The Wild One by Melinda Metz Read Free Book Online Page A

first?”
    â€œHardness scale?” Max suggested. He pulled open the top drawer of their lab station and pulled out some metal samples. He handed a piece of iron to Liz and she scraped the unknown with it.
    â€œIt scratched. So it’s softer than iron,” she said. Shetried the rest of the samples. They all scratched the unknown metal.
    â€œWhat do you think? Magnesium?” Max asked.
    â€œProbably,” Liz agreed. “Let’s try burning it. That will tell us a lot.”
    Max pulled out the Bunsen burner and connected the rubber tube to the gas spigot. He put on a pair of goggles and handed another pair to Liz. She used the striker to light the flame, and Max adjusted the oxygen flow until the flame was the right height.
    Liz picked up the metal sample with a pair of tongs and held it over the flame. When she pulled it out, the metal burned with a brilliant white light, much brighter than the orange flame of the Bunsen burner.
    It’s like when I touched Liz the day she got shot at the Crashdown Cafe, Max thought. I touched her, and it’s like I lit up with this amazing white light. And I knew I was in love with her.
    â€œI think we were right,” Max told Liz. “You want to try it under some water just to be sure?” He flipped on the cold water faucet, and Liz held the blazing piece of metal under the stream. It made a fizzling sound, but it didn’t go out. Max turned off the water, and the white flame was as bright as ever.
    Nothing is going to put out the light in me, either, Max thought. I’m never going to wake up and find myself out of love with Liz.
    Maybe he should tell Liz he was wrong when he said they had to be just friends. Wasn’t it insane to give up on a fire so blinding, so impossible toquench? How many times was he ever going to feel this way in his life?
    Answer: one. One time. Because there wasn’t another girl like Liz anywhere on this planet or any other.
    And that’s
why
they had to stay just friends. The closer Liz got to him, the more danger she was in. Max felt pretty sure Sheriff Valenti wanted all aliens on earth dead. And he had a feeling Valenti wouldn’t mind offing any humans who happened to be in the way Including Liz.
    Just friends
. Max was starting to hate those two words.

“Put me down for ten bucks on my girl Isabel,” Tish called. She gave Isabel’s shoulders a squeeze. “I know you can do it,” she whispered.
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Isabel asked. She sat down on the wooden bench in front of her locker and slid on her clogs.
    She had tuned out the conversation when Stacey started critiquing each of their jumping techniques. Isabel never bothered to listen to Stacey when she did her little after-practice lectures while everyone was changing.
    But today she’d tuned out everybody, even Tish. She couldn’t stop thinking about that weird dream she’d had last night. Plus that strange little conversation with DuPris at lunch.
    â€œWe’re talking about the snag-Nikolas contest,” Tish said. “The same thing we’ve been talking about for, like, the last fifteen minutes.”
    Stacey hopped up onto the bench next to her locker. “It sounds like Isabel is going to try to weasel out of this,” she cried. “That means I win!”
    â€œIsabel’s not weaseling,” Tish protested. “She just wants to know what we’re talking about, youknow, what counts as snagging, right, Isabel?”
    â€œRight,” Isabel answered. If there was a choice between agreeing with Tish or agreeing with Stacey, Isabel was always going to go with Tish, but she was still trying to figure out exactly what she wasn’t weaseling out of.
    â€œLunch together in the quad,” Julie suggested.
    â€œNo, tongue kissing in the quad,” Lucinda countered. “Holding hands in the quad,” Tish said.
    Isabel shook her head. Tish should become a