so, I was going to post a part tonight but I got a little wrapped up so I'll start again on Monday. Don't kill me. Thanks for all the love and lack of love for april '-) You can hanging Max sometime next week but leave him be for now. I also didn't want to repost that part tonight with the whole weekend looming in front of it. It's not fair.
See you guys on Monday.
DM
Cocking/Caulking (Lizfic) ADULT COMPLETE 3/30/06
Moderators: Anniepoo98, Itzstacie, truelovepooh, Erina, Forum Moderators
Part 30
I'm Liz Parker and… someone is looking over my shoulder. Watching me, testing me, studying me… waiting to see what I do in a crisis situation… because I'm not too good at those and I always feel like I'm doing something wrong. Take the prom situation or the lack of prom situation as it turned out.
Liz waited by her locker until the final bell rang. Tony was supposed to meet her since she avoided him the day before. She sat in a daze through her morning classes, ignorant of the buzz drifting through her classes. Prom was in two days. Today, Friday, Prom. She should go. She should have fun. Maybe she could meet Tony there and… who was she kidding? At this point it could be nothing but awkward and he hadn't even showed up to school that she could tell.
The lunch table was quiet when she sat with her lunch bag. It was then she got her first hint. Max was holding April, not unusual, but she was or had been crying. "Hey. Guys. What's… going on?"
"My brother." April whispered, only slightly louder than usual. "He ran off last night… he hasn't been home and my dad is furious."
"April Jackson?" The principal paused at their table. "Come with me please."
"What is it?" She got to her feet slowly.
"Please, I need to speak with you in the office."
"Can my boyfriend come?"
"He'll have to wait outside."
Liz felt her stomach boiling. Maria and Alex were confused but they didn't look the way she felt. No. Something bad had happened. "Tony."
"What?" Maria furrowed her brow at her friend but the brunette was already on her feet. There was a pay phone twenty feet away. What was she thinking? She had a cell phone in her back pack. "What's wrong?"
"Something." Liz dug for the stupid piece of plastic and circuits. Her fingers fumbled on the keys but somehow she got the number dialed.
"Najera residence." A male voice whispered.
"Is Tony home?"
"No."
"He didn't come to school." Liz whimpered.
"No. He didn't." The voice sounded odd. Void of emotion. "And… he won't be going… ever."
"I'm Liz Parker… his… date… for…"
"Prom." The voice sighed heavily. "He talked about you."
"What?" The boiling in her stomach threatened to rise in her throat. "Where is he?"
"Liz, I hate to be the one to tell you this… and on the phone… I'm his big brother, Kelen." He sighed again. "Tony… there was an accident… last night. Liz, Tony died."
"What?"
"I let him take my car. He was supposed to get it washed. I guess he ran into Gary somewhere… Gary was driving and there was an accident."
Liz had stopped hearing Kelen a long time ago. How? She had spoken to him just two nights before. It's not possible. Tony was 17. He wasn't supposed to be dead. Things like this didn't happen in Roswell. They just didn't. It was a small boring town and kids didn't die.
"The doctors said that Gary's high. They won't get too much out of him until he comes down… if he can remember then, even. Liz? Are you there?"
"I have to get to class."
"Liz? Are you at school?"
"I have to go." Liz hung up the phone and picked up her bag. She hadn't known him all that well but she had kissed him. They were kind of dating. They had shared drama and in high school that was more than just a crush.
"Liz?" Maria looked scared. She stared at her friend, who had become a shell in a few seconds on the phone. "Who did you call?"
Max came barreling around the corner, nearly knocking over eight people and their trays of food. When he saw Liz, he just stopped. He approached her slowly. "April's parents took her home. They told me… Liz, are you okay?"
"It's not true. He's a nice guy. It didn't happen." She shook her head at him.
"Let's go talk to the principal and call your mom." Max put his arms around her. "He wasn't high, Liz. He was trying to stop Gary."
"How do they know?" Liz let him lead her away from the staring students. Suddenly it was another arm around her and they were outside. She looked up. "Michael?"
"Yeah." He nodded and kept moving them to Max's jeep. "Max went to tell the warden about the situation and we'll get you home."
I don't remember much about the ride home except that I didn't let go of Michael until I got home. I don't remember if I thanked him or Max. I barely remember going to bed and at some point Maria was there. She had the full story by then. Gary was on some new high and when he ran into his buddy, Tony, he had a gun. So Gary was driving Kelen's car when it happened. The gun went off. The bullet hit Gary in the foot and he lost control of the car. They were speeding and then they spun and the semi hit the passenger side. I talked to Kelen again. It's going to be a closed casket funeral on Monday. Tony didn't have a thing in his system. He had been clean for months according to Kelen. He was turning himself around, getting himself together.
Liz played with the potpourri she had made out of the flowers Tony had given her two weeks before. Two weeks. She had seen him around, talked to him a bit the semester before but two weeks were all she had of a pretty cool guy. One and a half because she didn't trust him for the last half-week. Sitting in the park in the middle of the night, while everyone else was at prom, with a bowl of disintegrating flowers. She had found a smooth rock on her way and it… she didn't even know what she was doing until she was doing it.
A shadow fell over her as she ground the dry petals and stems into dust. "That's not good for flowers, you know."
"Yeah." Liz nodded and waited until he sat. "What are you doing here?"
"Free country. I was walking. Contemplating my existence. You?"
"Sitting… doing the same." She whispered. "You're not at the prom?"
"Me? At the prom. You have me confused with Max but… he's not there either." Michael cleared his throat. "You barely knew the guy."
"But I knew him."
"Why does it make you so sad? At school that day… you weren't even in your head. You were somewhere else and you just… went. Anything could have happened to you."
"But it didn't." Liz looked up at him. "I knew my friends were around."
"Right. Your ex-boyfriend and his… friend." He stared at her, hard. "For all you knew, we were evil aliens taking you off for experimentation. We could have taken you and dropped you in the middle of the freeway for all you were paying attention."
"I trusted you guys to get me home."
"You trusted Max."
"And you, too." Liz ran her fingers through the dust in her bowl. "You, too, Michael."
"Why would you trust me? I don't even like you."
She felt her face contort into a smile. "I know."
"Then why?"
"Why did you help me?"
"I…" He looked away. "I don't know."
"We're friends, Michael. Not best friends, not close friends but friends." Liz told him with some authority. "I get on your nerves and you get on mine… but we have friends in common and that makes us… civil to each other." She thought she knew what he was getting at. "I'd be sad if you died."
"Why?"
"You're a loyal friend, Michael. Anybody can see it. You're irrational sometimes but you care about Max and Isabel." She nudged him with her knee. "You're a little too good at the protection business. I'm glad Max put his foot down when he started seeing April."
"She's harmless. She's more locked up than… me." Michael snorted. "They were never going to last."
"So what was so scary about me?" Liz furrowed her brow.
"You're not… locked up." Michael got to his feet. He had said too much. "Did you know that you transmit every feeling you have? You paralyzed everyone around you the other day. One look at your face there was nothing anyone could do because they knew it was bad."
"I am though. Locked up. Tony… I couldn't even trust him because I was afraid to." She poured the dust into her hand and blew it into the light breeze that stirred the night air. "I don't think I've felt anything real in a long time. I was starting to and then I got scared." She looked up at him. "You ever feel like that? Like you can't show anyone the real you?"
"All the time." Michael nodded and turned to go. "You shouldn't be here by yourself."
"Because I'm a girl?"
"Because it's late and you're not yourself. Go home. Hug the folks, go to bed… do whatever it is that girls like you do." He walked backwards. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to a… friend."
"Goodnight, Michael." She called after him. He stopped and looked both ways but they were the only ones out this late.
"Parker, get on your feet. You're going home."
So, it's tragic because Tony was bright and he had a future. I won't be so selfish as to dwell on him being an almost-boyfriend or my prom date. He had a family and friends, some good and some lost. I feel guilty that I don’t feel worse but that turns into a vicious cycle and my head hurts enough already. Gary's going to rehab and then he's going to spend some time in jail and after that… who knows? His family won't be here anymore. If Max told me right, they're loading up the last of their stuff and Monday, after the funeral, they're leaving Roswell for good. I hope he's doing okay.
Max waved as they drove off. He promised he'd stay that long. Her parents had changed their mind. Sooner was better. He had walked to her house because he knew he needed this time alone. When he looked up again, he was in front of the UFO Center. There. Across the street. Liz and Michael? Michael had his hands shoved in his pockets, his dead ducked and… smiling? Smirking. Liz fiddling with the door, talking, nodding her head, rolling her eyes.
Head and heart still in pain, he had to ignore it. He had to go somewhere else and deal with what he could deal with and nothing more. Moving on he turned into an alley. It was a shortcut to the next main street and he could take that one home. As he turned the corner onto the next street, he brushed against someone and murmured an apology. Looking over his shoulder, they were doing the same. A blonde. Nice looking… had he seen her before? Furrowed brow, he returned to his path.
Turning again, she was looking back, brow creased. She turned back the way she was going and seemed to shake her head to herself. Stopping, he watched her go. Did he know her?
I just hope that Max and I will be able to move on. Not together, obviously… just in general. He deserves someone that can make him happy. I'm sure there's someone out there made just for him… Like he told me once, it may be years from now but there is someone for everyone… out there, somewhere.
TBC
Liz waited by her locker until the final bell rang. Tony was supposed to meet her since she avoided him the day before. She sat in a daze through her morning classes, ignorant of the buzz drifting through her classes. Prom was in two days. Today, Friday, Prom. She should go. She should have fun. Maybe she could meet Tony there and… who was she kidding? At this point it could be nothing but awkward and he hadn't even showed up to school that she could tell.
The lunch table was quiet when she sat with her lunch bag. It was then she got her first hint. Max was holding April, not unusual, but she was or had been crying. "Hey. Guys. What's… going on?"
"My brother." April whispered, only slightly louder than usual. "He ran off last night… he hasn't been home and my dad is furious."
"April Jackson?" The principal paused at their table. "Come with me please."
"What is it?" She got to her feet slowly.
"Please, I need to speak with you in the office."
"Can my boyfriend come?"
"He'll have to wait outside."
Liz felt her stomach boiling. Maria and Alex were confused but they didn't look the way she felt. No. Something bad had happened. "Tony."
"What?" Maria furrowed her brow at her friend but the brunette was already on her feet. There was a pay phone twenty feet away. What was she thinking? She had a cell phone in her back pack. "What's wrong?"
"Something." Liz dug for the stupid piece of plastic and circuits. Her fingers fumbled on the keys but somehow she got the number dialed.
"Najera residence." A male voice whispered.
"Is Tony home?"
"No."
"He didn't come to school." Liz whimpered.
"No. He didn't." The voice sounded odd. Void of emotion. "And… he won't be going… ever."
"I'm Liz Parker… his… date… for…"
"Prom." The voice sighed heavily. "He talked about you."
"What?" The boiling in her stomach threatened to rise in her throat. "Where is he?"
"Liz, I hate to be the one to tell you this… and on the phone… I'm his big brother, Kelen." He sighed again. "Tony… there was an accident… last night. Liz, Tony died."
"What?"
"I let him take my car. He was supposed to get it washed. I guess he ran into Gary somewhere… Gary was driving and there was an accident."
Liz had stopped hearing Kelen a long time ago. How? She had spoken to him just two nights before. It's not possible. Tony was 17. He wasn't supposed to be dead. Things like this didn't happen in Roswell. They just didn't. It was a small boring town and kids didn't die.
"The doctors said that Gary's high. They won't get too much out of him until he comes down… if he can remember then, even. Liz? Are you there?"
"I have to get to class."
"Liz? Are you at school?"
"I have to go." Liz hung up the phone and picked up her bag. She hadn't known him all that well but she had kissed him. They were kind of dating. They had shared drama and in high school that was more than just a crush.
"Liz?" Maria looked scared. She stared at her friend, who had become a shell in a few seconds on the phone. "Who did you call?"
Max came barreling around the corner, nearly knocking over eight people and their trays of food. When he saw Liz, he just stopped. He approached her slowly. "April's parents took her home. They told me… Liz, are you okay?"
"It's not true. He's a nice guy. It didn't happen." She shook her head at him.
"Let's go talk to the principal and call your mom." Max put his arms around her. "He wasn't high, Liz. He was trying to stop Gary."
"How do they know?" Liz let him lead her away from the staring students. Suddenly it was another arm around her and they were outside. She looked up. "Michael?"
"Yeah." He nodded and kept moving them to Max's jeep. "Max went to tell the warden about the situation and we'll get you home."
I don't remember much about the ride home except that I didn't let go of Michael until I got home. I don't remember if I thanked him or Max. I barely remember going to bed and at some point Maria was there. She had the full story by then. Gary was on some new high and when he ran into his buddy, Tony, he had a gun. So Gary was driving Kelen's car when it happened. The gun went off. The bullet hit Gary in the foot and he lost control of the car. They were speeding and then they spun and the semi hit the passenger side. I talked to Kelen again. It's going to be a closed casket funeral on Monday. Tony didn't have a thing in his system. He had been clean for months according to Kelen. He was turning himself around, getting himself together.
Liz played with the potpourri she had made out of the flowers Tony had given her two weeks before. Two weeks. She had seen him around, talked to him a bit the semester before but two weeks were all she had of a pretty cool guy. One and a half because she didn't trust him for the last half-week. Sitting in the park in the middle of the night, while everyone else was at prom, with a bowl of disintegrating flowers. She had found a smooth rock on her way and it… she didn't even know what she was doing until she was doing it.
A shadow fell over her as she ground the dry petals and stems into dust. "That's not good for flowers, you know."
"Yeah." Liz nodded and waited until he sat. "What are you doing here?"
"Free country. I was walking. Contemplating my existence. You?"
"Sitting… doing the same." She whispered. "You're not at the prom?"
"Me? At the prom. You have me confused with Max but… he's not there either." Michael cleared his throat. "You barely knew the guy."
"But I knew him."
"Why does it make you so sad? At school that day… you weren't even in your head. You were somewhere else and you just… went. Anything could have happened to you."
"But it didn't." Liz looked up at him. "I knew my friends were around."
"Right. Your ex-boyfriend and his… friend." He stared at her, hard. "For all you knew, we were evil aliens taking you off for experimentation. We could have taken you and dropped you in the middle of the freeway for all you were paying attention."
"I trusted you guys to get me home."
"You trusted Max."
"And you, too." Liz ran her fingers through the dust in her bowl. "You, too, Michael."
"Why would you trust me? I don't even like you."
She felt her face contort into a smile. "I know."
"Then why?"
"Why did you help me?"
"I…" He looked away. "I don't know."
"We're friends, Michael. Not best friends, not close friends but friends." Liz told him with some authority. "I get on your nerves and you get on mine… but we have friends in common and that makes us… civil to each other." She thought she knew what he was getting at. "I'd be sad if you died."
"Why?"
"You're a loyal friend, Michael. Anybody can see it. You're irrational sometimes but you care about Max and Isabel." She nudged him with her knee. "You're a little too good at the protection business. I'm glad Max put his foot down when he started seeing April."
"She's harmless. She's more locked up than… me." Michael snorted. "They were never going to last."
"So what was so scary about me?" Liz furrowed her brow.
"You're not… locked up." Michael got to his feet. He had said too much. "Did you know that you transmit every feeling you have? You paralyzed everyone around you the other day. One look at your face there was nothing anyone could do because they knew it was bad."
"I am though. Locked up. Tony… I couldn't even trust him because I was afraid to." She poured the dust into her hand and blew it into the light breeze that stirred the night air. "I don't think I've felt anything real in a long time. I was starting to and then I got scared." She looked up at him. "You ever feel like that? Like you can't show anyone the real you?"
"All the time." Michael nodded and turned to go. "You shouldn't be here by yourself."
"Because I'm a girl?"
"Because it's late and you're not yourself. Go home. Hug the folks, go to bed… do whatever it is that girls like you do." He walked backwards. "Wouldn't want anything to happen to a… friend."
"Goodnight, Michael." She called after him. He stopped and looked both ways but they were the only ones out this late.
"Parker, get on your feet. You're going home."
So, it's tragic because Tony was bright and he had a future. I won't be so selfish as to dwell on him being an almost-boyfriend or my prom date. He had a family and friends, some good and some lost. I feel guilty that I don’t feel worse but that turns into a vicious cycle and my head hurts enough already. Gary's going to rehab and then he's going to spend some time in jail and after that… who knows? His family won't be here anymore. If Max told me right, they're loading up the last of their stuff and Monday, after the funeral, they're leaving Roswell for good. I hope he's doing okay.
Max waved as they drove off. He promised he'd stay that long. Her parents had changed their mind. Sooner was better. He had walked to her house because he knew he needed this time alone. When he looked up again, he was in front of the UFO Center. There. Across the street. Liz and Michael? Michael had his hands shoved in his pockets, his dead ducked and… smiling? Smirking. Liz fiddling with the door, talking, nodding her head, rolling her eyes.
Head and heart still in pain, he had to ignore it. He had to go somewhere else and deal with what he could deal with and nothing more. Moving on he turned into an alley. It was a shortcut to the next main street and he could take that one home. As he turned the corner onto the next street, he brushed against someone and murmured an apology. Looking over his shoulder, they were doing the same. A blonde. Nice looking… had he seen her before? Furrowed brow, he returned to his path.
Turning again, she was looking back, brow creased. She turned back the way she was going and seemed to shake her head to herself. Stopping, he watched her go. Did he know her?
I just hope that Max and I will be able to move on. Not together, obviously… just in general. He deserves someone that can make him happy. I'm sure there's someone out there made just for him… Like he told me once, it may be years from now but there is someone for everyone… out there, somewhere.
TBC
Part 31
I'm Liz Parker and I lied. In my journal to myself, I lied. I said I wouldn't dwell on Tony but I can't do anything but… and no one in this forsaken town will let me do otherwise. I've become a social leper. Like if other girls talk to me, their boyfriends will die in a horrible accident. It's not contagious. It's awkward and depressing if that's all you want to talk about. What it really is for them is a jolt of reality in a world revolving around smoke and mirrors. At least I still have my friends… sometimes.
One week of school left and the gang was hanging out after hours on the last Friday. Liz, Maria and Alex occupied a booth, flipping through their yearbooks and chatting. Alex cleared his throat for the millionth time. "Is it wrong to kiss and tell if you got dumped a week after prom? I mean… it's you guys. I'm not spilling the goods in the locker room." He shifted in his seat, never waiting for a response. "I totally got lucky. It lasted for all of five minutes but it happened, and by gum, it counts."
Liz heard him but she didn't because there were Tony's memorial pages. So that was why no one asked to sign her yearbook. That was why no one had made eye contact all day. That was why no one had offered their sympathies for once.
I was immortalized in the yearbook as Tony's girlfriend. A picture of us buying prom tickets was fairly prominent on the one of the pages. It looked kind of romantic but I was there and it was really silly.
"So, Liz, you got really quiet." Alex cleared his throat.
"Sh. She… saw it." Maria cleared her throat.
They didn't warn me and they knew.
"So, that's why." Liz nodded and she fingered his features on the page. They, the yearbook committee or whoever, had chosen some really flattering pictures of him. Two-page spread devoted to a pretty cool guy that pretty much everyone kind of knew who had lost his life just before prom, the most holy of school functions… and they put it in the back of the yearbook, after the advertisements but before the blank signature pages. "Well, that explains a lot." She stared at the pictures of the two of them. "We were just standing in line, talking. We didn't see Ricky with the camera. He put his arm around me and leaned in. I thought he was going to kiss me but he put his mouth to my ear and whispered, 'Rek rapzil evoli.'"
"What the hell is that?" Maria exclaimed.
Alex pursed his lips to keep from laughing, he had gotten right off the bat. Liz looked at him then at Maria. "I don't know. He never explained." Liz cleared her throat. She knew what it meant. It had taken her several class periods and a whole sheet of scratch paper but she had figured it out before she had started avoiding him because… of the other thing.
"There goes all the romantic imagery right out of the picture." Maria complained. "You look sweet in that picture. How are you dealing? Really."
"Fine, I guess." Liz shrugged, hiding the fact that she hated that question. "But you…" She pointed at Alex. "You had sex last month and we're barely finding out now."
"Yeah." Maria turned to their guy friend.
"I thought that if I went that way with the Tony stuff, we could get away from the sex stuff."
"From Tony stuff to sex stuff." Liz countered. "My goal."
"How's about a heavy silence?"
"Okay."
"No." Maria stood on the couch. "He's not a virgin. He's… done it and we need to know why he was babbling earlier."
They let me change the subject because… well, no one wants me to say what they were all thinking and I don't want to say it either but they were all wrong about Tony. Not completely but at the present time, they were wrong about him and they don't want me to blame them for it. It doesn't do any good to blame anyone but Gary. I can hate the guy if I want… hopefully I don't have to. Hopefully he hates himself more than I could ever manage to. Tony was his best friend since childhood after all. For a high, Gary shot himself in the foot, lost control of a car that resulted in the death of his best friend and the paralyzation of a truck driver with a wife and three kids to support. Hopefully I don't need to add to his guilt. I can't dwell on him or anything connected with him…. Except Max. He's been avoiding me and I can almost understand why but… it's so obvious that no one is saying anything about it.
Max joined them after having a strained conversation with his sister at another table. Music had prevented anyone from hearing what had gone on over there. He looked stressed. Liz nudged him. "Alex had sex."
"Stop, Liz." Alex pleaded.
"Tiffany?" Max propped his head on his hand. Alex nodded. "Congratulations."
Liz nudged him again. "How are you dealing?" He shrugged, pain lingering in his eyes. "They left early?"
"I got to say goodbye." His eyes went to a faraway place and quickly returned. "We parted on good terms. That was the most important thing to me."
"That's good."
"Hey listen…" Max glanced at Isabel, who sat by herself staring out a window. "You and Michael… aren't… anything, right?" He hated asking her the question but he was concerned about them all. He had had two months to dwell on things happening around him as he recovered from the loss he was feeling. April had left him alone and aching. He missed her, her quiet intensity, her taciturn ways, her few but pithy words, her way of touching him and making him feel like the only guy on the planet who had ever done so. He missed the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn't looking, her blush when she was caught… the way her skin felt against his…
Liz glared at him. "What are you talking about?"
"I saw the two of you… Prom Night…" Max admitted. "I'm not… butting in but I kind of want to know."
"No. We're friends. He… cheered me up and walked me home. We haven't really talked since but that's a pattern I've noticed. After prom, no one speaks to the dead boy's girlfriend."
"Hey. I didn't mean it like that. I've been dealing with… stuff of my own." Max cut in. "I just… are you?"
"Would that be a bad thing?" Liz stared at him. "Sometimes I wonder if you're just as overprotective of Michael and Isabel as they are over you. If it was one of them getting serious…" Liz trailed off when his eyes darted to Isabel for a second. "What is it Max?"
"I just didn't want you to get hurt." Max stared at the ketchup bottle. "Michael's… he's not sure what he's doing these days and it'll be more than just you that gets hurt."
"Oh." Liz nodded. "We're not. Like I said. We're friends."
"Good."
"You don't have to protect me anymore, Max."
"I know." They sat next to each other, leg pressed against leg, while Maria and Alex chatted. Silence building. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you but I'm in some thing of a bit of pain, lately."
"Some thing of a bit?"
"Been going crazy, forgetting this language called English that I used to speak with some efficiency." Max shrugged with a wry smile. "Mom's been watching a lot of A&E lately, I'm watching with her. Better than reading all those Bronte books."
Liz lifted her yearbook once more and flipped through it. "You need a new girlfriend."
"No, I don't. I think one a year is my limit." Max looked up when Michael pushed open the doors to the café and jerked his head towards the dark outside. Max started to rise but Michael pinned him with a look and he settled back into his seat. Liz was shocked when it was Isabel who rose and joined Michael outside. So that's what that was about.
"She's a big girl, Max. She can take care of herself." She squeezed his arm.
"It seems wrong somehow." Max shook his head. "To me. When I was dating you, it felt wrong to him. To her. To me it was the rightest thing on the planet. Then it wasn't right at all… and then there was her… and things felt right again… for the first time in months…"
"He's your best friend. More than that. He's like family and you've appointed yourself family sentry. He's not your son, Max. He's your friend… and he's falling for your sister. Is that so wrong? She's allowed to grow up and pursue a relationship with a hunk of a guy like Michael… who, while he tries hard to push people away, wants someone just like the rest of us." Liz nudged him none too gently. "Maybe it feels right to them."
"Maybe."
"Hey. Have you met the new girl?" Liz pointed to her picture in the back of the junior section. "She's completely the opposite of anyone you've dated so far… well, she's short but everyone is next to you." Max wasn't paying attention. "She's cute. Blonde curly hair, bluest eyes I've ever seen. She's super nice with a biting sense of humor."
Max had given his attention the second he heard 'blond curly hair, bluest eyes' because that girl had haunted him since he had seen April off. It felt so wrong to think of the two girls in the same thought but he couldn't not think of the blonde girl in the context of when he'd met her. There she was in black and white. "She's new… at our school."
"She's in my history class, so she's smart too." Liz tilted her head in surprise. Max had just professed he had a one girl per year limited but he was captivated. "I could introduce you. She's always looking forward to meeting new people…" she giggled," especially boys. I think she's a little boy crazy."
Watching Max drool over the new girl's picture, I thought about what Michael had said about April. She was a quiet girl sure and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking but Max always said he could read her loud and clear… because she wanted him to. Maybe that's true but Max had become hard to read when he wasn't with April but watching him drool over the new girl's picture, he had become the readable person I have always known him to be. Still the Max mystery that was so intriguing but those signs I had learned to read dating him… those were back in full swing. I hated to pull a Maria but I had to at least introduce them…
…Some days, though, I just want to scream.
Liz stood outside the auditorium and refused to move when both Maria and Alex stopped to see what was up. It was the End-of-year-assembly slash long-overdue-memorial slash anti-drug-seminar and she did not want to be in there. When the lobby began to clear, a tie filled her vision. Prepared for the principal or a counselor, she worked up some tears as an excuse not to go. "I know that trick and it's not going to work on me." His hand reached for hers and gave it a good squeeze. "You remember me?"
When she finally looked up, there stood Kelen Najera. She had met him twice. Once at Tony's when she had gone to take them a casserole her mother had made, then at the funeral 'comida' as he had called it. "Hey. Kelen. Yeah, I'm fine."
"I know you are. It's a trick."
"Yeah… I thought you were someone official and…"
"You needed a way to get out of this." Kelen nodded. "It only works for the first few weeks and then everyone wants you to buck up and get over it." Wrapping an arm around her and steering her toward the stage entrance, he continued talking softly. "Tell you a little secret. Tony was the younger brother but he was the wise one. He told me to always keep some gum and some chap stick in my pocket. Said you never know when you're going to have to kiss a pretty girl."
Liz let loose a snort and had to cover it quickly as they passed the principal. "He always tasted like Winterfresh gum and mint chap stick."
"I guess it works." They shared a smile. Kelen cleared his throat and said something softly to the man, who nodded and pointed off stage. "Come on, we got you a seat where you can be by yourself and still hear the wonderful assembly."
After a few moments, he dragged a chair next to hers and pointed off where they could see the student body from where they sat. Liz sat and let her self think of Tony while she ignored the awards, some of which she received but were announced and set aside. No question and no explanation.
She thought of those minty kisses and hot breath, warm hands on her ribcage the once or twice things had gotten that far. Lying in the park with him. Humming 'Steal Your Car' and wondering where Tony had ever heard such a song. After a moment, she realized that Kelen was humming it too. They shared a looking and snickered while shaking their heads, it was a really horrible song about theft, arson, and destruction of property, not to mention cheating, slander and general torturing of confounding girlfriends.
Everyone in the auditorium looked appropriately sad and tried to pay attention but everyone wanted to be somewhere else talking about something else. She stopped her humming as she remembered what had bothered her at the funeral. She hadn't seen him. He was dead. That's what they told her but they had not allowed a viewing of the body because of damages caused by the accident but… she hadn't seen anything but a casket. Tears slipped down her face when Kelen rose to make his speech. She hadn't really cried at the funeral but no one could tell with the sunglasses and when she took them off, her eyes were red from sorrow and insomnia but a good cry she had not had.
Friday she had stayed home and stared at the wall. Saturday, instead of going to prom, she had sat in the park and tried valiantly to make herself believe that she would be okay. Instead of sleeping late on Sunday, she had attended the early rosary and the late rosary. At the funeral on Monday, she had done everything possible to stay calm. And now, instead of listening to Kelen talk about Tony's dreams and aspirations, she was having her first real cry. She had written strong words in her journal but you could be brave for a book of blank pages and mundane scribblings. You could be brave for strangers. You could brave for mom and dad and friends. You could not be brave for yourself if you really weren't.
Warm arms enveloped her as she bawled her eyes out. She couldn't even think about whose they were. A masculine voice shushed her softly and rocked her as they sank onto his chair together.
"Sh. I miss him, too." Kelen stroked her hair. Liz hiccupped as the world righted suddenly. "Sh."
"Kelen?" They were still behind the stage but now everyone was gone. Gone to classes, gone home, gone wherever.
"Yeah."
"Was he mad at me?"
"No. No, he understood… after he talked to me about it for two hours. He's… he had known for a while that he should straighten himself out. My brother was a rare soul." Kelen rested his head on Liz's, not wanting to let go of the only other person who was hurting as much as he was. "Mom and Dad are a little weird. Mom and her crystals and Dad with his born-again Christian stuff. Somehow I made it out of the house with my Catholicism intact the way my grandmother wanted. Tony just picked and chose until he found what worked for him."
"I… told myself I wouldn't do this, that I didn't have a right to be this blubbery would-be widow girl." Liz sniffled.
"He talked about you for a long time. Working up the guts to ask you out after you broke up with some guy." Kelen shrugged. "My little brother on the verge of a first love… that's what I saw."
Liz thought that over. Could it have been? Tony himself had said as much in his Tony-way. Kelen set her in her own chair and turned her face to him. "Two weeks… that's a high school engagement if I remember correctly. That perfect honeymoon period before you start picking out china patterns and naming future offspring. Dating exclusively and preparing prom coordination. Cummerbunds and corsages. You're 17, that's what it's all about. No one should have to go through this at 17. I'm 22 and I'm not ready for it. My brother, my best friend. Your boyfriend. It's all too soon." Kelen kissed her forehead. "Don't let anyone tell you what you should and should not feel. Just deal with the feelings you've got cause I know those are more than overwhelming all by themselves."
Sometimes the best friends you ever have are the ones that only last a few minutes. A day. A week. Impressions enough to know that there's one person that gets you even if they never really got the chance.
TBC
One week of school left and the gang was hanging out after hours on the last Friday. Liz, Maria and Alex occupied a booth, flipping through their yearbooks and chatting. Alex cleared his throat for the millionth time. "Is it wrong to kiss and tell if you got dumped a week after prom? I mean… it's you guys. I'm not spilling the goods in the locker room." He shifted in his seat, never waiting for a response. "I totally got lucky. It lasted for all of five minutes but it happened, and by gum, it counts."
Liz heard him but she didn't because there were Tony's memorial pages. So that was why no one asked to sign her yearbook. That was why no one had made eye contact all day. That was why no one had offered their sympathies for once.
I was immortalized in the yearbook as Tony's girlfriend. A picture of us buying prom tickets was fairly prominent on the one of the pages. It looked kind of romantic but I was there and it was really silly.
"So, Liz, you got really quiet." Alex cleared his throat.
"Sh. She… saw it." Maria cleared her throat.
They didn't warn me and they knew.
"So, that's why." Liz nodded and she fingered his features on the page. They, the yearbook committee or whoever, had chosen some really flattering pictures of him. Two-page spread devoted to a pretty cool guy that pretty much everyone kind of knew who had lost his life just before prom, the most holy of school functions… and they put it in the back of the yearbook, after the advertisements but before the blank signature pages. "Well, that explains a lot." She stared at the pictures of the two of them. "We were just standing in line, talking. We didn't see Ricky with the camera. He put his arm around me and leaned in. I thought he was going to kiss me but he put his mouth to my ear and whispered, 'Rek rapzil evoli.'"
"What the hell is that?" Maria exclaimed.
Alex pursed his lips to keep from laughing, he had gotten right off the bat. Liz looked at him then at Maria. "I don't know. He never explained." Liz cleared her throat. She knew what it meant. It had taken her several class periods and a whole sheet of scratch paper but she had figured it out before she had started avoiding him because… of the other thing.
"There goes all the romantic imagery right out of the picture." Maria complained. "You look sweet in that picture. How are you dealing? Really."
"Fine, I guess." Liz shrugged, hiding the fact that she hated that question. "But you…" She pointed at Alex. "You had sex last month and we're barely finding out now."
"Yeah." Maria turned to their guy friend.
"I thought that if I went that way with the Tony stuff, we could get away from the sex stuff."
"From Tony stuff to sex stuff." Liz countered. "My goal."
"How's about a heavy silence?"
"Okay."
"No." Maria stood on the couch. "He's not a virgin. He's… done it and we need to know why he was babbling earlier."
They let me change the subject because… well, no one wants me to say what they were all thinking and I don't want to say it either but they were all wrong about Tony. Not completely but at the present time, they were wrong about him and they don't want me to blame them for it. It doesn't do any good to blame anyone but Gary. I can hate the guy if I want… hopefully I don't have to. Hopefully he hates himself more than I could ever manage to. Tony was his best friend since childhood after all. For a high, Gary shot himself in the foot, lost control of a car that resulted in the death of his best friend and the paralyzation of a truck driver with a wife and three kids to support. Hopefully I don't need to add to his guilt. I can't dwell on him or anything connected with him…. Except Max. He's been avoiding me and I can almost understand why but… it's so obvious that no one is saying anything about it.
Max joined them after having a strained conversation with his sister at another table. Music had prevented anyone from hearing what had gone on over there. He looked stressed. Liz nudged him. "Alex had sex."
"Stop, Liz." Alex pleaded.
"Tiffany?" Max propped his head on his hand. Alex nodded. "Congratulations."
Liz nudged him again. "How are you dealing?" He shrugged, pain lingering in his eyes. "They left early?"
"I got to say goodbye." His eyes went to a faraway place and quickly returned. "We parted on good terms. That was the most important thing to me."
"That's good."
"Hey listen…" Max glanced at Isabel, who sat by herself staring out a window. "You and Michael… aren't… anything, right?" He hated asking her the question but he was concerned about them all. He had had two months to dwell on things happening around him as he recovered from the loss he was feeling. April had left him alone and aching. He missed her, her quiet intensity, her taciturn ways, her few but pithy words, her way of touching him and making him feel like the only guy on the planet who had ever done so. He missed the way she looked at him when she thought he wasn't looking, her blush when she was caught… the way her skin felt against his…
Liz glared at him. "What are you talking about?"
"I saw the two of you… Prom Night…" Max admitted. "I'm not… butting in but I kind of want to know."
"No. We're friends. He… cheered me up and walked me home. We haven't really talked since but that's a pattern I've noticed. After prom, no one speaks to the dead boy's girlfriend."
"Hey. I didn't mean it like that. I've been dealing with… stuff of my own." Max cut in. "I just… are you?"
"Would that be a bad thing?" Liz stared at him. "Sometimes I wonder if you're just as overprotective of Michael and Isabel as they are over you. If it was one of them getting serious…" Liz trailed off when his eyes darted to Isabel for a second. "What is it Max?"
"I just didn't want you to get hurt." Max stared at the ketchup bottle. "Michael's… he's not sure what he's doing these days and it'll be more than just you that gets hurt."
"Oh." Liz nodded. "We're not. Like I said. We're friends."
"Good."
"You don't have to protect me anymore, Max."
"I know." They sat next to each other, leg pressed against leg, while Maria and Alex chatted. Silence building. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to ignore you but I'm in some thing of a bit of pain, lately."
"Some thing of a bit?"
"Been going crazy, forgetting this language called English that I used to speak with some efficiency." Max shrugged with a wry smile. "Mom's been watching a lot of A&E lately, I'm watching with her. Better than reading all those Bronte books."
Liz lifted her yearbook once more and flipped through it. "You need a new girlfriend."
"No, I don't. I think one a year is my limit." Max looked up when Michael pushed open the doors to the café and jerked his head towards the dark outside. Max started to rise but Michael pinned him with a look and he settled back into his seat. Liz was shocked when it was Isabel who rose and joined Michael outside. So that's what that was about.
"She's a big girl, Max. She can take care of herself." She squeezed his arm.
"It seems wrong somehow." Max shook his head. "To me. When I was dating you, it felt wrong to him. To her. To me it was the rightest thing on the planet. Then it wasn't right at all… and then there was her… and things felt right again… for the first time in months…"
"He's your best friend. More than that. He's like family and you've appointed yourself family sentry. He's not your son, Max. He's your friend… and he's falling for your sister. Is that so wrong? She's allowed to grow up and pursue a relationship with a hunk of a guy like Michael… who, while he tries hard to push people away, wants someone just like the rest of us." Liz nudged him none too gently. "Maybe it feels right to them."
"Maybe."
"Hey. Have you met the new girl?" Liz pointed to her picture in the back of the junior section. "She's completely the opposite of anyone you've dated so far… well, she's short but everyone is next to you." Max wasn't paying attention. "She's cute. Blonde curly hair, bluest eyes I've ever seen. She's super nice with a biting sense of humor."
Max had given his attention the second he heard 'blond curly hair, bluest eyes' because that girl had haunted him since he had seen April off. It felt so wrong to think of the two girls in the same thought but he couldn't not think of the blonde girl in the context of when he'd met her. There she was in black and white. "She's new… at our school."
"She's in my history class, so she's smart too." Liz tilted her head in surprise. Max had just professed he had a one girl per year limited but he was captivated. "I could introduce you. She's always looking forward to meeting new people…" she giggled," especially boys. I think she's a little boy crazy."
Watching Max drool over the new girl's picture, I thought about what Michael had said about April. She was a quiet girl sure and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking but Max always said he could read her loud and clear… because she wanted him to. Maybe that's true but Max had become hard to read when he wasn't with April but watching him drool over the new girl's picture, he had become the readable person I have always known him to be. Still the Max mystery that was so intriguing but those signs I had learned to read dating him… those were back in full swing. I hated to pull a Maria but I had to at least introduce them…
…Some days, though, I just want to scream.
Liz stood outside the auditorium and refused to move when both Maria and Alex stopped to see what was up. It was the End-of-year-assembly slash long-overdue-memorial slash anti-drug-seminar and she did not want to be in there. When the lobby began to clear, a tie filled her vision. Prepared for the principal or a counselor, she worked up some tears as an excuse not to go. "I know that trick and it's not going to work on me." His hand reached for hers and gave it a good squeeze. "You remember me?"
When she finally looked up, there stood Kelen Najera. She had met him twice. Once at Tony's when she had gone to take them a casserole her mother had made, then at the funeral 'comida' as he had called it. "Hey. Kelen. Yeah, I'm fine."
"I know you are. It's a trick."
"Yeah… I thought you were someone official and…"
"You needed a way to get out of this." Kelen nodded. "It only works for the first few weeks and then everyone wants you to buck up and get over it." Wrapping an arm around her and steering her toward the stage entrance, he continued talking softly. "Tell you a little secret. Tony was the younger brother but he was the wise one. He told me to always keep some gum and some chap stick in my pocket. Said you never know when you're going to have to kiss a pretty girl."
Liz let loose a snort and had to cover it quickly as they passed the principal. "He always tasted like Winterfresh gum and mint chap stick."
"I guess it works." They shared a smile. Kelen cleared his throat and said something softly to the man, who nodded and pointed off stage. "Come on, we got you a seat where you can be by yourself and still hear the wonderful assembly."
After a few moments, he dragged a chair next to hers and pointed off where they could see the student body from where they sat. Liz sat and let her self think of Tony while she ignored the awards, some of which she received but were announced and set aside. No question and no explanation.
She thought of those minty kisses and hot breath, warm hands on her ribcage the once or twice things had gotten that far. Lying in the park with him. Humming 'Steal Your Car' and wondering where Tony had ever heard such a song. After a moment, she realized that Kelen was humming it too. They shared a looking and snickered while shaking their heads, it was a really horrible song about theft, arson, and destruction of property, not to mention cheating, slander and general torturing of confounding girlfriends.
Everyone in the auditorium looked appropriately sad and tried to pay attention but everyone wanted to be somewhere else talking about something else. She stopped her humming as she remembered what had bothered her at the funeral. She hadn't seen him. He was dead. That's what they told her but they had not allowed a viewing of the body because of damages caused by the accident but… she hadn't seen anything but a casket. Tears slipped down her face when Kelen rose to make his speech. She hadn't really cried at the funeral but no one could tell with the sunglasses and when she took them off, her eyes were red from sorrow and insomnia but a good cry she had not had.
Friday she had stayed home and stared at the wall. Saturday, instead of going to prom, she had sat in the park and tried valiantly to make herself believe that she would be okay. Instead of sleeping late on Sunday, she had attended the early rosary and the late rosary. At the funeral on Monday, she had done everything possible to stay calm. And now, instead of listening to Kelen talk about Tony's dreams and aspirations, she was having her first real cry. She had written strong words in her journal but you could be brave for a book of blank pages and mundane scribblings. You could be brave for strangers. You could brave for mom and dad and friends. You could not be brave for yourself if you really weren't.
Warm arms enveloped her as she bawled her eyes out. She couldn't even think about whose they were. A masculine voice shushed her softly and rocked her as they sank onto his chair together.
"Sh. I miss him, too." Kelen stroked her hair. Liz hiccupped as the world righted suddenly. "Sh."
"Kelen?" They were still behind the stage but now everyone was gone. Gone to classes, gone home, gone wherever.
"Yeah."
"Was he mad at me?"
"No. No, he understood… after he talked to me about it for two hours. He's… he had known for a while that he should straighten himself out. My brother was a rare soul." Kelen rested his head on Liz's, not wanting to let go of the only other person who was hurting as much as he was. "Mom and Dad are a little weird. Mom and her crystals and Dad with his born-again Christian stuff. Somehow I made it out of the house with my Catholicism intact the way my grandmother wanted. Tony just picked and chose until he found what worked for him."
"I… told myself I wouldn't do this, that I didn't have a right to be this blubbery would-be widow girl." Liz sniffled.
"He talked about you for a long time. Working up the guts to ask you out after you broke up with some guy." Kelen shrugged. "My little brother on the verge of a first love… that's what I saw."
Liz thought that over. Could it have been? Tony himself had said as much in his Tony-way. Kelen set her in her own chair and turned her face to him. "Two weeks… that's a high school engagement if I remember correctly. That perfect honeymoon period before you start picking out china patterns and naming future offspring. Dating exclusively and preparing prom coordination. Cummerbunds and corsages. You're 17, that's what it's all about. No one should have to go through this at 17. I'm 22 and I'm not ready for it. My brother, my best friend. Your boyfriend. It's all too soon." Kelen kissed her forehead. "Don't let anyone tell you what you should and should not feel. Just deal with the feelings you've got cause I know those are more than overwhelming all by themselves."
Sometimes the best friends you ever have are the ones that only last a few minutes. A day. A week. Impressions enough to know that there's one person that gets you even if they never really got the chance.
TBC
Part 32
I'm Liz Parker and in this world full of contradictions and disappointments and liars and cheaters and thieves… my journal is the only thing constant. It cannot lie to me unless I am untrue to it. It cannot leave me unless I leave it and forget it somewhere. It cannot promise me something it cannot give. It cannot not keep something from me unless I keep something from it and it cannot take anything from me that I do not give. My journal is the only thing that cannot wear a false face to be nice, to be protective or to be conveniently silent.
Liz watched Alex mingle and had to nudge Maria. Her best friend had been conspicuously allowing too much space and Liz would be damned if she didn't take advantage of the time together. "Look at him. He's like a new person."
"Yeah." Maria nodded and pursed her lips. She had been fingering her purse for an hour. The party was swinging around them and Max in their dark little corner.
"It's like he's… Super Alex. Able to sweep a girl off her feet in ten seconds or less, able to pierce through the fake veils of deceivers and able to tell the keepers from the users." The brunette couldn't keep the smile off her face as Alex asked a girl to dance and didn't have the hopeful puppy dog face that put girls off. It was casual and it was normal and the girl blushed at the look he gave her.
"Yeah well, he's received the decoder ring." Maria shrugged and sipped her drink. "Finish this for me. I'm going to find Freddy and some other dark corner."
Liz blinked at Maria and watched her wander away. Her normal sway had developed a slight stagger in the wake of the apparently alcoholic concoction she had been imbibing. Sipping it, Liz set it down again. Much too strong for her tastes. Turning to Max on her other side, she shook her head. The two of them were outcasts for the time being. "Are you going to leave me too?"
"What?" Max lifted his head from where it had been resting on the back of the couch. As if he had been asleep since he had seated himself, he glanced around and took in the new surroundings. "Hey, isn't that Maggie Jones Alex is groping?"
"Ew. Yes." Liz shook her head at the scene. That wasn’t something she wanted to imagine Alex doing much less see it. "Maybe I was wrong. Not Super Alex, Horny Alex."
"Yeah, well, sex will do that to you." He muttered and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked like he had a headache, like he was pinching there to keep the brains from flowing out like a river. "Ever get thoughts you didn't know you were capable of?"
"Like what?"
"Like… random things I never thought I'd do with someone I don't even know. That I never thought about doing with a stranger. Thoughts… so intense, it feels like they're actually happening."
Alex had definitely let his hand fall on Maggie's ass without apology. Max? "What?"
"Never mind."
The glass was too promising and so Liz had it in her hand again. Eventually, she made her way to the bottom of it. It was a different kind of buzz from the last time she had drunk. Max looked depressed again. "What's going on in your head, Max? It looks crowded."
He stared at a cup in the dark. It was laying on its side with some liquid still inside. A strange stain was forming on the carpet. "You ever think we didn't really give ourselves a chance?"
"What?"
"That maybe we jinxed ourselves. Maybe we'd still be together if I hadn't taken you for granted or if you had been able to make me see sooner what I was doing or not doing wrong." His eyes stayed on the cup. "What if you had been patient enough to wait two days? What if I had finished my stupid family crap and gone back to being what ever it was that made you want to be with me? What if I had been able to keep the stupid crap from interfering? Do you think that we would still be together and that I never would have gone out with April?"
"What are you talking about, Max?" Liz turned to face him and found his eyes were shining with tears. The sight broke her drunk little heart. "Why would you want that?"
Turning his head, he looked at her. Her eyelids drooped slightly and her eyebrow was arched strangely but he had to see. Taking her face in his hands, he kissed her lips. It wasn't the same as he remembered it. Maybe it was but he was too different to feel it the same way. He had been reprogrammed by a slight girl spending her summer on the east coast.
"Max?" Liz looked up when she had collected her wits. "Why did you do that?"
"I can't stop hurting. I can't stop feeling guilty. If maybe I hadn't been dating April… I wouldn't have tried to stop you from dating Tony and maybe…"
"Sh." Liz shook her head. Poor guy, he really knew how to carry around the guilt.
"I'm just being selfish. April's been the one who calms Gary down when he's high."
Rage lit anew in Liz's heart. "I don't want to talk about Gary."
Max kept talking as if he were the one who had been drinking instead of Liz. "Maybe if we weren't dating. She would have been there, unoccupied, when Gary stopped at the house before he left. Maybe she would have been able to keep him home until her parents got there. Tony would still be here."
"Shut up, Max." Liz whispered and wiped at her eyes.
"If we hadn't been upstairs doing what we were doing…" Max trailed off and watched her face as it sunk in what he was talking about. "I wasn't going to. Remember? I wasn't comfortable but somehow we did and… I feel like it was all my fault. Like I could have stopped it. I can't help but feel that I could go back to a specific moment in time and do something different and all this would be different."
"Say what you're trying to say, Max." Tears slipped down her face in little rivers. "Is this why you were avoiding me all this time, Max?" The rage and the sorrow were compounding with 20% interest as every second passed. "If you hadn't been at April's that night, maybe she would have stopped Gary from killing his best friend. Maybe that's so, Max… but you were." The sobs wouldn't come. The tears continued to slide down undisturbed as she spoke. "You were upstairs at the Jackson's deflowering their daughter while that asshole was getting high in the kitchen, getting ready to say goodbye to Roswell and planning a little trip to find his best friend so he could get him killed. I hope you made her happy, Max."
Wiping roughly at her lips, she got to her feet, a little more drunk than she would have liked but she didn’t want to waste distance time getting her bearings in a strange house. Bumping into a blonde, she swore and had to steady herself. She wasn't prepared for the perky blonde. "Liz, are you alright?"
"Peachy, Tess." Liz swiped at her eyes. Hitting the front door, she opened it and welcomed the cool summer air. If she could get far enough away…
Walking alone last night, I couldn't believe that this is my life and these are the people in it. I'll assume Maria never went home because she and Freddy were consummating their badly matched bliss. I'll bet Alex managed to go home with a phone number or two but not girls worthy to kiss the dirt he kicks behind him. Max… I don't want to think about him but… it's hard to know what exactly I have to be mad at him for. For kissing me and then spilling all that… excrement on me. For breaking a promise to himself? I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about any of that.
How am I supposed to feel about anything? I feel like I've become the invisible person. People aren't staring anymore and that's just because they think if they pretend I'm not there… then I won't be there and they won't have to think sad thoughts anymore. I want to get over it but I can't… Not until everyone else does. Until everyone else forgets for more than three seconds in a row.
Walking through the strange neighborhood, Liz didn't think she'd ever get home. She was buzzing, she was cold and she was lost. Some of it looked vaguely familiar but she didn't know where she was or how far she was going in what direction until… "Little late to be taking a stroll."
"Michael?" Liz peered into the darkness, straining to make out.
"Not Michael, actually." The voice remained hidden and slightly slurred.
"Who's out there?" It began to rain and Liz just sighed. It was the perfect ending to the perfect night.
"It's just me." She could just make out dark skin through a bush.
"Kelen?"
"The one and only."
She walked around the bush and there he was, in his scrubs, nursing a beer and rifling through a bag. "Are you okay?"
"Drunk and locked out." He pawed, half-heartedly through the mess again. "I think my dumb ass friends kept my keys when they kept my car."
"Good for them." Kneeling, she helped him put his things back in his bag. The rain began to pour but Kelen didn't seem to be in a hurry. "Your parents home?"
"No. Visiting… somebody, I forget who." Kelen tried to get his feet underneath him but he wasn't steady and Liz knew she was in no condition to help him do anything but fall again. Finally, he got to his feet and headed toward the house. "Back door's locked, front door, too."
"Garage door?" She eyed the patch of door beside the house.
"Maybe. Mom never locks the kitchen door." Dropping the bottle, he guided her over. He could barely see the rain was coming down so hard. Wiping her face free of rain, she helped lift the door and gratefully stepped inside the cold and dark but dry shelter. Kelen bumbled his way to the kitchen door, tripping over the step up on the way and nearly hitting his head on the knob. "Except this time." Flipping the light on, the garage was illuminated to reveal a washer, dryer, sink, couch, refrigerator, and tool bench. "God, it's cold."
"I think I'm sober now." Liz tried to wring out her shirt as she let the door fall but it stuck with two inches to spare.
"You look nice." He commented as he headed for the washer and dryer. "Bingo! Towel day. Come on, you gotta get dry." He peeled off his scrub top and dropped his pants. Liz had to spin around. Her gasp must have gotten his attention, he sounded sorry when he spoke again. "Sorry… I'm very drunk… but I still know that if you stay in those clothes, you're gonna get sick." She still didn't turn around. "Liz, I'm sorry. I'm covered. Just… go to the dryer and strip… I'll see if the pull-out has any blankets."
When she was sure he was busy with the couch, she hurried over to strip out of the outfit that Maria had thought was too cute. She knew he was right. A cold if she was lucky, pneumonia if the night got much colder. Tucking the towel under her arms, she pulled the rest of the towels out and threw her clothes and his scrubs in. "Does this dryer need anything special?"
"Just set the timer and hit the button. Good idea."
When I ran into Kelen, I expected him to be the guy I'd met twice before. He was someone I could connect with. This pain was something we could share. The loss, the complications, the certainty, all of it but… He was different. Not bad, just drunk and I was stuck there because of the rain and because I was already upset and because… I didn't want to go home. I needed some of the strength he'd shown me before and… looking at him sitting on the pullout, drinking a beer, I really didn't think he had it in him anymore.
Liz sat on the pullout so she could lean on the back. Kelen had replaced his fallen beer with a fresh one from the refrigerator. "Were you at a party?"
"I guess." Kelen shrugged. "I wasn't much for company tonight. They brought me home early." He took a swallow and leaned back, his hair dripping on her legs. "You? This isn't your neighborhood."
"Yeah. My friends ditched me and my ride and I… we had a falling out." She took a breath and readjusted her towel. "I had some to drink before I left and it kinda hit me when I got to the street… and I got lost."
"You should have called someone. You shouldn't be walking around this late without some kind of protection." He sat up when he felt her eyes on him for too long. "What?"
"Given what you said about catching cold… should you be drinking more? Won't it just cool your core faster? I mean…"
"No, you're right but it'll let me feel warmer for a little bit." He turned to look at her. "The blankets are clean and I'm sure it's warmer under there." There was a loud clap of thunder than made them both jump. He spilt beer on himself and rushed to keep it from dripping on the bed. He nearly lost his towel but recovered quickly. Liz took that opportunity to slip between the blankets without worrying she was going to lose her towel. Tossing the bottle in the sink, he used another towel to wipe himself off. "Don't think I didn't see that sneaky move. It's a classic. Wait for a distraction so if anything embarrassing happens, you're covered. I had a girlfriend who I never once saw eat. I took her to plenty of dinners and her food always disappeared but I never once caught her eating."
"Maybe you should just sit. You're losing body heat just wandering around like that." She watched him nod and sit next to her. "I meant to ask. Why is there a couch and a refrigerator in here?"
"This is the doghouse… or it used to be. My dad used to drink a lot and my mom would kick him out. Then she made the rule about no alcohol in the house. So he bought an old fridge and picked up the couch on the side of the road. Those nights he camped out in here… then he got all born-again and me and Tony took to camping out in here when it got too weird in there."
Lighting stuck again and this time the lights flickered. They sat in near-silence. The rain still pelted the roof and the garage door. The dryer still rumbled but they just sat. Liz didn't know what to say. They had only really spoken about Tony before and neither felt like it tonight. "I can share the blanket… if you're cold."
"I'll be fine in a few minutes when the dryer starts getting hot." To spite him the next lighting crash knocked out the electricity. They were bathed in darkness and the dryer tumbled twice more before it stopped. Their eyes adjusted and virtually no light came in under the garage door. "So maybe I am getting under the blankets."
The hair on his leg tickled hers. "I guess this means our clothes are just going to sit in the dryer… wet."
"Looks that way." His arm brushed hers and she just tried not to move. "The blankets are kind of thin." His body was hot and she knew it was just that the alcohol made the blood rush closer to the skin but it felt good. "If you don't mind, we'll build some heat if we get closer." She nodded dumbly and turned her body on its side. Kelen did the same, his front flush against her back, which felt good, and when his arm wrapped around her waist, that felt good too.
"Why were you drinking tonight?"
"Why were you?" He ran his hand up her arm to warm her a little.
"Boring party, nothing else to do."
"Ditto." A lighting flash illuminated his face when she turned her head. "You're staring at me. I can feel it."
"You've got pretty eyes."
"Oh. I see. That's your game. Evading the question with flattery." It was getting hard to say anything because they both knew that heat was indeed building and they knew where.
"I evaded no more than you did." She felt his breath on her neck.
"You smell good." His legs brushed against hers.
I guess I was wrong.
I don't really know why what happened, happened. It could have been anything. The rain. The thunder rumbling our bones. The alcohol running its way our of my system. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was because we had nothing to say to each other that we wanted to say.
I can't be certain that either of us knew what was going to happening but pleading ignorance might not have been an option.
The first kiss was tender. A bare brushing of lips. The next warm. Firm lips, warm breath. The following was hungry. He tasted like beer. His breath was hot. Her back chilled when her towel slipped off but he covered the space with his hot hands. In the dark, it was easier to just feel. To not care. To go with it. To live in the moment. To not remember anything.
When Liz tilted her head back for air, he burned a path down her throat. She let her hands be her eyes. Short damp hair on his head, neck muscles moving under the skin. His legs rubbing against hers, his body moving over hers. Her hands sliding down his back to the top of his towel.
Maybe it was the sadness in us both. The need for a lack of it. To forget the person that walks in the light of day and let the dark define someone new.
Liz clung to Kelen as he moved and when she shut her eyes she could imagine away the feel of the bars beneath the thin mattress. She could pretend away the musty garage and shut away the pain for a little while. His lips on her throat distracted her from anything outside their space. The taste of sweat on his chest, the pressure of his arms around her upper body… fingertips along her shoulder… his partial weight on top of her. Physical sensations were all her brain wanted to process.
Maybe it had nothing to do with anything at all. Maybe it was just something to do. Something to while away the rainy night. Something to do in lieu of doing nothing and feeling bad.
The rain puddle under the garage door had stopped growing but she stared at it. She saw the lights of the police cruiser as it passed in front of the house, checking that all was well in Roswell, this stormy night. Red, blue, red, blue, red, blue, yellow, red, blue, red, blue. The pullout was a tangle of limbs and blankets and towels. If she closed her eyes, she would go to sleep and the world would go away until morning.
To my faithful journal, I will not lie. I am going to hell. I had sex, which in its self is not a heinous thing. I lost my virginity to my dead boyfriend's brother on a pullout couch in his parent's one-car garage. I think I will go to my aunt's this summer.
TBC
Now you can go and lynch Max. He won't be any use to anyone for a while.
Liz watched Alex mingle and had to nudge Maria. Her best friend had been conspicuously allowing too much space and Liz would be damned if she didn't take advantage of the time together. "Look at him. He's like a new person."
"Yeah." Maria nodded and pursed her lips. She had been fingering her purse for an hour. The party was swinging around them and Max in their dark little corner.
"It's like he's… Super Alex. Able to sweep a girl off her feet in ten seconds or less, able to pierce through the fake veils of deceivers and able to tell the keepers from the users." The brunette couldn't keep the smile off her face as Alex asked a girl to dance and didn't have the hopeful puppy dog face that put girls off. It was casual and it was normal and the girl blushed at the look he gave her.
"Yeah well, he's received the decoder ring." Maria shrugged and sipped her drink. "Finish this for me. I'm going to find Freddy and some other dark corner."
Liz blinked at Maria and watched her wander away. Her normal sway had developed a slight stagger in the wake of the apparently alcoholic concoction she had been imbibing. Sipping it, Liz set it down again. Much too strong for her tastes. Turning to Max on her other side, she shook her head. The two of them were outcasts for the time being. "Are you going to leave me too?"
"What?" Max lifted his head from where it had been resting on the back of the couch. As if he had been asleep since he had seated himself, he glanced around and took in the new surroundings. "Hey, isn't that Maggie Jones Alex is groping?"
"Ew. Yes." Liz shook her head at the scene. That wasn’t something she wanted to imagine Alex doing much less see it. "Maybe I was wrong. Not Super Alex, Horny Alex."
"Yeah, well, sex will do that to you." He muttered and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked like he had a headache, like he was pinching there to keep the brains from flowing out like a river. "Ever get thoughts you didn't know you were capable of?"
"Like what?"
"Like… random things I never thought I'd do with someone I don't even know. That I never thought about doing with a stranger. Thoughts… so intense, it feels like they're actually happening."
Alex had definitely let his hand fall on Maggie's ass without apology. Max? "What?"
"Never mind."
The glass was too promising and so Liz had it in her hand again. Eventually, she made her way to the bottom of it. It was a different kind of buzz from the last time she had drunk. Max looked depressed again. "What's going on in your head, Max? It looks crowded."
He stared at a cup in the dark. It was laying on its side with some liquid still inside. A strange stain was forming on the carpet. "You ever think we didn't really give ourselves a chance?"
"What?"
"That maybe we jinxed ourselves. Maybe we'd still be together if I hadn't taken you for granted or if you had been able to make me see sooner what I was doing or not doing wrong." His eyes stayed on the cup. "What if you had been patient enough to wait two days? What if I had finished my stupid family crap and gone back to being what ever it was that made you want to be with me? What if I had been able to keep the stupid crap from interfering? Do you think that we would still be together and that I never would have gone out with April?"
"What are you talking about, Max?" Liz turned to face him and found his eyes were shining with tears. The sight broke her drunk little heart. "Why would you want that?"
Turning his head, he looked at her. Her eyelids drooped slightly and her eyebrow was arched strangely but he had to see. Taking her face in his hands, he kissed her lips. It wasn't the same as he remembered it. Maybe it was but he was too different to feel it the same way. He had been reprogrammed by a slight girl spending her summer on the east coast.
"Max?" Liz looked up when she had collected her wits. "Why did you do that?"
"I can't stop hurting. I can't stop feeling guilty. If maybe I hadn't been dating April… I wouldn't have tried to stop you from dating Tony and maybe…"
"Sh." Liz shook her head. Poor guy, he really knew how to carry around the guilt.
"I'm just being selfish. April's been the one who calms Gary down when he's high."
Rage lit anew in Liz's heart. "I don't want to talk about Gary."
Max kept talking as if he were the one who had been drinking instead of Liz. "Maybe if we weren't dating. She would have been there, unoccupied, when Gary stopped at the house before he left. Maybe she would have been able to keep him home until her parents got there. Tony would still be here."
"Shut up, Max." Liz whispered and wiped at her eyes.
"If we hadn't been upstairs doing what we were doing…" Max trailed off and watched her face as it sunk in what he was talking about. "I wasn't going to. Remember? I wasn't comfortable but somehow we did and… I feel like it was all my fault. Like I could have stopped it. I can't help but feel that I could go back to a specific moment in time and do something different and all this would be different."
"Say what you're trying to say, Max." Tears slipped down her face in little rivers. "Is this why you were avoiding me all this time, Max?" The rage and the sorrow were compounding with 20% interest as every second passed. "If you hadn't been at April's that night, maybe she would have stopped Gary from killing his best friend. Maybe that's so, Max… but you were." The sobs wouldn't come. The tears continued to slide down undisturbed as she spoke. "You were upstairs at the Jackson's deflowering their daughter while that asshole was getting high in the kitchen, getting ready to say goodbye to Roswell and planning a little trip to find his best friend so he could get him killed. I hope you made her happy, Max."
Wiping roughly at her lips, she got to her feet, a little more drunk than she would have liked but she didn’t want to waste distance time getting her bearings in a strange house. Bumping into a blonde, she swore and had to steady herself. She wasn't prepared for the perky blonde. "Liz, are you alright?"
"Peachy, Tess." Liz swiped at her eyes. Hitting the front door, she opened it and welcomed the cool summer air. If she could get far enough away…
Walking alone last night, I couldn't believe that this is my life and these are the people in it. I'll assume Maria never went home because she and Freddy were consummating their badly matched bliss. I'll bet Alex managed to go home with a phone number or two but not girls worthy to kiss the dirt he kicks behind him. Max… I don't want to think about him but… it's hard to know what exactly I have to be mad at him for. For kissing me and then spilling all that… excrement on me. For breaking a promise to himself? I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about any of that.
How am I supposed to feel about anything? I feel like I've become the invisible person. People aren't staring anymore and that's just because they think if they pretend I'm not there… then I won't be there and they won't have to think sad thoughts anymore. I want to get over it but I can't… Not until everyone else does. Until everyone else forgets for more than three seconds in a row.
Walking through the strange neighborhood, Liz didn't think she'd ever get home. She was buzzing, she was cold and she was lost. Some of it looked vaguely familiar but she didn't know where she was or how far she was going in what direction until… "Little late to be taking a stroll."
"Michael?" Liz peered into the darkness, straining to make out.
"Not Michael, actually." The voice remained hidden and slightly slurred.
"Who's out there?" It began to rain and Liz just sighed. It was the perfect ending to the perfect night.
"It's just me." She could just make out dark skin through a bush.
"Kelen?"
"The one and only."
She walked around the bush and there he was, in his scrubs, nursing a beer and rifling through a bag. "Are you okay?"
"Drunk and locked out." He pawed, half-heartedly through the mess again. "I think my dumb ass friends kept my keys when they kept my car."
"Good for them." Kneeling, she helped him put his things back in his bag. The rain began to pour but Kelen didn't seem to be in a hurry. "Your parents home?"
"No. Visiting… somebody, I forget who." Kelen tried to get his feet underneath him but he wasn't steady and Liz knew she was in no condition to help him do anything but fall again. Finally, he got to his feet and headed toward the house. "Back door's locked, front door, too."
"Garage door?" She eyed the patch of door beside the house.
"Maybe. Mom never locks the kitchen door." Dropping the bottle, he guided her over. He could barely see the rain was coming down so hard. Wiping her face free of rain, she helped lift the door and gratefully stepped inside the cold and dark but dry shelter. Kelen bumbled his way to the kitchen door, tripping over the step up on the way and nearly hitting his head on the knob. "Except this time." Flipping the light on, the garage was illuminated to reveal a washer, dryer, sink, couch, refrigerator, and tool bench. "God, it's cold."
"I think I'm sober now." Liz tried to wring out her shirt as she let the door fall but it stuck with two inches to spare.
"You look nice." He commented as he headed for the washer and dryer. "Bingo! Towel day. Come on, you gotta get dry." He peeled off his scrub top and dropped his pants. Liz had to spin around. Her gasp must have gotten his attention, he sounded sorry when he spoke again. "Sorry… I'm very drunk… but I still know that if you stay in those clothes, you're gonna get sick." She still didn't turn around. "Liz, I'm sorry. I'm covered. Just… go to the dryer and strip… I'll see if the pull-out has any blankets."
When she was sure he was busy with the couch, she hurried over to strip out of the outfit that Maria had thought was too cute. She knew he was right. A cold if she was lucky, pneumonia if the night got much colder. Tucking the towel under her arms, she pulled the rest of the towels out and threw her clothes and his scrubs in. "Does this dryer need anything special?"
"Just set the timer and hit the button. Good idea."
When I ran into Kelen, I expected him to be the guy I'd met twice before. He was someone I could connect with. This pain was something we could share. The loss, the complications, the certainty, all of it but… He was different. Not bad, just drunk and I was stuck there because of the rain and because I was already upset and because… I didn't want to go home. I needed some of the strength he'd shown me before and… looking at him sitting on the pullout, drinking a beer, I really didn't think he had it in him anymore.
Liz sat on the pullout so she could lean on the back. Kelen had replaced his fallen beer with a fresh one from the refrigerator. "Were you at a party?"
"I guess." Kelen shrugged. "I wasn't much for company tonight. They brought me home early." He took a swallow and leaned back, his hair dripping on her legs. "You? This isn't your neighborhood."
"Yeah. My friends ditched me and my ride and I… we had a falling out." She took a breath and readjusted her towel. "I had some to drink before I left and it kinda hit me when I got to the street… and I got lost."
"You should have called someone. You shouldn't be walking around this late without some kind of protection." He sat up when he felt her eyes on him for too long. "What?"
"Given what you said about catching cold… should you be drinking more? Won't it just cool your core faster? I mean…"
"No, you're right but it'll let me feel warmer for a little bit." He turned to look at her. "The blankets are clean and I'm sure it's warmer under there." There was a loud clap of thunder than made them both jump. He spilt beer on himself and rushed to keep it from dripping on the bed. He nearly lost his towel but recovered quickly. Liz took that opportunity to slip between the blankets without worrying she was going to lose her towel. Tossing the bottle in the sink, he used another towel to wipe himself off. "Don't think I didn't see that sneaky move. It's a classic. Wait for a distraction so if anything embarrassing happens, you're covered. I had a girlfriend who I never once saw eat. I took her to plenty of dinners and her food always disappeared but I never once caught her eating."
"Maybe you should just sit. You're losing body heat just wandering around like that." She watched him nod and sit next to her. "I meant to ask. Why is there a couch and a refrigerator in here?"
"This is the doghouse… or it used to be. My dad used to drink a lot and my mom would kick him out. Then she made the rule about no alcohol in the house. So he bought an old fridge and picked up the couch on the side of the road. Those nights he camped out in here… then he got all born-again and me and Tony took to camping out in here when it got too weird in there."
Lighting stuck again and this time the lights flickered. They sat in near-silence. The rain still pelted the roof and the garage door. The dryer still rumbled but they just sat. Liz didn't know what to say. They had only really spoken about Tony before and neither felt like it tonight. "I can share the blanket… if you're cold."
"I'll be fine in a few minutes when the dryer starts getting hot." To spite him the next lighting crash knocked out the electricity. They were bathed in darkness and the dryer tumbled twice more before it stopped. Their eyes adjusted and virtually no light came in under the garage door. "So maybe I am getting under the blankets."
The hair on his leg tickled hers. "I guess this means our clothes are just going to sit in the dryer… wet."
"Looks that way." His arm brushed hers and she just tried not to move. "The blankets are kind of thin." His body was hot and she knew it was just that the alcohol made the blood rush closer to the skin but it felt good. "If you don't mind, we'll build some heat if we get closer." She nodded dumbly and turned her body on its side. Kelen did the same, his front flush against her back, which felt good, and when his arm wrapped around her waist, that felt good too.
"Why were you drinking tonight?"
"Why were you?" He ran his hand up her arm to warm her a little.
"Boring party, nothing else to do."
"Ditto." A lighting flash illuminated his face when she turned her head. "You're staring at me. I can feel it."
"You've got pretty eyes."
"Oh. I see. That's your game. Evading the question with flattery." It was getting hard to say anything because they both knew that heat was indeed building and they knew where.
"I evaded no more than you did." She felt his breath on her neck.
"You smell good." His legs brushed against hers.
I guess I was wrong.
I don't really know why what happened, happened. It could have been anything. The rain. The thunder rumbling our bones. The alcohol running its way our of my system. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was because we had nothing to say to each other that we wanted to say.
I can't be certain that either of us knew what was going to happening but pleading ignorance might not have been an option.
The first kiss was tender. A bare brushing of lips. The next warm. Firm lips, warm breath. The following was hungry. He tasted like beer. His breath was hot. Her back chilled when her towel slipped off but he covered the space with his hot hands. In the dark, it was easier to just feel. To not care. To go with it. To live in the moment. To not remember anything.
When Liz tilted her head back for air, he burned a path down her throat. She let her hands be her eyes. Short damp hair on his head, neck muscles moving under the skin. His legs rubbing against hers, his body moving over hers. Her hands sliding down his back to the top of his towel.
Maybe it was the sadness in us both. The need for a lack of it. To forget the person that walks in the light of day and let the dark define someone new.
Liz clung to Kelen as he moved and when she shut her eyes she could imagine away the feel of the bars beneath the thin mattress. She could pretend away the musty garage and shut away the pain for a little while. His lips on her throat distracted her from anything outside their space. The taste of sweat on his chest, the pressure of his arms around her upper body… fingertips along her shoulder… his partial weight on top of her. Physical sensations were all her brain wanted to process.
Maybe it had nothing to do with anything at all. Maybe it was just something to do. Something to while away the rainy night. Something to do in lieu of doing nothing and feeling bad.
The rain puddle under the garage door had stopped growing but she stared at it. She saw the lights of the police cruiser as it passed in front of the house, checking that all was well in Roswell, this stormy night. Red, blue, red, blue, red, blue, yellow, red, blue, red, blue. The pullout was a tangle of limbs and blankets and towels. If she closed her eyes, she would go to sleep and the world would go away until morning.
To my faithful journal, I will not lie. I am going to hell. I had sex, which in its self is not a heinous thing. I lost my virginity to my dead boyfriend's brother on a pullout couch in his parent's one-car garage. I think I will go to my aunt's this summer.
TBC
Now you can go and lynch Max. He won't be any use to anyone for a while.
Part 33
I'm Liz Parker…
Liz put away the last of her things. Her flight had gotten in late. It was the last arriving flight of the evening and landing had been delayed. So, it was just past midnight when she sat down with her journal… and just tapped it with her pencil for twenty minutes. When she looked up, she nearly fell off her chair.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Max stayed where he was sitting on the ledge. "I was walking and I saw the lights up here. Figured you were back."
"Just got in." Liz nodded and pulled her blanket higher around her shoulders.
"How was Florida?"
"Humid."
"You got a tan."
"Yeah."
He took a deep breath and got to his feet. "About what happened… that night. I'm sorry. I think I got drunk at some point… not an excuse but I didn't mean to… tell you all that… stuff."
"I know." Liz closed her journal and set it aside. "It was a bad night for me to begin with. I was tired of being a teenage widow and then you got diarrhea of the mouth and then I stormed out and…"
Max looked at her, really looked, and she had left the balcony. She was gone. He crossed the expanse between them and sat nearer to her. "Did you get home alright? That night, I mean?"
"I got lost." Liz admitted. "I… it started raining but I… uh… accidentally wandered past Tony's house. His… brother was there."
"Oh. Okay. As long as… you weren't… um… put out by my stupidity." Max pulled his jacket tighter. It was oddly chilly. "Maria gave me an earful. She and Freddy broke up that night but I wasn't… able to drive and we couldn't find you and Alex… Alex punched Freddy."
"What?"
"Freddy wanted to make use of a bed upstairs. Maria said 'no' and broke it off. She stormed downstairs to find me. I was incoherent. Alex got the gist of it from her babbling. Freddy came down looking for her and Alex punched him. Knocked him out." A half-smile crossed his face. "It was really kind of funny. We searched the party for you, we drove around. Tess drove, she was the only other person who could drive standard. She's nice."
"I'm sorry if I worried you guys. I wasn't thinking."
"We had to give up when the power went out, Sheriff told us to get off the road, he'd look for you but you couldn't be missing until a certain amount of time. We called around noon and your dad had just gotten back from the airport."
The night was getting colder and it was late. "I think I did something I kind of regret." Her eyes met his. She had thought about it all summer. "I still don't know why I did it."
"Did what?"
A tear welled in her eye. "I… uh..." She shrugged and wiped the tear away. "I… I slept with Kelen."
"Who?"
"Tony's brother. He had been drinking, I had been drinking, and we were kind of stuck in his garage and… we did it and I left before he woke up."
"Liz…" Max's mouth moved but no other words crossed his lips.
"I… think that he could have been a friend, you know. But every time I see him, I think of Tony and… if he's my friend…"
"Maybe you did it as an excuse not to see him anymore."
"Yeah." Clearing her eyes, she took a deep breath. "So, you met Tess."
"She's nice. We've been talking and… she's… someone I can talk to." Max shrugged. "I… we're going out next week. I've been out of town and when I got back, I decided to take the plunge."
"That's good. That you waited awhile, you know? So that you can… be with Tess and not still."
"Be with April. Yeah. My dad said something along the same lines and I thought he was… stupid." Max shook his head. "When you say it, it makes sense."
"Max." Liz looked up at him. "I…"
"Feel awkward." He nodded. "Why?" He cleared his throat and looked out into the night. "Me or the Kelen thing?"
"Kelen." She sighed. "Could you… take me by his house?"
I didn't know what I was going to do when I asked Max. We had just fallen into a pace, Max and me. Like it took what he did to me to break the ties. I have to be held responsible for what I said to him, just like he has to be for what he said to me. Now, we are actually friends, looking forward to seeing the other happy and with someone else. We're there. It took a long time but we are there.
Kelen's car wasn't at his parents' house so Liz asked Max to drive by the hospital. The lot was nearly empty. A slow night in Roswell. Still, there it was. Liz had to walk in by herself. The doctors and interns were goofing off behind the desk. Kelen wasn't hard to pick out, he was the only clean cut face in the bunch. It took them a moment to see her. "Can we help you, miss?"
"I… um… I was… I needed to talk to…" Liz met his eye and he nodded.
"Yeah, I'll be right there. Taking a break." Kelen nodded to his supervising resident.
"Make it short." The doctor warned.
Kelen led Liz outside to the bus stop bench. "Hey."
"Hey."
"You wanted to talk?" Kelen rubbed his hands on his legs.
"Yeah… about that… night."
"I'm sorry." Kelen blurted out. "I am. I was drunk and I didn't mean to… take advantage. Are you okay?"
"Yeah… I just… wanted to say that… I'm sorry that I just took off." Liz blew out a breath. "I feel really weird about it. I left town and everything."
"You're 17, Liz."
"18." She corrected him. "I just turned 18."
"Okay. You're 18. This is your senior year. Don't let what happened ruin any of that. It wasn't a bad thing." He turned to look at her. "You are not a bad person. I spent plenty of time beating myself up for what happened." He reached out and touched her face. "My little brother's girlfriend. Something inside me was broken. I was screwing up big time. I thank you for that night. It woke me up. I've managed to have a semi-decent summer, not dwelling on Tony. I can talk about him now."
"Maybe I can too." Liz nodded to herself.
"Don't let this be anything. Let it be a non-event."
"I can't." She grimaced and dropped her gaze to her hands for a long moment. "A girl never forgets her first time and it could have been much worse… especially given the way I've been trying to hide from myself." She looked at him. "You're 22, Kelen. Be young. Be stupid. You've got the rest of your life to be a grown-up. Dr. Kelen." She stared at her fingers again. "I just wanted to get things straight with you since I ran out. To say that I'm okay and I don't blame you for anything and I didn't read anything into that night that wasn't there." She let out a breath. "I guess that's what I needed. To hear that sentence out loud."
"Maybe I'll see you around, Liz."
"Yeah." She got to her feet and turned to him. "Maybe. Don't be afraid to say hi."
"Okay." He laughed to himself and was nearly startled when she pressed her lips to his forehead, the way he had done for her once.
Somehow I feel closer to Max. School starts in a week and he's obviously relishing every moment of summer freedom. Rather than go home, where he tells me that his parents are instituting new rules with the new school year, he's sitting across from me at a booth, picking at some frozen coconut cream pie. He's sitting and I'm writing. Nothing seems to be able to go wrong no______
Liz didn't even feel her pen was still pressed to the paper. She looked over Max's head. "Max."
Bang.
TBC
Liz put away the last of her things. Her flight had gotten in late. It was the last arriving flight of the evening and landing had been delayed. So, it was just past midnight when she sat down with her journal… and just tapped it with her pencil for twenty minutes. When she looked up, she nearly fell off her chair.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Max stayed where he was sitting on the ledge. "I was walking and I saw the lights up here. Figured you were back."
"Just got in." Liz nodded and pulled her blanket higher around her shoulders.
"How was Florida?"
"Humid."
"You got a tan."
"Yeah."
He took a deep breath and got to his feet. "About what happened… that night. I'm sorry. I think I got drunk at some point… not an excuse but I didn't mean to… tell you all that… stuff."
"I know." Liz closed her journal and set it aside. "It was a bad night for me to begin with. I was tired of being a teenage widow and then you got diarrhea of the mouth and then I stormed out and…"
Max looked at her, really looked, and she had left the balcony. She was gone. He crossed the expanse between them and sat nearer to her. "Did you get home alright? That night, I mean?"
"I got lost." Liz admitted. "I… it started raining but I… uh… accidentally wandered past Tony's house. His… brother was there."
"Oh. Okay. As long as… you weren't… um… put out by my stupidity." Max pulled his jacket tighter. It was oddly chilly. "Maria gave me an earful. She and Freddy broke up that night but I wasn't… able to drive and we couldn't find you and Alex… Alex punched Freddy."
"What?"
"Freddy wanted to make use of a bed upstairs. Maria said 'no' and broke it off. She stormed downstairs to find me. I was incoherent. Alex got the gist of it from her babbling. Freddy came down looking for her and Alex punched him. Knocked him out." A half-smile crossed his face. "It was really kind of funny. We searched the party for you, we drove around. Tess drove, she was the only other person who could drive standard. She's nice."
"I'm sorry if I worried you guys. I wasn't thinking."
"We had to give up when the power went out, Sheriff told us to get off the road, he'd look for you but you couldn't be missing until a certain amount of time. We called around noon and your dad had just gotten back from the airport."
The night was getting colder and it was late. "I think I did something I kind of regret." Her eyes met his. She had thought about it all summer. "I still don't know why I did it."
"Did what?"
A tear welled in her eye. "I… uh..." She shrugged and wiped the tear away. "I… I slept with Kelen."
"Who?"
"Tony's brother. He had been drinking, I had been drinking, and we were kind of stuck in his garage and… we did it and I left before he woke up."
"Liz…" Max's mouth moved but no other words crossed his lips.
"I… think that he could have been a friend, you know. But every time I see him, I think of Tony and… if he's my friend…"
"Maybe you did it as an excuse not to see him anymore."
"Yeah." Clearing her eyes, she took a deep breath. "So, you met Tess."
"She's nice. We've been talking and… she's… someone I can talk to." Max shrugged. "I… we're going out next week. I've been out of town and when I got back, I decided to take the plunge."
"That's good. That you waited awhile, you know? So that you can… be with Tess and not still."
"Be with April. Yeah. My dad said something along the same lines and I thought he was… stupid." Max shook his head. "When you say it, it makes sense."
"Max." Liz looked up at him. "I…"
"Feel awkward." He nodded. "Why?" He cleared his throat and looked out into the night. "Me or the Kelen thing?"
"Kelen." She sighed. "Could you… take me by his house?"
I didn't know what I was going to do when I asked Max. We had just fallen into a pace, Max and me. Like it took what he did to me to break the ties. I have to be held responsible for what I said to him, just like he has to be for what he said to me. Now, we are actually friends, looking forward to seeing the other happy and with someone else. We're there. It took a long time but we are there.
Kelen's car wasn't at his parents' house so Liz asked Max to drive by the hospital. The lot was nearly empty. A slow night in Roswell. Still, there it was. Liz had to walk in by herself. The doctors and interns were goofing off behind the desk. Kelen wasn't hard to pick out, he was the only clean cut face in the bunch. It took them a moment to see her. "Can we help you, miss?"
"I… um… I was… I needed to talk to…" Liz met his eye and he nodded.
"Yeah, I'll be right there. Taking a break." Kelen nodded to his supervising resident.
"Make it short." The doctor warned.
Kelen led Liz outside to the bus stop bench. "Hey."
"Hey."
"You wanted to talk?" Kelen rubbed his hands on his legs.
"Yeah… about that… night."
"I'm sorry." Kelen blurted out. "I am. I was drunk and I didn't mean to… take advantage. Are you okay?"
"Yeah… I just… wanted to say that… I'm sorry that I just took off." Liz blew out a breath. "I feel really weird about it. I left town and everything."
"You're 17, Liz."
"18." She corrected him. "I just turned 18."
"Okay. You're 18. This is your senior year. Don't let what happened ruin any of that. It wasn't a bad thing." He turned to look at her. "You are not a bad person. I spent plenty of time beating myself up for what happened." He reached out and touched her face. "My little brother's girlfriend. Something inside me was broken. I was screwing up big time. I thank you for that night. It woke me up. I've managed to have a semi-decent summer, not dwelling on Tony. I can talk about him now."
"Maybe I can too." Liz nodded to herself.
"Don't let this be anything. Let it be a non-event."
"I can't." She grimaced and dropped her gaze to her hands for a long moment. "A girl never forgets her first time and it could have been much worse… especially given the way I've been trying to hide from myself." She looked at him. "You're 22, Kelen. Be young. Be stupid. You've got the rest of your life to be a grown-up. Dr. Kelen." She stared at her fingers again. "I just wanted to get things straight with you since I ran out. To say that I'm okay and I don't blame you for anything and I didn't read anything into that night that wasn't there." She let out a breath. "I guess that's what I needed. To hear that sentence out loud."
"Maybe I'll see you around, Liz."
"Yeah." She got to her feet and turned to him. "Maybe. Don't be afraid to say hi."
"Okay." He laughed to himself and was nearly startled when she pressed her lips to his forehead, the way he had done for her once.
Somehow I feel closer to Max. School starts in a week and he's obviously relishing every moment of summer freedom. Rather than go home, where he tells me that his parents are instituting new rules with the new school year, he's sitting across from me at a booth, picking at some frozen coconut cream pie. He's sitting and I'm writing. Nothing seems to be able to go wrong no______
Liz didn't even feel her pen was still pressed to the paper. She looked over Max's head. "Max."
Bang.
TBC
Part 34
AN: Officially 10 parts before this board is caught up to the rest of the story. '-)
I'm Liz Parker and I'm not sure what's been going on in my strange little town. One minute I am happy and enjoying a comfortable silence with one of my best friends and the next… Max is lying on the linoleum, bleeding from the chest and choking for air. I know my heart stopped beating as I thought about him dying in my arms.
Liz stared at the boy. It was a boy with acne-ridden skin and a bad sunburn. He had the smoking gun in his hand and he looked proud of himself. He was 12 or maybe 13 or 14. Young still to be gloating over someone he had just shot in cold blood. It felt like hours that she stared at that boy and memorized his face before he ran off into the night. Then she was on the floor with a bunch of napkins, trying vainly to stop the bleeding.
The noise got to her. Her own sobbing and that other noise. That gulping and croaking noise. Then it hit her. Max had been eating. Max was choking. Max couldn't breathe. She had taken first aid. She could do this. Uselessly wiping her hand on her pants, she opened his mouth and scooped the pie out of his mouth but there was still some in his throat where she couldn't reach. She racked her brain for the lessons but nothing seemed to be coming. He had to breathe so that she could tell if he could. If only he had been a frailer boy, she could have done it easily but she had a hard time turning his body on his side so she could hit his back. Sobbing, she smacked him as hard as she could until she heard the gasp, followed by the puking. She almost puked herself as she let him finish so she could roll him back. No blood in the puke from his mouth. No choking when he was on his back again. Missed the lung? Maybe forcing her parents to let her watch ER on a school night wasn't a waste of time after all. Pressure on the wound. Call the cops. She couldn't do both at the same time.
Footsteps in the back room. Had it all only taken seconds? Were her parents already out of bed and on the phone with the police? Max was breathing, gasping for air, taking it in gulps and in a lot of pain. "Max?" He didn't respond and his eyes were closing. "Max, can you hold on until the ambulance gets here? Please? Hold on, please."
The bells and the screech of rubber on linoleum made her head snap up. She stared because she didn't know what she was seeing. How could Max be here and there? How could he be bleeding beneath her hands and sliding across the Crashdown floor to his own body at the same time? "Shit. Shit, shit, shit." He muttered as he looked them over, his knee in the puddle of puke. That-Max looked dirty and sweaty and panicked, his eyes snapped to hers. "What's his name?"
"Max." She managed to get out while she leaned on the wound in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. "His name is Max."
"Let me see, darlin'," That-Max nudged her aside, his bare hand covering the wound and the other hand lifting This-Max's head. "Max, open the eyes, Chief." This-Max's eyes rolled beneath the eyelids but didn't open. "Come on, Max. Open 'em up." That-Max looked to Liz. "Darlin', some help? Get him to open his eyes."
Liz leaned over, hands shaking, heart slamming in her chest and not really comprehending anything anymore. "Max? It's Liz. Can you open your eyes? Someone's here to help." His eyes fluttered open. "That's it. Open those pretty eyes for us." She felt her face smiling in relief as his eyes opened but it was like her face muscles had been disconnected from her brain. Then This-Max looked at That-Max and they both gasped for air and This-Max's body went rigid. "Oh my God," she whispered. Her brain worked furiously. Shock? He needed to be warm, right? That-Max seemed to be concentrating on holding the blood in with his bare hands. She jumped to her feet to get a blanket from the back room. When she returned, This-Max was sitting up and staring at That-Max. That-Max's hand still gripped This-Max behind the neck and This-Max had gripped That-Max's arm. They were locked in some kind of staring contest. The sirens seemed to bring them out of it. "Max?"
"You know what to do." That-Max told This-Max and then he raced out the door.
I was paralyzed. I just sat there with Max when the cops came. I sounded like a robot when I gave my statement. 'A teenage boy raced in, fired off one shot and ran away. Max was startled… he started choking. He puked. That? It's ketchup. A bottle broke.' It was like I didn't know what I was saying but it was the look on Max's face when I started talking. I had never seen him look like that. Scared and of me and what I might say. Max didn't see the boy so I gave the description and I was the only other person who saw that other Max… but I didn't mention him to the cops.
Two things kept running through my head. That guy looked just like Max. Max was adopted. Maybe this was what he had been waiting for all these years. Did he know he had a brother? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he had repressed it. Maybe it came back to him looking at that guy. 'You know what to do.' Had this been a part of Max's life before the Evans found him? I could ask Max but he's been nowhere to be seen these days. He stood up Tess for their date…
Max couldn't help but stare. Isabel hadn't left his side since she had heard what happened. The teenager in front of them was a clone. Not of Max. Both he and Max were clones of their former alien self. The story was rather unbelievable. Zan, his name was. They were once king of a planet. They had a sister, a best friend and a wife.
"Near as I can figure, they stowed us away, you know? Just tossed us where they could be sure no one would find us by accident." Zan explained. "We were in the sewer and a few years ago, they came for us. Said things back home were rough and we needed to go but even though I remember, I can't go back there. I said no. They kept comin' at me. Tryin' to get to me in different ways. Then they had their meeting and to have us officially as a non-matter, we gotta be dead. So they came after us. We've been runnin' ever since."
"Why are you here?" Max demanded.
"Last year, Nicholas, the leader of the bad guys on Earth, he finds out there's another set… only he don't know where they are. Neither do we. It's been a race. All he has to do is capture, kill and show the bodies. I've been verified but your body will do. I've been doggin' him for months and he finally found out where you were. He almost won." Zan sank down into the chair.
"You said there were four of us to a set. We only have three." Isabel cut in.
"Tall guy. Kind of tough. Thinks he can do it all better." Zan sipped the coke they had gotten for him ages ago and poured some hot sauce in.
"Michael." Isabel rolled her eyes. "We've got him."
"Short girl, naturally blond." Zan paused at the looks on their faces. "Mine's not blond anymore. Anyway, like I was sayin'… Eager to please and a way in the sack that can drive you crazy." He shook his head to himself. "If you're into it, that is."
Max shook his head. "Just been the three of us as long as we can remember."
"The dreams, man. You had to at least seen her in those. You did get the dreams, right?" Zan looked to Isabel who looked away. "She did."
"Well, she and Michael are kind of a thing." Max shifted uncomfortably.
"They're supposed to be." Zan studied Max hard. Hinting might work, draw him out a little. "Curly blond hair, small tight body, and when you kiss her behind her ear, she moans somethin' fierce."
Max shot out of his chair and moved to the window. He had had the dreams but they were inappropriate and he hardly knew the girl. He cursed to himself. He had a date with her, four hours ago. "Maybe… I did dream something like that but the girl is normal. She just moved to town last semester. She has nothing to do with us."
"You don't mean Tess, right?" Isabel's head whipped to her brother. "She can't be one of us, can she?"
"She hasn't told you anything?" Zan sat up.
"She's one of my friends, has been since she came to town." Isabel shook her head. "She hadn't really bothered to meet Max before but later… when she found out he was my brother…"
"Liz set us up." Max shook his head.
"Because I told her I wouldn't set her up with such a dork."
I see that guy around town. He's walking and people just walk around him and when I look away, I can feel his eyes on me. I just wish someone could tell me something concrete about what's going on. I saw that guy again today and he scared me this time.
Liz stared at the refrigerator. Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Diet Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, Cherry Coke, Mr. Pibb… This country had too many options. She sighed and just grabbed a couple of bottles of Cherry Coke. If she was going to insist on seeing Max, she was going to be prepared to stay awhile. She wondered if he was really alright. He had a bullet in his chest. He had bled a considerable amount. When she had cleaned up the mess, there were two broken bottles of ketchup to cover the huge puddle.
When she turned there was a body blocking her vision. When she looked up, it was him. "There you are darlin', I thought I was gonna have to scour the town for you."
"You were looking for me?" Liz's eyes were wide and she couldn't seem to make herself back up.
"All over." He leaned in and put his mouth to her ear. "I know who you are."
"What?" She tried to back up but there was a cold refrigerator case there.
"Is this your real shape? Or are you really a hairy old man or somethin'?"
"What are you talking about?" Move Liz, move. It took a large amount of strength to step away. Head up, she looked at him. He seemed angry at her and she didn't know why. "Look. I didn't tell the cops what really happened. I don't know you or why you look like Max… but I am grateful for what you did." He stood and stared at her, blocking her path. Liz couldn't seem to keep her mouth shut. "Are you… his brother or something? Do you know what happened to his parents?"
"You're good." He nodded and stepped out of her way. "They have a seminar on how to act like a 16-year-old?"
"I'm 18, thank you." Liz scoffed and moved to the counter. "I don't know what's wrong with you but I'll thank you to leave me alone."
He gripped her arm and spun her around. "I am on to you."
"Well, that's good. I'd see someone about your delusions if I were you. Thank you for saving Max's life but I'm gonna have to ask you to leave me alone from now on. I'll send Max your regards." Liz ripped her arm out of his grasp and rushed to the counter to pay. She wished she had begged the car off her mother but she had been brilliant and decided to walk to the convenient store to get her head together on the way to Max's. She was four blocks away by the time she had gathered the courage to look behind her. No one was there. Somehow she had expected that guy to be right on her heels.
By the time she got to Max's, she was a nervous wreck. On top of it all, Max was genuinely surprised to see her and seemed to want her to leave until she told him about why she was there. "And on top of all this craziness, that guy threatened me. Wanted to see my real face, whatever that means. What's going on, Max?" He didn't answer her. He fidgeted at the kitchen table. "Well, did you at least call Tess to apologize for standing her up? I talked to her this morning and she was a little upset."
"About the other night… um…" Max was at a loss for words and he knew Isabel was in the hallway listening. "I'm sorry if you got scared and if… Zan said anything to you… I sure he didn't mean it."
"Zan? His name is Zan? What is that?" Her ire was growing the more evasive Max was. "Can you just tell me what's going on? That boy… the cops can't find him and they've looked everywhere. Why would he want to shoot you?" He just stood there and she had to throw her arms around him. "I was so scared, Max. You were bleeding and I couldn't stop it."
"Sh. It's okay. I'm okay." Max let his arms come around her body.
"I didn't dream that, did I?"
"No."
"You move fast." A voice floated over her head.
Liz turned and there he was. 'Zan'. "Excuse me?"
"I was on you for three blocks and you move fast."
"You were following me." Liz exclaimed and turned to Max. "Tell me what's going on and why this… miscreant is following me."
"Everyone just calm down." Max shouted. "Nothing is going on. It was all a misunderstanding." He put his hands on Liz's shoulders. "Just… go home. I'll call Tess and apologize tonight. I haven't been feeling myself. Obviously, I've got a bit of a … family issue, here."
"So he is. He's your brother?" Liz watched his face while he tried to figure out how to answer. "I see. You were avoiding the subject. Well at the very least he's your identical twin cousin."
"Something like that." Max nodded with a half smile in appreciation of her joke. "I'll call her tonight and I'll see you in a couple of days at school. I'll let you know something when I have the answers myself. Okay?"
"Okay." She nodded. "Promise."
"Yeah. I promise and just… don't tell anyone what you saw. Please?"
"Okay. I promise, too." She held still as he kissed her forehead. She left them the drinks and moved through the house to the front door. Isabel was waiting. "Hey."
"Hey." Isabel held onto the door knob. "Listen… I wasn't there. I don't know the specifics but I'm glad you were there. Max said he could have… asphyxiated, I think is the word he used, before Zan got there and did… whatever…"
"He hasn't told you much either?" Liz stared at the blond. She seemed genuinely scared. "I thought you were close."
"We are but… the guy in the kitchen could be my brother or cousin too. It's all a little scary and… I know that it's weird and you haven't flaked or told. You're a better friend to my brother than I ever gave you credit for."
"Thank you for saying that." Liz nodded and walked out when Isabel opened the door. The blond leaned on the door after the brunette departed. The two alien kings were staring at her. "I had to…"
"To confirm what she was starting to think was a dream?" Zan glared at her.
"If she thinks she's not alone in this, it takes the pressure off. She won't talk." Isabel moved to the window to watch Liz turn the corner. "I've dreamwalked her already. She's not a threat but she does know what Nicholas looks like and that's what she's dreaming about. He's a pint-sized world of trouble. She knows that."
"What are you saying, Isabel?" Max sat to look at his sister.
"I'm not saying you should tell her but I am saying that she's more concerned about you finding out your real parents were involved in something shady than about how Zan saved your life. She still loves you." When she turned her brother was staring at his hands. "I know you still have to be with her even if it's just friends but I'm thinking at this point, you shouldn't get any closer… to protect her. If the enemy finds out that a human knows what Nicholas looks like…"
"She's right." Zan spoke up. "They kept him in that stupid little town for 30 years so that he wouldn't be connected to anything unexplained. He's had nothing to do but study earth procedures and grow stronger. He's dying but he won't go down without a fight."
"What do you think he'll do?"
"He'll go after Michael next. He's got a hard on for killing him. He killed Rath on Antar, he killed the Rath I know in Tucson and he'll kill Michael if he gets the chance."
I think that if I trust Max that he'll come to me on his own. He'll tell me what's going on. I just have to be patient and wait until school starts.
"Maria." Liz scoffed.
"You got involved in a murder mystery before you even called me to tell me you were back and you will pay for not calling all summer." Maria moved around the store, gathering new school-wear.
"It's not a murder mystery. No one was killed. They didn't even find a bullet. The cops told my dad it was probably some little kid looking to scare someone with blanks. He could have picked up the shell and taken off while Max was choking and I was busy looking after him."
"You are such a weird person. Kyle is this in and out person in your life, you know? You dated him and then you broke up with him and then he's trying again and then he's not and now you're pretending he doesn't exist except that I heard he's in our economics class and you know what always happens when you have a class with him."
"'Ms. Parker, you're ahead of the game. Help Mr. Valenti catch up.'" Liz imitated her freshman history teacher.
"Exactly. It's a normal relationship with an ex but this Max thing is way weird. You're dating, you're not. You're friends, you turn into the psycho-jealousy-monster of death and then you're friends and then you're not and then you're friends again." Maria stopped her friend. "Why? Are you harboring some fantasy of giving yourself to him on graduation night?"
"Oh. Um. No. Look. Jeans." Liz panicked. She hadn't told Maria and that wasn't going to go over well.
"Oh my god. You are. It's sweet. Really. Alex and I made a pact. If I haven't gotten any by July 4 next summer, we're going to get it out of the way before I go off into the world." Maria watched Liz's double take and nodded. "We're adults. We can do this."
"It's Alex… and Alex slept with the cheerleader."
"He'll know what he's doing by then."
"You're horrible." Liz shook her head. "And I'm not gonna sleep with Max on graduation night or prom night or the night before I leave for college. It's not like that. We're just friends. And besides… Max and Tess are gonna be a totally cute thing and… I… will find someone else."
"Oh my god." Maria gasped and grabbed Liz. "I almost forgot. There is this totally weird rumor that April skipped town because Max knocked her up. Isn't that the wildest thing ever?"
"It's not true. Her father transferred to South Carolina."
"You and I know that but the kids at school."
"So, they slept together. Max was totally responsible. He had a condom." Liz shook her head and moved around the rack and straight into Tess Harding. "Oh. Tess. Hi."
"Whoa? Girlfriend got some?" Maria barreled around the side of the rack and froze. "Oh. Hi."
"Hi." Tess nodded and moved to the next rack. "It's okay. You know. We… aren't officially dating until the first date is over and… I do realize that Max has dated before."
"I really didn’t mean to…" Liz apologized.
"It's okay. Really. Have… you talked to him?"
"He's totally spaced. He called you?"
"Yeah, family stuff he said." Tess shoved her hands into her back pockets. "He's supposed to meet me in half an hour at the food court."
"Okay. Um… see you in school."
"Bye."
"Oh my God. That was embarrassing." Maria covered her mouth. "But Max? Really?"
"Yeah." Liz stared at the rack in front of her. "And I did… too."
"Huh? Did what?" The blonde followed Liz to the dressing room, where they squeezed into a stall. "Liz?"
"That night… of the party?"
"The one where you ditched us and we were worrying all night?"
"Yeah… something happened…"
I mean. It was strange and I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it all and I will get it but I've really got enough on my plate with Maria wanting to murder me and that Zan guy following me… When school starts tomorrow, I'll get some answers… Maybe.
TBC
I'm Liz Parker and I'm not sure what's been going on in my strange little town. One minute I am happy and enjoying a comfortable silence with one of my best friends and the next… Max is lying on the linoleum, bleeding from the chest and choking for air. I know my heart stopped beating as I thought about him dying in my arms.
Liz stared at the boy. It was a boy with acne-ridden skin and a bad sunburn. He had the smoking gun in his hand and he looked proud of himself. He was 12 or maybe 13 or 14. Young still to be gloating over someone he had just shot in cold blood. It felt like hours that she stared at that boy and memorized his face before he ran off into the night. Then she was on the floor with a bunch of napkins, trying vainly to stop the bleeding.
The noise got to her. Her own sobbing and that other noise. That gulping and croaking noise. Then it hit her. Max had been eating. Max was choking. Max couldn't breathe. She had taken first aid. She could do this. Uselessly wiping her hand on her pants, she opened his mouth and scooped the pie out of his mouth but there was still some in his throat where she couldn't reach. She racked her brain for the lessons but nothing seemed to be coming. He had to breathe so that she could tell if he could. If only he had been a frailer boy, she could have done it easily but she had a hard time turning his body on his side so she could hit his back. Sobbing, she smacked him as hard as she could until she heard the gasp, followed by the puking. She almost puked herself as she let him finish so she could roll him back. No blood in the puke from his mouth. No choking when he was on his back again. Missed the lung? Maybe forcing her parents to let her watch ER on a school night wasn't a waste of time after all. Pressure on the wound. Call the cops. She couldn't do both at the same time.
Footsteps in the back room. Had it all only taken seconds? Were her parents already out of bed and on the phone with the police? Max was breathing, gasping for air, taking it in gulps and in a lot of pain. "Max?" He didn't respond and his eyes were closing. "Max, can you hold on until the ambulance gets here? Please? Hold on, please."
The bells and the screech of rubber on linoleum made her head snap up. She stared because she didn't know what she was seeing. How could Max be here and there? How could he be bleeding beneath her hands and sliding across the Crashdown floor to his own body at the same time? "Shit. Shit, shit, shit." He muttered as he looked them over, his knee in the puddle of puke. That-Max looked dirty and sweaty and panicked, his eyes snapped to hers. "What's his name?"
"Max." She managed to get out while she leaned on the wound in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. "His name is Max."
"Let me see, darlin'," That-Max nudged her aside, his bare hand covering the wound and the other hand lifting This-Max's head. "Max, open the eyes, Chief." This-Max's eyes rolled beneath the eyelids but didn't open. "Come on, Max. Open 'em up." That-Max looked to Liz. "Darlin', some help? Get him to open his eyes."
Liz leaned over, hands shaking, heart slamming in her chest and not really comprehending anything anymore. "Max? It's Liz. Can you open your eyes? Someone's here to help." His eyes fluttered open. "That's it. Open those pretty eyes for us." She felt her face smiling in relief as his eyes opened but it was like her face muscles had been disconnected from her brain. Then This-Max looked at That-Max and they both gasped for air and This-Max's body went rigid. "Oh my God," she whispered. Her brain worked furiously. Shock? He needed to be warm, right? That-Max seemed to be concentrating on holding the blood in with his bare hands. She jumped to her feet to get a blanket from the back room. When she returned, This-Max was sitting up and staring at That-Max. That-Max's hand still gripped This-Max behind the neck and This-Max had gripped That-Max's arm. They were locked in some kind of staring contest. The sirens seemed to bring them out of it. "Max?"
"You know what to do." That-Max told This-Max and then he raced out the door.
I was paralyzed. I just sat there with Max when the cops came. I sounded like a robot when I gave my statement. 'A teenage boy raced in, fired off one shot and ran away. Max was startled… he started choking. He puked. That? It's ketchup. A bottle broke.' It was like I didn't know what I was saying but it was the look on Max's face when I started talking. I had never seen him look like that. Scared and of me and what I might say. Max didn't see the boy so I gave the description and I was the only other person who saw that other Max… but I didn't mention him to the cops.
Two things kept running through my head. That guy looked just like Max. Max was adopted. Maybe this was what he had been waiting for all these years. Did he know he had a brother? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he had repressed it. Maybe it came back to him looking at that guy. 'You know what to do.' Had this been a part of Max's life before the Evans found him? I could ask Max but he's been nowhere to be seen these days. He stood up Tess for their date…
Max couldn't help but stare. Isabel hadn't left his side since she had heard what happened. The teenager in front of them was a clone. Not of Max. Both he and Max were clones of their former alien self. The story was rather unbelievable. Zan, his name was. They were once king of a planet. They had a sister, a best friend and a wife.
"Near as I can figure, they stowed us away, you know? Just tossed us where they could be sure no one would find us by accident." Zan explained. "We were in the sewer and a few years ago, they came for us. Said things back home were rough and we needed to go but even though I remember, I can't go back there. I said no. They kept comin' at me. Tryin' to get to me in different ways. Then they had their meeting and to have us officially as a non-matter, we gotta be dead. So they came after us. We've been runnin' ever since."
"Why are you here?" Max demanded.
"Last year, Nicholas, the leader of the bad guys on Earth, he finds out there's another set… only he don't know where they are. Neither do we. It's been a race. All he has to do is capture, kill and show the bodies. I've been verified but your body will do. I've been doggin' him for months and he finally found out where you were. He almost won." Zan sank down into the chair.
"You said there were four of us to a set. We only have three." Isabel cut in.
"Tall guy. Kind of tough. Thinks he can do it all better." Zan sipped the coke they had gotten for him ages ago and poured some hot sauce in.
"Michael." Isabel rolled her eyes. "We've got him."
"Short girl, naturally blond." Zan paused at the looks on their faces. "Mine's not blond anymore. Anyway, like I was sayin'… Eager to please and a way in the sack that can drive you crazy." He shook his head to himself. "If you're into it, that is."
Max shook his head. "Just been the three of us as long as we can remember."
"The dreams, man. You had to at least seen her in those. You did get the dreams, right?" Zan looked to Isabel who looked away. "She did."
"Well, she and Michael are kind of a thing." Max shifted uncomfortably.
"They're supposed to be." Zan studied Max hard. Hinting might work, draw him out a little. "Curly blond hair, small tight body, and when you kiss her behind her ear, she moans somethin' fierce."
Max shot out of his chair and moved to the window. He had had the dreams but they were inappropriate and he hardly knew the girl. He cursed to himself. He had a date with her, four hours ago. "Maybe… I did dream something like that but the girl is normal. She just moved to town last semester. She has nothing to do with us."
"You don't mean Tess, right?" Isabel's head whipped to her brother. "She can't be one of us, can she?"
"She hasn't told you anything?" Zan sat up.
"She's one of my friends, has been since she came to town." Isabel shook her head. "She hadn't really bothered to meet Max before but later… when she found out he was my brother…"
"Liz set us up." Max shook his head.
"Because I told her I wouldn't set her up with such a dork."
I see that guy around town. He's walking and people just walk around him and when I look away, I can feel his eyes on me. I just wish someone could tell me something concrete about what's going on. I saw that guy again today and he scared me this time.
Liz stared at the refrigerator. Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, Diet Sprite, Dr. Pepper, Diet Dr. Pepper, Cherry Coke, Mr. Pibb… This country had too many options. She sighed and just grabbed a couple of bottles of Cherry Coke. If she was going to insist on seeing Max, she was going to be prepared to stay awhile. She wondered if he was really alright. He had a bullet in his chest. He had bled a considerable amount. When she had cleaned up the mess, there were two broken bottles of ketchup to cover the huge puddle.
When she turned there was a body blocking her vision. When she looked up, it was him. "There you are darlin', I thought I was gonna have to scour the town for you."
"You were looking for me?" Liz's eyes were wide and she couldn't seem to make herself back up.
"All over." He leaned in and put his mouth to her ear. "I know who you are."
"What?" She tried to back up but there was a cold refrigerator case there.
"Is this your real shape? Or are you really a hairy old man or somethin'?"
"What are you talking about?" Move Liz, move. It took a large amount of strength to step away. Head up, she looked at him. He seemed angry at her and she didn't know why. "Look. I didn't tell the cops what really happened. I don't know you or why you look like Max… but I am grateful for what you did." He stood and stared at her, blocking her path. Liz couldn't seem to keep her mouth shut. "Are you… his brother or something? Do you know what happened to his parents?"
"You're good." He nodded and stepped out of her way. "They have a seminar on how to act like a 16-year-old?"
"I'm 18, thank you." Liz scoffed and moved to the counter. "I don't know what's wrong with you but I'll thank you to leave me alone."
He gripped her arm and spun her around. "I am on to you."
"Well, that's good. I'd see someone about your delusions if I were you. Thank you for saving Max's life but I'm gonna have to ask you to leave me alone from now on. I'll send Max your regards." Liz ripped her arm out of his grasp and rushed to the counter to pay. She wished she had begged the car off her mother but she had been brilliant and decided to walk to the convenient store to get her head together on the way to Max's. She was four blocks away by the time she had gathered the courage to look behind her. No one was there. Somehow she had expected that guy to be right on her heels.
By the time she got to Max's, she was a nervous wreck. On top of it all, Max was genuinely surprised to see her and seemed to want her to leave until she told him about why she was there. "And on top of all this craziness, that guy threatened me. Wanted to see my real face, whatever that means. What's going on, Max?" He didn't answer her. He fidgeted at the kitchen table. "Well, did you at least call Tess to apologize for standing her up? I talked to her this morning and she was a little upset."
"About the other night… um…" Max was at a loss for words and he knew Isabel was in the hallway listening. "I'm sorry if you got scared and if… Zan said anything to you… I sure he didn't mean it."
"Zan? His name is Zan? What is that?" Her ire was growing the more evasive Max was. "Can you just tell me what's going on? That boy… the cops can't find him and they've looked everywhere. Why would he want to shoot you?" He just stood there and she had to throw her arms around him. "I was so scared, Max. You were bleeding and I couldn't stop it."
"Sh. It's okay. I'm okay." Max let his arms come around her body.
"I didn't dream that, did I?"
"No."
"You move fast." A voice floated over her head.
Liz turned and there he was. 'Zan'. "Excuse me?"
"I was on you for three blocks and you move fast."
"You were following me." Liz exclaimed and turned to Max. "Tell me what's going on and why this… miscreant is following me."
"Everyone just calm down." Max shouted. "Nothing is going on. It was all a misunderstanding." He put his hands on Liz's shoulders. "Just… go home. I'll call Tess and apologize tonight. I haven't been feeling myself. Obviously, I've got a bit of a … family issue, here."
"So he is. He's your brother?" Liz watched his face while he tried to figure out how to answer. "I see. You were avoiding the subject. Well at the very least he's your identical twin cousin."
"Something like that." Max nodded with a half smile in appreciation of her joke. "I'll call her tonight and I'll see you in a couple of days at school. I'll let you know something when I have the answers myself. Okay?"
"Okay." She nodded. "Promise."
"Yeah. I promise and just… don't tell anyone what you saw. Please?"
"Okay. I promise, too." She held still as he kissed her forehead. She left them the drinks and moved through the house to the front door. Isabel was waiting. "Hey."
"Hey." Isabel held onto the door knob. "Listen… I wasn't there. I don't know the specifics but I'm glad you were there. Max said he could have… asphyxiated, I think is the word he used, before Zan got there and did… whatever…"
"He hasn't told you much either?" Liz stared at the blond. She seemed genuinely scared. "I thought you were close."
"We are but… the guy in the kitchen could be my brother or cousin too. It's all a little scary and… I know that it's weird and you haven't flaked or told. You're a better friend to my brother than I ever gave you credit for."
"Thank you for saying that." Liz nodded and walked out when Isabel opened the door. The blond leaned on the door after the brunette departed. The two alien kings were staring at her. "I had to…"
"To confirm what she was starting to think was a dream?" Zan glared at her.
"If she thinks she's not alone in this, it takes the pressure off. She won't talk." Isabel moved to the window to watch Liz turn the corner. "I've dreamwalked her already. She's not a threat but she does know what Nicholas looks like and that's what she's dreaming about. He's a pint-sized world of trouble. She knows that."
"What are you saying, Isabel?" Max sat to look at his sister.
"I'm not saying you should tell her but I am saying that she's more concerned about you finding out your real parents were involved in something shady than about how Zan saved your life. She still loves you." When she turned her brother was staring at his hands. "I know you still have to be with her even if it's just friends but I'm thinking at this point, you shouldn't get any closer… to protect her. If the enemy finds out that a human knows what Nicholas looks like…"
"She's right." Zan spoke up. "They kept him in that stupid little town for 30 years so that he wouldn't be connected to anything unexplained. He's had nothing to do but study earth procedures and grow stronger. He's dying but he won't go down without a fight."
"What do you think he'll do?"
"He'll go after Michael next. He's got a hard on for killing him. He killed Rath on Antar, he killed the Rath I know in Tucson and he'll kill Michael if he gets the chance."
I think that if I trust Max that he'll come to me on his own. He'll tell me what's going on. I just have to be patient and wait until school starts.
"Maria." Liz scoffed.
"You got involved in a murder mystery before you even called me to tell me you were back and you will pay for not calling all summer." Maria moved around the store, gathering new school-wear.
"It's not a murder mystery. No one was killed. They didn't even find a bullet. The cops told my dad it was probably some little kid looking to scare someone with blanks. He could have picked up the shell and taken off while Max was choking and I was busy looking after him."
"You are such a weird person. Kyle is this in and out person in your life, you know? You dated him and then you broke up with him and then he's trying again and then he's not and now you're pretending he doesn't exist except that I heard he's in our economics class and you know what always happens when you have a class with him."
"'Ms. Parker, you're ahead of the game. Help Mr. Valenti catch up.'" Liz imitated her freshman history teacher.
"Exactly. It's a normal relationship with an ex but this Max thing is way weird. You're dating, you're not. You're friends, you turn into the psycho-jealousy-monster of death and then you're friends and then you're not and then you're friends again." Maria stopped her friend. "Why? Are you harboring some fantasy of giving yourself to him on graduation night?"
"Oh. Um. No. Look. Jeans." Liz panicked. She hadn't told Maria and that wasn't going to go over well.
"Oh my god. You are. It's sweet. Really. Alex and I made a pact. If I haven't gotten any by July 4 next summer, we're going to get it out of the way before I go off into the world." Maria watched Liz's double take and nodded. "We're adults. We can do this."
"It's Alex… and Alex slept with the cheerleader."
"He'll know what he's doing by then."
"You're horrible." Liz shook her head. "And I'm not gonna sleep with Max on graduation night or prom night or the night before I leave for college. It's not like that. We're just friends. And besides… Max and Tess are gonna be a totally cute thing and… I… will find someone else."
"Oh my god." Maria gasped and grabbed Liz. "I almost forgot. There is this totally weird rumor that April skipped town because Max knocked her up. Isn't that the wildest thing ever?"
"It's not true. Her father transferred to South Carolina."
"You and I know that but the kids at school."
"So, they slept together. Max was totally responsible. He had a condom." Liz shook her head and moved around the rack and straight into Tess Harding. "Oh. Tess. Hi."
"Whoa? Girlfriend got some?" Maria barreled around the side of the rack and froze. "Oh. Hi."
"Hi." Tess nodded and moved to the next rack. "It's okay. You know. We… aren't officially dating until the first date is over and… I do realize that Max has dated before."
"I really didn’t mean to…" Liz apologized.
"It's okay. Really. Have… you talked to him?"
"He's totally spaced. He called you?"
"Yeah, family stuff he said." Tess shoved her hands into her back pockets. "He's supposed to meet me in half an hour at the food court."
"Okay. Um… see you in school."
"Bye."
"Oh my God. That was embarrassing." Maria covered her mouth. "But Max? Really?"
"Yeah." Liz stared at the rack in front of her. "And I did… too."
"Huh? Did what?" The blonde followed Liz to the dressing room, where they squeezed into a stall. "Liz?"
"That night… of the party?"
"The one where you ditched us and we were worrying all night?"
"Yeah… something happened…"
I mean. It was strange and I'm sure there's a logical explanation for it all and I will get it but I've really got enough on my plate with Maria wanting to murder me and that Zan guy following me… When school starts tomorrow, I'll get some answers… Maybe.
TBC
Last edited by DMartinez on Thu May 12, 2005 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Part 35
I'm Liz Parker and living in Roswell just got weirder.
Maria glared at the table as she assessed her new knowledge of her friends. "How did I end up the only virgin left in Roswell? Hmm? You got cheerleader nookie." She pointed at Alex then threw a Chee-to at him. "You got army brat nookie." She threw a second at Max. "And you… you got doctor nookie." Liz picked up her notebook in time to deflect the airborne imitation cheese product. "Really hot doctor nookie."
"Stop."
"I mean… really, really hot doctor nookie."
"Enough, Maria." Liz glared at her friend.
"Did you know that the elder Najera son was so hot?" She asked the guys, who rolled their eyes and concentrated on their respective lunches.
"Kelen is not hot. He's normal. Stop it." Liz rewrote her supply list for physics and prayed Maria would get off the topic before it got all over the school. Then it hit her. "Max?" She sang. "Max?"
"What?" He looked up, he was tired and hungry and hadn't had a moment's peace in three days.
"How was your lunch with Tess? We saw her at the mall right before."
"Okay, I guess." Max wasn't so hungry anymore. Tess hadn't let on anything. So he gave up and resigned himself to enjoy her company. He had to admit that he had felt something when he kissed her before she left. Something inside that felt… wrong. "It was a little public, I think."
"Safety date." Maria reached over and squeezed his hand. "See, we taught you well. Safety date is out of the way. Next date is dinner and a movie. Romantic comedy and burgers."
"We're fixing up Max but not me?" Alex scoffed at his gal pals. "What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing but I thought you were still bringing in the numbers." Maria shook her head. While they bickered over who needed the dates more, Max looked at Liz. They exchanged looks and Liz understood that the explanation would come later when they could be alone and not have to explain to anyone that they needed to talk. Then Maria stopped talking. Liz felt the body next to her just seconds before a tattooed arm reached in front of her for her bag of chips. "Whoa. Double take."
"So, these are my cousin's friends." Zan committed each face to memory in turn.
"What are you doing here?" Max ground out.
"Lookin' for some culture and I ain't found none yet."
"Gee, you can't find someone who's glad to see you. Imagine that." Liz tried to rise from her seat but Zan placed an arm around her shoulders. "Could you, please, not touch me?"
"Alex, Maria, this is Zan." Max told them. "He was just leaving."
"I just got here, cuz." He squeezed Liz with his arm and pressed a noisy kiss to her cheek. "Me and Liz are finally gettin' along."
"Ugh." Liz gagged and shoved him away. "Please… don't touch me."
"That's… some family resemblance." Alex nodded.
"You've met?" Maria gestured to the bickering duo.
"Once or twice too many." Liz grabbed her bag and stormed away. That guy was really getting on her nerves. She would be well within her rights to rack him if he touched her again without permission.
If just knowing that Max has an identical twin cousin wasn't enough… first the guy tries to threaten me or something and then he's like… all over me and I can't tell if he's still doing the former or if he… wants me for some depraved reason or another. Max apologized profusely for the bad behavior but he still hasn't told me anything. I flipped back. I read it. Max got shot. I couldn't have hallucinated something that horrible and written it down before it got spattered by imaginary blood. I'm in the twilight zone. It's the quarter episode where I hear things and don't know what's really going to happen or if it's just something someone's thinking to pass the time.
"Liz!" Max caught up to her after school. "Liz, look, I'm sorry about Zan. He… drives me a little crazy, too ." She kept walking. "I know that I was going to tell you something today but I don't know what it is that I'm going to tell you."
She finally stopped and turned to him. "Why? I thought you were figuring it all out."
"It's hard to figure out. I was counting on Zan to know something concrete. He doesn't." Max blew out a breath. "Apparently there weren't many reliable people in my biological family. The only ones Zan knew are long gone. Everyone else… distant relatives, they expect too much from us."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Max." She waited but he had stopped speaking. "Max… what did Zan do? I worried I might never wash all that blood off my hands. You were shot and now you want to pretend it never happened but I… and Isabel… both of us want to know what Zan is." She reached for his hand. "It can't be all bad… he brought you back to us."
"I guess the obstacle there is that he doesn't know himself. It's just something he's always been able to do." Max lied. He hated to lie to her when she was obviously so concerned. He had thought about telling her a thousand and one times and it had always come down to his fear of someone he loved finding out and thinking he was a monster. "He's really a nice guy… sometimes." He laughed to himself. "He only seems to get irritating around you. I think he's afraid of you and what you might say to someone."
"I would never tell anyone." Liz stared into the trees. "I guess I can understand why he might be afraid. If he had stuck around and we told the truth. They might have thought we were all crazy until they forced him to demonstrate and I couldn't even begin to imagine the tests someone might perform on him to find out how he could do it… and really… if I hadn't seen it myself… I might have never considered the possibility."
"I think his real fear is that someone might take him against his will to perform those tests you don't want to imagine. He's been alone for a long time, Liz. I've had parents. He's a real orphan. No parents, no one to take care of him but himself. All this time."
"How long?"
"He was little… very young. Nine, I think is what he said."
"Nine?" Liz thought that over. Aggressive behavior used as a security blanket, a rather effective shield to protect himself and his family. "Why did he think I could hurt you?"
"I think he's a little off his rocker." Max moved them along once again. "He's paranoid. He'll get over it. He won't be here long."
"Really? I thought he had moved here or something."
"He's just passing through. After some of the things he told me, I'm willing to not know. My parents are enough for me."
"Max." Liz stopped them. She reached up and pulled aside his shirt. There. Not a scar. Like a bullet had never torn the flesh there. "I had to see."
"It means a lot to me that you understand enough not to press for more than it's possible for me to know."
Liz could only nod. It was probably al she was going to get out of him and it seemed to really upset him and so… she decided to let it drop.
I'm not sure I buy the story Max told me but I could tell it took a lot out of him to tell me. Zan is less of a mystery but no less annoying. He still pops up out of nowhere and follows me around.
Liz rolled her eyes and when she turned the corner, she stopped. Then Zan came barreling around the corner and almost ran right past her. "Are we having fun?"
"Yes." Liz nodded and started walking once more. "You know… even knowing what I do about you… I'm not afraid of you… actually, less so since Max told me. This is all an act. You're from some urban city where you have to act tough to keep from getting beaten or used or something. You don't need it around me."
"I don't, huh." Zan nodded to himself. "I thought your were going to bitch me out again for following you."
"Oh, don't worry. It's coming." She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "I don't know why you feel it's necessary to follow me like I'm going to do something bad to you when the fact of the matter is that I don't care a good God damn what you do or don't do."
"Answer me this, darlin', and maybe I'll leave you 'lone." Zan shoved his hands into his pockets and stepped in front of her. "How d'you know so much 'bout Max?"
"Like what?"
"Stuff. How old he was when he showed up, that his folks were into somethin' fishy…"
"Max told me. I mean, the whole town knows that his real parents left him out in the desert, no food, no water, no clothes. I met him in the third grade, after he spent a couple of years catching up. Everyone knows that. You can't live here your whole life without hearing the gossip."
"Why would Max tell you? Out of ev'ryone in town. Why you?"
"We were dating when he told me. Okay? We were pretty serious for a while. I consider Max to be one of my best friends." She looked up at him. "If this is about what you did… I'm not telling anyone. Believe me, I'd like to but I promised Max. I don't break my promises to my friends. Can I walk now?"
Zan stepped aside. "Do me a favor. You ever see that kid 'gin… go someplace public and call Max."
"What?" Liz blinked at him. "What makes you think I'd see that kid again?"
"Just call it a feelin'." Zan strode off and disappeared around a corner.
Standing there in the middle of the sidewalk… I began to think for the first time that maybe it had been a mix up. Maybe this Zan guy was into something and because he and Max share many key genes, he got Max involved in it. That kid wasn't after Max… Maybe he meant to shoot Zan. In a dark alley, I might make the same mistake. I hope to God that I never see Zan or that kid ever again. I'll never talk about what happened that night if it means it all goes away.
TBC
Maria glared at the table as she assessed her new knowledge of her friends. "How did I end up the only virgin left in Roswell? Hmm? You got cheerleader nookie." She pointed at Alex then threw a Chee-to at him. "You got army brat nookie." She threw a second at Max. "And you… you got doctor nookie." Liz picked up her notebook in time to deflect the airborne imitation cheese product. "Really hot doctor nookie."
"Stop."
"I mean… really, really hot doctor nookie."
"Enough, Maria." Liz glared at her friend.
"Did you know that the elder Najera son was so hot?" She asked the guys, who rolled their eyes and concentrated on their respective lunches.
"Kelen is not hot. He's normal. Stop it." Liz rewrote her supply list for physics and prayed Maria would get off the topic before it got all over the school. Then it hit her. "Max?" She sang. "Max?"
"What?" He looked up, he was tired and hungry and hadn't had a moment's peace in three days.
"How was your lunch with Tess? We saw her at the mall right before."
"Okay, I guess." Max wasn't so hungry anymore. Tess hadn't let on anything. So he gave up and resigned himself to enjoy her company. He had to admit that he had felt something when he kissed her before she left. Something inside that felt… wrong. "It was a little public, I think."
"Safety date." Maria reached over and squeezed his hand. "See, we taught you well. Safety date is out of the way. Next date is dinner and a movie. Romantic comedy and burgers."
"We're fixing up Max but not me?" Alex scoffed at his gal pals. "What's wrong with me?"
"Nothing but I thought you were still bringing in the numbers." Maria shook her head. While they bickered over who needed the dates more, Max looked at Liz. They exchanged looks and Liz understood that the explanation would come later when they could be alone and not have to explain to anyone that they needed to talk. Then Maria stopped talking. Liz felt the body next to her just seconds before a tattooed arm reached in front of her for her bag of chips. "Whoa. Double take."
"So, these are my cousin's friends." Zan committed each face to memory in turn.
"What are you doing here?" Max ground out.
"Lookin' for some culture and I ain't found none yet."
"Gee, you can't find someone who's glad to see you. Imagine that." Liz tried to rise from her seat but Zan placed an arm around her shoulders. "Could you, please, not touch me?"
"Alex, Maria, this is Zan." Max told them. "He was just leaving."
"I just got here, cuz." He squeezed Liz with his arm and pressed a noisy kiss to her cheek. "Me and Liz are finally gettin' along."
"Ugh." Liz gagged and shoved him away. "Please… don't touch me."
"That's… some family resemblance." Alex nodded.
"You've met?" Maria gestured to the bickering duo.
"Once or twice too many." Liz grabbed her bag and stormed away. That guy was really getting on her nerves. She would be well within her rights to rack him if he touched her again without permission.
If just knowing that Max has an identical twin cousin wasn't enough… first the guy tries to threaten me or something and then he's like… all over me and I can't tell if he's still doing the former or if he… wants me for some depraved reason or another. Max apologized profusely for the bad behavior but he still hasn't told me anything. I flipped back. I read it. Max got shot. I couldn't have hallucinated something that horrible and written it down before it got spattered by imaginary blood. I'm in the twilight zone. It's the quarter episode where I hear things and don't know what's really going to happen or if it's just something someone's thinking to pass the time.
"Liz!" Max caught up to her after school. "Liz, look, I'm sorry about Zan. He… drives me a little crazy, too ." She kept walking. "I know that I was going to tell you something today but I don't know what it is that I'm going to tell you."
She finally stopped and turned to him. "Why? I thought you were figuring it all out."
"It's hard to figure out. I was counting on Zan to know something concrete. He doesn't." Max blew out a breath. "Apparently there weren't many reliable people in my biological family. The only ones Zan knew are long gone. Everyone else… distant relatives, they expect too much from us."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Max." She waited but he had stopped speaking. "Max… what did Zan do? I worried I might never wash all that blood off my hands. You were shot and now you want to pretend it never happened but I… and Isabel… both of us want to know what Zan is." She reached for his hand. "It can't be all bad… he brought you back to us."
"I guess the obstacle there is that he doesn't know himself. It's just something he's always been able to do." Max lied. He hated to lie to her when she was obviously so concerned. He had thought about telling her a thousand and one times and it had always come down to his fear of someone he loved finding out and thinking he was a monster. "He's really a nice guy… sometimes." He laughed to himself. "He only seems to get irritating around you. I think he's afraid of you and what you might say to someone."
"I would never tell anyone." Liz stared into the trees. "I guess I can understand why he might be afraid. If he had stuck around and we told the truth. They might have thought we were all crazy until they forced him to demonstrate and I couldn't even begin to imagine the tests someone might perform on him to find out how he could do it… and really… if I hadn't seen it myself… I might have never considered the possibility."
"I think his real fear is that someone might take him against his will to perform those tests you don't want to imagine. He's been alone for a long time, Liz. I've had parents. He's a real orphan. No parents, no one to take care of him but himself. All this time."
"How long?"
"He was little… very young. Nine, I think is what he said."
"Nine?" Liz thought that over. Aggressive behavior used as a security blanket, a rather effective shield to protect himself and his family. "Why did he think I could hurt you?"
"I think he's a little off his rocker." Max moved them along once again. "He's paranoid. He'll get over it. He won't be here long."
"Really? I thought he had moved here or something."
"He's just passing through. After some of the things he told me, I'm willing to not know. My parents are enough for me."
"Max." Liz stopped them. She reached up and pulled aside his shirt. There. Not a scar. Like a bullet had never torn the flesh there. "I had to see."
"It means a lot to me that you understand enough not to press for more than it's possible for me to know."
Liz could only nod. It was probably al she was going to get out of him and it seemed to really upset him and so… she decided to let it drop.
I'm not sure I buy the story Max told me but I could tell it took a lot out of him to tell me. Zan is less of a mystery but no less annoying. He still pops up out of nowhere and follows me around.
Liz rolled her eyes and when she turned the corner, she stopped. Then Zan came barreling around the corner and almost ran right past her. "Are we having fun?"
"Yes." Liz nodded and started walking once more. "You know… even knowing what I do about you… I'm not afraid of you… actually, less so since Max told me. This is all an act. You're from some urban city where you have to act tough to keep from getting beaten or used or something. You don't need it around me."
"I don't, huh." Zan nodded to himself. "I thought your were going to bitch me out again for following you."
"Oh, don't worry. It's coming." She tossed her hair over her shoulder. "I don't know why you feel it's necessary to follow me like I'm going to do something bad to you when the fact of the matter is that I don't care a good God damn what you do or don't do."
"Answer me this, darlin', and maybe I'll leave you 'lone." Zan shoved his hands into his pockets and stepped in front of her. "How d'you know so much 'bout Max?"
"Like what?"
"Stuff. How old he was when he showed up, that his folks were into somethin' fishy…"
"Max told me. I mean, the whole town knows that his real parents left him out in the desert, no food, no water, no clothes. I met him in the third grade, after he spent a couple of years catching up. Everyone knows that. You can't live here your whole life without hearing the gossip."
"Why would Max tell you? Out of ev'ryone in town. Why you?"
"We were dating when he told me. Okay? We were pretty serious for a while. I consider Max to be one of my best friends." She looked up at him. "If this is about what you did… I'm not telling anyone. Believe me, I'd like to but I promised Max. I don't break my promises to my friends. Can I walk now?"
Zan stepped aside. "Do me a favor. You ever see that kid 'gin… go someplace public and call Max."
"What?" Liz blinked at him. "What makes you think I'd see that kid again?"
"Just call it a feelin'." Zan strode off and disappeared around a corner.
Standing there in the middle of the sidewalk… I began to think for the first time that maybe it had been a mix up. Maybe this Zan guy was into something and because he and Max share many key genes, he got Max involved in it. That kid wasn't after Max… Maybe he meant to shoot Zan. In a dark alley, I might make the same mistake. I hope to God that I never see Zan or that kid ever again. I'll never talk about what happened that night if it means it all goes away.
TBC
Part 36
I'm Liz Parker and something is happening to me. I'm on this ride and I don't know how to make it stop. I want off.
Their eyes met for a second across the busy street. Liz nodded and smiled a little and kept walking, her eyes searching desperately for something else to focus on. Her face flushed and she was glad that he had kept walking too. If he had crossed the street to say high to her, her embarrassment would have transformed her into the Babbling queen of Babbledonia. She nearly tripped over a rise in the sidewalk and the hands that steadied her reminded her what she was doing before seeing him.
"Okay, Liz. You told me that it was a one-time thing but that… face you just made…"
"Shut up, Alex." Liz bit out and found her footing again. "And what's this Fourth of July pact that you've got with Maria?"
"My God, that was like… a year or two ago. How did you even hear about that?"
"She told me."
"We won't do it." Alex shook his head. He shrugged his shoulders and turned the corner with her, eyes forward. "Maria… I've never felt that way about her. I think maybe in the fourth grade… Yeah, in the fourth grade I was in love with her for a whole week. But the next week I was in love with Dinah Cortez… and the next week it was Belinda Ames. Maria will be back with Freddy by Thanksgiving."
"You really think that?" Liz watched his face as they covered the next block and a half. The amount of time he spent thinking about it worried her. "Well?"
"You know Maria. If she doesn't have that element of drama in her life, she feels like she's not living. Next week she'll bring up the virgin thing up again every day at lunch. Next month she'll whine that there are no guys in Roswell worth dating. Then at the beginning of October she'll be interviewing candidates for Homecoming. She'll casually talk to some fringe friend of Freddy's and boom… Second week of November, she and Freddy will be back together. They'll take a break the first week of December and they'll make up the week before Christmas and they'll fight right away and then he'll get her a Christmas present and they'll be good until after New Year's… and on Valentine's… they'll finally do it."
"Alex." Liz chided but only half-heartedly. It sounded exactly like Maria. Drama Mama of them all. They needed a change of subject. "And you?"
"Oh, me… I'm doomed to fall in love every week until I make my first million, at which point, I start dating supermodels." When he smiled, Liz didn't believe him.
That thing that happens to you. That you want to happen so badly but when it happens, you're unprepared. I'm growing up. I know that I am evolving. It's one thing to know that it happens from a scientific perspective. To know that it's chemicals that rush through your veins and allow you to feel things. To know what it says in the health books, that your body matures and changes into that person you will become. That moment when you realize that it doesn't always boil down to science. That moment when you realize that you have no control over your hormones and chemicals and certainly not over the chemicals and hormones in anyone else. That moment when your world spins out of control. That's the scariest moment that I've ever had to pretend that I didn't know about. It's harder to pretend not to know something than to keep a secret with someone.
Liz passed the popcorn and waited for everyone to sit down. Isabel and Michael were separated by Mr. Evans on the big couch. Liz shared the smaller couch with Mrs. Evans. Max popped in the tape and handed Liz her drink before taking his seat at their feet. She smiled to herself. The Evans still had a VCR. She always giggled when Max told stories about his childhood. The Evans were older than most parents. They thought seven-year-olds would love shuffleboard and a cruise in Florida.
Isabel joked sometimes about the way Max ironed his jeans but that came from Mrs. Evans and her beliefs on how a young man should dress. Isabel was one to talk. The way she did her make up was always fashion forward but could always easily translate to another age. The Evans children were definitely products of their parents.
"I hate previews." Diane muttered. "So. Liz… are you and Max dating again?"
"Mom." Max and Isabel both said at the same time that Michael snorted.
Max cleared his throat and looked at his father then back at his mother and finally at Liz. "A girl saves my life and I cut her out of my life? What kind of logic does that make?"
"She performed the Heimlich. A monkey could do it." Michael tsked.
"Hey… He vomited all over my shoes. The very least he owes me is a movie and popcorn." Liz nudged him with her knee. "Besides… Max is spoken for."
"Liz." Max sighed heavily and his mother was off on the new tangent.
"Oh really."
"You didn't tell your mother about Tess? Shame on you." Liz liked to see Max squirm a little under his mother's teasing. It made him seem touchable. Isabel and Michael got quiet. She was right. They were protective over Max all the time. They didn't even like Tess.
"Max, honey. Who is Tess?"
You cannot unlearn something. You can forget initially and you can reprogram your actions and beliefs but you can never un-know something. You can know that hamburgers are cows but when you learn about the butchering process, you freeze just a little when you think about eating a burger or bacon or a chicken sandwich. Just a little, until finally you barely realize you do it but you always think about it.
"I'm sorry about outing you to your parents." Liz apologized weakly as Max walked her home.
"I'm not sure how I feel about her is all. I… I mean… have you ever felt attracted to someone at such a subconscious level that it just feels right but when you think about it, it never seems right?" He waited for her answer but she just pulled him to a bus stop bench to sit. "I mean, and bear with me because I know how insane I sound, when I look at her I think. 'God, is she real? She's gorgeous. She's perfect.'" He swallowed thickly. "But when I'm with her… like at the movies the other night… I think… she's the opposite of what I usually find attractive. Curly hair, blue eyes… the shape of her lips… When I kiss her, I want to have more but it doesn't feel right. Something is off when I'm with her."
"Like what?"
"Like… I know she likes me and I want to like her but we talk and we don't have anything in common… except that we both think that Crashdown tea could be sweeter." He looked at her. "Have you ever known what someone felt about you and just felt horrible because you know… just know, deep down that you could never feel the same way back?"
"Yeah, I do."
"Knowing that you do care about a person but that romantic involvement is just not in the cards for you even if they hold out… hoping…"
"Yeah, I do, Max."
"I've never been on this side of it before."
"Me either." Liz suddenly, desperately needed to be talking about something else, anything else. "So… I should get home so you don't miss your curfew."
"He told you?" Max blurted out, unable to let it drop. For a moment she froze and Max knew she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Not exactly."
"He told me."
"Max, please." This was the last thing than Liz wanted to talk about with anyone.
"How long have you known?"
"A week."
I feel like I have to watch everything I do. How often my fingers accidentally brush someone else's. How long I allow my hand to rest innocently on someone's shoulder. How often I speak someone's name. How often I find myself alone with people of the opposite sex despite my relationship standing. I understand how people make assumptions. I understand the rules that people follow even if they seem ridiculous and outdated.
I know why Mrs. Evans always walks past Max's open door when we're studying. I know why Mr. Evans insists that Michael only visit Isabel in the living room or the kitchen. Why Mrs. DeLuca always asks Maria if Freddy's parents will be there when they watch movies. Why my dad always has to meet someone that I am dating for more than a week or two. Why my parents never visit old friends of the opposite sex separately.
These seemingly archaic rules are in place for a reason and that reason is perception. It doesn't mean my dad is having an affair with Mrs. Delaney if he visits her alone. It means that if someone who doesn't know him sees him go into her house alone and he stays for a few hours catching up, they will perceive a relationship that could be less than casual. They will repeat the information and a rumor starts. I know that they were in a band together and they like to catch up on old times. Propriety states that when they miss each other, they hang out with their spouses. Mr. and Mrs. Delaney having a few drinks with Mr. and Mrs. Parker. It seems stupid for society's rules to interfere in something so basic as friendship but it's important to be responsible. To your spouse, to your children, to your friends.
"A week?" Max stared at her. "He didn't tell me anything."
"He doesn't know he almost told me." Liz shook her head. "I don't want him to know I know." She looked to him. "How long have you known?"
"Since Jeremy." When he looked at her, she froze for a moment. The world absolutely stood still for five minutes before she could find it in herself to speak again.
"I've been very careful not to act differently but it kind of blew my mind."
"How did he give himself away?"
"Maria told me that Alex told her that he was in love with her for a week in the fourth grade, with me for a week the next and then it was Belinda Ames and then Melanie Powers and then Aimee Gray… Do you know what he told me? Maria, Dinah Cortez and Belinda."
"So." Max shook his head. He knew who she was.
"Max… Dinah Cortez… God, I guess nobody remembers anymore but… in the third grade, Max… do you remember?"
"Cortez… wait… she's… the…" Max struggled to remember. That first year of school was a tumultuous one. "Oh. She was thrown from a horse. She moved away to get treatment or something like that."
"Exactly. The third grade. The same year Alex moved here. Right before he moved here. She wasn't in class. He's never seen her picture but he's heard her name. It took them a long time to take her name off of roll call." She shrugged. "It was a small oversight but if he mentioned me and Maria to Maria but only mentioned Maria to me…"
"You love Alex… just not like that."
"Yeah."
Sometimes I think my head won't ever stop hurting. It seems like every new day means a new responsibility and I just want some time to breathe in between.
Liz waved goodbye to Max and waited until he was out of sight to put one foot in front of the other. A good long walk was all she needed. To clear her brain. To put things in perspective. Just moving like a shark to keep everything functioning. Keep the wheels turning so she could… say, "Hi."
--
Max took a detour and ended up right where he feared to be. He knocked on the door and held his breath until it was opened. "Hi Mr. Harding. Is Tess home?"
"Max… Evans, right? She's been talking quite a bit about you. Now I see what the fuss was all about. Come in. Come in. I've been meaning to have you over for dinner." The short bald man, stepped aside but Max couldn't.
"Actually, this will only take a minute. I'll wait here…" Max realized how that sounded and rushed to keep talking. "Maybe some time this week… My mom wants to meet Tess, too."
"Well, we'll coordinate a schedule, then."
"Dad? Who's at the door?" Tess's voice intruded from deep inside the house.
"The oh so handsome and polite and your very soul mate, Max Evans." Mr. Harding recited off the top of his head the last few things he'd weaned out of Tess about Max.
Max felt his face turn red. Tess looked like she had been betrayed. "Dad! Oh my god! I can't believe you said that."
"He wants a minute of your time. Take five." Mr. Harding tilted his head at his daughter. "What the heck, let's make it ten." His head snapped around to fix Max with a stare. "But if it turns into fifteen, I will be stationed by the nearest window."
"Oh my god." Tess exclaimed again. She stood in the doorway in shock for a few minutes. "I do believe that was the most embarrassing moment of my life." She pulled the door shut behind her and looked to Max. "I thought you were having a family video night."
"We did." Max winced. That was a slight exaggeration he had fed her when she pressured him to make a commitment for the weekend. "I… " He pulled her away from the door and to the edge of the porch. There. Looking at her in that light, he had to kiss her. Despite all of Zan's warnings, that felt too good never to do again. His hands framed her face and again he was hit by how much he was attracted to her. Licking his lips, he tasted like her. Still, his insides were conflicted about how they felt kissing her. "I'm sorry, I just had to."
"Max?"
"I know who you are, Tess." She didn't even flinch, not in her face. He felt it. "Ava." There. The facial flinch. "I know. I've known since August… since before our first official date."
--
Liz's heart beat so fast she thought it was going to leap out of her chest. This hadn't been what she was looking for when she had decided to take her walk. Now she was a statistic of Buckley Point. "Oh god." She covered her face with her hands. "Oh god."
"Two ways to put it."
"Shut up." She mumbled through her hands. "I can't believe that happened again."
"I wasn't the one who wanted to climb into the backseat to 'look at the stars' and um, I do believe I was the one who had second thoughts. I'm the seducee here… and I'm beginning to wonder about last time, too." His warm hand covered her belly and she let her eyes close. They lay awkwardly on the backseat for a long time in silence. "You know… it's harder to sneak away when I'm not gonna fall asleep and um… there's no place to roll me away… I'm also not sure where I threw your shirt… and it's a long walk into town."
"I get it."
"Do you?" Kelen whispered in her ear. "You're in pain, Liz. I can feel it. You have to take care of it and this way isn't going to work for you for much longer." She nodded that she understood. "Tonight, I was easy sex. I won't always be so easy. I had a bad night. Seemed like a good idea, then it was a bad one and then I wasn't thinking at all." No one said a word for the longest time. Rain hit the windows and then went away, evaporating quickly with the warmth of the night.
"It just… feels good to be close to someone… who doesn't expect anything from me."
"That's what friends are for. I'm not suggesting you start sleeping with your friends but… talking to people who know you, I heard it helps."
"Sometimes it's just not enough."
"Neither is this."
"I know."
"You know, it'll help me stick to my resolve to get us out of the backseat if you make some kind of effort to put your clothes on. I promise I won't be offended if you race to put them on."
Liz couldn't help herself. She burst out laughing. The laughing part felt really good after the week she'd had.
--
"Why do you hold back when you touch me?"
Max didn't know quite how to answer. Mr. Harding had threatened to spy on them if they were out there longer than fifteen minutes but Max hadn't seen even a curtain move. "I don't know."
"You don't know how good this feels. To not have to pretend with Isabel or Michael… or you."
"Your… dad… um…"
"Um… yeah, my dad… Let me tell him about you and then you can talk to him. He… um… I didn't tell him that I found you." She bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet. "We can hang out together all the time… and you don't have to hang out with Alex and Liz anymore."
"They're my friends."
"You don't need them anymore."
"I do. Don't you have any… human friends?"
"I don't need them."
--
"I promise that I will talk to someone before I go looking to hop in the sack with someone that I'm not seriously dating. Are you happy?" Liz tilted her head at him.
"It's a start. Seriously, though, Liz. Enjoyable as our run-ins have come to be, let's make the next one a long ways off."
"The next one…" Liz let go of the door handle.
Kelen stammered over his words, eyes fixed on the steering wheel. "You know what I meant. Call me first, I'll listen… I'm not so good with temptation when it's right in front of me." He cleared his throat. "Liz, I don't think I have to tell you that it could be bad if it got out that anything… ever… happened between us." She nodded and gripped the handle again. "It wouldn't matter how old you are… I could get in a lot of trouble."
"I know."
"Liz…" Kelen waited until she looked at him. "You're a pretty girl. A nice one, too. You should want something more for yourself."
"I do."
Kelen says I'm on the verge of a rebellion. I think he's exaggerating. I'm just lost. I'm not ready to grow up and deal but I can't stop it and I have to find a way to go with it… without losing any of my friends… or myself.
tbc
Their eyes met for a second across the busy street. Liz nodded and smiled a little and kept walking, her eyes searching desperately for something else to focus on. Her face flushed and she was glad that he had kept walking too. If he had crossed the street to say high to her, her embarrassment would have transformed her into the Babbling queen of Babbledonia. She nearly tripped over a rise in the sidewalk and the hands that steadied her reminded her what she was doing before seeing him.
"Okay, Liz. You told me that it was a one-time thing but that… face you just made…"
"Shut up, Alex." Liz bit out and found her footing again. "And what's this Fourth of July pact that you've got with Maria?"
"My God, that was like… a year or two ago. How did you even hear about that?"
"She told me."
"We won't do it." Alex shook his head. He shrugged his shoulders and turned the corner with her, eyes forward. "Maria… I've never felt that way about her. I think maybe in the fourth grade… Yeah, in the fourth grade I was in love with her for a whole week. But the next week I was in love with Dinah Cortez… and the next week it was Belinda Ames. Maria will be back with Freddy by Thanksgiving."
"You really think that?" Liz watched his face as they covered the next block and a half. The amount of time he spent thinking about it worried her. "Well?"
"You know Maria. If she doesn't have that element of drama in her life, she feels like she's not living. Next week she'll bring up the virgin thing up again every day at lunch. Next month she'll whine that there are no guys in Roswell worth dating. Then at the beginning of October she'll be interviewing candidates for Homecoming. She'll casually talk to some fringe friend of Freddy's and boom… Second week of November, she and Freddy will be back together. They'll take a break the first week of December and they'll make up the week before Christmas and they'll fight right away and then he'll get her a Christmas present and they'll be good until after New Year's… and on Valentine's… they'll finally do it."
"Alex." Liz chided but only half-heartedly. It sounded exactly like Maria. Drama Mama of them all. They needed a change of subject. "And you?"
"Oh, me… I'm doomed to fall in love every week until I make my first million, at which point, I start dating supermodels." When he smiled, Liz didn't believe him.
That thing that happens to you. That you want to happen so badly but when it happens, you're unprepared. I'm growing up. I know that I am evolving. It's one thing to know that it happens from a scientific perspective. To know that it's chemicals that rush through your veins and allow you to feel things. To know what it says in the health books, that your body matures and changes into that person you will become. That moment when you realize that it doesn't always boil down to science. That moment when you realize that you have no control over your hormones and chemicals and certainly not over the chemicals and hormones in anyone else. That moment when your world spins out of control. That's the scariest moment that I've ever had to pretend that I didn't know about. It's harder to pretend not to know something than to keep a secret with someone.
Liz passed the popcorn and waited for everyone to sit down. Isabel and Michael were separated by Mr. Evans on the big couch. Liz shared the smaller couch with Mrs. Evans. Max popped in the tape and handed Liz her drink before taking his seat at their feet. She smiled to herself. The Evans still had a VCR. She always giggled when Max told stories about his childhood. The Evans were older than most parents. They thought seven-year-olds would love shuffleboard and a cruise in Florida.
Isabel joked sometimes about the way Max ironed his jeans but that came from Mrs. Evans and her beliefs on how a young man should dress. Isabel was one to talk. The way she did her make up was always fashion forward but could always easily translate to another age. The Evans children were definitely products of their parents.
"I hate previews." Diane muttered. "So. Liz… are you and Max dating again?"
"Mom." Max and Isabel both said at the same time that Michael snorted.
Max cleared his throat and looked at his father then back at his mother and finally at Liz. "A girl saves my life and I cut her out of my life? What kind of logic does that make?"
"She performed the Heimlich. A monkey could do it." Michael tsked.
"Hey… He vomited all over my shoes. The very least he owes me is a movie and popcorn." Liz nudged him with her knee. "Besides… Max is spoken for."
"Liz." Max sighed heavily and his mother was off on the new tangent.
"Oh really."
"You didn't tell your mother about Tess? Shame on you." Liz liked to see Max squirm a little under his mother's teasing. It made him seem touchable. Isabel and Michael got quiet. She was right. They were protective over Max all the time. They didn't even like Tess.
"Max, honey. Who is Tess?"
You cannot unlearn something. You can forget initially and you can reprogram your actions and beliefs but you can never un-know something. You can know that hamburgers are cows but when you learn about the butchering process, you freeze just a little when you think about eating a burger or bacon or a chicken sandwich. Just a little, until finally you barely realize you do it but you always think about it.
"I'm sorry about outing you to your parents." Liz apologized weakly as Max walked her home.
"I'm not sure how I feel about her is all. I… I mean… have you ever felt attracted to someone at such a subconscious level that it just feels right but when you think about it, it never seems right?" He waited for her answer but she just pulled him to a bus stop bench to sit. "I mean, and bear with me because I know how insane I sound, when I look at her I think. 'God, is she real? She's gorgeous. She's perfect.'" He swallowed thickly. "But when I'm with her… like at the movies the other night… I think… she's the opposite of what I usually find attractive. Curly hair, blue eyes… the shape of her lips… When I kiss her, I want to have more but it doesn't feel right. Something is off when I'm with her."
"Like what?"
"Like… I know she likes me and I want to like her but we talk and we don't have anything in common… except that we both think that Crashdown tea could be sweeter." He looked at her. "Have you ever known what someone felt about you and just felt horrible because you know… just know, deep down that you could never feel the same way back?"
"Yeah, I do."
"Knowing that you do care about a person but that romantic involvement is just not in the cards for you even if they hold out… hoping…"
"Yeah, I do, Max."
"I've never been on this side of it before."
"Me either." Liz suddenly, desperately needed to be talking about something else, anything else. "So… I should get home so you don't miss your curfew."
"He told you?" Max blurted out, unable to let it drop. For a moment she froze and Max knew she knew exactly what he was talking about.
"Not exactly."
"He told me."
"Max, please." This was the last thing than Liz wanted to talk about with anyone.
"How long have you known?"
"A week."
I feel like I have to watch everything I do. How often my fingers accidentally brush someone else's. How long I allow my hand to rest innocently on someone's shoulder. How often I speak someone's name. How often I find myself alone with people of the opposite sex despite my relationship standing. I understand how people make assumptions. I understand the rules that people follow even if they seem ridiculous and outdated.
I know why Mrs. Evans always walks past Max's open door when we're studying. I know why Mr. Evans insists that Michael only visit Isabel in the living room or the kitchen. Why Mrs. DeLuca always asks Maria if Freddy's parents will be there when they watch movies. Why my dad always has to meet someone that I am dating for more than a week or two. Why my parents never visit old friends of the opposite sex separately.
These seemingly archaic rules are in place for a reason and that reason is perception. It doesn't mean my dad is having an affair with Mrs. Delaney if he visits her alone. It means that if someone who doesn't know him sees him go into her house alone and he stays for a few hours catching up, they will perceive a relationship that could be less than casual. They will repeat the information and a rumor starts. I know that they were in a band together and they like to catch up on old times. Propriety states that when they miss each other, they hang out with their spouses. Mr. and Mrs. Delaney having a few drinks with Mr. and Mrs. Parker. It seems stupid for society's rules to interfere in something so basic as friendship but it's important to be responsible. To your spouse, to your children, to your friends.
"A week?" Max stared at her. "He didn't tell me anything."
"He doesn't know he almost told me." Liz shook her head. "I don't want him to know I know." She looked to him. "How long have you known?"
"Since Jeremy." When he looked at her, she froze for a moment. The world absolutely stood still for five minutes before she could find it in herself to speak again.
"I've been very careful not to act differently but it kind of blew my mind."
"How did he give himself away?"
"Maria told me that Alex told her that he was in love with her for a week in the fourth grade, with me for a week the next and then it was Belinda Ames and then Melanie Powers and then Aimee Gray… Do you know what he told me? Maria, Dinah Cortez and Belinda."
"So." Max shook his head. He knew who she was.
"Max… Dinah Cortez… God, I guess nobody remembers anymore but… in the third grade, Max… do you remember?"
"Cortez… wait… she's… the…" Max struggled to remember. That first year of school was a tumultuous one. "Oh. She was thrown from a horse. She moved away to get treatment or something like that."
"Exactly. The third grade. The same year Alex moved here. Right before he moved here. She wasn't in class. He's never seen her picture but he's heard her name. It took them a long time to take her name off of roll call." She shrugged. "It was a small oversight but if he mentioned me and Maria to Maria but only mentioned Maria to me…"
"You love Alex… just not like that."
"Yeah."
Sometimes I think my head won't ever stop hurting. It seems like every new day means a new responsibility and I just want some time to breathe in between.
Liz waved goodbye to Max and waited until he was out of sight to put one foot in front of the other. A good long walk was all she needed. To clear her brain. To put things in perspective. Just moving like a shark to keep everything functioning. Keep the wheels turning so she could… say, "Hi."
--
Max took a detour and ended up right where he feared to be. He knocked on the door and held his breath until it was opened. "Hi Mr. Harding. Is Tess home?"
"Max… Evans, right? She's been talking quite a bit about you. Now I see what the fuss was all about. Come in. Come in. I've been meaning to have you over for dinner." The short bald man, stepped aside but Max couldn't.
"Actually, this will only take a minute. I'll wait here…" Max realized how that sounded and rushed to keep talking. "Maybe some time this week… My mom wants to meet Tess, too."
"Well, we'll coordinate a schedule, then."
"Dad? Who's at the door?" Tess's voice intruded from deep inside the house.
"The oh so handsome and polite and your very soul mate, Max Evans." Mr. Harding recited off the top of his head the last few things he'd weaned out of Tess about Max.
Max felt his face turn red. Tess looked like she had been betrayed. "Dad! Oh my god! I can't believe you said that."
"He wants a minute of your time. Take five." Mr. Harding tilted his head at his daughter. "What the heck, let's make it ten." His head snapped around to fix Max with a stare. "But if it turns into fifteen, I will be stationed by the nearest window."
"Oh my god." Tess exclaimed again. She stood in the doorway in shock for a few minutes. "I do believe that was the most embarrassing moment of my life." She pulled the door shut behind her and looked to Max. "I thought you were having a family video night."
"We did." Max winced. That was a slight exaggeration he had fed her when she pressured him to make a commitment for the weekend. "I… " He pulled her away from the door and to the edge of the porch. There. Looking at her in that light, he had to kiss her. Despite all of Zan's warnings, that felt too good never to do again. His hands framed her face and again he was hit by how much he was attracted to her. Licking his lips, he tasted like her. Still, his insides were conflicted about how they felt kissing her. "I'm sorry, I just had to."
"Max?"
"I know who you are, Tess." She didn't even flinch, not in her face. He felt it. "Ava." There. The facial flinch. "I know. I've known since August… since before our first official date."
--
Liz's heart beat so fast she thought it was going to leap out of her chest. This hadn't been what she was looking for when she had decided to take her walk. Now she was a statistic of Buckley Point. "Oh god." She covered her face with her hands. "Oh god."
"Two ways to put it."
"Shut up." She mumbled through her hands. "I can't believe that happened again."
"I wasn't the one who wanted to climb into the backseat to 'look at the stars' and um, I do believe I was the one who had second thoughts. I'm the seducee here… and I'm beginning to wonder about last time, too." His warm hand covered her belly and she let her eyes close. They lay awkwardly on the backseat for a long time in silence. "You know… it's harder to sneak away when I'm not gonna fall asleep and um… there's no place to roll me away… I'm also not sure where I threw your shirt… and it's a long walk into town."
"I get it."
"Do you?" Kelen whispered in her ear. "You're in pain, Liz. I can feel it. You have to take care of it and this way isn't going to work for you for much longer." She nodded that she understood. "Tonight, I was easy sex. I won't always be so easy. I had a bad night. Seemed like a good idea, then it was a bad one and then I wasn't thinking at all." No one said a word for the longest time. Rain hit the windows and then went away, evaporating quickly with the warmth of the night.
"It just… feels good to be close to someone… who doesn't expect anything from me."
"That's what friends are for. I'm not suggesting you start sleeping with your friends but… talking to people who know you, I heard it helps."
"Sometimes it's just not enough."
"Neither is this."
"I know."
"You know, it'll help me stick to my resolve to get us out of the backseat if you make some kind of effort to put your clothes on. I promise I won't be offended if you race to put them on."
Liz couldn't help herself. She burst out laughing. The laughing part felt really good after the week she'd had.
--
"Why do you hold back when you touch me?"
Max didn't know quite how to answer. Mr. Harding had threatened to spy on them if they were out there longer than fifteen minutes but Max hadn't seen even a curtain move. "I don't know."
"You don't know how good this feels. To not have to pretend with Isabel or Michael… or you."
"Your… dad… um…"
"Um… yeah, my dad… Let me tell him about you and then you can talk to him. He… um… I didn't tell him that I found you." She bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet. "We can hang out together all the time… and you don't have to hang out with Alex and Liz anymore."
"They're my friends."
"You don't need them anymore."
"I do. Don't you have any… human friends?"
"I don't need them."
--
"I promise that I will talk to someone before I go looking to hop in the sack with someone that I'm not seriously dating. Are you happy?" Liz tilted her head at him.
"It's a start. Seriously, though, Liz. Enjoyable as our run-ins have come to be, let's make the next one a long ways off."
"The next one…" Liz let go of the door handle.
Kelen stammered over his words, eyes fixed on the steering wheel. "You know what I meant. Call me first, I'll listen… I'm not so good with temptation when it's right in front of me." He cleared his throat. "Liz, I don't think I have to tell you that it could be bad if it got out that anything… ever… happened between us." She nodded and gripped the handle again. "It wouldn't matter how old you are… I could get in a lot of trouble."
"I know."
"Liz…" Kelen waited until she looked at him. "You're a pretty girl. A nice one, too. You should want something more for yourself."
"I do."
Kelen says I'm on the verge of a rebellion. I think he's exaggerating. I'm just lost. I'm not ready to grow up and deal but I can't stop it and I have to find a way to go with it… without losing any of my friends… or myself.
tbc
Part 37
AN: Hey El, she's the ringleader of my Thumbtack brigade. If I forget to post in a while she's supposed to stick a thumbtack on my chair.
I ask that I not be hunted down and killed for this part because that could be a real damper on getting Part 45 finished. I swear Part 45 is coming along but slowly. So here's 37... just 7 parts to catch up.
I'm Liz Parker and my name is the only thing I'm certain of. I just feel like I don't fit in anymore. I'm a peg with no peg hole.
Maria burst into the break room and Liz steeled herself for another one of her mother's feminist rants. Those seemed to be her favorites lately. "Jamie asked me out."
"Who?" Liz blinked at her. That was a surprise. Alex had claimed this was a month away. "What?"
"And how…" Maria sighed dramatically. "I was watching off-season baseball practice and Jamie is the ball boy or bat boy or whatever… or he is when they let him. He's kind of a dork but he asked me out and I think I'm gonna go."
"You didn't answer him when he asked you out?"
"It was a technicality. 'We should do something sometime.' And we probably will." Maria quickly got changed for her shift. "It's an iffy thing because he's such a dork but so adorable. Oh! Did you see Max and Tess at lunch?"
"No. I've been in my own headspace today. What happened? They forget they were in public or something?" Liz clipped on her nametag and pushed open the doors to the dining room.
"Or something." Maria adjusted her skirt and reached for an apron. "Honeymoon is over… I think. They got into it about loyalties and trust and friends. Your name was brought up once or twice."
"Me?"
"In a friend capacity. Alex was mentioned, too. Why not me? Am I not one of Max's friends?"
"No." Liz shook her head. "You are my friend, you are Alex's friend but I don't believe you and Max were ever friend-friends, just friends through friends. So they fought about his friends… I don't suppose Isabel and Michael were mentioned."
"No, actually." She huffed for a moment. "There was something about Tess being a liar with a capital L."
"They were yelling? Max never yells." Liz pondered as she began to seat tables. She and Maria met at the soda fountain every once in a while to rehash. "So you think they're breaking up?"
"Are they really together? Because it all seems pretty casual to me. One or two dates with many days between… ¿que no?"
Maria had a point there. Max seemed intent on examining every issue with Tess while dealing very little with the girl herself. "Did you actually talk to him at all?"
"Are you kidding? After lunch, he was barely at school. Someone said they saw him leave with a relative or something."
Nothing makes much sense. It really doesn't anymore.
I give up.
I'm tired of waiting to become. To become a high school graduate, a college student, a former resident of Roswell. To be come real. My life sometimes feels like one long nonsensical dream that I blindly follow moment to moment without being able to turn it from its course. I just watch myself doing things and wonder why I do them.
Liz listened to Alex chat while she focused on the popcorn eating. Where was Max? "So, you see, the cheese puff is an underrated and under-appreciated prop. They look good… all uniform and evenly covered with powered cheesy goodness. Taste good…" He popped one into his mouth. "Mmmm… cheesy goodness and hey, provide hours of laughter at the expense of teenagers with braces."
"Well spoken."
"I thought so." Alex nodded and reached for the popcorn. Liz carefully maneuvered her fingers out of the way and put it within easier reach almost without thinking. "Where's… what's her face? The loud, dramatic one?"
"Grounded. Her mom found a box of condoms in her underwear drawer and freaked out."
"The unopened box she bought back in January?"
"All just semantics to mothers. Mine overheard one of Maria's rants about Kelen… minus the name part and the me part but you get the gist and so I had the Talk. Intimacy and responsibilities. She looked like she was going to vomit herself."
"You took it like a man?"
"A manly man..." Liz nodded and breathed out. "From underneath my pillow where I hid like a girlie girl."
"How do you feel about that whole thing?" His blue eyes slid to watch her face while she thought about it.
Liz eyed the popcorn with interest. She hadn't told him about her second or third or... fifth encounters and felt it should remain unmentioned. "I don't think about it… much. I'm glad it was someone that I trust but I'm also glad I'm not friends with him."
"Why?"
"Because then I'd see him everyday. I'm not ashamed as much as constantly embarrassed about it."
"Feel like you can't look anybody in the eye? Since you're thinking about it more often than you think you should, you wonder how many other people are thinking about sex. You look at your parents like they're aliens and your dentist seems a little ickier than before?"
"Something like that." She nodded with a smile and slight blush.
"That awkward moment when you get caught picturing… the cashier at 7-Eleven getting it on and it just won't leave your head." Alex shuddered.
"Last year I saw Mr. Crulick hitting on Ms. Hardy… Now I can't stop picturing it. He's got those glasses and she's got… the hair."
"You poor thing… eg. Now I'm gonna picture it." He wrinkled his nose at the mental image. Black socks. Granny panties. Ew.
"Picture what?" Max joined them in front of the TV after distributing drinks.
"Mental image of Crulick/Hardy fornication."
"Pardon?" Max turned slowly to wonder if his friends had gone insane in the two minutes he'd gone to get drinks.
"Downside to carnal knowledge." Alex explained briefly.
"My parents." Max shuddered. "My mother giggles while they make breakfast every Saturday morning."
"Thank you." Liz scrubbed at her eyes. "Mine do that… Thursday mornings. I was hoping never to go there. I told myself once. Just the once and they never did it again."
"Some things you can't un-think." Max shuddered again and leaned back on the sofa near Liz's knees. "Isabel got grossed out this morning, too. Oh God. Someone wash my brain with bleach." Then he looked ill. "I'm gonna kill Michael."
"No. Michael's your best friend. You won't kill him You love your sister and you want her to be happy."
"Right. Sister happy. Best friend alive." Max nodded as the devil joined them. "Sister unhappy. Best friend… not so much alive."
"What?" Michael glared at them as he took over the other armchair. "Why are you staring at me?"
"You've been caught mister." Liz turned to greet him. Covering Max's ears, she leaned over and winked. "You consummated the relationship. Congratulations."
"I can still hear you." Max ground out.
"So what. So you're the only virgin in the room. Big deal." Michael waved him off but couldn't seem to relax… because he had meant for Max never to find out.
"Actually…" Alex started to comment but it wasn't his battle.
"You held onto yours the longest." Liz smiled at him and tossed a handful of popcorn at him.
"What?" Michael sat up and seemed to try make Max to look at him through force of will.
Liz watched Max stiffen and stare straight ahead at the TV. Michael gaped. There was something going on there. "You didn't tell him? I thought that was the first thing guys did… they bragged to their friends… maybe I was wrong."
"You screwed Tess?" Michael pressed, eyes still on the side of Max's head.
"No so much Tess…"
"April?"
"That would be the one." Max nodded, eyes on his shoes.
"And why was there no bragging?"
"It was a touchy subject." Max looked to Liz then to Michael. "Some bad things happened that night and some of us have to live with it. No one knew, Michael… not for a long while." He didn't blink. "You going to brag about sleeping with my sister?"
"We're here for Japanese exports." Michael cleared his throat and turned his eyes to the TV.
"More badly dubbed kung-fu." Liz turned Max's head to the TV as well. Alex had the good sense to stay silent until called for in the midst of the movie. After most of the movie had been forced into her brain, Liz lodged her protest of the day's activities. "Hey! How did I become an honorary guy, today?"
"Maria's grounded." Alex reminded her.
"Isabel is doing girly things with her mom." Michael muttered.
"They went to the craft store. Mom's teaching Isabel how to make a mum." Max shook his head. "She wants to make Michael's homecoming garter. I think she'll make her own mum too and just tell everyone that Michael bought it for her."
"Mum-making is girly." Michael protested.
"Yes, that's why I buy." Alex nodded. "Or… I pay Maria to make them for my dates… who suddenly disappear when they see the mum. I gotta stop doing that."
"I'll make it this year. Not like I'm going to be making any garters this year." She rolled her eyes. "God. I hate senior year crap."
"You going to do the pity dates this year?" Alex prodded.
"No pity dates." Liz shook her head and reached over Max for the phone. "Hey Max, you and Tess doing the whole homecoming thing?"
Michael snorted but didn't say anything. Max shrugged. "We're still getting to know each other."
"It's not a real pity date if we're friends." Alex pointed out.
"It's the most pitiful of pity dates if we go to homecoming because we pity each other." Liz countered and dialed rapidly. "Hi Ms. Deluca… she can't? Please? Pretty please? … I know but she was supposed to hang out with us and I ended up being the only girl and the guys won't behave themselves… Well, they think I'm one of them… There's lots of burping and crotch grabbing… I know. It's so gross… Really? Thank you so much."
Max caught the phone when Liz dropped it into his lap. "What did you just do?"
"Found a way to beat back the testosterone. Maria should be enough to keep me alive during bad kung fu movie day. Who picked the genre and how did we get it into my house?"
"I picked it. I thought you liked kung fu." Alex glared at her.
"I liked one movie. It was cool with the superchicks running up walls. It reminded me of Crouching Tiger… these are just bad." She kicked her shoe off at him.
"I like it." Michael interjected. "Isabel has me watching all these girly chick movies."
"Only because you don't fight her on it. With Isabel you have to mount your protest days in advance." Max explained. "Action movies must have some really cute actor to get her attention. You canvas her room, her magazines and anything that fits… it's kismet."
"Explain." Liz was really interested in this.
"Independence Day." Max ignored Michael's groan. "As much as we've all come to despise the alien theme… you can get her to watch it if you remind her that it's got Bill Pullman and… that guy from The Fly… oh! And the guy from SLC Punk!… it gets her every time."
"Idle Hands. How do I get her to watch that?" Michael implored.
"Do not mention Jessica Alba." Max advised. "Do tell her that the guy from… I forget his name but the main guy. Show her his face and the movie is yours."
"You're kidding." Liz gaped at Max. "I never thought she was that shallow."
"She's not but she likes a pretty face if she's going to watch gore and fighting." He took the popcorn bowl from her. "You have to make it seem like it's her idea."
I'm sure no one would notice if I just ceased to become anything at all. If I didn't become something great, it wouldn't matter as long as I was the person they could all rely on. As long as I am loyal as a dog I am always going to be just what they expect.
Liz sat alone at the far booth and pretended to work on her homework. She had been putting off people's calls all night since the guys had left. Maria had been allowed to watch only one movie and then Amy had picked her up to help at the shop. So, Liz sat and pondered. The last time she had slept with Kelen, she was going to just talk to him. Maybe just have the conversation she needed to have but they were alone in his house. They were alone and just… really lonely people. That's why she had called him and asked him to coffee that morning. They had finally agreed that they were breaking up. They weren't dating but ritually sleeping together instead of dealing with their own problems and it had to end. They broke it off in public at the coffee place. It didn't matter that no one knew what they were talking about. They knew. They had the pressure of a public place to finalize it for them. She still couldn't bring herself to write any of it down.
So, she smiled when people waved at her. She pleaded fatigue and too much kung fu to anyone who wanted her to go out on a Saturday night. She turned pages in her book, she wrote down random thoughts but mostly, she just sat. Her mind was too cluttered to focus on any one thing. She thought about Alex. She thought about Max and his mysterious biological family. She thought about Maria and her flirtation with the ball boy. She thought about her parents and their growing stack of applications for her to fill out. She thought about Kelen and his ugly brother issues. She thought about Roswell's ability to suck the life and dreams out of everyone in it.
I am Liz Parker… must I remind myself everyday? I probably do.
Liz couldn't sleep and there was nothing she wanted to put in her journal except that one depressing thought. Her father had already warned her not to stay outside too long and to bundle up if she was going to be much longer. The reason she wanted to sit outside was the cold. She needed to cool down. She was overheating in more ways than one.
Do men kiss the way they make love?
She stared at the question. She wanted to scratch it out but couldn't seem to lift her pen against a simple written thought. Kelen always kissed her gently, softly, always asking for permission to do things she swore she had already assented to. When he moved inside her, all those times, he had been gentle and slow and unwillingly to cause her discomfort, even while intoxicated. He was never in a rush. Took his time. He was very considerate. Max could kiss softly but could also steal her breath with so much passion and hunger. The fragments she recalled from That Party were so full of that hunger. He wouldn't be slow like Kelen, would he then? Jeremy had been sloppy… would he make sex a fumbling mess? Tony… She couldn't allow herself to think on him other to recall his kisses, those he gave with some strength behind them.
A noise caught her attention. No one was with her on the balcony but it had sounded so near. In the alley? The night suddenly seemed too quiet. Her parents were watching TV. Jose was closing up downstairs. She rose and set the journal aside, marking it with her pen. Carefully, she inched to the ledge to peer over. Nothing but shadows… but there it was again. That noise. Was someone on the ladder? "Hello? Somebody out there? Who is it?"
Her heart beat faster when no one answered her but the noise continued, getting closer and not much louder. She just couldn't see down there with that street light out… She squinted. Was it broken? It had jagged edges… Her heart slammed in her chest as she backed away from the ledge, upending her chair, tripping and crashing onto the ground, her journal flew toward the ledge. Back she went like a crab toward her window when his face appeared over the side. The Boy.
"Dad!" she screamed, scrambling for the window. She fell inside her room, struggling to her feet so she could slam the window shut and lock it tight. She threw her curtains closed so she couldn't see him stalking toward the window. "Dad!" Her hand was shaking but she turned to the door, reaching to grasp the knob. As she was pulling it open, the windows exploded inward. "Daddy!" She fell forward, halfway out her bedroom door. Glass and wood splinters embedded themselves in her flesh and blood spotted her clothes. Then she felt the hand on her leg. She no longer had control of anything but her voice. "Daddy!"
TBC
I could be evil and wait until next week to post but... then... that might make me too evil.
We'll see.
I ask that I not be hunted down and killed for this part because that could be a real damper on getting Part 45 finished. I swear Part 45 is coming along but slowly. So here's 37... just 7 parts to catch up.
I'm Liz Parker and my name is the only thing I'm certain of. I just feel like I don't fit in anymore. I'm a peg with no peg hole.
Maria burst into the break room and Liz steeled herself for another one of her mother's feminist rants. Those seemed to be her favorites lately. "Jamie asked me out."
"Who?" Liz blinked at her. That was a surprise. Alex had claimed this was a month away. "What?"
"And how…" Maria sighed dramatically. "I was watching off-season baseball practice and Jamie is the ball boy or bat boy or whatever… or he is when they let him. He's kind of a dork but he asked me out and I think I'm gonna go."
"You didn't answer him when he asked you out?"
"It was a technicality. 'We should do something sometime.' And we probably will." Maria quickly got changed for her shift. "It's an iffy thing because he's such a dork but so adorable. Oh! Did you see Max and Tess at lunch?"
"No. I've been in my own headspace today. What happened? They forget they were in public or something?" Liz clipped on her nametag and pushed open the doors to the dining room.
"Or something." Maria adjusted her skirt and reached for an apron. "Honeymoon is over… I think. They got into it about loyalties and trust and friends. Your name was brought up once or twice."
"Me?"
"In a friend capacity. Alex was mentioned, too. Why not me? Am I not one of Max's friends?"
"No." Liz shook her head. "You are my friend, you are Alex's friend but I don't believe you and Max were ever friend-friends, just friends through friends. So they fought about his friends… I don't suppose Isabel and Michael were mentioned."
"No, actually." She huffed for a moment. "There was something about Tess being a liar with a capital L."
"They were yelling? Max never yells." Liz pondered as she began to seat tables. She and Maria met at the soda fountain every once in a while to rehash. "So you think they're breaking up?"
"Are they really together? Because it all seems pretty casual to me. One or two dates with many days between… ¿que no?"
Maria had a point there. Max seemed intent on examining every issue with Tess while dealing very little with the girl herself. "Did you actually talk to him at all?"
"Are you kidding? After lunch, he was barely at school. Someone said they saw him leave with a relative or something."
Nothing makes much sense. It really doesn't anymore.
I give up.
I'm tired of waiting to become. To become a high school graduate, a college student, a former resident of Roswell. To be come real. My life sometimes feels like one long nonsensical dream that I blindly follow moment to moment without being able to turn it from its course. I just watch myself doing things and wonder why I do them.
Liz listened to Alex chat while she focused on the popcorn eating. Where was Max? "So, you see, the cheese puff is an underrated and under-appreciated prop. They look good… all uniform and evenly covered with powered cheesy goodness. Taste good…" He popped one into his mouth. "Mmmm… cheesy goodness and hey, provide hours of laughter at the expense of teenagers with braces."
"Well spoken."
"I thought so." Alex nodded and reached for the popcorn. Liz carefully maneuvered her fingers out of the way and put it within easier reach almost without thinking. "Where's… what's her face? The loud, dramatic one?"
"Grounded. Her mom found a box of condoms in her underwear drawer and freaked out."
"The unopened box she bought back in January?"
"All just semantics to mothers. Mine overheard one of Maria's rants about Kelen… minus the name part and the me part but you get the gist and so I had the Talk. Intimacy and responsibilities. She looked like she was going to vomit herself."
"You took it like a man?"
"A manly man..." Liz nodded and breathed out. "From underneath my pillow where I hid like a girlie girl."
"How do you feel about that whole thing?" His blue eyes slid to watch her face while she thought about it.
Liz eyed the popcorn with interest. She hadn't told him about her second or third or... fifth encounters and felt it should remain unmentioned. "I don't think about it… much. I'm glad it was someone that I trust but I'm also glad I'm not friends with him."
"Why?"
"Because then I'd see him everyday. I'm not ashamed as much as constantly embarrassed about it."
"Feel like you can't look anybody in the eye? Since you're thinking about it more often than you think you should, you wonder how many other people are thinking about sex. You look at your parents like they're aliens and your dentist seems a little ickier than before?"
"Something like that." She nodded with a smile and slight blush.
"That awkward moment when you get caught picturing… the cashier at 7-Eleven getting it on and it just won't leave your head." Alex shuddered.
"Last year I saw Mr. Crulick hitting on Ms. Hardy… Now I can't stop picturing it. He's got those glasses and she's got… the hair."
"You poor thing… eg. Now I'm gonna picture it." He wrinkled his nose at the mental image. Black socks. Granny panties. Ew.
"Picture what?" Max joined them in front of the TV after distributing drinks.
"Mental image of Crulick/Hardy fornication."
"Pardon?" Max turned slowly to wonder if his friends had gone insane in the two minutes he'd gone to get drinks.
"Downside to carnal knowledge." Alex explained briefly.
"My parents." Max shuddered. "My mother giggles while they make breakfast every Saturday morning."
"Thank you." Liz scrubbed at her eyes. "Mine do that… Thursday mornings. I was hoping never to go there. I told myself once. Just the once and they never did it again."
"Some things you can't un-think." Max shuddered again and leaned back on the sofa near Liz's knees. "Isabel got grossed out this morning, too. Oh God. Someone wash my brain with bleach." Then he looked ill. "I'm gonna kill Michael."
"No. Michael's your best friend. You won't kill him You love your sister and you want her to be happy."
"Right. Sister happy. Best friend alive." Max nodded as the devil joined them. "Sister unhappy. Best friend… not so much alive."
"What?" Michael glared at them as he took over the other armchair. "Why are you staring at me?"
"You've been caught mister." Liz turned to greet him. Covering Max's ears, she leaned over and winked. "You consummated the relationship. Congratulations."
"I can still hear you." Max ground out.
"So what. So you're the only virgin in the room. Big deal." Michael waved him off but couldn't seem to relax… because he had meant for Max never to find out.
"Actually…" Alex started to comment but it wasn't his battle.
"You held onto yours the longest." Liz smiled at him and tossed a handful of popcorn at him.
"What?" Michael sat up and seemed to try make Max to look at him through force of will.
Liz watched Max stiffen and stare straight ahead at the TV. Michael gaped. There was something going on there. "You didn't tell him? I thought that was the first thing guys did… they bragged to their friends… maybe I was wrong."
"You screwed Tess?" Michael pressed, eyes still on the side of Max's head.
"No so much Tess…"
"April?"
"That would be the one." Max nodded, eyes on his shoes.
"And why was there no bragging?"
"It was a touchy subject." Max looked to Liz then to Michael. "Some bad things happened that night and some of us have to live with it. No one knew, Michael… not for a long while." He didn't blink. "You going to brag about sleeping with my sister?"
"We're here for Japanese exports." Michael cleared his throat and turned his eyes to the TV.
"More badly dubbed kung-fu." Liz turned Max's head to the TV as well. Alex had the good sense to stay silent until called for in the midst of the movie. After most of the movie had been forced into her brain, Liz lodged her protest of the day's activities. "Hey! How did I become an honorary guy, today?"
"Maria's grounded." Alex reminded her.
"Isabel is doing girly things with her mom." Michael muttered.
"They went to the craft store. Mom's teaching Isabel how to make a mum." Max shook his head. "She wants to make Michael's homecoming garter. I think she'll make her own mum too and just tell everyone that Michael bought it for her."
"Mum-making is girly." Michael protested.
"Yes, that's why I buy." Alex nodded. "Or… I pay Maria to make them for my dates… who suddenly disappear when they see the mum. I gotta stop doing that."
"I'll make it this year. Not like I'm going to be making any garters this year." She rolled her eyes. "God. I hate senior year crap."
"You going to do the pity dates this year?" Alex prodded.
"No pity dates." Liz shook her head and reached over Max for the phone. "Hey Max, you and Tess doing the whole homecoming thing?"
Michael snorted but didn't say anything. Max shrugged. "We're still getting to know each other."
"It's not a real pity date if we're friends." Alex pointed out.
"It's the most pitiful of pity dates if we go to homecoming because we pity each other." Liz countered and dialed rapidly. "Hi Ms. Deluca… she can't? Please? Pretty please? … I know but she was supposed to hang out with us and I ended up being the only girl and the guys won't behave themselves… Well, they think I'm one of them… There's lots of burping and crotch grabbing… I know. It's so gross… Really? Thank you so much."
Max caught the phone when Liz dropped it into his lap. "What did you just do?"
"Found a way to beat back the testosterone. Maria should be enough to keep me alive during bad kung fu movie day. Who picked the genre and how did we get it into my house?"
"I picked it. I thought you liked kung fu." Alex glared at her.
"I liked one movie. It was cool with the superchicks running up walls. It reminded me of Crouching Tiger… these are just bad." She kicked her shoe off at him.
"I like it." Michael interjected. "Isabel has me watching all these girly chick movies."
"Only because you don't fight her on it. With Isabel you have to mount your protest days in advance." Max explained. "Action movies must have some really cute actor to get her attention. You canvas her room, her magazines and anything that fits… it's kismet."
"Explain." Liz was really interested in this.
"Independence Day." Max ignored Michael's groan. "As much as we've all come to despise the alien theme… you can get her to watch it if you remind her that it's got Bill Pullman and… that guy from The Fly… oh! And the guy from SLC Punk!… it gets her every time."
"Idle Hands. How do I get her to watch that?" Michael implored.
"Do not mention Jessica Alba." Max advised. "Do tell her that the guy from… I forget his name but the main guy. Show her his face and the movie is yours."
"You're kidding." Liz gaped at Max. "I never thought she was that shallow."
"She's not but she likes a pretty face if she's going to watch gore and fighting." He took the popcorn bowl from her. "You have to make it seem like it's her idea."
I'm sure no one would notice if I just ceased to become anything at all. If I didn't become something great, it wouldn't matter as long as I was the person they could all rely on. As long as I am loyal as a dog I am always going to be just what they expect.
Liz sat alone at the far booth and pretended to work on her homework. She had been putting off people's calls all night since the guys had left. Maria had been allowed to watch only one movie and then Amy had picked her up to help at the shop. So, Liz sat and pondered. The last time she had slept with Kelen, she was going to just talk to him. Maybe just have the conversation she needed to have but they were alone in his house. They were alone and just… really lonely people. That's why she had called him and asked him to coffee that morning. They had finally agreed that they were breaking up. They weren't dating but ritually sleeping together instead of dealing with their own problems and it had to end. They broke it off in public at the coffee place. It didn't matter that no one knew what they were talking about. They knew. They had the pressure of a public place to finalize it for them. She still couldn't bring herself to write any of it down.
So, she smiled when people waved at her. She pleaded fatigue and too much kung fu to anyone who wanted her to go out on a Saturday night. She turned pages in her book, she wrote down random thoughts but mostly, she just sat. Her mind was too cluttered to focus on any one thing. She thought about Alex. She thought about Max and his mysterious biological family. She thought about Maria and her flirtation with the ball boy. She thought about her parents and their growing stack of applications for her to fill out. She thought about Kelen and his ugly brother issues. She thought about Roswell's ability to suck the life and dreams out of everyone in it.
I am Liz Parker… must I remind myself everyday? I probably do.
Liz couldn't sleep and there was nothing she wanted to put in her journal except that one depressing thought. Her father had already warned her not to stay outside too long and to bundle up if she was going to be much longer. The reason she wanted to sit outside was the cold. She needed to cool down. She was overheating in more ways than one.
Do men kiss the way they make love?
She stared at the question. She wanted to scratch it out but couldn't seem to lift her pen against a simple written thought. Kelen always kissed her gently, softly, always asking for permission to do things she swore she had already assented to. When he moved inside her, all those times, he had been gentle and slow and unwillingly to cause her discomfort, even while intoxicated. He was never in a rush. Took his time. He was very considerate. Max could kiss softly but could also steal her breath with so much passion and hunger. The fragments she recalled from That Party were so full of that hunger. He wouldn't be slow like Kelen, would he then? Jeremy had been sloppy… would he make sex a fumbling mess? Tony… She couldn't allow herself to think on him other to recall his kisses, those he gave with some strength behind them.
A noise caught her attention. No one was with her on the balcony but it had sounded so near. In the alley? The night suddenly seemed too quiet. Her parents were watching TV. Jose was closing up downstairs. She rose and set the journal aside, marking it with her pen. Carefully, she inched to the ledge to peer over. Nothing but shadows… but there it was again. That noise. Was someone on the ladder? "Hello? Somebody out there? Who is it?"
Her heart beat faster when no one answered her but the noise continued, getting closer and not much louder. She just couldn't see down there with that street light out… She squinted. Was it broken? It had jagged edges… Her heart slammed in her chest as she backed away from the ledge, upending her chair, tripping and crashing onto the ground, her journal flew toward the ledge. Back she went like a crab toward her window when his face appeared over the side. The Boy.
"Dad!" she screamed, scrambling for the window. She fell inside her room, struggling to her feet so she could slam the window shut and lock it tight. She threw her curtains closed so she couldn't see him stalking toward the window. "Dad!" Her hand was shaking but she turned to the door, reaching to grasp the knob. As she was pulling it open, the windows exploded inward. "Daddy!" She fell forward, halfway out her bedroom door. Glass and wood splinters embedded themselves in her flesh and blood spotted her clothes. Then she felt the hand on her leg. She no longer had control of anything but her voice. "Daddy!"
TBC
I could be evil and wait until next week to post but... then... that might make me too evil.
We'll see.Part 38a
AN: I worked and reworked on this part for almost three weeks. I think I finally got it the way I wanted it. It was going to be more graphic but I decided to just trim here and there. It's still a little more than disturbing but know it was worse at one point or another. It's long, so two posts we go... in just a slightly altered format from the rest of the story.
Part 38
Jeff Parker held onto the book with both hands. He was supposed to give his statement to his best friend and he had trouble finding his words. He was focused on the book because he could touch it, feel it under his hands. "It's Liz's."
"I know, Jeff, but right this moment, it's evidence. It's a clue." Jim prompted him. He was gentle because he knew his friend was in shock. If it had been Kyle, Jim couldn't be sure he'd be able to remember how to use his gun.
"It's more than that. This book IS Liz. Her thoughts and experiences. She wrote everything in this book, virtually every night. It's all I have to hold on to." He shook his head, tears slipping down his face.
"I'll have them process it and get it back to you. There could be prints on it. Hers… whoever took her."
"A shoe print." Jeff nodded and slid it into the plastic sleeve that Jim held out in gloved hands. He couldn't stop talking. "Liz is a small girl. She wears a size 6. That shoe is too big to be hers. She's got boys shoes but they're 4 1/2s… Wiggle room. That's an 8."
Jim nodded and wrote instructions on the sleeve before handing it off to the nearest officer headed toward the cruiser. He sat across from Jeff at one of the Crashdown tables. "How about you tell me about what happened here tonight? Start from the beginning. Take your time. Don't leave out anything."
"I was just in there." Jeff took a deep breath and pushed his hair out of his face. "It was… a little after ten, I guess. I was waiting for Saturday Night Live to come on. It's so stupid now but I've always watched it. A tradition, I guess… um… I went in to check on her, figured I could get her to join us. She'd been… alone all evening, studying… on a Saturday Night. She's a very good student." He cleared his throat, eyes on the table top. "Her bed was turned down. She was in her pjs… out on the balcony, writing in her journal. She said she wouldn't be out there much longer. I told her not too long… it's cold out. She needed more blankets for this time of year. She rolled her eyes at me. I didn't want her to get sick. She always tells me I'm overprotective." He smiled a little at the memory of her face when he was trying to be a good parent and then choked down a sob. "I shut the door and sat down to watch TV with Nancy. It was… ten… twenty minutes maybe. I thought I heard something. I heard her call for me. I got up to see if I could hear better and then…
"She screamed for me, Jim. Screamed. Liz is not a screamer. No 'I saw a spider and it scared me' screamer. She's the girl who picks them up to play with them to see how they work. To count their legs and see if she can get them to make silk. She screamed bloody murder, Jim. I jumped up to see… she opened the door and there was a crash. A bigger crash. She fell. Glass was everywhere. She was bleeding all over. She screamed for me. She called me Daddy. She hasn't called me Daddy since she was ten and she scraped her knee really badly."
"I felt like was stuck in mud but I know I was moving as fast as I could. I told Nancy to call 911. Someone grabbed her and yanked her back inside the room. Slammed the door in my face. The door was stuck. I had to get a hammer to get it open. Felt like it took forever to find it when I knew just where I'd left it. It was on the dresser and I know I moved faster than I thought I could. Even after I'd knocked the knob off, I had to break the door to get it open. I think part of the door is still on the catch. She was absolutely terrified and that's the last look I saw on her face. They dropped straight over the edge and… I ran out there… then I saw the car speed off. It turned right at the end of the alley. Little green four door… foreign made… a real junker. I just can't get over how fast they went… out the window, over the edge… into the car and out the alley… God, I see her face when I close my eyes."
"Jeff." Jim gripped the man's shoulders. "We'll catch these people. You'll get her back. Did you catch even a glimpse?"
Jeff thought hard. "He. It was a he in the room. He was short… guess he'd have to be to wear those shoes."
"We'll find her. We'll get her back to you." Jim put his hat on. "Count on it." He walked out of the restaurant and to his men, waiting for orders.
--
Jim held back with Soltero before he talked to the men. "Why the Parker girl?"
"What do the Parkers take in yearly?" Soltero hooked his fingers in his belt.
"Not nearly enough to make a decent ransom." The Sheriff shook his head. "They didn't leave a note. Maybe they'll drop us a line."
"Maybe. They'll hide her away. Give us a time limit to meet demands."
"Jeff Parker and I grew up together. For a while… we thought our kids would get together, get married after high school." Jim stared out into the night. "I owe my best friend enough to make sure she graduates at all."
"It's been four hours. We're on it earlier. We'll get her back. They couldn't have gone far. Green's not a common car color. A junker like he says will stick out."
"You stay in case they make contact. I'll send someone to her friends tomorrow. Maybe it's not what her parents have. She's a pretty smart girl. Talk to Jeff and Nancy… see if she had any interesting hobbies, strange boyfriends… something that might have gotten attention."
"Wasn't there a shooting here not long ago?"
"I'll look it up." Jim headed for his cruiser. "Once you see her room, you'll understand how urgent this is." He paused. "Put her stats out. See if anyone's spotted her out there. Brown hair, brown eyes. 5'3", 105 lbs. Medium-light complexion. Inch-long scar over her left eye. Her mother said she was wearing dark blue top and light blue sleep pants. She's 18 but looks younger."
"I'm on it."
--
Liz couldn't sob. She was paralyzed. She hadn't been able to move since he had grabbed her in her bedroom. Tears had dried on her face. She was just a girl, she didn't know anything, and she didn't have anything. She tried to tell them but her lips wouldn't move. Her head bounced against the glass when the car went over bumps. It hurt but she couldn’t move even an inch. There were two of them. One was The Boy and the other she couldn't see but she could hear him.
"You sure it's her?"
"I'm sure. She's the girl." He was smaller than she was but he had tossed her around like a rag doll. Like he was a giant in pygmy skin. "She looked right at me when I put a bullet through that wanna-be king's chest. He survived and this pretty lady is going to tell us how."
She wanted to shake her head but she couldn't move and the instant his hand fit against her forehead, pain erupted. It was like he had shoved his fingers into her gray matter and twirled her synapses like spaghetti. She had to scream. It was excruciating and felt like it lasted hours by the time he pulled his hand away. She gasped and felt the tears sting at her eyes but they wouldn't fall.
"That fuck up, Zan." The Boy spat out. "He was here after all."
Through her fear, she could still dredge up anger. Anger at the driver for not stopping this. Anger at The Boy for doing whatever he had just done to her. Anger at Zan for dragging her into this. She knew he would do this. It was Zan's fault that Max got shot. That Liz was there when The Boy went after Max. It was all Zan's fault. She felt violated by whatever The Boy had done. She wanted to sob but she couldn't find the muscles to make it happen. She couldn't even pull her camisole back down over her stomach where it should be.
There was a low whistle from the front seat. "Look at that… I'd do her."
"Not my type. Too young." The Boy made a noise in his throat. "Not enough curves."
"You think Zan found out where It is?"
"Oh, I'm counting on it. I'd stake my 82 years on it." The Boy turned Liz's face to him. It was really frightening, that tone of voice coming from so young a face. "If Zan could find our wanna-be… he could find It."
"How are we gonna get him to activate It?"
"With a little persuasion. Zan's going soft. The Zan I knew would kill this girl for what she saw. He let her live once, he'll let her live again."
"Can I play with her til then?"
"I don't care."
Liz could see his eyes in the rearview and she didn't like those depths. What the hell was going on? Play? Play. Play! He couldn't 'play' with her… but there was no one to stop him, not even herself.
"Look at them eyes. Bet they give off everythin'. Think she can transmit a scream if you don't put her back?" The eyes danced back and forth between the road and the mirror. "I like it when they scream. Could you put back just the cords?"
"Then I'd have to listen to the begging and the whining. She's just a human, just like all the others. They beg for their lives in spite of how meaningless they are. I'm pretty certain most of them know exactly how pointless their lives are and they persist on fighting disease and hunting down murderers. It doesn't do any good."
"Maybe she could squeak… or grunt. Grunting works for me." That driver sure did have a one track mind.
--
Jim took the book back from the courier and stared at it. He should run it back over to Jeff's. Check on them, see how they were doing but he was waiting on a call from the FBI. He wasn't afraid to hand over jurisdiction of this one. It hit him too close to home. She wasn't just some girl in town. She'd been to his house for movie nights and the occasional dinners. He'd caught her and Kyle making out on the couch once or twice. His best friend's daughter. She had a bright future ahead of her. Harvard, Jeff had told him once… maybe it had been Yale or Stanford… somewhere far away and someplace expensive and bound to get her noticed in whatever field she chose. He turned the book over in his hands and removed it from the plastic. It was a clue. An important clue to anything her parents didn't know about her. About what her friends couldn't fathom. It was an invasion of privacy but the only way to know for sure.
He opened it up and read a few patches here and there. Normal stuff. The drama of a teenage girl. Every day was the end of the world. The shooting in '99 had really shaken her up, it seemed. It seemed to have inspired many of her ups and downs since then. He jotted down names and relations as he came to them. He made a list of people he could interview. She had more than a few bad break ups… And some clandestine meetings… with an older man… what was that? The shooting last month that Soltero had mentioned… Jim flipped back a dozen or so pages to the date and there it was… The boy had been shot. Was that blood? Dried blood. Carefully, he reached for a water glass and a toothpick…
--
Liz's mind reeled from where she had been seated on the concrete floor of some small abandoned silo. The Boy had just peeled a layer of skin off his face. The skin piece disintegrated before her eyes, falling to the ground in barely a pile of dust. What were these people? Not-Michael leered at her from where he leaned on a table. She would have shuddered but she didn't have control of her body to perform the action. She remembered what he had said about her in the car. He wanted to play with her. Fear was all she had. He looked like Michael but he wasn't. It wasn't just the clothes and the hair that set him apart from a boy who had become a friend. There was something missing in his eyes, probably humanity because she could just believe he was picturing doing things to her body that would make her scream. She couldn't move and she couldn't scream. No one knew where she was and she could only hope her father knew what direction they went though she suspected the cops couldn't do a thing to help her. The Boy did things that weren't human. Not-Michael was so eerie and frightening. Hope seemed like the last thing she had a right to cling to.
The door swung open and Isabel… no… Not-Isabel sauntered in. Different hair, different clothes and a viciousness in her eyes. She eyed Liz and hopped up on the table beside Not-Michael. She lifted a leg to rest her foot on the table edge. She smirked at Not-Michael. "Who's the statue? I thought you were gonna get my brother out here."
"Human." The Boy shrugged and picked at his face in a mirror. "Her dear old dad called her 'Lizzie.' She saw me draw out Zan… and he made the mistake of letting her live."
"That's my brother, makin' big with the mistakes." Not-Isabel slid behind Not-Michael and rested her chin on his shoulder, her arm around his middle. She had seen Isabel and Michael sit together like that before. It was unnerving how alike and unlike they were from the kids she had grown up with. "Open up for us, darlin'. Why'd he let you live?"
"She can't talk. Nicholas here thought it might make her easier to handle. Annoying cryin' and all that." Not-Michael shrugged. "I like it when they cry."
"Open the little darlin' up. Find out." Not-Isabel begged them with a smirk. Her eyes burned with something. Not even Not-Michael had that element. This girl was crazy and probably very, very smart. 'Darlin''… Zan had called her that.
"You do it." Nicholas pulled some skin off his neck. "I'm tired and I'm peeling all over the place. I cannot express just how much I hate the desert."
"Come on, baby. Open up. I wanna dive in." Not-Isabel smiled broadly and locked eyes with Liz. Her eyes were like black voids. The pain took away her sight momentarily. Red. Black. White. Red. She could hear Not-Isabel chuckle. "That's it, sweetlin', let Mama in." Then her vision went again. The sensation of phantom fingers in her brain made her choke for air. Then she had to scream. She found a way and the scream burned her own ears. She could hear Not-Michael laughing to himself. Then the pain went away. After a few moments of gasping, she could make out Not-Isabel grinning over Not-Michael's shoulder.
"Well?" Nicholas cleared his throat.
"Zan warned her about you, Nicky… he got all protective over little ol' Lizzie… but just for a second. She don’t know nothin'. He might just let us have her." Her hand rubbed Not-Michael's belly beneath his shirt.
"Can I play? I wanna break her in." Not-Michael smiled maliciously at her. Liz wished she could move her head so she could turn away from those eyes.
"Aw, baby, she's already broke in…" Not-Isabel let her hands drop to his fly, playing with the buttons before pulling them open. "But I'm sure you can make her bleed anyway." Liz wanted to give anything to just be able to turn her head from that sight. "What do you say, Lizzie?" Her hand slid inside Not-Michael's pants and his eyes fluttered closed at her touch. "You wanna open up for Rath?" 'Rath' grunted as Not-Isabel moved her hand beneath the heavy denim. Liz didn't need a diagram to know exactly what they were doing and exactly what they were thinking about doing to her.
"I've got a wanna-be king to get a message to. Play children. Just don't kill her yet. She's the only pawn we've got right now." Nicholas adjusted his T-shirt and headed for the door. He left her to her tormentors. For a few minutes after the door shut, Liz hoped Not-Isabel would fill Rath's needs but after working him up, the girl let go of him. She even shoved him towards Liz with her foot. Her eyes widened as he approached and his shadow engulfed her.
"Don't matter what Nicky did to her, Rath. If you hurt her bad enough, she'll scream anyway." Unfortunately, it wasn't Not-Isabel's last input in the events to follow. "Hey Lizzie, you ever made it with an alien? It's gonna change your world."
--
TBC next post
Part 38
Jeff Parker held onto the book with both hands. He was supposed to give his statement to his best friend and he had trouble finding his words. He was focused on the book because he could touch it, feel it under his hands. "It's Liz's."
"I know, Jeff, but right this moment, it's evidence. It's a clue." Jim prompted him. He was gentle because he knew his friend was in shock. If it had been Kyle, Jim couldn't be sure he'd be able to remember how to use his gun.
"It's more than that. This book IS Liz. Her thoughts and experiences. She wrote everything in this book, virtually every night. It's all I have to hold on to." He shook his head, tears slipping down his face.
"I'll have them process it and get it back to you. There could be prints on it. Hers… whoever took her."
"A shoe print." Jeff nodded and slid it into the plastic sleeve that Jim held out in gloved hands. He couldn't stop talking. "Liz is a small girl. She wears a size 6. That shoe is too big to be hers. She's got boys shoes but they're 4 1/2s… Wiggle room. That's an 8."
Jim nodded and wrote instructions on the sleeve before handing it off to the nearest officer headed toward the cruiser. He sat across from Jeff at one of the Crashdown tables. "How about you tell me about what happened here tonight? Start from the beginning. Take your time. Don't leave out anything."
"I was just in there." Jeff took a deep breath and pushed his hair out of his face. "It was… a little after ten, I guess. I was waiting for Saturday Night Live to come on. It's so stupid now but I've always watched it. A tradition, I guess… um… I went in to check on her, figured I could get her to join us. She'd been… alone all evening, studying… on a Saturday Night. She's a very good student." He cleared his throat, eyes on the table top. "Her bed was turned down. She was in her pjs… out on the balcony, writing in her journal. She said she wouldn't be out there much longer. I told her not too long… it's cold out. She needed more blankets for this time of year. She rolled her eyes at me. I didn't want her to get sick. She always tells me I'm overprotective." He smiled a little at the memory of her face when he was trying to be a good parent and then choked down a sob. "I shut the door and sat down to watch TV with Nancy. It was… ten… twenty minutes maybe. I thought I heard something. I heard her call for me. I got up to see if I could hear better and then…
"She screamed for me, Jim. Screamed. Liz is not a screamer. No 'I saw a spider and it scared me' screamer. She's the girl who picks them up to play with them to see how they work. To count their legs and see if she can get them to make silk. She screamed bloody murder, Jim. I jumped up to see… she opened the door and there was a crash. A bigger crash. She fell. Glass was everywhere. She was bleeding all over. She screamed for me. She called me Daddy. She hasn't called me Daddy since she was ten and she scraped her knee really badly."
"I felt like was stuck in mud but I know I was moving as fast as I could. I told Nancy to call 911. Someone grabbed her and yanked her back inside the room. Slammed the door in my face. The door was stuck. I had to get a hammer to get it open. Felt like it took forever to find it when I knew just where I'd left it. It was on the dresser and I know I moved faster than I thought I could. Even after I'd knocked the knob off, I had to break the door to get it open. I think part of the door is still on the catch. She was absolutely terrified and that's the last look I saw on her face. They dropped straight over the edge and… I ran out there… then I saw the car speed off. It turned right at the end of the alley. Little green four door… foreign made… a real junker. I just can't get over how fast they went… out the window, over the edge… into the car and out the alley… God, I see her face when I close my eyes."
"Jeff." Jim gripped the man's shoulders. "We'll catch these people. You'll get her back. Did you catch even a glimpse?"
Jeff thought hard. "He. It was a he in the room. He was short… guess he'd have to be to wear those shoes."
"We'll find her. We'll get her back to you." Jim put his hat on. "Count on it." He walked out of the restaurant and to his men, waiting for orders.
--
Jim held back with Soltero before he talked to the men. "Why the Parker girl?"
"What do the Parkers take in yearly?" Soltero hooked his fingers in his belt.
"Not nearly enough to make a decent ransom." The Sheriff shook his head. "They didn't leave a note. Maybe they'll drop us a line."
"Maybe. They'll hide her away. Give us a time limit to meet demands."
"Jeff Parker and I grew up together. For a while… we thought our kids would get together, get married after high school." Jim stared out into the night. "I owe my best friend enough to make sure she graduates at all."
"It's been four hours. We're on it earlier. We'll get her back. They couldn't have gone far. Green's not a common car color. A junker like he says will stick out."
"You stay in case they make contact. I'll send someone to her friends tomorrow. Maybe it's not what her parents have. She's a pretty smart girl. Talk to Jeff and Nancy… see if she had any interesting hobbies, strange boyfriends… something that might have gotten attention."
"Wasn't there a shooting here not long ago?"
"I'll look it up." Jim headed for his cruiser. "Once you see her room, you'll understand how urgent this is." He paused. "Put her stats out. See if anyone's spotted her out there. Brown hair, brown eyes. 5'3", 105 lbs. Medium-light complexion. Inch-long scar over her left eye. Her mother said she was wearing dark blue top and light blue sleep pants. She's 18 but looks younger."
"I'm on it."
--
Liz couldn't sob. She was paralyzed. She hadn't been able to move since he had grabbed her in her bedroom. Tears had dried on her face. She was just a girl, she didn't know anything, and she didn't have anything. She tried to tell them but her lips wouldn't move. Her head bounced against the glass when the car went over bumps. It hurt but she couldn’t move even an inch. There were two of them. One was The Boy and the other she couldn't see but she could hear him.
"You sure it's her?"
"I'm sure. She's the girl." He was smaller than she was but he had tossed her around like a rag doll. Like he was a giant in pygmy skin. "She looked right at me when I put a bullet through that wanna-be king's chest. He survived and this pretty lady is going to tell us how."
She wanted to shake her head but she couldn't move and the instant his hand fit against her forehead, pain erupted. It was like he had shoved his fingers into her gray matter and twirled her synapses like spaghetti. She had to scream. It was excruciating and felt like it lasted hours by the time he pulled his hand away. She gasped and felt the tears sting at her eyes but they wouldn't fall.
"That fuck up, Zan." The Boy spat out. "He was here after all."
Through her fear, she could still dredge up anger. Anger at the driver for not stopping this. Anger at The Boy for doing whatever he had just done to her. Anger at Zan for dragging her into this. She knew he would do this. It was Zan's fault that Max got shot. That Liz was there when The Boy went after Max. It was all Zan's fault. She felt violated by whatever The Boy had done. She wanted to sob but she couldn't find the muscles to make it happen. She couldn't even pull her camisole back down over her stomach where it should be.
There was a low whistle from the front seat. "Look at that… I'd do her."
"Not my type. Too young." The Boy made a noise in his throat. "Not enough curves."
"You think Zan found out where It is?"
"Oh, I'm counting on it. I'd stake my 82 years on it." The Boy turned Liz's face to him. It was really frightening, that tone of voice coming from so young a face. "If Zan could find our wanna-be… he could find It."
"How are we gonna get him to activate It?"
"With a little persuasion. Zan's going soft. The Zan I knew would kill this girl for what she saw. He let her live once, he'll let her live again."
"Can I play with her til then?"
"I don't care."
Liz could see his eyes in the rearview and she didn't like those depths. What the hell was going on? Play? Play. Play! He couldn't 'play' with her… but there was no one to stop him, not even herself.
"Look at them eyes. Bet they give off everythin'. Think she can transmit a scream if you don't put her back?" The eyes danced back and forth between the road and the mirror. "I like it when they scream. Could you put back just the cords?"
"Then I'd have to listen to the begging and the whining. She's just a human, just like all the others. They beg for their lives in spite of how meaningless they are. I'm pretty certain most of them know exactly how pointless their lives are and they persist on fighting disease and hunting down murderers. It doesn't do any good."
"Maybe she could squeak… or grunt. Grunting works for me." That driver sure did have a one track mind.
--
Jim took the book back from the courier and stared at it. He should run it back over to Jeff's. Check on them, see how they were doing but he was waiting on a call from the FBI. He wasn't afraid to hand over jurisdiction of this one. It hit him too close to home. She wasn't just some girl in town. She'd been to his house for movie nights and the occasional dinners. He'd caught her and Kyle making out on the couch once or twice. His best friend's daughter. She had a bright future ahead of her. Harvard, Jeff had told him once… maybe it had been Yale or Stanford… somewhere far away and someplace expensive and bound to get her noticed in whatever field she chose. He turned the book over in his hands and removed it from the plastic. It was a clue. An important clue to anything her parents didn't know about her. About what her friends couldn't fathom. It was an invasion of privacy but the only way to know for sure.
He opened it up and read a few patches here and there. Normal stuff. The drama of a teenage girl. Every day was the end of the world. The shooting in '99 had really shaken her up, it seemed. It seemed to have inspired many of her ups and downs since then. He jotted down names and relations as he came to them. He made a list of people he could interview. She had more than a few bad break ups… And some clandestine meetings… with an older man… what was that? The shooting last month that Soltero had mentioned… Jim flipped back a dozen or so pages to the date and there it was… The boy had been shot. Was that blood? Dried blood. Carefully, he reached for a water glass and a toothpick…
--
Liz's mind reeled from where she had been seated on the concrete floor of some small abandoned silo. The Boy had just peeled a layer of skin off his face. The skin piece disintegrated before her eyes, falling to the ground in barely a pile of dust. What were these people? Not-Michael leered at her from where he leaned on a table. She would have shuddered but she didn't have control of her body to perform the action. She remembered what he had said about her in the car. He wanted to play with her. Fear was all she had. He looked like Michael but he wasn't. It wasn't just the clothes and the hair that set him apart from a boy who had become a friend. There was something missing in his eyes, probably humanity because she could just believe he was picturing doing things to her body that would make her scream. She couldn't move and she couldn't scream. No one knew where she was and she could only hope her father knew what direction they went though she suspected the cops couldn't do a thing to help her. The Boy did things that weren't human. Not-Michael was so eerie and frightening. Hope seemed like the last thing she had a right to cling to.
The door swung open and Isabel… no… Not-Isabel sauntered in. Different hair, different clothes and a viciousness in her eyes. She eyed Liz and hopped up on the table beside Not-Michael. She lifted a leg to rest her foot on the table edge. She smirked at Not-Michael. "Who's the statue? I thought you were gonna get my brother out here."
"Human." The Boy shrugged and picked at his face in a mirror. "Her dear old dad called her 'Lizzie.' She saw me draw out Zan… and he made the mistake of letting her live."
"That's my brother, makin' big with the mistakes." Not-Isabel slid behind Not-Michael and rested her chin on his shoulder, her arm around his middle. She had seen Isabel and Michael sit together like that before. It was unnerving how alike and unlike they were from the kids she had grown up with. "Open up for us, darlin'. Why'd he let you live?"
"She can't talk. Nicholas here thought it might make her easier to handle. Annoying cryin' and all that." Not-Michael shrugged. "I like it when they cry."
"Open the little darlin' up. Find out." Not-Isabel begged them with a smirk. Her eyes burned with something. Not even Not-Michael had that element. This girl was crazy and probably very, very smart. 'Darlin''… Zan had called her that.
"You do it." Nicholas pulled some skin off his neck. "I'm tired and I'm peeling all over the place. I cannot express just how much I hate the desert."
"Come on, baby. Open up. I wanna dive in." Not-Isabel smiled broadly and locked eyes with Liz. Her eyes were like black voids. The pain took away her sight momentarily. Red. Black. White. Red. She could hear Not-Isabel chuckle. "That's it, sweetlin', let Mama in." Then her vision went again. The sensation of phantom fingers in her brain made her choke for air. Then she had to scream. She found a way and the scream burned her own ears. She could hear Not-Michael laughing to himself. Then the pain went away. After a few moments of gasping, she could make out Not-Isabel grinning over Not-Michael's shoulder.
"Well?" Nicholas cleared his throat.
"Zan warned her about you, Nicky… he got all protective over little ol' Lizzie… but just for a second. She don’t know nothin'. He might just let us have her." Her hand rubbed Not-Michael's belly beneath his shirt.
"Can I play? I wanna break her in." Not-Michael smiled maliciously at her. Liz wished she could move her head so she could turn away from those eyes.
"Aw, baby, she's already broke in…" Not-Isabel let her hands drop to his fly, playing with the buttons before pulling them open. "But I'm sure you can make her bleed anyway." Liz wanted to give anything to just be able to turn her head from that sight. "What do you say, Lizzie?" Her hand slid inside Not-Michael's pants and his eyes fluttered closed at her touch. "You wanna open up for Rath?" 'Rath' grunted as Not-Isabel moved her hand beneath the heavy denim. Liz didn't need a diagram to know exactly what they were doing and exactly what they were thinking about doing to her.
"I've got a wanna-be king to get a message to. Play children. Just don't kill her yet. She's the only pawn we've got right now." Nicholas adjusted his T-shirt and headed for the door. He left her to her tormentors. For a few minutes after the door shut, Liz hoped Not-Isabel would fill Rath's needs but after working him up, the girl let go of him. She even shoved him towards Liz with her foot. Her eyes widened as he approached and his shadow engulfed her.
"Don't matter what Nicky did to her, Rath. If you hurt her bad enough, she'll scream anyway." Unfortunately, it wasn't Not-Isabel's last input in the events to follow. "Hey Lizzie, you ever made it with an alien? It's gonna change your world."
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