Page 165 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“Are you going to talk to him?” Liam gave me a double take, and I scowled.
“What, are you surprised?”
“A little. You don’t really talk to people.”
“Most people aren’t famous geophysicists.”
Liam stood up and stretched.
“Thank god for that.” He rubbed his neck. “Take all the time you need. I’ll go find us a snack.”
“We just had dinner two hours ago!” I called after him as he joined the exodus towards the doors.
“I’m hungry again!”
I sat back in my seat and tried to calm my breathing. What was I even supposed to say? I rehearsed several greetings in my head while I waited for the students and scientists who surrounded him up front to slowly disperse.
I forced myself to stand when they’d almost all left and the ushers were making their passes through the aisles, looking for discarded programs and other garbage.
My legs were led beneath me, but I forced them to keep walking down the steps of the auditorium towards the stage.
Dr. Brenton was even taller up close.
He’d abandoned us. He wasn’t even on my birth certificate. Mom had never said a single good thing about him, and I had hated him all my life. So now that I was standing in front of him after eighteen years of cursing the name Maxwell Brenton, why was I suddenly so worried about him liking me?
He cut off his conversation with a woman in a pantsuit to give me a sideways glance. She saw me too, offered a quick reassurance that they could catch up later, and let my estranged father turn his attention to me.
He stepped down the stage steps, and despite my inherited height, he still towered a full head taller than me. He raised his eyebrows in polite interest and waited for me to speak first, apparently unaware that he was looking at his daughter for the first time ever.
“Hi, um, professor? Sorry. Doctor,” I corrected myself. My heart felt like someone had shoved an angry hummingbird inside my chest. It fluttered painfully against my sternum, and I stood with my hands behind me so I could take secret comfort in pulling at the skin around my thumb nails.
“Max is fine.” His grin was kind behind his neat brown-and-gray beard. Despite the facial hair, I could see me in his bone structure. His cheekbones, the shape of his ears, the exact shade of brown in his hair— he’d given it all to me. The hummingbird behind my sternum kicked its fluttering up a gear. “I hope you aren’t here to complain about my lecture.”
“No!” I said, too aggressively. “It was fascinating, what I understood at least. I want to study volcanology, not paleomagnetism, though I’m sure I’ll have to learn it anyway.”
“Youwantto study?” he repeated. His grin turned curious, and he crossed his arms as he surveyed me. “You aren’t a student yet?”
“I’ll be a freshman here if I get off the waitlist.”
“And you’re sure about volcanoes? Paleomagnetists are the real rockstars of the geophysics world.”
“That’s a pun!” I blurted. His grin faltered, and I fumbled onwards, trying to redeem myself. “Because rockstars.Rocks. Get it? Although, it would probably be a better joke if you were a geologist.”
His polite smile broke into a laugh that carried through the emptying auditorium.
“Oh, thatisfunny!”
My chest loosened, and I laughed too. He’d been so funny on stage, but now he thoughtIwas funny.
Mydadthought I was funny.
“It was technically your joke.” I shrugged. He pointed a firm but good-natured finger at me.
“No, no, no. If you want to be a geophysicist, consider this your first lesson. Never, and I meannever, give anyone else credit for something you did.”
I nodded, absorbing his words. I’d never received fatherly advice before. Or advice from a world-renowned geophysicist. It was hard to say which was more thrilling.
“Right. Sorry.”
