Free Spy School by Stuart Gibbs

here.”
    “Yeah. Science dork girls.”
    “No. Hot girls. In fact, there’s one—Erica—who makes Elizabeth Pasternak look like my aunt Mitzi.”
    “Liar.”
    “I’m serious. Next time I see her, I’ll send you a picture.”
    “Go right ahead. And don’t think you can send me some photo of a model from a catalog or something, because I can tell.”
    “She’s real, Mike. And she’s unbelievable.”
    Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a clump of fellow students cloaked in heavy jackets and winter boots. Instead of walking to class like everyone else, they were watching me. But when I turned their way, they all quickly averted their eyes and pretended to be looking somewhere else.
    “Okay,” Mike said, giving in. “So there’s one hot girl. She’ll never hang out with you.”
    “She did last night.”
    There was a slight pause before Mike responded. When he did, I could sense something in his voice I’d never heardbefore: jealousy. “In a communal coed dorm sort of situation, right? Like in Harry Potter ?”
    “No. My own room. She came to see me. After curfew. And she went through a lot of trouble to do it.”
    I was probably violating about twelve security directives by sharing this, but I couldn’t help myself. Besides, I wasn’t sharing the entire truth about the school. Only the good stuff.
    “What’d you do?” Mike asked. It was like I’d hooked a fish.
    “Just talked. For a really long time.”
    “About what?”
    “She wants me to work on a project with her. Just the two of us.”
    “What kind of project? Some kind of smarty-pants science thing?”
    “It’s a little more interesting than that. I’m gonna be spending a lot of time with her.”
    “Wow. Sounds awesome.”
    “It is. I have to go. I’m late for class.” I wasn’t saying that just to leave him hanging, wanting more. I was really in danger of being late. I fell in with a group of students as they shoved through the doors of Bushnell Hall.
    “Send me that photo!”
    “Okay. Bye.” I pocketed my phone with a smile. It was time to begin my training.

NINJAS
    Bushnell Hall
    Lecture Room 2C
    January 17
    0930 hours
    My first class was Introduction to Self-Preservation . I’d have been excited about it even if I didn’t think it would come in handy, given my recent circumstances. I was expecting a quick immersion into hand-to-hand combat or perhaps a scintillating discussion of how to incapacitate an armed man.
    Instead, it was a snore. Two minutes into the first lecture, I was already nodding off.
    This was partly because I’d had no sleep the night before,but mostly because Professor Lucas Crandall had the charisma of a rock. Crandall was quite old, with unkempt white hair, the stooped posture of a question mark, and eyebrows that looked as though they’d recently been in a tornado. He was rumored to have served the CIA from the very early days, and he appeared to have been shunted off to spy school because no one had the heart to fire him. He rambled in a wheezing voice that was almost impossible to hear, often losing his train of thought and then pausing for great swaths of time to remember what he’d been saying.
    Thank goodness Murray had saved a seat for me in the back row.
    Class was in a large lecture hall, like on a college campus, rather than the type of small, boxy classroom I was used to from normal school. A tiered semicircle of seats faced a podium and blackboard. I’d entered late, having lost my way in the building, though thankfully, class hadn’t begun, as Crandall was late as well. My fellow students had shrewdly filled all the back rows, leaving the front rows a desert of open seats. I’d reluctantly started down to them when Murray yelled, “Ripley! Over here!”
    He yanked his backpack off a back row seat and waved me over. “Never ever sit in the front row in a class here,” he warned. “Even if it means getting here early.”
    “Why not?”
    “Depends on the class. In Psychological