Read Online The Pantheon by Amy Leigh Strickland - Free Book Online Page B

sophomore lab write-up that had been left behind on the desk. Her hair was pulled back into a very plain ponytail and her glasses had slipped down her nose. Minnie had brown eyes and a slender build that was well hidden behind baggy fandom t-shirts. Minnie’s legs were very long in proportion to the rest of her body, but all-in-all she was only five-foot two-inches. She pushed her glasses back up her nose, where they stayed for a moment before beginning to slip once more.
    “ Ready?” June got her binder out.
    “ Yeah.” Minnie set her bag down. It thunked heavily on the table. “Can I just suggest something before we start? Or rather make an observation?”
    “ Hmm?”
    “ I think you grasp the concept. I think you’re just distracted.”
    June stopped rooting through her bag. “By what?”
    “ By watching Devon Valentine.” She’d seen the fight in the hall the other day. Somehow, June kept her composure.
    “ Devon’s gone after Zach just to spite me. I don’t trust her.” She attached a rubber hose to a glass tube and slid it through a rubber stopper. June went back to business as if that was the end of it.
    “ Do you trust him?” Minnie asked.
    June didn’t look up. “I don’t trust her.”
    “ It shouldn’t matter if you trust her; it’s not about her. It’s him that matters.” Not that Minnie would know. She’d never had a boyfriend. She’d never even tried to have a boyfriend. Still, her lack of interest in dating didn’t detract from her ability to see human relationships clearly and she saw that June and Zach’s was not so healthy. “You did nothing but spy on Devon when we did the lab. And now you’re here making it up and she’s out on the football field shaking her pom-poms in his view.”
    June’s initial imagining of Devon’s pom-poms did not include synthetic plastic streamers mounted on handles. She set the burner down hard and looked at Minnie, “It doesn’t matter if I trust Zach or not. She can still lay distrust between us. She can still drive a wedge if she wants to with her own dishonesty.”
    Minnie was about to say that she doubted Devon would do that, but she knew Devon was pretty cut-throat when she wanted something. So was June.
    “ I’m just gonna say the distrust is working.” She quickly changed the subject. “Okay, so what we’re looking for when we graph the temperatures is a plateau. That’s the boiling point.”
    Dr. Davis came in with a fresh cup of coffee to check on the girls. Her eyes fell on them, side by side, cooperating but at odds. It was like watching family. They looked like a pair of bickering sisters as Minnie corrected June’s lab write-up.
    “ How the hell do you remember that?” June remarked about a procedure Minnie rattled off from the text-book. She’d seemingly memorized the whole lab.
    “ I have a perfect memory,” Minnie bragged.
    Celene moved to her desk and sat down to watch. They didn’t seem to notice her.
    “ Really? Like photographic?”
    “ Everything. I don’t study anymore, I just do the reading at night and remember everything. It’s called eidetic recall.”
    “ Lucky,” June wouldn’t have to work so hard, she’d have time to keep an eye on Zach if she had that ability. “I hate you so much right now.”
    “ I can recite whole books I’ve read. Wanna hear Harry Potter ?” Now she was just showing off. “The Dursleys of number four--”
    “ No, we’re good! I’ve read it,” June lied. “Come on. I’ve got to get this done.”
    Minnie lit the burner. She pushed the button on the stop watch. Thirty seconds passed. “Temperature.”
    “ Sixty three degrees.” June marked the graph. “How long have you had this memory thing?”
    “ About... well I’ve always had a good memory, but it went haywire about April last year. Gradually, not all on one day. It made finals a breeze.”
    “ I can tell when people are lying,” June was trying to one-up the other girl. “Most people. There’s only