The Agent's Daughter (7 page)

“
I like being around you,
too,” Melina said, as smooth as she could muster.

They both smiled awkwardly at each other,
unsure what to say now. After a moment, Alex bent over and looked
sideways at Melina’s arm.

Melina looked down at her arm too. “What is
it?”

“
I’m trying to look at the
ugly watch, so I can find out what time it is. Can’t be late for
your next class.”

“
About that watch,” Melina
started. “I told you that it was one of my mom’s watches. But this
watch in particular has some meaning to me. It is the watch that
she was wearing the night of her accident.”

Alex looked horrified. “Oh, Melina, I am so
sorry. Jean told me about your mom. And I have been making jokes
about your watch.”

Melina put her hand on Alex’s shoulder. “No,
don’t worry. It is truly ugly. I am only telling you this so that
you understand my feelings about my mom’s situation. Everyone
around me thinks that she is not going to wake up. I don’t know
why, but I believe deep in my heart that she is going to get
better. Carrying around something of hers reminds me of that.”

“
I can totally
understand,” Alex said. “I had something similar happen to me. A
couple of years ago, my dad was on a business trip and his plane
went down right smack in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean.”

“
Went down?” Melina asked.
“You mean it crashed?”

“
Yeah,” Alex said. “Over
water and nowhere close to any land. The night that we got the call
he was missing, I wandered around the house in a daze until I found
myself in my parents’ bedroom. On the dresser, there were some
coins where my dad’s keys and wallet sat when he was home. He
always has some change in his pocket, but he was going out of the
country, so he must have felt that he did not need them. I scooped
the coins up and put them in my pocket. The jingling noise that
they made in my pocket helped make me feel better. Like I had a
part of my dad with me.”

“
Obviously, it turned out
okay,” Melina said. “So what happened?”

“
They were fortunate that
it was daytime, and there were clear skies, so the pilot was able
to set the plane down gently on the water, and my dad and the other
people on board were able to get out of the plane and get into a
raft. But for the three days that it took to find him, I carried
those coins that I found on his bedroom dresser in my
pocket.”

“
Do you still have the
coins?” Melina asked.

“
I don’t carry them with
me anymore,” Alex said. “But I have them in a special box at home.
Two quarters, a dime and two nickels.”

Jean was right. He did understand.

Melina held out her arm, unclasped the watch
from her wrist, and held it in her hand before her. “I’m going to
have to give the watch back at some point. I just have to make sure
that my dad doesn’t find out that I have it. He would go
ballistic.”

That thought caused her to lose her grip on
the watch, and it dropped toward the floor. In an instant, Melina
thrust a hand downward and snatched the watch from the air before
it reached her knees.

Alex stared at Melina with wide eyes. “Wow.
I have never seen a hand move so fast in my life.”

“
Must be all those years
of martial arts training,” Melina answered sheepishly.

“
Do you take classes at
the company studio?” Alex asked.

“
Yes,” Melina said. “Well…
I used to, but I stopped. Long story. ”

“
Taekwondo or karate?”
Alex asked.

“
I studied krav maga,” she
said.

Alex looked puzzled. “But krav maga classes
are for…” And then he caught himself.

“
For what?” Melina
asked.

“
Um… for people who are …
um majorly into martial arts. I just didn’t picture you liking krav
maga that much.”

“
It was my after-school
life for years,” Melina said. She wanted to say more about it, but
she stopped. “This is my class. I had better be getting inside
before the bell rings.

“
Okay,” Alex
said.

Neither Melina nor Alex knew what to say at
this point. They had covered a lot of ground. There would have to
be consultations with friends before either of them would know the
meaning of this conversation, and know how to proceed. Finally,
Alex said, “I had better get going too. I’ll see you in English
class.”

Melina watched from the doorway of her
classroom as Alex slowly backed away, and then walked down the
hall. When he disappeared around a corner, she smiled and drifted
into her class.

…………………………
.

“
Melina! Over
here.”

Jean was calling to Melina from a table in
the lunchroom. She was sitting with two of their friends, Lindsey
and Denise. Jean did not have friends so it would be more correct
to say that Jean was sitting with two of Melina’s friends. They
were a few of the sort of friends that you have at school but do
not see outside of school. Melina knew Lindsey from middle school.
She was pretty but not particularly smart. Denise had been in
Melina’s advanced classes since elementary school. All of their
eyes were on Melina as she sat down at the table.

“
What are you guys looking
at?” Melina asked.

“
Well?” Jean said as if
Melina had asked a stupid question.

Melina looked confused. Then it dawned on
her. “Are you wondering about Alex?”

“
Jean told us all about
your new crush,” Denise said, excited.

“
Yeah,” Lindsey said,
laughing. “We heard the whole story. The embarrassing episode in
language arts class yesterday, the meeting with Alex after class,
the embarrassment at the meeting with Alex after class, and finally
the meeting with Alex today in physics class.”

“
And we are dying to find
out how it ends,” Denise said.

“
Okay,” Melina started as
the three friends’ heads leaned in to hear. “First, he doesn’t
think that I am crazy or weird. He totally understands my situation
with my mom and he even told me a similar story about his dad.
Then, we had a nice chat about homework and other non-school stuff
when he was walking me to my history class.”

“
He walked you to your
next class?” Denise shrieked.

Melina smiled. “Yes he did. All the way over
to the D wing.”

“
Did Alex walk you
specifically to your class, or was he just walking with you to your
class as he continued on to his own class?” Jean asked as if she
were an attorney cross-examining a witness.

Melina thought for a moment. “I guess I
would have to say that he may have been walking with me to my class
as he did continue down the same hallway past my class.”

“
Doesn’t sound like we
have anything interesting here, folks,” Jean said, “Just a couple
of geeks walkin’ and talkin’ about science stuff.”

“
I guess that’s true,”
Melina said. “Just a couple of lab partners talkin’ about their
magnetics lab project.”

“
Lab partners?” Denise
said. “What luck. Mr. Clary’s random lab partner assignment always
pairs me with the weird guys.”

Melina leaned in with a
sly look. “If only the assignment
were
random. Alex went to Mr. Clary
before class and asked him if he could be my lab
partner.”

“
Oooooooooh,” Denise and
Lindsey cooed.

“
Wait a minute,” Jean
interrupted. “You are the smartest one in that class. What if he
just needed some help and wanted to be paired with the smart
girl.”

“
Yeah,” Melina said.
“That’s what I thought too. Until he told me that the reason that
he asked to be my lab partner, was that he liked being around me. I
told him that I liked being around him too.”

“
Ooooooooooh,” again from
Denise and Lindsey.

Jean leaned back from the table. “Looks like
our Melina has herself a boyfriend.”

“
With the kissing
privileges that come with it,” Lindsey followed.

“
Wait, what?” Melina
asked. “Boyfriend? Kissing? You people are way out in front with
all this talk. All we have agreed on is that we like each other’s
company. Something may come of it, but we are not at that point
yet.”

“
You do know about the
kissing, though,” Lindsey asked in a sly voice. “In case it comes
up.”

Melina leaned back from the table herself.
“As painful as it is to admit, all those years spent studying
martial arts after school didn’t leave much time for boys. I know
nothing about kissing beyond what I see in movies.”

“
Would you like a short
tutorial?” Lindsey asked. Again with the sly voice.

Melina still looked embarrassed about her
admission of her lack of kissing knowledge, so Jean spoke up. “Come
on, she said it has not reached that point with Alex yet.”

“
I’d kinda like to hear
this tutorial,” Denise said quietly. “You know. For future
reference.”

Lindsey looked around the table. There being
no further protest, she started. “Beyond the basics of ensuring
that you smell delightful and have fresh breath, the first thing
that you need to do is to make sure that you won’t be interrupted.
The last thing you need is some little brother barging in on you
when you are in mid-kiss. A friend of mine bit her boyfriend’s lip
when her brother snuck up on them.”

“
Next,” she continued.
“Head position. When you kiss, one of you needs to tilt your head
to one side, and the other one has to tilt their head the other
way. Otherwise, you would hit noses. I’ve done this. It is not
pretty.”

Denise interrupted. “How do you know which
way to tilt your head? It could go either way.”

“
Good question,” Lindsey
replied. “The girl always tilts her head first and the boy responds
by tilting his head in the opposite direction. Most couples have a
favorite direction, so after a while you just know which
side.”

By this time, all three of Lindsey’s
students were leaning forward and following her every word.

“
Okay, on to the mouth,”
Lindsey said. “You must have your mouth open the proper amount. As
his mouth approaches yours, your mouth should be slightly open. If
you open it too wide, you’ll look like some scary person that wants
to eat him. Open too little and it is like kissing your grandma.
Once your lips have met, you can open your mouth a little more to
adjust your lips to each other.”

As Lindsey talked, the three girls tried
opening their mouths and adjusting them.

Jean looked over at a boy at the next table
that was watching them. “What are you looking at? Nothing to see
here.”

“
Is that it?” Denise
asked. “You just sit there with your lips locked?”

“
No, you don’t just sit
there sucking on each other’s lips,” Lindsey said. “At this point
either you or him will gently open and close your mouths in rhythm
while still keeping your lips sealed together.”

“
Is that it?” Jean
said.

“
That is all there is to
know about how to do the kiss,” Lindsey said. “But there are a few
more things to know. Number one is saliva control. Remember, we are
talking about two mouths here, so there is twice the saliva
combined into one space. Nobody wants to have drool running down
their cheeks while they are kissing. There are several ways to
prevent this. First, right before you know you are about to start a
kiss, swallow any and all saliva that you can from your mouth to
get a fresh start.”

Lindsey paused as she could see them
swallowing hard trying to empty their mouths of spit.

“
Then, if at any time
during the kiss you feel that there is a little too much saliva,
remember these four words. Pull. Close. Swallow. Continue. You need
to get rid of that built up saliva, so you first pull your lips
away, close your mouth, swallow the excess drool, and continue
where you left off by moving your lips back into place. Properly
done, it should take just over a second.”

Lindsey leaned in close and spoke softer.
The other girls leaned in too.

“
The next thing is called
the French Kiss,” Lindsey said. “It involves the-”

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

Just then, the end of lunch bell rang, and
students in the lunchroom started to get up to leave.

“
It involves the what?”
Denise said, excited.

Lindsey smiled and stood up to leave. “To be
continued at lunch tomorrow.”

After spending a couple of hours at his desk
brushing up on the particular dialect of Russian spoken in
Malazistan, Evan left his office and headed back down to the
basement of the building to visit the one of the agency workout
facilities. Since missions often involved extreme physical demands,
agents were encouraged to spend as much time as they wanted at the
gym keeping in shape.

As he entered the workout area, Evan could
see that there was only one other person in the gym. Over at the
free weights was Karl Becker. Karl was an agent in the same group
as Evan and had started at the agency a few years before him.
Although he was a little older than Evan was, Karl had not been on
any missions in quite a while. He had not officially retired, but
he would still come in to the agency to use the gym and complain to
anyone that would listen. Most often about how things were not as
they used to be. Evan steered clear of him.