that- It's one of the reasons no one in the town of Roseville, Virginia, thought twice about the long line of limousines that brought my classmates back to campus last September.

"It really is the perfect cover!"
"It really is when we first watched a video about the academy, I totally thought it was a rich snob school!" Zach replies

I watched from a window seat on the third floor of the mansion as the cars materialized out of the blankets of green foliage and turn through the towering wrought-iron gates. The half-mile-long driveway curved through the hills, looking as harmless as Dorothy's yellow brick road, not giving a clue that it's equipped with laser beams that read tire treads and sensors that check for explosives, and one entire section that can open up and swallow a truck whole.

"Wow!" The three girls say impressed

(If you think that's dangerous, don't even get me started about the pond!) I wrapped my arms around my knees and stared through the window's wavy glass. The red velvet curtains were drawn around the tiny alcove, and I was enveloped by an odd sense of peace, knowing that in twenty minutes, the halls were going to be crowded; music was going to be blaring; and I was going to go from being an only child to one of a hundred sisters, so I knew to savor the silence while it lasted.

"Quite can be an advantage and a disadvantage." Abby says, like the perfect spy.

Then, as if to prove my point, a loud blast and the smell of burning hair came floating up the main stairs from the second-floor Hall of History,

Everyone who has been at the school long enough to know what happens when you touch the sword, laughs. Zach only looks confused.

followed by Professor Buckingham's distinguished voice crying "Girls! I told you not to touch that!" The smell got worse, and one of the seventh graders was probably still on fire,

"On fire?" Zach asks but no one answers him

because Professor Buckingham yelled, "Stand still. Stand still, I say!" Then Professor Buckingham said some French swear words that the seventh graders probably wouldn't understand for three semesters, and I remembered how every year during new student orientation one of the newbies will get cocky and try to show off by grabbing the sword Gillian Gallagher used to slay the guy who was going to kill Abraham Lincoln- The first guy, that is.

Everyones face darkens at the mention of Ioseph Cavan.

The one you never hear about. But what the newbies aren't told on their campus tour is that Gilly's sword is charged with enough electricity to...well...light your hair on fire.

"Oohhh! That's why!" Zach says
"Why what?" Bex asks
"When we first got here, Grant tried to touch the sword and a senior told him 'Not a smart idea' and just walked off."
"Of course Grant would try to touch the sword!" Macey says, "I'm surprised he didn't ignore her and grab the sword anyway!"

I just love the start of school.

More laughter.

I think our room used to be an attic, once upon a time. It has these cool dormers and oddly shaped windows and lots of little nooks and crannies where a girl can sit with her back against the wall and listen to the thundering feet and sequels of hello that are pretty standard at boarding schools everywhere on the first day after summer break (but they probably stop being standard when they take place in Portuguese and Farsi).

"Yup, that's when it starts to stop being standard," Liz laughs.

Out in the hall, Kim Lee was talking about her summer in Singapore; and Tina Walters was declaring that "Cairo was super cool. Johannesburg- not so much," which is exactly what my mom had said when I complained about how Tina's Parents were taking her to Africa over the summer whereas I was going to have to visit my dad's parents on their ranch in Nebraska- an experience I'm fairly sure will never help me break out of an enemy interrogation facility or disarm a dirty arm a dirty bomb.

"It teaches patients, which every spy needs," Rachel says. "Cough, Abby, Cough" That gets some more giggles from the room.

"Hey, where's Cammie?" Tina asked, but I wasn't about to leave my room until I could come up with a fish story to match the international exploits of my classmates, seventy percent of whom are the daughters of current or former government operatives-aka spies. Even Courtney Bauer had spent a week in Paris, and her parents are both optometrists, so you can see why I wasn't especially eager to admit that I'd spent three months plopped down right in the middle of North America, cleaning fish.

"She fishes when she goes there?" Macey asks.
"Yah, she's mentioned a couple of times, she said she's pretty good at it." Bex says.

I'd finally decided to tell them about the time I was experimenting with average household items that can be used as weapons and accidentally decapitated a scarecrow (who knew knitting needles could do that kind of damage?),

"Well she didn't tell me that!" Bex pouts
"You weren't there when she told people!" Liz replies

when I heard the distinctive thud of luggage crashing into a wall and a sort, Southern, "Oh, Cammie...come out, come out, wherever you are." I peered around the corner and saw Liz posing in the doorway trying to look like Miss Alabama, but bearing a greater resemblance to a toothpick in capri pants and flip-flops. A very red toothpick.

Lot's of laughter.
"A-red-toothpick!" Macey says between giggles.
"Don't forget a toothpick in capri pants!" Bex adds.
"Shut up guys!" Liz said a small blush creeping onto her cheeks.
"We're just joking around with you!" Macey said.

She smiled and said, "Did you miss me?" Well I did miss her, but I was totally afraid to hug her. "What happened to you?" Liz rolled her eyes and just said, "Don't fall asleep by a pool in Alabama," as if she should have known better-which she totally should have.

"Don't have to be mean about it," Liz mumbles.

I mean, we're all technically geniuses and everything, but at age nine, Liz had the highest score on the third-grade achievement tests ever. The government keeps track of that kind of think, so the summer before seventh grade, her paents got a visit from some big guys in dark suits and three months later, Liz was a Gallagher Girl- just not the kill-a-man-with-her-bare-hands variety.

"Awww, Lizzie don't put yourself down, not everyone in the world is as amazingly as me!" Bex says.

If I'm ever on a mission, I want Bex beside me and Liz far, far away, with about a dozen computers and a chessboard-a fact I couldn't help but remember when Liz tried to fling her suitcase onto the bed, but missed and ended up knocking over a bookcase demolishing my stereo and flattening a perfectly-scaled replica of DNA that I'd made out of paper-mache in eight grade.

"That explains why there was never any music playing in our room," Macey says.

"Oopsy daisy," Liz said, throwing her hand to her mouth. Sure she knows cuss words in fourteen different languages, but when faced with a minor catastrophe, Liz says oopsy daisy.

"I just don't like swearing."

At that point I didn't care how sunburned she was-I had to hug my friend. At six thirty exactly, we were in our uniforms, sliding our hands over the smooth mahogany banisters, and descending down the staircase that spiral gracefully to the foyer floor. Everyone was laughing (turns out my knitting needle story was a big hit), but Liz and I kept looking toward the door in the center of the atrium below.

Most people in the room look confused but Liz remembers why they were looking at the doors

"Maybe there was trouble with the plane?" Liz whispered. "Or customs? Or... I'm sure she's just late." I nodded and continued glancing down at the foyer as if, on cue, Bex was going to bust through the doors. But they stayed closed, and Liz's voice got squeakier as she asked, "Did you hear from her? I didn't hear from her. Why didn't we hear from her?"

"Awww, nice to know you care," Bex says with an puppy dog face.
"'Course I do, you are my best friend!" Liz replies
"Excuse me...?" Macey asks.
"One of my best friends," Liz corrects herself

Well, I would have been surprised if we had heard from her, to tell you the truth. As soon as Bex had told us that both her mom and her dad were taking a leave of absence to spend the summer with her, I know she wasn't going to be much of a pen pal. Leave it to Liz to come to a complete different conclusion.

"Yah that was one of my better summers, when I didn't have to stay alone in our house for weeks," Bex says with a soft smile.

"Oh my gosh, what if she dropped out?" Liz cranked up the worry in her voice. "Did she get kicked out?" "Why would you think that?" "Well..." she said, stumbling over the obvious, "Bex always has been kind of rules-optional."

"Hey, There's nothing wrong with that!" Abby and Bex say
"Sure there isn't," Zach says.

Liz shrugged, and, sadly, I couldn't disagree. "And why else would she be late? Gallagher Girls are never late! Cammie, you know something, don't you? You've got to know something!" Times like this are when its no fun being the headmistress's daughter, because A) it's totally annoying when people think I'm in a loop I'm not in, and B) people always assume I'm in partnership with the staff, which really I'm not. Sure, I have private dinners with my mom on Sunday nights, and sometimes she leaves me alone in her office for five seconds, but that's it. Whenever school is in session, I'm just another Gallagher Girl (except for being the girl to whom the aforementioned A and B apply).

"I never knew she hated me as her headmistress," Rachel jokes. She knew that it annoyed Cammie when people ask her about whats happening over the semester.

I looked back down at the front doors, then turned to Liz. "I bet she's just late,"

"Or maybe I was on a plane with a certain CoveOps teacher," Bex says mysteriously.

I said, praying that there would be a pop quiz over supper (nothing distracts Liz faster than a pop quiz).

"So true!" Macey, Bex, and Zach say in a sing-song voice.
"... Yah, it is!" Liz says with a smile.

As we approached the massive, open doors of the Grand Hall, where Gilly Gallagher supposedly killed a man at her own cotillion, I involuntarily glanced up at the electronic screen that read "English-American" even though I knew always talk in our own language and accents for the welcome-back dinner. Our mealtime conversations wouldn't be taking place in "Chinese-Mandarin" for at least a week, I hoped.

"Remember that one year, when the sign broke, and we had to speak Russian at the beginning of the term!" Abby laughs
"Yah, and all you could say was 'Hi, how are you' and 'Im fine, thank you' Rachel says.

We settled at out usual table in the Grand Hall, and I finally felt at home. Of course, I'd actually been back for three weeks, but my only company had been the newbies and the staff. The only thing worse than being the only upperclassman in a mansion full of seventh graders is hanging out in the teachers' lounge watching your Ancient Languages professor put drops in the ears if the world's foremost authority on data encryption while he swears he'll never go scuba diving again.

"EEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" Liz, Macey, and Bex shout
"Really didn't need that mental picture!" Abby exclaims in disgust
"So very creepy," Rachel says.
"Now that's just gross," Zach says.

(Ew, mental picture of Mr. Moscowitz in a wet suit! Gross!) Since a girl can only read so many back issues of Espionage Today, I usually spend those pre-semester days wandering around the mansion, discovering hidden compartments and secret passageways that are at least a hundred years old and haven't seen a good dusting in about that long.

"Yup, that will explain all the stains on her blouses and skirts." Rachel says, even though she already knew where they came from.

Mostly, I tried to spend time with my mom, but she'd been super busy and totally distracted.

"Tut, tut, Rachel," Abby says in a disapproving tone. "You really should have spent time with your daughter."

Remembering this now, I thought about Bex's mysterious absence and suddenly began to worry that maybe Liz had been onto something. Then Anna Fetterman squeezed onto the bench next to Liz and asked, "Have you seen it? Did you look?" Anna was holding a blue slip of paper that instantly dissolves when you put it in your mouth.

"Evapopaper!" Bex shouts.
Gaining a small amount of laughter from Abby, Liz, and Macey.

(Even though it looks like it will taste like cotton candy, it doesn't-trust me!) I don't know why they always put our class schedules on Evapopaper

"You know... I honestly don't know why either," Liz says
"Me too," Bex adds. They both look at Mrs. Morgan.
"I don't know either... Patricia prints the schedules."

-probably so we can use up our stash of the bad-tasting kind and move on to the good stuff, like mint chocolate chip. But Anna wasn't thinking about Evapopaper flavor when she yelled, "We have Covert Operations!" She sounded absolutely terrified, and I remembered that she was probably the only Gallagher Girl that Liz could take in a fist fight. I looked at Liz, and even she rolled her eyes at Anna's hysterics. After all, everyone knows sophomore year is the first time we get to do anything that even approaches actual fieldwork. It's our first exposure to real spy stuff, but Anna seemed to be forgetting that the class itself was, sadly, kind of a cakewalk.

Zach looks totally confused. "I thought Joe was teaching, how is his teaching a cakewalk?"
"Mr. Solomon didn't start teaching until the year Cammie wrote this," Bex explains.

"I'm pretty sure we can handle it," Liz soothed, prying the paper from Anna's frail hands. "all Buckingham does is tell horror stories about all the stuff she saw in Worlds War Two and show slides, remember? Ever since she broke her hip she's-" "But Buckingham is out!" Anna exclaimed, and this got my attention, I'm sure I stared at her for a second or two before saying "Professor Buckingham is still here, Anna," not adding that I'd spent half the morning coaxing Onyx, her cat, down from the top shelf of the staff library. "That's got to be a start-of-school rumor.

"Plenty of those!" Macey exclaims

"There were always plenty of those-like how some girl got kidnapped by terrorist, or one of the staff members won a hundred grand on Wheel of Fortune. (Though now that I think about it, that one was actually true.)

"Wow, how ironic," Zach says sarcastically.

"No," Anna said. "You don't understand. Buckingham's doing some kind of semiretirement thing. She's gonna do orientation and acclimation for the newbies-but that's it. She's not teaching anymore." Wordlessly, out heads turned, and we counted seats at the staff table. Sure enough, there was an extra chair. "Then who's teaching CoveOps?" I asked. Just then a loud murmur rippled through the enormous room as my mom strolled through the doors at the back of the hall, fallowed by all the usual suspects- The twenty teachers I'd been looking at and learning from for the past three years. Twenty teachers. Twenty-one chairs. I know I'm the genius, but you do the math.

More laughter. But it was more of a 'wow I miss her' laugh than a 'she's so funny' laugh.

Liz, Anna, and I all looked at each other, then back at the staff table as we ran through the faces, trying to comprehend that extra chair. One face was new but we were expecting that, because Professor Smith always returns from summer vacation with a whole new look-literally. His nose was larger, his ears more prominent, and a small mole had been added to his left temple,

"That's a little creepy..." Liz says.
"I agree.. at least it's every year, not after every break," Bex says.

disguising what he claimed was the most wanted face on three continents. Rumor has it he's wanted by gun smugglers in the Middle East, ex-KGB hit men in Eastern Europe, and a very upset ex-wife somewhere in Brazil.

"Wow, he should run..." Zach says.
"And why is that?" Abby asks
"No reason!" Zach has a scared look on his face.

Sure, all this experience makes him a great Countries of the World (COW) professor, but the best thing Professor Smith brings to the Gallagher Academy is the annual anticipation of guessing what face he will assume in order to enjoy his summer break. He hasn't comeback as a woman yet, but it's probably just a matter of time.

More chuckles because the girls remember joking about what he would look like as a woman.

The teachers took their seats, but the chair stayed empty as my mother took her place at the podium in the center of the long head table. "Women of the Gallagher Academy, who comes here?" she asked.

Just as Abby was opening her mouth to answer the question Macey cut her off saying, "If everyone keeps commenting we will never get past the first chapter!"

Just then every girl at every table (even the newbies) stood and said in unison, "We are the sisters of Gillian." "Why do you come?" my mother asked. "To learn her skills. Honor her sword. And keep her secrets." "To what end do you work?" "To the cause of justice and light." "How long will you strive?" "For all the days of our lives." We finished, and I felt a little like a character on one of my grandma's soap operas. We sat down, but Mom remained standing. "Welcome back, students," she said, beaming. "This is going to be a wonderful year here at the Gallagher Academy. For our newest members"-she turned to the table of seventh graders, who seemed to shiver under her intense gaze

"Yup, that seals it... you are scarey," Abby says teasing her sister.
"Whatever Abby, you know I'm cooler than you," Rachel jokes back.

-"welcome. You are about to begin the most challenging year of your young lives. Rest assured that you would not have been given this challenge were you not up to it. To our returning students, this ear will mark many changes." She glanced at her colleagues and seemed to ponder something before turning back to face us. "We have come to a time when-" But before she could finish, the doors flew open, and not even three years of training at spy school prepared me for what I saw. Before I say any more, I should probably remind you that I GO TO A GIRL'S SCHOOL

"No need to shout Macey," Zach says rubbing his ear.
"Well it's in all capital letters, so it's meant to be shouted," Macey replies smugly.

- that's all girls, all the time, with a few ear-drop-needing, plastic-surgery-getting male faculty members thrown in for good measure. But when we turned around we saw a man walking in our midst who would have made James Bond feel insecure. Indiana Jones would have looked like a mamma's boy compared to the man in the leather jacket with two day's growth of beard

"That's a funny way to describe him!" Abby laughs.

who walked to where my mother stood and then-horror of horrors-winked at her.

"The horror!" Bex and Liz shout.

"Sorry I'm late," he said as he slid into the empty chair. His presence was so unprecedented, so surreal, that I didn't even realize Bex had squeezed onto the bench between Liz and Anna, and I had to do a double take when I saw her, and remembered that five seconds before she'd been MIA. "Trouble, ladies?" she asked. "Where have you been?" Liz demanded. "Forget that," Anna cut in. "Who is he?" But Bex was a natural-born spy. She just raised her eyebrows and said, "You'll see."

"Awww... see that, she called me a natural born spy!" Bex says fake blushing
"Whatever!" Macey says rolling her eyes, "Liz, you want to read next?"
"Sure" Liz says and opens the book and starts to read...

Whew! Finished! That was long. anyway hope you like. Read & Review! No flames please! Only my second story.

-Cameron 'Chameleon' Morgan