Extremely Classified-Deleted Scenes from the Gallagher Girls Series

CMHS

This is the scene that originally followed the first Code Black. In it, the girls have just gone down to the P&E; barn to talk about what happened and they run into Mr. Mosckowitz.

I hope you like it. (But I bet you'll agree with my editor who wisely told me that having a scene with Zach working out was probably a lot more fun than a scene with a sweaty Mr. Mosckowitz.)

...And Mr. Mosckowitz was working out.

If you've never seen the world's foremost authority on data encryption trying to use an elliptical trainer...well...then you know what I'm talking about.

"Hello..." Mr. Moscowitz said, trying to catch his breath. "Girls... Having... A nice.... Day?" He was on one of the elliptical machines for the first time, too, judging from his lack of coordination.

"Sure," I said which was a lie, of course, because on the scale of awkward, scary, annoying, terrifying days it was really high.

"Mr. Mosckowitz," Bex said, laying on the perfect amounts of perkiness and charm, "Have you spent a lot of time in deep cover? You were really convincing as Undersecretary."

"What... um...no," Mr. Mosckowitz said. "Well, there was this one time when the CIA had this code in this Russian nuke silo, but it had to be cracked on-site, so I had to go and pretend to be ___(fill in later)__________ and there was this bar, and..." Then he shut up really quickly and said, "But I'm not supposed to talk about that."

"Oh," Bex said. "Right." Wesparred a little because one of the basic rules of interrogation is that nothing adds pressurelike time.

Sweat was really pouring off him, "Did I seem like a seasoned undercover operative?"

"Well, everyone is talking about it," Bex said, which was a lie. Everyone was talking about me and how my raging boy crazy hormones had threatened the security of the school, but I was willing to bet Mr. Mosckowitz hadn't picked up on that. It was entirely the wrong kind of encryption.

"I did...okay?" he panted. "You don't think I was a little over the top?"

"Are you mad?" Bex said, sounding especially British as if to remind everyone that she meant crazy-not angry. "I've met loads of those official types of fellows and you were just like them."

"Really?" he said, which was both really sweet and kinda sad. I mean, he's one of the top three codebreakers in the world, but telling him he'd make a great fake Undersecretary of theInterior was what totally made his day. Then I thought back on my trip to D.C., my mother's words, I wondered if the whole "be yourself" problem wasn't a little more widespread at the Gallagher Academy than everyone thought.

"It's just a shame the night had to be cut short by that bloody false alarm," Bex said. Liz and I stared up at his face wearing looks of innocent disappointment from a spoiled ball.

"False alarm?" he asked, then seemed to remember. "Oh. Yes. Right. False alarm!"

"I'm just really glad it was false," Liz said, opening her brown eyes wide.

"Not to worry, Ms. Sutton," our teacher soothed. "Not to worry. Those alumni lists are as safe as..." Then he stopped and
looked at the digital reader on his trainer as if that was a trip that would never end, and I could have sworn I heard him whisper, "But I'm not supposed to talk about that."