"My dear boy, I neither like you nor dislike you," Dax said. He could feel his hands beginning again to tremble slightly. Damn adrenalin! "I am merely trying to teach you elementary physics. Why do you ask?"
"Why do you give me such low grades?" Mallison said, but with no sense of urgent curiosity.
Howard Dax thought that the boy's manner was altogether too adult. He didn't expect deference from a modern teenager, but neither did he like to be spoken to in such a man-to-man way. No; come to think of it, man-to-man wasn't quite the phrase. It was off-hand. And yet it was artificial: Mallison never spoke in this way to his contemporaries. He usually talked like a ... what was it? Hipster?
"I give students the grades that in my opinion they deserve," Dax said. "In your case they are low because I don't think you're trying."
"I am trying," Mallison said, then added, "sir."
"You are," Dax said. "Very." He thought the remark was rather neat, but the boy looked at him without any change of expression. Why was he here? What did he want to say? "I must confess," Dax went on, "that I am surprised at your interest in grades. I should have thought that rock-and-roll was more your style. That and ... er ... racing around at night in a fast car!" He felt that he was sneering, and made his face blank.
"I'm too young for a driver's license," Mallison said.
"But old enough to pull yourself together and do some real work. You could do much better in class. You're not stupid."
The boy said nothing and continued to stare at him without expression.