As a kid, I didn’t have many friends. I kept to myself and found comfort in quiet things, such as reading and baking. Longing for the friendships I couldn’t have because I was homeschooled at the time, I found my friends in books. 

The book series that to this day still makes an impact on me is Gallagher Girls. Not many people know of this book series, but as a child, it was my life. It was about a school for spies and a girl named Cammie who felt insecure and just wanted a normal life. Cammie was someone I could relate to, and if I’m being honest, I think she was my first book crush. I adored her and all the stories her character had to tell.

Over the course of the six books in the series, I found stories of love, friendship, and danger. I acted scenes out in my backyard and daydreamed along with my favorite characters. I wrote my own stories with those same characters and ranted to my sister about them. Cammie and her friends were something I ached to have at the time, so reading it was bittersweet at moments when I escaped the world of the Gallagher Academy and found myself still sitting in my room.

A story about a school of spies sounds so childish, but at times, the books took on a more serious tone. I cried for the characters and laughed with them. I shipped Cammie with her love interest Zach and cursed the name of Josh, who was Cammie’s other love interest. It was the first time I joined a fandom and entered a community of people who liked the same thing as me.

There weren’t many people in the fan base since the book series wasn’t big at the time, but any content I could find, I would grasp onto it for dear life. Fanart, fanfics, fan castings. I loved all of it and would share some of it with my sister who was the only other person I could talk about my interests with. 

The book series took me a few weeks to read, and the ending crushed me because there was nothing else. It was the first time something ended and I had no way of stopping it. I had read Percy Jackson before this series, but Percy’s story never ended, he made cameos in other books and had 2 whole book series dedicated to him. Cammie didn’t have that: her story ended with the books. I had nothing left to grasp onto and it made me sad. 

I had felt like these characters were my friends and letting go hurt even though I knew they were fake. To this day, I’ve only read the last book once, because it hurts that much for me to read. I hold this series close to my heart as something that brought me comfort and happiness when I didn’t have many people to give it to me, and its place on my bookshelf will never change.