“Where have you been?” she chided me, tucking a stray wisp of white hair up into her bun. “You’re late, and your mother has been waiting. Now wash up and hustle into the dining room. Chop chop.” The sound of clinking glassware echoed faintly from behind the thick mahogany door, and I raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

“Officer Salzburg is here to discuss security,” she said, turning back to the large cast-iron pot on the stove. “Be on your best behavior.”

Being on my best behavior at all times was just one of the problems with being the commander’s kid, and today of all days I did not want to play the polite and well-behaved daughter. Mrs. Ellsworth turned away from the pot she was stirring and saw me still standing right where she’d left me, and her eyebrows disappeared into the low swoop of white curls that lay across her forehead. The message was clear—move it, girl. With a barely stifled sigh, I ducked into the small hall bathroom just off the kitchen and did a quick check of myself in the mirror. The same face I’d watched flub up Abraham Lincoln’s assassination just hours before stared back at me, although I looked a little paler now. My mom called my name from the dining room, and I grabbed both of my cheeks in my fingers and gave them a rough twist to pink them up a bit. It hurt, but at least I didn’t look like I’d seen a ghost, or, I amended with a grimace, a Cocoon written in my own handwriting. Still feeling unnerved and slightly nauseous despite the garlic bread in my stomach, I ran my hand over my hair, smoothing it down, before taking a deep breath and walking out and into the dining room.

Our house, unlike most of the buildings at the Academy, was actually old, not just fabricated to look that way. It was built in a time when houses had things like butler’s pantries and wall-to-wall mahogany wood paneling. Our dining room in particular had an elegant old-world feel to it that you just couldn’t re-create today with all the strict regulations on natural resources. My mom was sitting at the end of our long dining room table in full dress uniform eating a salad with a man, also in full dress. He smiled broadly when I came in, and stood up.

“Officer Salzburg,” I said, extending a hand that he shook like a limp fish. “It’s wonderful to see you.”