Woodchuck exclaimed enthusiastically. “Those are excellent turns!” I slid to a textbook stop next to my fellow classmates, who had been waiting for me halfway down the run. They all cheered for me. Jawa proudly fist-bumped me. “You’ve gotten ten times better since yesterday! How’d you do that?” “I just practiced yesterday afternoon,” I replied, doing my best to sound humble. It was hard, though. Because I had finally found something athletic that I was actually good at. Ever since I’d arrived at spy school, everyone else had constantly bested me at tests of skill and feats of physical prowess. Erica was capable of anything, from climbing a sheer rock face to beating up ninjas—often at the same time. Chip, Jawa, and Zoe were all impressive as well. Warren wasn’t, but he was so good at camouflaging himself that our instructors tended to overlook his other flaws. (They often overlooked him, period, because they couldn’t find him.) Meanwhile, I had been constantly humiliated: flattened by kung fu masters, winded from long runs, flunked off the artillery range for nearly wounding people.
