The Agent's Daughter by Ron Corriveau Read Free Book Online Page B

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