Free Only the Good Spy Young (Gallagher Girls) by Ally Carter

impressive as it sounds).
The Target strictly avoids both sugar and caffeine (which, according to Operative Morgan, is every bit as crazy as THAT sounds).
Despite two weeks on the Gallagher Academy faculty, The Target has acquired zero friends.
    I’ve had a lot of memorable meals in five and a half years at the Gallagher Academy, but that was one of the few times when I didn’t actually eat anything.
    “He’s not coming,” Liz said, her gaze glued to the big double doors at the back of the room. Bex and Macey and I stayed quiet, glancing around the Grand Hall, the two of them picking at their food as we took turns staring at the doors.
    Liz was the one who voiced what we were all thinking. “What if he doesn’t come?”
    “Hey, Macey, can I have that—”
    “No!” the four of us cried in unison. Macey grabbed a banana out of Courtney Bauer’s hands, which might have looked kinda strange. And, okay, so maybe the fact that, between the four of us, we’d taken one of everything on the buffet was kinda strange. But at the Gallagher Academy, “strange” is a completely relative thing.
    “Sorry, Courtney,” I said, trying to explain. “It’s just that we’ve got this experiment we’re going to do later with . . .”
    But then I couldn’t finish because Agent Townsend was standing at the entrance of the Grand Hall, taking a long drink from a bottle of water. His dark curly hair was wet with sweat. In his black running suit, he looked as if he could have just gotten back from breaking into an embassy, parachuting behind enemy lines, meeting with a particularly shady informant in the darkest alley of the most dangerous city in the world. As much as I wanted to hate Agent Townsend, there was one thing I didn’t dare forget: he was probably a very good spy.
    I looked at my roommates, knowing that for the next hour, somehow, someway, the four of us had to be better.
    “Who has eyes?” I whispered as I felt the man pass behind me.
    “He’s going to the buffet,” Bex said, but unless you could hear her you would have sworn she was talking about the weather.
    “What’s he doing?” Liz asked. (Her face and voice, I’m sorry to say, were significantly less covert.)
    “Apple,” Macey said. Her blue eyes seemed especially big and bright as she looked at me and whispered again, “Apple.”
    It took four seconds for Liz to take the syringe from her bag. Her hands were shaking as I pulled the apple from my tray and held it beneath the table.
    “You do realize this is probably illegal, right?” I asked, but Liz looked up at me and smiled as if I were the most naïve girl in the world.
    “It can’t be illegal, Cam. It’s research .” So that was it. Our teacher’s fate, my safety, and Liz’s GPA
all hinged on what we were about to do.
    “You’re doing great, Lizzie,” Bex said, but still Liz’s hand trembled.
    “Liz . . .” Macey started.
    “Got it!” Liz said, and in the next second the apple passed beneath the table from Liz’s hand to Bex’s.
    In a flash, Bex was up and walking toward the door while Townsend did the same. Three seconds later my best friend was stumbling into him. The apple he’d been carrying slipped from his grasp and tumbled through the air, right into Bex’s outstretched palm.
    “Mind where you’re going, Baxter,” he said as she handed one apple back to him. But there was a glint in Bex’s eyes as she turned her back to us, pulled another apple from behind her back, and took a big bite.
    I just sat there wondering what Grandma Morgan would say if she knew what we were doing—no doubt something about forbidden fruit.
    The Operatives engaged in a basic four-man rotating surveillance detail, tracking The Target through the Gallagher Mansion.
    It would have been nice to have had comms units. Every operative in the world can tell you the extreme disadvantages of tailing someone who knows what you look like. And to be perfectly honest, it’s always easier when your