Irish Melody Read Free

order, not really anyway, but that’s what the teacher had wanted and so—
    “Phillip, if you can’t bother to pay attention in my class I’m going to send you to the alpha to deal with you. He’s a very busy man, so I’m sure he wouldn’t like to be interrupted.”
    He looked up at her and wondered when they’d moved on to chemistry. Or when it had become nearly two o’clock in the afternoon.
    “Do you want to be sent away?” she asked him pointedly as the whispers started up.
    Ippy shook his head. No, he didn’t want Samson to be mad at him. But it was so hard to focus without Hannah there. If she’d been there, he was sure he could have paid attention. He’d never had this much trouble before she’d graduated. Why did she have to be so much older than him? Two years wasn’t all that much. And pretty soon he’d be graduating too and then she, Caelum and Ippy could go start their adventure together. But where would they live? Caelum was in Ireland and Hannah had a passport, but Ippy didn’t because his parents said he didn’t need one. They’d told him that when he’d asked for one right after meeting Caelum. They said he’d never be leaving the states and couldn’t survive in another country on his own. But he wouldn’t be on his own because he’d have Hannah there and she’d always been there to take care of him and then Caelum could, too. They’d be there for each other.
    People were getting up around him and Ippy looked at them. He wondered why they were packing up their things and why the teacher was getting her purse and putting away her books. Were they leaving early?
    He got up from his chair and went to her with his notebook ready. He asked if they were already done then showed her the notebook.
    She shook her head at him. “You missed out on an entire afternoon of class. You might as well have not even come back from lunch. You’re getting a zero for participation today.”
    His face fell and he shook his head, quickly writing that he didn’t know why he couldn’t pay attention.
    “Maybe because you were too focused on your girlfriend. I don’t care who you kids date as long as it doesn’t affect your schoolwork. But Phillip, you’ve been barely present for the past week. You’ve been physically here, but I can tell that you aren’t paying attention. I’ll be calling your parents to let them know what’s going on. Maybe they can stop this. I thought maybe you were coming down with something, but after another student caught your little display in the driveway, I’m convinced that I know what the problem is.” She moved away from him while he was still writing down a question to see if there was any homework that he hadn’t heard about.
    As he left the room and stepped onto the driveway to wait for Hannah, he heard laughing over his shoulder and turned to see Sara and her friends smiling at him. He watched them while he waited, wondering why she was still smiling at him until she walked up to him and put each of her arms over his shoulders. He stepped back instantly, not liking to be touched by most people. Hannah and Caelum were the only people that could touch him when they wanted to, and Sara was nowhere near that top of the list. She came with him though, her long fingernails curling into his shoulders until he couldn’t move back without having pain. She was smiling, but her eyes weren’t. Hannah had taught him that, to look for the creases around someone’s eyes to see if they meant it or not. It wasn’t a big deal to her, he knew this because she’d said so, but because he didn’t like when people were lying, she’d taught him that so that he could know when it was happening to him.
    He tried to pull his phone from his pocket to ask her what she was doing, but she pressed up against him. It wasn’t comfortable at all and he brought his hands up to push her away on her shoulders. Ippy heard a car door open and close while Sara was leaning toward him, but then