Samantha Smart by Maxwell Puggle Read Free Book Online Page B

wait–” she began, trying to stop. Her watch read 2:55. “Jordan, I–I’m sorry, I can’t actually go right now.”
    “Aw, come on,” he continued pulling her, “it’ll just take a minute! It’s right up here... ”
    “I–no,” Samantha pulled backward, halting their progress. “I can’t Jordan, I have to be somewhere, like
now.
”
    Jordan’s grip tightened on her arm and he continued to protest, saying again that it would ‘only take a minute.’ At last Samantha pulled her arm free of his hand, almost yelling at him.
    “
I have to go.
”
    “All right!” he replied, putting up his hands and looking around somewhat shiftily to see if people were watching them. Then he calmed down a bit and apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Samantha,” he began, trying to look cool and collected again.
    “How,” Samantha asked looking straight into his eyes, “did you know my name?”
    “Samantha,” he continued, looking strange and nervous again. “You told me. Just now.”
    “Whatever,” Samantha replied, feeling that something weird had just happened but needing to get moving. “I have to go, Jordan, but if you want, I, um, I walk my dog every day around noon at Belvedere Castle in the park, uptown.”
    “Okay,” Jordan smiled his winning smile again. “Well, maybe I’ll see you there sometime. I’ll try to bring you a poster.”
    “That’d be great. Bye, Jordan, it was, ah, nice meeting you.”
    “Yeah, you too. Take care.”
    Odd,
Samantha thought to herself as she turned around and headed back towards Twenty-sixth Street. Had she told Jordan her name? She couldn’t remember; she felt, in fact, like the whole conversation had been a strange dream. It was like he had been, well,
was
the only person other than The Professor who had existed in both the normal timeline and the new, altered one that she was walking through now.
    She shook her head to clear it of confusion and dreaminess. It didn’t matter right now–she was at the door to the building whose address matched the one on the piece of paper given to her by The Professor. She scanned the board at the entrance with her eyes and found the name she was looking for–Alan Horrowitz And Associates–and noted the call number next to it, 060.
Her fingers dialed the number on the phone-like keypad and a voice answered.
    “Alan Horrowitz and Associates,” it said in a bored, nasally voice. “Who’s calling, please?”
    Samantha cleared her throat and thought quickly, spewing out the best thing she could think of.
    “Hi, this is Samantha Smart–I’m here to interview Ms. Edelstein for my, uh, school newspaper, the...
Roslyn High Examiner...
”
    “One moment please,” the voice replied. This was followed by a long silence.
After what seemed like an eternity of staring at the little metal speaker, the buzzer buzzed to let her in. She almost didn’t snap out of her daze in time but caught the door and opened it just before the sound stopped.
    Samantha made her way to the elevator in the lobby’s far right-hand corner, located the agent’s office on the directory board and walked through the doors when they opened, pressing the button on the inside for the fifth floor. The doors closed and she began to move slowly upward, watching the numbers light up as she passed floors two, three and four. As ‘five’ lit up, the elevator stopped, opening its doors and ringing a little bell that sounded like it belonged in a Japanese economy car.
    Apparently the whole floor was occupied by Alan Horrowitz And Associates,
as there was a sort of lobby here, too, with a receptionist’s desk straight in front of her. She walked up to it, noticing that the receptionist was on the phone, and stood waiting patiently.
    “No, Mr. Horrowitz doesn’t represent
children’s
authors,” she was saying to someone. “I– know that adolescents aren’t
exactly
children, but as I said–” more silence as the persistent author continued in a minuscule