The Agent's Daughter Read Online Free

and trudged across the
room to the closet to get her robe. As she passed in front of her
dresser, she paused and looked toward the mirror on the wall.
    “ You look gorgeous,”
Melina said, following up the comment with her lips drawn up into a
‘kissy-face’ pucker.
    She was joking, of course. By the time she
left for school, her long brown hair would be straight and halfway
down her back, courtesy of a flat iron, but it always started the
day as if each hair were on a separate vacation. She gathered some
of her hair in each one of her hands and gave it an extra vigorous
mussing. She smiled at the freakish girl staring back at her in the
mirror.
    “ I’ll get you, my pretty,
and your little dog Toto too,” she said as she pointed a gnarled
finger at her reflection.
    Satisfied with her witch impersonation,
Melina continued to the closet, where she grabbed her robe, and
then she headed downstairs to have breakfast. As she walked down
the hallway, Melina thought she heard talking coming from the
master bedroom. She poked her head in the open door and saw her dad
sitting on the bed, his back to her, talking to some clothing
hanging on a coat rack in front of him. Melina recognized the
clothes as those that her mom was wearing the night of her
accident. They had been hanging from that coat rack since the night
the hospital returned them. Melina could not hear what her dad was
saying, but she was sure that it was directed to her mom. She
thought about going to him to ask if he were all right, but she
decided against it. Her dad was not the type that enjoyed talking
about how he felt. He hadn’t seen her, so she quietly backed up and
continued downstairs.
    Her brother was in the kitchen, already
dressed for school. He was seated at the table eating a toaster
pastry with a side of child-sized yogurt. His usual.
    “ Well, if it isn’t the boy
genius,” Melina said. Only she said it the way a cartoon hero
greets a villain.
    Travis looked up from his cereal. “So, we
meet again,” he said, in his best evil scientist voice. “But you’re
too late! As soon as I put my evil plans into place, I shall rule
the world! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
    This made Melina smile. It reminded her of a
time when they were younger, and they would tease each other and
perform funny voices at the kitchen table.
    “ Not if I defeat you
first,” Melina said, in her best anime cartoon voice. “We will
battle. And then after the battle, I will have been the one who
will have won and you will have been the one that will have
lost.”
    “ Not so fast, Madame
Roberts,” Travis said, matching her anime voice. “My new weapon is
very powerful and has a special move that cannot be
defeated.”
    Travis was waiting for his sister to
continue the dialog, but her attention was drawn to the other side
of the kitchen as she watched her dad walking toward the kitchen
table. On any other day, she would have continued the fun, but
after what she saw upstairs, she thought it best to stop.
    “ Listen up, you guys,”
Melina’s dad said as he approached the table, “I have an urgent
meeting today, so we have to leave a little early.”

    ………………………… .

    “ If the sun is a flaming
ball of gas,” Travis said, “Then why doesn’t it just burn up or
explode?”
    Melina was used to this sort of question
from her brother. Random and unexpected, his question was the type
of thing that he liked to talk about on the drive to school. He
asked questions about science. About mathematics. About geography.
You name it, and he asked questions about it. If the question had
to do with science, chances are her brother was asking a question
for which he already knew the answer. Melina usually tried to
ignore him in the back seat, but he was relentless. He also had the
advantage that he was a morning person and that he could speak at
length, seemingly without breathing.
    Hearing no answer to his question, Travis
continued. “You see, the sun is made of hydrogen