The Agent's Daughter (6 page)

“
Tell your son that I
appreciate his discretion and that I am still thinking about how to
tell her,” Evan said as he turned again to leave. “I’ll see you at
the briefing.”

As she did every school day since she started being
dropped off by her dad, Melina went straight for the school
library. It was quiet there, and she could indulge in her passion
for reading. She had loved reading as far back as she could
remember. When she was younger, her mom read stories to her every
night from a special volume of short bedtime stories. There were
stories about frogs and bugs and dogs and horses and all of them
could speak. And there were stories about fairies. She especially
loved the stories about fairies. There were the weather fairies,
the jewel fairies and even the holiday fairies. There was just
something about characters that possessed some remarkable power
that she found appealing.

When Melina became a little older, and she
started reading on her own, her dad suggested some books that she
might like where the main characters were strong females. Books
where the woman or girl saved the day. This was a revelation to
her, and she read every one of the books of that type she could get
her hands on. Even now, it was the only sort of book that she read.
The more danger that the heroine faced the more she liked it.

Melina had been reading for about twenty
minutes when she was approached by Mrs. Wharton, the school
librarian.

“
I saw that you came in
early today. You usually don’t come in until later.”

“
Yeah. My dad had to be to
work a bit earlier today,” Melina said.

“
All the more time to
read,” Mrs. Wharton said, smiling. “Have you begun reading the book
that I gave to you yesterday? The one with that fantastic
underwater machine built by the girl and her friend?”

“
Do you mean this one?”
Melina said, holding up the book she was reading. “I am just
finishing it now. Just a few pages left.”

Mrs. Wharton put her hand over her mouth.
“My word, child. I have never seen anyone that can read as fast as
you.”

“
The book wasn’t that
long, just 250 pages.” Melina replied, holding up the book. “Nice
story, though. I am glad that you recommended it to me. If I don’t
end up as a diplomat or ambassador, I’ve thought about doing that
for a living when I get older … recommending books, I mean. As a
book publisher.”

“
Well I am sure that you
would be great at it,” Mrs. Wharton said. “You have read just about
every book in this-”

Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.

The conversation was interrupted by the
first of several loud bells that alert the students to get to
class. This was the ten-minute bell.

Melina grabbed her book and put her backpack
on her shoulder. “Excuse me, Mrs. Wharton. I have to catch up with
someone. I’ll see you later.”

Catch up indeed. She only hoped that Jean
was not her usual late self today.

…………………………
.

“
I’m confused, and I don’t
know what I should do.”

Jean finished putting her books in her
locker and turned around to see Melina standing there.

“
Well, for starters, I
wouldn’t have worn that shirt with those pants and you should
reconsider that choice for a hairstyle. Kinda dorky if you ask
me.”

Melina looked down at her shirt and back to
Jean. “Be serious!” Melina said. “I have my first class with Alex
since my little meltdown yesterday, and I don’t know what to say to
him.”

“
I told you that I
explained to him why you were upset and that he said he
understood,” Jean answered, coming dangerously close to a snippy
tone.

“
I know he ‘understands’,”
Melina replied, using air quotes for emphasis. “But what does that
mean? Does that mean he thinks that it’s unfortunate that I’m a
psychotic, but he can totally understand why or was it just a basic
recognition that he understood your words?”

Jean looked at Melina in horror. “Did you
just use air quotes?”

“
Yes I did,” Melina said.
“I thought that it made sense as a part of my
explanation.”

Jean shook her head. “It’s just… I thought
we agreed that we both hated air quotes and that we were not going
to use them in each others’ presence.”

“
Arrrrrgh, Jean, focus on
the problem!” Melina cried. “Alex and I have physics together first
period. What am I going to say to him?”

Jean put her hand on
Melina’s shoulder. “Look, Alex seems like a pretty sweet dude. When
he used the word
understand
, he said it in a way that
was as if he had undergone the experience himself. I don’t know
that. It is just the feeling I got. His body language. The tone in
his voice. He understood.”

Melina smiled. “Thanks, Jean. That helps a
lot. And thank you for being there yesterday to talk to him.”

“
No problem, lady,” Jean
said, looking down in a fake blush. “Anything for my best
friend.”

Melina smiled. A memorable friend
moment.

“
But seriously,” Jean
added. “You are going to change shirts and ditch the mom haircut.
Aren’t you?”

“
Goodbye, Jean,” Melina
said as she walked away. “See you at lunch.”

…………………………
.

Melina walked through the door of her first
period physics class and paused to look around the room. The
classroom was set up more like a laboratory than a classroom.
Instead of individual desks, there were seven workstations, each
with a sink and four barstool type chairs. Her teacher, Mr. Clary
didn’t like assigned seats, so everyone just came in and sat at an
open space at a workstation. Melina made sure she arrived to class
a few minutes before the bell. She wanted to get to the class
before Alex so she could let him decide whether he wanted to sit
near her. The class was already half full, but Alex wasn’t there
yet, so she spied an empty workstation and sat down.

Melina spent a few moments fidgeting in her
seat while she monitored the door. Then she remembered she had a
few pages left in her book, so she took it out and began to read.
After a few minutes, out of the corner of her eye, Melina saw the
stool next to her move.

“
Is anyone sitting
here?”

Melina looked up to see Alex standing next
to her, holding the stool.

“
No, please. Sit down,”
Melina said, motioning toward the chair with an open
hand.

Alex sat down and reached into his backpack
for his notebook. “Did you get an answer to the extra credit
question on last night’s homework?”

Melina sat there without saying a word.
Hundreds of thoughts raced through her mind. The thought at the top
of the list was that he wanted to sit by her. That meant that he
did not think she was nuts. Next, his first topic of conversation
was routine talk about homework. That meant that the incident
yesterday was not worth talking about. It was behind them.

Alex looked up from his notebook. “Melina?
Did you get an answer to the extra credit question?”

Melina finally stopped staring into space,
and looked over at Alex. “Oh… yes. If you subtracted out the force
due to friction of the tires on the pavement, the answer came out
correct.”

“
Oh, man,” Alex sighed as
he put his head down on the workstation. “I can’t believe that I
did not think of that.”

“
Don’t worry,” Melina
said, putting her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I don’t always get the
extra credit problem. Mr. Clary tries to make that problem extra
hard. Most of the time you have to go back to one of the previous
chapters for an equation or piece of information to solve the
problem.”

“
Okay. Everybody take out
your textbooks and turn to page fifty-two.”

It was Mr. Clary. He was speaking from
behind his desk at the front of the room. Melina had not noticed
him come in. She also just noticed that she still had her hand on
Alex’s shoulder. She withdrew it quickly, although she did not know
why.

“
Chapter three.
Magnetism,” Mr. Clary said as he wrote the word
magnetism
on the board. “Today is
the first day of a new unit. The unit on magnetism will last two
weeks. As in the previous units, each of you will be paired with a
classmate for the lab portion of the unit.”

There was a noticeable rumbling in the
classroom. In other classes, if there was a two-person project,
then the teacher let the students work out with whom they were
paired. Mr. Clary insisted on a random assignment of the students
that were to work together. He said that it forced the students to
be exposed to work habits that they may not have seen before. He
was right, but Melina still thought of it as a school version of
Mystery Date. Her last lab partner was one of the legendary
‘slacker boys’. They were so called because they spent more time
playing with their portable game players than helping with the
assignment.

Mr. Clary sat back down at his desk and
consulted his list of students. “All right. When I call your name,
I want you to move to the workstation where your partner is
located. I’ll leave it to you which of the two of you have to
move.”

More rumbling. The tension was building.

“
Martinez and
Bass.”

Maria Martinez gave Derek Bass a look that
said she was not going anywhere. Derek moved to her
workstation.

“
Barrett and
Green.”

Jeff Barrett and Mitch Green both jumped up,
moved toward each other and high-fived when they met at the middle
of the room. This made sense. They were in the computer club
together.

“
Roberts and
Winfield.”

Melina froze. Her partner was Alex. It was
what she wanted, of course, but then she began to panic. She
remembered that lab partners end up spending a considerable amount
of time together. At each other’s houses. Was she ready for that
level of exposure?

“
Okay, where do you want
to sit?” Alex said toward Melina.

Melina almost didn’t get the joke. “Well… I
guess we could sit at this table.”

The rest of the class was a blur. Mr. Clary
said some stuff about magnetism. People were called on to answer
questions. Mercifully, Melina was not one of them. All she could
think about was her new lab partner. Where they would meet. What
she would wear. Nagging at the back of her mind was the idea that
she was unsure whether he had any feelings for her. She ran each of
their recent conversations back through her head looking for the
nuance that said he was interested in her too as Jean had said. She
came up empty. The truth was that she didn’t know. This gave her a
pang of sadness. Like she had just found out some distressing
news.

The class bell rang, and Melina found
herself to be staring at an empty notebook. She had not taken any
notes. She stood up and put her notebook back into her
backpack.

“
What class do you have
next?” Alex said as he stood up.

“
I have my history class
with Miss Lender,” Melina said. “Over in the D wing.”

“
I’m going that way, do
you mind if I walk with you?” Alex asked.

“
Not at all,” Melina said,
managing to get the sentence out without that weird high-pitched,
overexcited voice.

Melina put her backpack on her shoulder and
headed with Alex toward the door. As Alex passed by Mr. Clary’s
desk Alex pointed at him, and the two of them smiled at each
other.

When Melina and Alex were in the hallway,
she stopped walking, and stood in front of Alex. “What was that
about?” she asked.

Alex shrugged his mouth and gave her a
sheepish look. “I have a confession to make. Your being assigned to
be my lab partner was not exactly random.”

“
What?” Melina
said.

“
Since we had just
finished the unit on kinetic energy, I knew that we were going to
start a new unit today. Before class, out in the hall, I asked Mr.
Clary if he would assign you to be my partner. I told him that I
wasn’t able to keep up with the class. And that you were so smart
that it would be like having a tutor.”

“
Is that the reason that
you wanted to be my partner, so I can help you?” Melina said, with
a tone of mock indignation.

Alex stopped walking. He fidgeted with his
backpack and looked down at the ground. “Actually… no. There is
another reason.”

He paused. Melina did not know what to say,
so she waited for him to continue.

Finally, he raised his head and looked right
at her. “I like being around you.”

This was surreal. Melina’s
legs buckled a bit, but she caught herself in time, so he did not
notice. His words rattled around in her head like an echo.
I like being around you
.
What did it mean? Other than the obvious. Could it be that Alex had
been agonizing whether she had an interest in him? But, he didn’t
say
I like you.
That would have been definitive. No, he said
I like being around you
.
That is something close friends say to each other. On the other
hand, maybe he had taken the first tenuous step in the process of
negotiations that two people go through when there
is
interest in each
other. One of the two people has to go first. To come out and say
what is hoped they both feel. Either way, she realized that this
was hard for Alex to say. She had to respond.