The Agent's Daughter (3 page)

When Melina was in
kindergarten, she started studying martial arts at a special studio
across town. Set up by her dad’s employer, the studio was attached
to a fitness complex owned by the company, and it taught only the
children of employees and their extended families. The studio
offered classes in all of the different forms of martial arts and
Melina began studying
taekwondo
. Focusing almost entirely
on punching and kicking forms, but with little sparring, she
excelled to the top of her class.

When Melina was in fourth
grade, her dad told her that she must switch her study to
krav maga
. Originally
developed by Israeli commandos, this form of martial arts was
unique in that it emphasized disabling your opponent as fast as
possible by any means possible, even if it meant poking out the
opponent’s eye or breaking their neck.

At first Melina did not like the sheer
brutality of krav maga. She liked the beauty and grace of taekwondo
while this new form of martial arts taught how to harm anyone that
was a threat to her in the most efficient way. It did not help that
she was at least ten years younger than anyone else that was in the
class. Melina pleaded with her dad, to allow her to go back to
studying taekwondo, but he insisted that she stick with krav maga.
“You will need to be able to defend yourself,” he told her. His
explanation didn’t make sense, but he would not discuss it
further.

She continued attending krav maga classes
all throughout elementary and middle schools, in time progressing
up through the different levels of belts. At each belt level, the
students were expected to spar with each other and try out what was
learned during class on each other. Though Melina was in a class
with students that were much bigger than she was, she held her own
during the sparring and developed a reputation for having a
particularly fierce fighting style.

Her ability gave her tremendous confidence,
and it was reflected in her manner both in the studio and at
school. In sixth grade, she once was confronted by a group of
eighth grade girls that took offense to her trespassing in the
eighth grade hallway. After getting shoved around the hallway a
bit, Melina unleashed a fury of fists and feet that resulted in
broken bones for several of the girls involved. Reviewing the
hallway security tape, the principal remarked that it looked like a
clip from a Bruce Lee movie.

When she was a freshman in
high school, she finally reached the level of black belt. While
this is the highest belt level that can be achieved in krav maga,
there are nine
dan
levels of black belt. Each new level being achieved with more
intensive training that included the study of advanced weapons.
Melina was studying for her black belt, third
dan
when her mom’s accident
happened. At that point, her dad had become too busy to take her to
class, so her mom had been taking her. Her dad made it clear to her
that it was crucial that she continued her martial arts training,
so he said that he would leave work early to take her. But she
decided to quit. She had lost the desire. It just wasn’t the same
without her mom.

Melina looked up at her friend. “Many things
changed after my mom’s accident. I’m just not that person
anymore.”

Melina woke up just before the alarm was to
go off. For a brief moment, while she was still in that half-awake
state, she smiled, as she believed that it was the weekend. But, as
she gained full consciousness, she realized that it was another
school day.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
went the alarm clock as if to rub it
in.

With her eyes closed, Melina flailed with
her left arm until it found the clock and then she pounded on the
top of it until it stopped buzzing. When she opened her eyes, she
was staring at a sea of light purple. Periwinkle, actually. This
was the color of the walls in her room. When she was eight years
old, she pleaded with her parents for them to paint the walls of
her room light purple. They agreed, but told her that because of
the expense, she would have to live with that color for a long
time. When she reached high school age, she had come to regret that
decision. A few years earlier, she convinced her parents that she
had reached the age where she should scrap the ‘little girl’ walls
for something older. Perhaps a shade of deep blue. They were in the
process of lining up a painting contractor when her mom’s accident
happened. Her dad said that he would still have the room painted,
but Melina told him to leave it how it was. It was now somewhat of
a comfort to her. They would paint it when Mom came home from the
hospital.

After an extended and exaggerated stretch of
her arms and back, Melina got out of bed and trudged across the
room to the closet to get her robe. As she passed in front of her
dresser, she paused and looked toward the mirror on the wall.

“
You look gorgeous,”
Melina said, following up the comment with her lips drawn up into a
‘kissy-face’ pucker.

She was joking, of course. By the time she
left for school, her long brown hair would be straight and halfway
down her back, courtesy of a flat iron, but it always started the
day as if each hair were on a separate vacation. She gathered some
of her hair in each one of her hands and gave it an extra vigorous
mussing. She smiled at the freakish girl staring back at her in the
mirror.

“
I’ll get you, my pretty,
and your little dog Toto too,” she said as she pointed a gnarled
finger at her reflection.

Satisfied with her witch impersonation,
Melina continued to the closet, where she grabbed her robe, and
then she headed downstairs to have breakfast. As she walked down
the hallway, Melina thought she heard talking coming from the
master bedroom. She poked her head in the open door and saw her dad
sitting on the bed, his back to her, talking to some clothing
hanging on a coat rack in front of him. Melina recognized the
clothes as those that her mom was wearing the night of her
accident. They had been hanging from that coat rack since the night
the hospital returned them. Melina could not hear what her dad was
saying, but she was sure that it was directed to her mom. She
thought about going to him to ask if he were all right, but she
decided against it. Her dad was not the type that enjoyed talking
about how he felt. He hadn’t seen her, so she quietly backed up and
continued downstairs.

Her brother was in the kitchen, already
dressed for school. He was seated at the table eating a toaster
pastry with a side of child-sized yogurt. His usual.

“
Well, if it isn’t the boy
genius,” Melina said. Only she said it the way a cartoon hero
greets a villain.

Travis looked up from his cereal. “So, we
meet again,” he said, in his best evil scientist voice. “But you’re
too late! As soon as I put my evil plans into place, I shall rule
the world! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

This made Melina smile. It reminded her of a
time when they were younger, and they would tease each other and
perform funny voices at the kitchen table.

“
Not if I defeat you
first,” Melina said, in her best anime cartoon voice. “We will
battle. And then after the battle, I will have been the one who
will have won and you will have been the one that will have
lost.”

“
Not so fast, Madame
Roberts,” Travis said, matching her anime voice. “My new weapon is
very powerful and has a special move that cannot be
defeated.”

Travis was waiting for his sister to
continue the dialog, but her attention was drawn to the other side
of the kitchen as she watched her dad walking toward the kitchen
table. On any other day, she would have continued the fun, but
after what she saw upstairs, she thought it best to stop.

“
Listen up, you guys,”
Melina’s dad said as he approached the table, “I have an urgent
meeting today, so we have to leave a little early.”

…………………………
.

“
If the sun is a flaming
ball of gas,” Travis said, “Then why doesn’t it just burn up or
explode?”

Melina was used to this sort of question
from her brother. Random and unexpected, his question was the type
of thing that he liked to talk about on the drive to school. He
asked questions about science. About mathematics. About geography.
You name it, and he asked questions about it. If the question had
to do with science, chances are her brother was asking a question
for which he already knew the answer. Melina usually tried to
ignore him in the back seat, but he was relentless. He also had the
advantage that he was a morning person and that he could speak at
length, seemingly without breathing.

Hearing no answer to his question, Travis
continued. “You see, the sun is made of hydrogen atoms. Lots of
them. So many that they have a powerful gravitational force at the
core of the sun that pulls all of the atoms toward the center. But
when they reach the core, the gravitational force fuses them
together to become helium atoms. This fusion process releases
energy and the helium atoms explode toward the surface only to be
drawn back to the core by the gravity. Thus, the sun reaches
equilibrium.”

Travis paused and looked around at Melina
and her dad. This is where he expects questions about what he has
said. When Melina’s mom used to drive them to school, she would
indulge Travis by peppering him with questions about what he was
saying. Her dad was not as indulgent, so it fell to her to prime
his lectures with short questions. Mercifully, on this day, they
were pulling into the parking lot at his school, so she looked out
the window and pretended not to hear him.

“
Okay, keep your seatbelts
on until we have reached the curb, and the captain has turned off
the seatbelt sign,” Melina’s dad said as the car came to a stop in
front of the school. The same stale joke every day, Melina thought.
What is it about Dads that they tell the same joke every day? It
doesn’t get any funnier.

Travis opened the door, grabbed his backpack
and got out.

“
Have a good day, big
guy,” Melina’s dad yelled to Travis as he shut the door.

Big guy. Her dad had
called her brother that as far back as she could remember. He used
to call her ‘big girl’ too, when she was much younger, but he
stopped when she got older. When she asked him why one day, he said
that the word ‘big’ had a different meaning for boys and girls. For
boys, ‘big’ was good, for girls it wasn’t. He said it was sad and
that it was unfair, but it was true. So he switched to calling
her
kiddo
instead.

After dropping off Travis at his school,
Melina and her dad continued down the street to her school and
turned into the parking lot. It was an hour before school started,
so he pulled over past the usual drop-off area and parked.

Melina’s dad squinted his eyes and scanned
the parking lot as if he were a cop on a stakeout. There were only
a few cars and no people could be seen. “I thought they opened the
doors well before school started so people could drop their kids
off early.”

“
They do, we’re just a
little too early,” Melina said. “I know you have that meeting to go
to, why don’t you just let me out and I’ll wait in front of the
building until someone comes and opens the doors.”

Melina’s dad gave her a scowl. She had seen
that look before. “I don’t care how late I am, I am not going to
leave my little girl on the front steps of a locked school and
drive away.”

“
Little girl?” Melina said
with mock indignation. “I’ll have you know I can tie my shoes
almost all by myself.”

“
I’m sorry, kiddo,” he
said, smiling. “It’s a cruel world out there, and I worry about
you. Will you at least indulge me and let me stay with you until
someone unlocks the doors?”

She thought about it for a moment. “As long
as you don’t give me the field trip speech.”

The infamous field trip speech. When she was
in elementary school, every time that Melina had a field trip, her
dad made sure that he called her aside that morning before she left
for school and gave her what became known as the field trip speech.
Her dad would go over all of the things she should look out for and
people she should be wary of. About how she should never, ever be
alone. And last, if she ever found herself in any trouble, she was
to scream as loud as possible. Her dad finally stopped giving her
the speech when she mocked him one day by reciting it to him
perfectly word for word.

Melina opened her car door and headed for a
bench a few yards away from the car. “Come on and sit with me over
here,” she said.

Lately, she and her dad did not get to spend
much time just talking. Not that he was much of a talker. He
preferred to be doing something instead of talking about it. It was
his nature. Melina’s dad got out of the car and joined her on the
bench. He was flustered and out of his element as he fidgeted,
trying to find a comfortable position. Melina wondered how he sat
at a desk all day.

“
So, how are you doing?”
he said.

Melina thought for a moment. “Things are
going pretty well. I am doing all right in my classes, and there is
…”

Her dad stopped her. “That is not what I
meant. What I mean is… how are you feeling? ... you know, about
your mom.”

Melina and her dad had not spoken about her
mom’s accident in several months. He was sensitive about the
subject, so they just avoided it.

“
I’m doing all right, I
guess,” Melina said. “Why do you ask? Is something
wrong?