Page 30 of Ink & Ambition

ProfessorWalkeropensupher powerpoint and I sigh in relief that she’s only planning to lecture today instead of having us make speeches again. Class started ten minutes ago, but Alex hasn’t shown up. I don’t know him well enough to know his punctuality habits, but he’s never been late for anything that’s included me.Self-centered, much? I focus on the professor’s voice to drown out my ridiculous thoughts.

“Got a pen?” I jolt in my chair at the sound of the familiar, unexpected voice in my ear. I’m so enraptured by my own thoughts I didn’t notice as Alex slid into the seat next to me. Alex lets out a breathy laugh, “Jumpy today, huh?”

Sighing, I roll my eyes as I hand him the pen I have in my hand and dig in my backpack for another.

“Thanks, sunshine.” I’m sure he’s trying to hit me with that megawatt smile but I don’t give him the satisfaction of looking in his direction. He pulls a notebook out of his bag and opens to a fresh page. For a moment, he’s quiet, seemingly focused on the front of the room and I’m actually shocked that he’s going to pay attention and leave me alone.

“Don’t you want to know why I was late?”

Shock over.

“No,” I reply, copying Professor Walker’s notes on “looney tune endings.”

“This prank is becoming more elaborate than I thought it would be,” he muses.

“And I didn’t ask.”

My inattention hardly deters Alex from continuing. “Devon and Kai think we should move in a different direction, but I think the plan we have now is going to work. Anyway, we were meeting about it. Lost track of time.”

I keep my eyes focused on the front of the room and try my hardest to pay attention but the overpowering annoyance next to me is making it difficult.

“Devon says it’s too risky putting you in the DE house next week. Says they might catch on to what we’re doing and hold you hostage.”

I draw a breath.How did I not think of that?

“Don’t worry,” Alex says, giving the top of my thigh a slight pinch before pulling his hand back. “I’ve got a plan.” I finally meet his eyes and there is a deep earnestness settled there. And again, for some completely unknown reason, I trust him. “We’ll talk about it more later.” I nod, giving him a slight grin before turning back to the lecture.

Alex doesn’t interrupt for the rest of the class time, but he also does absolutely nothing productive. The few times I glanced down at his notes, he’d doodled, “Eat my shorts” next to a terribly drawn picture of a clown. When Professor Walker dismisses us, Alex keeps stride with me toward the library where I’ve scheduled a study room for our podcast meeting.

“Okay so about this hostage thing?” I ask, my tone of voice slightly higher than normal.

“Would you relax,” he says, giving Edith a smile as we walk in. She hands me the key, giving me a look I don’t want to even try to decipher, and we head downstairs. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“But how are you going to prevent that? You’re not even going to be there,” I rib him a bit, opening the door to Study Room G6.

“Where am I going to be?”

“I don’t know!” We take the same seats we adopted last time we were in this room together.

“You think I would just throw you to the wolves and not be there to back you up?”

“Well, you can’t come inside with me, obviously.”

Alex shakes his head. “Obviously not inside. But I’ll be right outside and I already talked to the guys, we can set up a code word if you start to get freaked out.”

I pause for a minute. “You’ve really thought this through.”

Alex looks at me like I have twelve heads. “Of course I have.”

Rolling my eyes, something I feel like I’ve been doing so much more since I met Alex, I grab my notebook and laptop from the bag and open to theAsk Alexwebsite page I made a week ago.

“We should get started, there’s a lot to sift through here,” I say, pushing the screen toward Alex and letting him scroll through the hundreds of responses we’ve gotten in just a week’s time. I can’t even imagine the responses we’ll get once the show goes live.

“I’ve been doing a lot of research about podcasts—”

“Of course you have.”

I continue, ignoring his rude interjection, “And I think we need to establish a rapport that we’ll use when communicating and answering questions on air.”

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