Roswell Fanatics

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The sunrise of a new day came to the bunk house of the old Parker ranch and Maria took care of the cook duties, scrambling eggs and frying bacon while homemade biscuits tried to burn themselves in the ancient electric oven she was cooking on. It was really a nice breakfast....not like their usual one of cocoa krispies with chocolate milk. Liz took two bites and headed for the bathroom.

"You are going to give me some sort of a complex if you continue to take two bites of my food, then run to the altar of Rowlf....the great God of Porcelain, Liz. My cooking isn't THAT bad."

"Sorry Ria," Liz gasped between heaves. "This will pass in a minute...then I'll be able to eat...I hope."

"Hey, should you be on some vitamins or something? And should you be doing this...you need to eat for two now."

"I go back to the clinic on Thursday, I'll get some prenatal vitamins then....maybe something for the nausea too, if it doesn't start getting better. But I'm already gaining weight...just water retention I guess, I'm not eating that much."

"You don't look like you are gaining any..."

"Well, my breasts are getting tender...and fuller."

"I could use that...the fuller, I mean...but I think I'll go with an aquabra, thank you kindly. Your way strikes me as a little...drastic."

"Yeah well, if I had it to do over again...." and all at once the thought scared Liz, because she wasn't sure really....if she had it to do over again...would she have done something else? She'd like to think she would have...but the image hit her of him laying there naked...she even found herself wanting to believe it was all just about sex when that happened...but she didn't. She didn't want to admit...not even to herself, how much she had loved Max Evans...how much she still loved him. And it was crazy, she knew. They weren't a couple, they had never been a couple....well, they'd coupled once...and now their DNA were indelibly bound together in a child that neither of them had considered....that he clearly wouldn't even want to be born if he knew.... But still. ..... despite all the misery that this had caused her already, and the misery it would cause her and her family in the future...somehow there was a felling of rightness to that bonding.... a feeling that scared her even now. If they could have just dated....let their relationship develop. But that hadn't happened....and now this had.

'You've got to give up that fantasy, Liz,' she told herself. 'Get Max out of your mind. You've got responsibilities now...to yourself, and to your child.'

Liz wiped her lips and then took a cup of water to wash out her mouth, and spit it in to the commode. "I'm feeling better...I think. Got any toast? Dry?"

"No, but I'll make some."

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Isabel put on her lipstick and looked in the mirror....reached up wo touch her lips, using her powers to change the color...then change it again...and again. Maybe it was the mascara, she thought. The mascara went through several more shades...then the lipstick again....finally she took a wet washcloth and scrubbed her face, removing all signs of cosmetics.

'Nothing', she thought to herself, '...will get THAT face looking good this morning.'

It really wasn't as bad as all that.....still, she had tossed and turned most of the night, worried about Max and blaming herself remorselessly for the depression he was in. She'd gotten to sleep only about 45 minutes before her alarm had gone off and awakened her, and fled instantly into the comforting mental arms of Alex. She'd tried to teach Max dreamwalking once....it had been less than a success. Maybe if she'd been successful at that, Max would have had a resource...could have at least been with Liz in his dreams....but no, she decided. That would have probably just made it worse. Because unlike Alex who she knew was intimidated by her Ice Princess persona allowing her to enjoy each other's dream company while neither would ever really risk actually considering becoming a couple, Liz had shown that she could get over her shyness....enough to do something like opening her heart up to Max. If their relationship had also been fueled by the dreams of the dream-orb, heaven knows where it might have led Liz...even if Max could have been less emotional about it...which of course, he hadn't. That's why he'd been in such a funk for the whole summer, worse now after he'd heard she was out carousing around with Kyle that night. 'Your brother's life is screwed, Isabel,' she told herself, and she wished she could believe it was just because he was an alien in a strange land, but she had to admit she'd done more than her fair share to help screw up Max's life in the Spring, she just couldn't figure how to fix it.

As Isabel left her room she could hear Counting Crows playing and it almost broke her heart, but as she looked down the hall she saw something that did break her heart, her mother leaning against the hallway beside Max's door, tears coming down her cheeks. She walked up to Diane and hugged her, and her mother hugged back. It didn't look like Diane had gotten a hell of a lot of sleep either. Isabel rapped on Max's door, "Hey Max....want to go out for breakfast with Mom and me?"

Something between a growl and a snarl seemed to emanate from Max's room, and the volume of the CD player went up noticeably. "Come on," said Isabel, "...we need to talk."

It was twenty minutes later that Isabel and her mother were sitting in a quiet corner of the Flying Cup & Saucer Coffehouse on South Third and Main, Diane with coffee and a bagel, Isabel with a cappuchino and a blueberry scone.

"Mom...I didn't tell you the whole truth before," Isabel started....not that she was going to tell her the WHOLE truth now, for that matter. But she had to at least talk to someone because while the situation with Max probably couldn't get any worse....it certainly wasn't getting any better, and it was starting to hurt the whole family.

"The girl Max is broken up about....some of that is my fault, Mom."

"Isabel...what did you do?"

"Well, I didn't want Max to rush in to anything.....I didn't want him to...to take any chances....so I did my best to discourage him from dating her....I mean like single dates...rather than just in a group or something."

"Actually dear, if he had THAT much of a crush on her, that was probably good advice. Being sixteen is a difficult time for anyone, and you two sort of had a rough start at social interaction, especially Max. So what happened? Did he not take your advice, and she turned him down?"

"No...actually, it's worse. Li... that is, she is almost as shy as Max but somehow...someway...she found the courage to admit she liked him 'Unlike me, who couldn't admit to Alex that I care for him if my life depended on it',...to actually ask Max if he'd like to start dating. Unfortunately he DID listen to his sister's advice, and turned her down...not really showing a lot of social skill when he did it either."

"So now he's hurt the girl he has a crush on, as well as being apart from her..."

"Yeah," said Isabel, "...something like that. Except I'm not sure it's just a crush....I used to believe that....I believed that for years, actually. Now I'm just not sure."

"Years? Isabel...how long has this been going on...?"

"Since sometime in ..... third grade."

"Sometime in THIRD grade?"

"Yeah....sometime around 8AM...about the time we stepped off the bus the first day of third grade."

"Max has had a crush on someone for SEVEN YEARS?"

"Yeah, well if it is a crush....I thought it was...and that it didn't really matter...and at first it seemed harmless enough...I mean it gave Max a reason to get up and go to school in the morning...after awhile though I got worried...worried that Max and Li...and the girl would get too close...so by fourth grade I was trying to keep them apart.."

"Fourth grade? Good heavens, Isabel, what is wrong with this girl that you were so worried about her in fourth grade?"

"Her...it's not her...in fact, she's nice enough in an intellectual hard-working responsible sort of way....much like Max, actually, except of course, Liz is human...but it scared me that she seemed to have such a hold over him...right from the start. But I swear Mom... I really never knew she felt as much for Max as she does...Not until I dreamwalked her...not until she actually did ask him to start dating and...and he listened to me and turned her down."

"So that's why he started acting this way last Spring...because of Liz Parker?" Isabel's eyes flew open at the name, and Diane's mouth made a thin smile. "I'm not completely blind, dear. Her name has been there with his on just about every science fair project and awards assembl;y we ever attended. She seems like a sweet girl...or at least did until this hazing thing..."

Isabel nodded grimly. Roswell was a small town, and even though the juvenile court had hushed up the names of the people involved, much of the town knew it had been Kyle Valenti and Liz Parker that had been stopped for DUI...and who had blown the secret of the great West Roswell High football hazing scandal.

"But that's the other thing, Mom. It's not just Max...it's what I did to Liz too. She would have been the last one in the world to do something like that, but when I broke them up....no, that's not fair, they never really were a pair...but when I kept them from at least giving it a try...."

"You think you interfered with their destiny, Isabel? It doesn't work quite like that. They are growing up too...they have to make choices. If your brother makes the choice to try to patch things up with Liz, he'll do just that...and if they are really destined to be together...maybe that will happen, even if her feelings are hurt right now...but it's got to be their choice. But thanks for telling me...I'll try to talk with Max...or maybe have your father talk to him man to man. Sometimes it helps if you can just have someone to talk over your problems with, you know?"

Isabel nodded her head. Mom was right....she just didn't know that the biggest problem was that Max wasn't the same species as his would-be girlfriend, and Isabel had never really figured out the right way to break THAT to her mother.

Max had made the decision to talk to Liz...to apologize to Liz...about ten o'clock last night. He'd lain awake all night trying to think about exactly how to do that. He realized that he didn't have quite the social skills most people did, but he imagined that...for anyone...the decision on just how to apologize to someone for raping them was rather daunting.

He'd hurt her enough already. It wasn't like he could go up to her in class and say, 'I'm terribly sorry I raped you the other day, Liz.' Max had been reading about rape...and had found that the psychological effects of rape were often far worse than the physical ones, and he especially thought that would be the case with Liz. He'd seen her humiliation and shame as she'd grabbed her clothes and run from the gym, and he'd seen the look in her eyes when he'd seen her in class...or at the Crashdown. He'd seen that she was depressed....had no energy....none of the spark that had been so typical of Liz Parker all the time he'd known her.

But how do you apologize...without heaping on more embarassment...more humiliation...another reminder of the trauma she'd been through. He'd have to talk to her in private, but what would THAT do to her? Would it frighten her even more?

And worse....much worse...Max realized he was really afraid to be alone with Liz. He hadn't MEANT to rape her then, but he had. Something had come over him....something he didn't understand...something that had possessed him like he was a puppet...that had led him to do something that terrible. What if it happened again if he were alone with her...if there was no one there to protect her.

'You really are a monster, Max...., even if you don't want to be one. Maybe it's not your fault you aren't human, but you know now...whatever she triggered in you that night...it's still inside you. You can't let it out...not ever again.'

But what was that monster's purpose, he wondered? What had the monster inside him intended when it had taken over his mind....when it had used him to do THAT to Liz? And how could he ever talk to her....let her know how badly at least the human part of him felt over what had happened that night?

Of course, there was more than one way to apologize for what he'd done to her....ways that didn't require him to be anywhere near her, but would succinctly express his regret to her, he thought as he remembered the old revolver his father kept in the downstairs safe. His father had never given him the combination, but that wouldn't stop a monster. Perhaps if he used it on himself, it might stop her pain...and it would certainly assure the monster would never hurt Liz...or anyone else....again.

Max turned the CD player up even louder, trying to drown out his own thoughts.

Philip Evans looked up from the papers on his desk as the door opened in his downstairs office.

"Oh, hi Max....good morning."

"Uh...good morning, Dad," said Max...starting to turn away.

"Max...wait a minute, would you? Your mom and Izzy went out for breakfast, but I had a little legal work to do here. That's finished now, and I'd like it if we could go have breakfast somewhere. I really need to talk to you."

Max watched his father go to the safe and put the legal papers into a drawer..just below the compartment the old revolver occupied. "You know," said Philip, "..you are sixteen now.."

"Maybe.....," said Max, shrugging. Philip understood the point. Nobody knew exactly how old Max and Isabel were, their birth certificates were based upon the estimates the Chaves County Child Protective Service personnel had gotten from the initial doctors who had examined them rather than by actual knowledge.

"Well, in the eyes of the law you are sixteen...able to drive...able to start transitioning to become an adult. That's a lot of responsibility and sometimes it all kind of seems to hit real quickly. You know, Max, your mother and I have been worried for months now about how depressed you've been...laying in your room...listening to the same couple of CDs over and over again. You wouldn't be the first teenage boy to have problems you know....maybe we could talk about them, whatever they are..?"

Max looked back at the safe as his father closed it and spun the dial. He was quite sure he could open it with his powers and the safe and gun weren't going anywhere. "OK, Dad. Let's talk..."

Twenty minutes later, Max found himself wishing he'd used the gun, as his father drove up to the front of the Crashdown and motioned him inside. They sat in one of the back booths...in Maria's section if she was working, but one of the other waitresses brought them water and menus, and his father looked through the menu. Max was looking for Liz, and was surprised when the waitress returned..his father ordered first and Max picked something randomly off the menu without thought. As the waitress went off to take the order to the grill, Philip Evans looked at his son and his lips made a thin smile.

"I know it isn't easy being sixteen...it wasn't easy for me either. A whole lot of changes in your life...new problems...new responsibilities. Your mom and I have been worried about you all summer but we kind of held back because you always kind of go into a funk during summers we noticed...although this one was the worst. We sort of held back doing anything about it because you usually perk right up again when school starts but this year you didn't. In fact, if anything it's gotten worse. Would you care to tell me about what's going on?"

Max looked at his father. The guy had never been anything but kind to him and Izzy...he deserved better than what was happening to him...'He deserves a real son. But as much as Max wished he could be that son...that human son...he wasn't. If he was it would be different. If he'd been human he would have had a normal life...not had to conceal what he was. Hell, he could have dated Liz...not pushed her away. And whatever alien force overtook him that night...it wouldn't have happened. They wouldn't have fought...she'd have probably not even been drunk in the first place....and he wouldn't have done whatever he did to her. Was it only rape? Or was it worse than that. Why would another species have some instinct....some overwhelming compulsion to rape someone of another species? By definition, different species couldn't reproduce.

Max had been studying his biology books ever since it happened. The twin imperatives of life were to survive and to reproduce, and he certainly hadn't needed to do what he did to Liz to survive. But if they were different species, they couldn't have a child either. But plenty of creatures on Earth used other species as part of their reproduction process. He'd read about the spider wasp that would paralyze spiders and lay it's eggs in them....the young larvae feeding on the paralyzed spider as they developed....using the creature of another species as a food source as they gnawed their way out of its paralyzed body. Max had watched the movie Aliens a dozen times in the last six weeks, watching alien larvae burst from the bodies of innocent victims.

He really didn't know what he and Michael and Izzy were...but he was pretty sure that hatching from pods was not a normal way of reproduction for any species. What if the pods had been holding cages....a way to transport dangerous species...species that if they got out would hurt....civilized species. What if whatever had compelled him to attack Liz had been the reason they were locked up like that....because when they matured they were so dangerous? What if what he had done to Liz was even worse than rape. What if it was something that would kill her? What if......

"Max? Did you hear me? "

"Uh...Scrambled eggs and ham with sourdough toast!"

Philip smiled and shook his head. "No Max, you've already ordered. I asked you if you'd care to tell me what is going on?"

"What's going on?"

"Yes, what's going on?"

"Dad, I honestly wish I knew."

Philip smiled again. "I know Max, it's hard, going from a child to an adult. You don't really know which you are sometimes...one foot in each world. Your not sure what to do....afraid you might make mistakes. Well let me tell you, Max. You are going to make mistakes, we ALL make mistakes, you wouldn't be human if you didn't make mistakes...."

Max thought briefly of telling his father that if making mistakes made you human, he was the most human person in the building....even though he knew he wasn't...human that is, but thought better of it.

"I guess..."

Philip tried to keep the conversation going but he knew it wasn't doing any good. Max just wouldn't engage in the conversation. His son was trapped in some sort of world of his own with whatever the problem was. It was time to get the young man some professional help. The waitress brought their orders and said she was going off duty, but another waitress would take care of them if they had anything else. They ate their food largely in silence, and then Philip Evans turned to his son and said, "Look Max, I know you have some problem and you somehow belief you are the only one on Earth that's ever had a problem like that. Well, I can tell you, that just isn't so. I'm going to talk to a friend of mine, Dr. Larson,....he's a psychologist, about seeing you. You need some help, son....help that I apparently don't have the skills to give you. But you are my son, and your mother and I love you, and we aren't going to let whatever is eating you up inside destroy you, so you ARE going to get help, do you understand that?"

"Yessir," said Max, even though he knew his dad was wrong. He wasn't the man's son...as much as he'd really have loved to be that....and chances are no one on Earth had EVER had a problem like his, and of course it wasn't what might be eating him up inside that was worrying him...it was what might be happening to Liz Parker...and even if it wasn't...even if he had ONLY raped Liz....that was certainly bad enough. But he couldn't control the past...that he knew...but he could certainly limit the pain he could cause anyone in the3 future....and he would...as soon as he got back to the safe.

As his father got up to pay the check, that's all Max could think of...getting back to that revolver. But as the waitress started picking up the dishes in front of him he heard her voice. "Max...this is really none of my business, but Liz is my friend.."

Max looked up into the eyes of Maria DeLuca who gestured across the room, where Liz was now waiting on a couple at a booth. "I really think you guys need to talk. Couldn't you just run into each other at lunch in the school cafeteria tomorrow...like maybe it was an accident or something? She really needs to talk to you..."

Fear struck into the heart of Max Evans. 'What was wrong with Liz...? What have YOU done to Liz, Max?' As he looked across at where she was waitressing, his heart nearly broke. He was an idiot to consider suicide right now...that could wait...wait until he'd done whatever he could do to make amends....


"Max. I'll try to get her to come out on the grandstand to eat lunch with me....if you could just drop by....speak to her...?"

Max nodded. 'That ought to be safe enough...especially if Maria was there. It was public...in plain sight....but isolated enough for a private conversation.' "I'll be there, Maria..."

It was 1AM Monday morning and the alarm went off on Isabel Evans' bedstand and she came awake with a frown on her face. She'd tried to dreamwalk Max and it hadn't worked...she was not surprised. She doubted that he slept much at all anymore...judging by his haggard look. No doubt he was just lying there in his room...staring at the ceiling again, his earbuds pumping Counting Crows into his brain.

Her mother had told her before she went to bed that they had made an appointment for Max with a clinical psychologist tomorrow...that they were really worried about him. Well she was worried about her brother too...that's why she'd tried to dreamwalk him. But she doubted the psychologist would be much help. What could Max tell him? That he was an alien...in love with an Earth girl. That was going to happen. But even if he did, what could the psychologist do? Most likely the psychologist wouldn't believe him and Max would wind up in a rubber room somewhere with no belt or shoelaces. Of course, it would be barely possible that the man would believe Max...in which case Max would wind up in a government facility...probably with her in the adjoining cell.

No, that wasn't going to happen...Max wasn't going to tell the man anything, and if there was any chance of Max getting help, his sister was going to have to give it to him....that or he'd have to just somehow get over needing what he could clearly never have.

But not tonight...Isabel was too damn depressed herself tonight. She picked up the West Roswell Yearbook...it opened automatically to the page with his picture and she smiled as she laid back and drifted off.

• "Izzy...how nice to see you again. Would you care for a dance?"
  
  "Just one, Alex...a slow one. Then maybe if we could just sit and cuddle for awhile...I've had a bad day."
  
  "Anything you say, Iz..," said Alex.
  
  After the dance they sat on the bench, her head on his shoulder and Alex running his fingers through her hair as the tears came down and she sobbed softly.
  
  "There....there...Izzy. It'll all be OK...whatever the problem is..."
  
  "Thanks, Alex....you're a life-saver, you know that?"
  
  He didn't answer...he just ran his fingers slowly through her hair and kissed the top of her head. Somehow it DID seem to make it better...but not much.

• Blue morning blue morning
  wrapped in strands of fist and bone
  Curiosity, kitten,
  Doesnt have to mean youre on your own
  You can look outside your window
  He doesnt have to know
  We can talk awhile, baby
  We can take it nice and slow
  All your life is such a shame, shame, shame
  All your love is just a dream, dream, dream
  Are you happy when youre sleeping?

It was 2AM and Max Evans was not asleep. He was tired...not as tired as he'd been the first three days after he'd done it...he hadn't slept at all then. Neither Max nor his sister really seemed to need as much sleep as human beings did. Normally, they got by real well on six hours. Of course, he hadn't gotten six hours sleep any night since June. Throughout the summer he's lain there...tormented by the remembrance of the look on Liz's face when he'd turned her down...and that had been bad enough. That memory had tormented his dreams most of the summer, and he'd been luck to get four hours sleep a night. But since the night six weeks ago...the night he had raped Liz....it had only gotten worse.

The first three nights he'd just lain there...contemplating the horror he had done....sobbing quietly in the night as he remembered the look on her face as she'd gathered her clothes and run crying from his presence. And after those three days...he'd never gotten more than a couple hours sleep a night...tormented by his dreams...by his nightmares...except a nightmare was an illusion...what he'd done to her was real enough.

He thought again of the revolver waiting in the safe below, and almost got up to go get it...before he remembered Maria's whispered conversation to him. He would try to talk to her...if Maria was there ..up on the grandstand of the football field...it ought to be safe enough. Liz deserved at least that much...an apology...an attempt to make her understand it wasn't him...not really...and a promise to her that he would do something...something permanent...about the monster that had possessed him that night. Maybe her horror about that night could be at least partially put to rest with the death of Max Evans...at least, he hoped so. He fought to remember that 'You need to hang on until you can talk to her...not do anything until then...'...knowing the sleep deprivation was screwing with his mind causing him to be unable to think clearly....even starting to make it difficult for him to do his schoolwork...not that THAT mattered anymore.

But even deciding to talk to her...to do his best to make amends...didn't let him rest. No...that itself was the problem. He feared sleep...feared those dreams...those agonizing nightmares that haunted him every time his fatigue forced him to close his eyes and confront the demons within his memories and the truth about what he was and what he'd done. That was the reason he didn't sleep....couldn't sleep...mustn't sleep. No...he couldn't face those dreams....not ever again.

He reached for the volume control and cranked up the sound to his earbuds....once he'd liked this song...but he hated it now....after almost 3 months...but even that hate could be used...used to keep himself from having to confront those nightmares....

• We were perfect when we started
  Ive been wondering where weve gone
  All your life is such a shame
  All your love is just a dream
  I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow
  Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there
  Counting crows
  One for sorrow two for joy
  Three for girls and four for boys
  Five for silver six for gold and
  Seven for a secret never to be told

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It was 4 o'clock Monday morning in Roswell New Mexico, county seat of Chaves County. Very early indeed.

Geologically speaking, much of Chaves county New Mexico was once am inland sea, and the terrain of the area reflected that. Most of the county was in fact fairly flat, and in any arroyo or creekbed you might well find fossils of sea creatures that had lived in the Pleistocene era. But over the years the tectonic plates had settled unevenly, so although much of the area around Roswell New Mexico was flat by anyone's standards, there still existed a few places where the ancient seabed had been tilted and uplifted. By the standards of northern New Mexico, where real mountains existed, or even further west where the Sangre de Cristo range rose in awesome splendor, Carsons peak wasn't much...in fact, it wasn't even really a peak at all.

Carson's peak was about a quarter mile to the north of West Roswell High School, with both the student paarking lot and the high school football stadium and athletic fields in between. It only rose about 120 feet above the town of Roswell, but that had proven enough to make it important to the city of Roswell water department when they'd iniially been established in the 1920s. It wasn't so much a water tower that had been built there as a water tank, allowing the city pumphouses to work intermittently to keep the tank filled from the deep wells that fed the city water supply while gravity assured a near constant pressure to the city to keep bathtubs running, lawns watered, and fire hydrants pressurized. The tank wasn't a terribly attractive structure and if future archeologists might some day dig up the ruins of the structure they might question what strange maintenance practices had caused the city to paint the northern side every five years or so, and the southern side at least several times a year.

The reason for that discrepancy was simple. The south side faced directly at the West Roswell High campus and the student parking lot and despite state and county ordnances attempting to control graffiti, the south side of the tank would frequently get painted ....well.....unofficially.

Generally this was done in a spirit of school spirit and in fact the previous year when the football team was state champions it had been painted several times, urging on their efforts over one team or another, and after many years it was almost traditional for it to be painted, as June graduation approached, "Congratulations class of......"

Of course, nobody was too excited about the football team this year. It was early in the season but they were already 0 and 3, and it was going to get a whole lot worse as the season went on. The offense had been decimated by graduation and they had really needed help from the new sophomores and especially help at quarterback from Kyle Valenti. Since those guys were not being allowed to play this year after the party six weeks earlier, the offense had pretty much sputtered and the defense was little better since four starting seniors...including high school All-American Bubba Brigham and three All-state starters had been kicked off the team as well. And thats why Bubba and two of his fellow seniors were at the water tank at 4 AM on a Monday morning with ladders, paint cans, and brushes.

Bubba wasn't altogether sure that Pam Troy was telling him the truth...and even if she believed she was Bubba wasn't altogether sure that she had actually seen what she'd thought she'd seen. But it really didn't matter to Bubba. Oh, he HOPED what Pam was telling him was the truth but Pam wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer...even Bubba could tell that, but even if she HAD somehow gotten this wrong, what he and the other two seniors were doing was at least going to embarrass the little bitch, and if she really was pregnant, who knows haw it might affect her. Hell, she could kill herself for all Bubba cared, she'd cost him enough.

It wasn't JUST that she'd caused him to have to take Algebra TWO years in a row, or even that she'd assaulted him....although his face still flushed with anger when he thought of how easily the 110 pound girl had incapacitated him. No, the BIG thing he was mad at her about was that she had caused him to get kicked off the team. He had been an All-American his junior year, and damn near every college in the country had been interested in giving him an athletic scholarship, or at least would have been once he got his algebra grades up, but they sure weren't any more. Liz Parker had seen to that.

NCAA schools had gotten their fill lately of problem children athletes....athletes who had tangled with the law. The county DA apparently had never liked football, and he'd unloaded on the four seniors. One, ..... Lyle Davis, had accepted it philosophically,...of course with his grades he could go to college anyway and make it on the team as a walk-on, but for Bubba and the other two, getting caught in the hazing ritual...'No, that bitch SQUEALING on us...about the intiation...' was going to cost them a year of playing junior college football at best, so instead of being the Big Man on Campus at some national school, the three of them were going to have to go off to some community college and waste a year of eligibility before they could possibly get back in the good graces of the football scouts, and even that was going to be harder, because they weren't going to have access to the training facilties the West Roswell team used at all this football season.

Bubba reached into his pocket and took out the bottle, taking one of the anabolic steroid tablets out....tablets he'd gotten at the same little Mexican pharmacy that had sold him the Everclear....and quickly washed it down with a beer.

"Come on guys, We've got a job to do...."

It was almost 5:15 AM Monday when they walked out through the gate and picked up the bolt cutters they'd used on the gate lock. Bubba looked back at the tank in the light of the moon, and high-fived his two comrades. ' 'Yes,' he thought, '....that bitch is going to pay....' He found himself wondering if she might even commit suicide when she saw that the whole town knew what she'd done...assuming she was really pregnant.... He decided that he hoped so. At any rate, it ought to embarrass the hell out of her...and that was a good first start.

The Jetta had 12 pies in the trunk that morning for the Crashdown, and Maria and Liz helped Amy carry them in to the restaurant. Her next stop was on 14th and Jefferson, which took her right by West Roswell High. Maria had already talked to her mother...asked her to let them off a block away from the school...in hopes that she could somehow set the stage with Liz to ready her for Max's "accidental" talk with them on the grandstand at lunch.

Maria knew Liz had been telling her the truth as she believed it...she knew Liz too well to doubt that...but the whole damn thing just didn't make any sense. It wasn't that she approved of what Liz had done...even though Maria had been long convinced that that frosty bitch sister of his was all that had ever kept Max and Liz apart...'If there were ever two human beings that were made for each other.....' No, it just didn't make sense that after seven years of those big brown eyes aching to be closer to Liz, that unexpectedly....and undeservedly....getting lucky, would somehow make Max dislike Liz. Sure, he was a shy kid....it might put him in shock for a day or two... 'Not that finding out he's going to be a dad is going to be real gentle on him either....'...but Max most definitely WASN'T a cold heartless Ice Princess like his sister and certainly not when it came to Liz... Once he knew what Liz was going through...he'd find a way to make it better... Maria was sure of it.

"Don't forget your backpack, Liz..."

"Oh, right...I guess I'm a little....distracted right now," said Liz.

"Lordy, Chica,' thought Maria, '...if anyone in Roswell has a right to be distracted...'

Five minutes later, the girls were in the Jetta and Amy was driving them toward West Roswell High.

----------------------------------------------

Isabel didn't really like the black Jeep. Yes, it was hers, just as much as it was Max's....that was the official line. But her father had found the old jeep for them as they'd approached what the Department of Child Services had arbitrarily decided was fifteen and a half....old enough for Learner's permits, and it had been largely her father and Max that had restored the old hulk to something reasonably roadworthy...if you didn't mind occasionally getting grease under your fingernails when a fuse blew or a carbureter needed you to pound on the sticky automatic choke....not things the Ice Princess particularly enjoyed doing. Worse yet, unlike the family car, the damn thing had a clutch and for all her coordination and skills as a West Roswell cheerleader, somehow the right hand and right foot had never REALLY gotten comfortable with a clutch and manual gearshift.

Even so, Isabel was driving...and that was the way she wanted it....as she turned her eyes toward her brother in the passenger seat next to her. 'Max looks like crap,' she thought. She'd tried to dreamwalk him three times last night...he hadn't been asleep once. And she was pretty sure most of his nights since he'd heard about Kyle and Liz's date...the one they'd been DUI on...or at least Liz had..... had been as sleepless as this one, THAT was why she was driving this piece of 1967 4-wheel drive monstrosity with a clutch that after the last stop sign was starting to smell like scorched cotton.

She looked at him again...'God he looks bad..', she thought, ....wishing things were different...He looks like he has a cancer...eating him up inside.' But no, she decided...it was worse than that. Max could cure cancer....he'd done it once for the Pomeranian that belonged to a little old lady down the block from them...someone who had befriended the Evans kids in the fourth grade. He'd kept that dog going for another three years...until the elderly woman herself had passed. No, whatever was eating Max, it was something even he couldn't handle.

If she'd have had it all to do over, she knew she'd have never told him to keep away from Liz..and she knew what she'd have done differently. Way back in the seventh grade she'd have invited Liz for a sleepover....then told her the truth...done a few little tricks to convince her...and told her that as much as Max cared for her, that was why there could never really be anything between them beyond friendship. If she'd only done that then...before all this happened. If only she could somehow go back in time...of course, that wasn't possible...

----------------------
The Jetta let the two girls out a block from the school. Maria had asked her mother to do that and it made sense...keeping them away from the traffic as all the older students drove their cars to the parking lot and those without cars or friends to drive tham, rode the huge school buses that brought students in from much of the county. But that wasn't the real reason that Maria had asked Amy to drop them off there. This was an opportunity to talk to Liz...to try to set her up for the lunch meeting.

"Chica...I still think you are making a mistake. I think before you go..you ought to at least talk to Max. It's his kid too, and he ought to at least know."

"Ria...I have no right to drop this on Max. It wasn't HIS idea...he was drunk."

"Well, you weren't exactly sober either Liz...I seem to recall you spending an overnight in jail."

"Big difference, Maria...I got myself drunk, Max...well, I got him drunk too...drunk or drugged or whatever."

"But you didn't mean to do that, Liz."

"But what does that change, Maria...I didn't mean to get pregnant either...but I did. The baby is my responsibility...not Max's... I have no right to saddle him with guilt over this...I've done enough to him already."

"But Liz...you haven't even talked to him. You don't know how he feels.."

Maybe not, Liz thought, but she remembered...remembered the look of horror and contempt he'd had on his face when he realized what they'd done...what she'd made him do...

"I dunno, Ria. I can't picture him knowing about this being anything positrive for him...and I won't ask him for any child support or anything...I just won't do that."

"Just promise me...if Max comes up to talk about that night...you'll talk to him...listen to what he thinks about whhat happened...and then if you are comfortable....God, Liz...it's his kid too. He really ought to at least know...."

"Maybe, Maria...We'll see what happens, OK?" said Liz. She knew this was bothering Maria...but she just couldn't think of anyway she could actually ever break the news to him that she was pregnant. How on earth did you tell someone that...when you weren't even a couple...and never had been?

Maria sensed that the last statement was the best she could expect from Liz for now. And she understood. How hard must it be to tell your boyfriend you are pregnant? Especially when he'd never really been your boyfriend. All she could do was to hope it might someday work out.

-----------------------

A half-block away from the high school. Isabel saw Liz Parker and Maria DeLuca walking along the sidewalk together. She could almost feel the pain seeing Liz caused her brother, even just sitting next to him. 'You really screwed this up, Isabel,' she thought to herself. She wished she'd remembered before she'd tried to keep them apart...remembered what Max had been like those first two years...before he'd started school. It was all she could do to keep him from running off...back to the desert...to the pod chamber. He'd never really felt a part of thier family...a part of Roswell...before he'd met Liz. 'It was her all along...she was the reason he could bear to be a part of human society...and you took that away from him...'

Somehow, she had to find a way to make this better, Isabel thought as she pulled the jeep into the student parking lot...the one between the main building and the football stadium...the one a quarter mile south of Carson's peak.

Max’s heart seemed to twist within him as he saw Liz and Maria on the sidewalk. He knew he’d promised Maria to talk with Liz at lunch…but he still hadn’t figured out how to start that conversation. Worse yet, he’d actually managed to get to sleep twenty minutes before his alarm had gone off, and he’d had the worst nightmare yet. Only the ringing of his alarm had finally stopped it, and the memory of that nightmare had left him physically shaking throughout his morning shower and he’d barely been able to conceal the trembling during a hurried breakfast with his folks and Isabel. ‘But one way or another,’ he told himself, ‘you’ve got to talk to Liz…got to do what you can…before you do anything else.’ At least he was sure he could do it…he’d managed to go into his father’s office…his powers had opened the safe as easily as they did any door lock. And the gun was there..and loaded. He’d left it there…he could almost hear it calling to him.

As she drove the jeep into the parking lot, the pain coming off Max was almost palpable to Isabel. She parked in the first space she came to…near the East end of the parking lot, knowing that Liz and Maria would be coming up the block momentarily. Max had sophomore English at the west end of the building and started walking that way as soon as they were parked…as if he really didn’t want to see Liz. She’d driven them in twenty minutes early. There was an informal meeting of the cheerleaders to discuss their afternoon practice at the commons near the East end of the high school. As Max headed west, Isabel headed east toward the commons…and Liz and Maria.


Max was lost in thought…hardly noticing that the parking lot had more people than usual…people gathered in small groups of three and four….people looking to the north…at least until he passed two upperclassmen who were talking.


“If it’s true, I bet it was Valenti,” said the first, “…he took her to the hazing…they were both drunk..”

“I bet it’s just a cruel joke. I mean…Parker? Pregnant? No way…”

Max’s eyes came up from the ground to stare at the two students…then followed their eyes to the north. He didn’t see it at first…hell, someone was always painting SOMETHING on the damn water tank. It took his fatigued mind several seconds just to notice the lettering…seconds more to go from recognizing there were words there to actually reading the words……

From almost a parking lot away, Isabel felt the flare of Max’s emotion….his mind recoiling in pain…in horror. Her bookbag fell from her hands as she turned to look for her brother…finally finding him….watching the color drain from him as his eyes stayed locked to the north. She swiveled her head instantly but like Max…it took long seconds before the meaning of the words burned through her consciousness…..


The world stood still for Max Evans as he stood there looking at the water tank a quarter mile to the north. He remembered the words the two upperclassmen had been saying.... no, it hadn’t been Kyle. He’d seen the bright red blood when he’d gone back to clean up in the gym room…Liz had been a virgin when he’d entered her…When you RAPED her, Max… his conscience reminded him….and she’d been arrested less than twenty minutes later. The beautiful young girl who’d grabbed her clothes and run away with tears in her eyes certainly wouldn’t have found another partner in those twenty minutes. Max was sure she wasn’t pregnant….that couldn’t be. But he’d certainly put something in her….and if that something were now growing inside of her…… Max looked to the east…just as Liz and Maria crossed the street to the schoolgrounds.

It took Maria and Liz a few seconds to realize that there were more students than usual just hanging around the student parking lot…almost all of them looking to the north. But increasingly, they were looking at Liz and Maria too, some elbowing their fellows and nodding to one another at the approaching duo.

‘I don’t get it,” said Maria, “What’s everyone looking at?”

Finally Maria saw one person looking to the north, pointing at something and her eyes followed the hand of that person. Suddenly her eyes saw the tank….

“OMIGAWD!!!”

When her eyes saw the tank…it was like a blow across the face to Liz Parker. She fell to her knees as if stunned…..and then she looked back at the parking lot. Over a hundred sets of eyes were looking at her….and more joining them every second. People she knew well…people she barely knew at all….but all of them knew. The tears started to fall and she was utterly speechless, and threatening to become catatonic, as the entire world crashed in on her.

Isabel was only twenty feet away from Liz Parker when she saw the girl go to her knees….and somehow she knew. This wasn’t just some cruel hoax…had it been the girl would have been upset…upset and angry…but Liz Parker was crushed. Liz Parker knew the words were true.

‘God you’ve really done it this time, Isabel…,’ she thought. She remembered dreamwalking the girl…remembered just how very badly she’d cared for… Not ‘cared for,’ Isabel….,’ her conscience screamed at her…., ‘Loved….loved like no human could ever love you…like an Ice Princess could never love anyone….Liz Parker LOVED your brother, and you drove them apart. You’ve ruined TWO lives Isabel…are you happy now?’ And yet Isabel Evans had ruined that...broken them up...and Liz had gotten drunk...and now was carrying someone's child...maybe Kyle's...maybe some guy from the party. And it was really Isabel's fault, she knew...not Liz's. She'd created the situation that had led to this. . This would kill Max..., she feared, and it looked like it was going to kill Liz Parker as well.

Maria tried to help Liz to her feet, but the girl was almost catatonic…staring at the water tank…watching people point at her…whisper about her… Rage filled Maria….she wanted someone to hurt…someone to kill…for what they’d done to her friend. And then she approached….the frosty bitch herself, Ice Princess Isabel Evans…walking right toward her, no doubt wanting to be the first to taunt Liz now that the truth was out…that everyone would know… But her anger died as she saw Isabel Evans face…the pain in it an echo of the pain she was feeling herself…the tears flowing down her cheeks as she helped Maria help Liz to her feet. Liz was still almost catatonic…but with Isabel’s help the two of them got her into the passenger seat of the black jeep and got her buckled in

“Take these,” said Isabel, thrusting the Jeep keys into Maria’s hands, “…and get her out of here…”

“I’m not very good with a stick…I might ruin your clutch….”

“If you ruin it, we’ll get it fixed. Just get her away from this right now….,” said the girl who suddenly didn’t seem anything at all to Maria like an Ice Princess. “Call me later…once things are better for Liz. Promise?”

“I promise,” said Maria.

Ten minutes later, the Jeep was on the edge of town…heading back toward the bunkhouse of the old Parker homestead.




It was 8:15 AM Monday morning, and he's only been open for fifteen minutes when the phone rang.

"Simmons Painting, Bob Simmons speaking."

He listened attentively for almost thirty seconds before replying.

"I understand Mr. Holbrook. I'll get there as quickly as I can."

He loaded two ten gallon cans of paint into the van, locked the shop doors, and started off toward Carsons Peak. It was only fifteen minutes later that he was at the gate, shaking his head as he looked at the water tank. He parked at the base of the tank, poured ten gallons of paint...as close to the color of the tank as he had been able to find...in to the sprayer, and took two ladders of the roof rack and then arranged the scaffold between them.

'What's wrong with kids these days?' he asked himself. Bob and his wife Marie were kind of conservative and both had been talking about the decline of standards and particularly the sexploitation of young girls. His wife had lamented that young girls were going directly from being Mouseketeers one month to being the centerfold spread...in all meanings of the word...in Playboy the next month. 'The world is going to Hell in a handbasket,' he told himself as he started to spray the paint. He found himself hoping it wasn't true, but even if it was, he wasn't going to judge the young lady. He knew Liz Parker...like many of the tradesmen who worked Saturdays, he often had breakfast in the Crashdown, and the smiling polite young lady was well liked by everyone. But even if it was true, he still wasn't going to criticize her. If true, she wasn't the first girl to get herself in that situation, and undoubtedly wouldn't be the last....everyone makes mistakes. But this.....

The anger flared in him again, wishing he could get his hands on whoever had done this.

'Hell, even the Puritans only made Hester Prynne wear a 4 inch embroidered 'A' on her breast,' he thought. 'They didn't paint 'Liz Parker is Pregnant' in four foot high red letters on a water tank in full view of the whole school, and ten percent of the people in the whole damn town.... I'd like to get my hands on the heartless bastards who did this....

Alex had come to the school at 5AM...long before the rising sun had lit the water tank up on Carson's Peak. His mission had nothing to do with hanging out in the Commons...in fact, he'd been in the computer lab...converting every computer back from Windows 98 to Windows 95...after spending almost 4 weeks trying to get the new operating system that had been installed on the computers to actually work. Unfortunately, the same idiots who had actually believed that Windows 98 was an upgrade from Windows 95, had also engineered it so it couldn't be erased by Windows 95...necessitating reformating of the hard drives on all 16 computers in the computer lab, then reinstalling the older system on the computers...off of 14 floppy disks. Fortunately, he'd been able to set them up so that as one floppy finished loading, the one next to it was ready to take it. It had taken him all morning, but the computer science teacher was going to be so happy to finally get the machines working again, that he'd get an "A" for the semester...and the rest of the semester to do independent study on computer work he REALLY liked. And that was going to make today a great day. Or at least, that had been the plan.

But the plan had ended abruptly fifteen minutes ago...fifteen minutes ago when he'd finished and come to the Commons for some hot cocoa from the vending machine, and saw the water tank up on Carson's Peak lit up by the morning sun. He'd tried to call Liz...only to find that she'd left with Maria, and he'd been waiting to see the Jetta to warn them....waiting as more and more people had wandered in to the Commons, with only one topic of conversation. And as much as Alex had desperately wanted to believe that the sign was just some sort of very cruel hoax, he was sort of starting to doubt that....even before he'd seen Liz collapse as she'd seen the sign...certainly SOMETHING had profoundly changed his friend over the last six weeks.

As Alex looked at the cheerleading squad...and a few hangers-on, he thought about Isabel Evans. Strangely enough, Alex had never really liked Isabel Evans...although in total fairness, he now realized he hadn't ever really had enough info about her to form a fair opinion. That hadn't, however, stiopped him from having an opinion. Physically...well, no question there...the girl was hot...and he'd fantasized...and dreamed...about her body quite a bit in the last couple of years. But it had only been her body...not her mind. For Isabel was an Ice Princess with the mind...he had assumed...of an Ice Princess. The mind of the girl of his dreams had always been far different from the mind of Isabel Evans...the mind had been his own sweet Izzy's. But he'd always BELIEVED Isabel Evans WAS an Ice Princess...cold, and uncaring...at least that's what Alex had always believed from the very limited contact he'd had with the girl....at least until this morning.

But right now he was re-evaluating his own knowledge...his own prejudices, he realized. Because alone of everyone of those hundreds of people who were watching Liz Parker collapse in horror as she saw that sign...only Isabel Evans had actually done something to help Maria get Liz away....to give her time to come to grips with this. Only the Ice Princess...of all the people nearby...had had even that much empathy.

No, whatever else Isabel Evans was...Alex owed her...owed her for that one act of graciousness and kindness to Liz. And that had gotten Alex thinking...wondering really...just how badly he may have misjudged her all these years.
-------------------------

As she entered the Commons, Isabel had long since forgotten the cheerleaders meeting. She'd watched a broken Max go into the building and all she wanted to do was go west down the long hallway and find him....do something....anything...to help him to cope with what had happened to Liz. To apologize to him....cry with him....do whatever she could. But that wasn't the way it was going to work out, as things happened.

--------------------------

Pamela Troy knew she had no chance to make it as a member of the Ice Princess Posse, nor did she really want to. Being close to guys...currently Bubba, but he certainly wasn't the first and would likely not be the last, was too important to her to be an Ice Princess. But although there was certainly some overlap, not all of the cheerleaders were Ice Princesses...and Pamela Troy did still aspire to be a cheerleader. She had been a junior varsity cheerleader in junior high school and had hopes that she'd get voted in as a cheerleader this year by the student athletes who got to pick a quarter of all the cheerleaders by their votes. Pamela had been 'working' that audience pretty heavily and had already promised that if she was elected she'd 'work' for their vote after the fact. Of course, Bubba telling all his teamates to vote for her couldn't help either, although she didn't exactly want him to know about her side deals with the other guys.

Pamela was one of those people who believed that if she could make anyone else look smaller, it made her look bigger, and although she wasn't unique in that regard, it was an angle she worked hard...with surprisingly good results. A fair number of the younger cheerleaders had always resented Liz Parker. The girl had a natural beauty and personality that would have made her a cinch to get on the squad.....and she was absolutely not interested. She wasn't openly contemptuous...just not interested, and the fact of that caused a bit of resentment among some of the cheerleaders...a resentment that Pamela was intending to fan...in hopes the other girls would see her in a better light.
And if fanning that resentment ...or providing choice gossip about the subject that was as of ten minutes ago the number one gossip subject at West Roswell High let her ingratiate herself with any of the cheerleaders, Pam was all for it.

"I know for a fact...," said Pamela, to the small group of cheerleaders looking out the window at the water tank "Liz Parker is pregnant. I was in at the clinic getting my pill prescription refilled...I just take it to keep from having acne...and I saw her pregnacy test in the lab. It's all her fault...the fact that the football team is no good this year...now that all those people ...like Bubba...got kicked off it. Maybe when she sees this she'll realize how much everyone at West Roswell hates her for what she did."

Alex's head turned instantly in the direction of the small group, anger flashing through him. He was too polite to do what he'd like to do to Pamela Troy..slap her silly...she was...after all.... a girl. And it wasn't as if she'd painted the words on the water tower...Pamela hated anything even remotely involving physical activity...at least any she did while vertical. But then Alex looked next to Pamela....at the girl who'd come in the door just before she'd said those words...and his eyes filled with amazement. No....Isabel Evans wasn't an Ice Princess today. Her face mirrored his feelings as the words of Pamela Troy sank into her consciousness. He'd never seen anyone look quite so angry.

----------------------------------------

As much as she wanted to get to her brother...do whatever she could do to help him cope with the pain and the horror she had felt in Max's emotions...the words of Pamela Troy to the cheerleaders assembled for the meeting had been icey daggers stabbed into her own heart. This mess was all her fault...what she'd driven Max to do...what that had driven Liz to do... and the thought that someone might actually have been trying to benefit from the terrible thing that had happened. Isabel Evans didn't think much of herself right now, but at least she'd never been malicious about what she'd done. She'd been wrong...she was certain of that...but she hadn't caused Liz or her brother so much pain just to settle some old score or to try to social climb.

"I still can't believe it..." said one of the younger cheerleaders. "Not the perfect Miss Parker...,"

"Oh, she's not all that perfect. Bubba...my boyfriend...was at that party...said that Parker couldn't even keep her hands out of his underwear...as much as he pushed her away. Valenti probably made her put out for him as the price to even take her to the party...why else would he have taken her there? And you'd think that someone so 'brilliant' would have remembered to use protection..."

Anger flared in Alex's mind, but another voice was quicker than his....

"Not everyone has the experience of a round-heeled slut like you, Pam...," said the normally unflappable Ice Princess. About that quickly, the fight was on.

Isabel saw the slap coming. She'd alway known that her reaction time....and that of Max and Michael...was about 25% faster than that of humans. At times like this....when she was overwhelmed by rage and guilt and remorse...it seemed like other people moved in slow motion. She had seen Pamela's muscles tighten...predicted the slap was coming...and was waiting impatiently for it to land. She wanted it to land...needed it to land...and eventually it did.

She rolled with the punch as it hit, the slap losing some of its sting...not that THAT mattered to her. She deserved the pain...any pain that she got...for what she'd done to Max and Liz. Besides, the physical pain was nothing compared to the mental pain she was already experiencing. Mostly, she just wanted the slap to be over so she could do what she wanted. Mom and Dad were lawyers, and she'd learned enough from them. What Pam had done was assault and battery and now what she did was merely protecting herself...as long as what she did didn't go too far. Normally the Ice Princess had no trouble controlling her emotions and that wouldn't be a problem. She wasn't just sure about today though.

Even as her palm was slapping Isabel Evans, Pam was wondering if this was the right thing to do. Maybe she should have ignored the comment...played up to the Ice Princess. She wasn't sure that she could actually become a cheerleader if Isabel actively campaigned against her. But that was the extent of her concern...Bubba was right, Pam wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Alex watched in amazement as the Ice Princess rolled with the first slap and saw it carry Pamela's hand way to her right...out of position...leaving her wide open. Isabel's left hand was a blur as it came up striking Pam's right cheek and the girl's eyes went wide with first shock and then anger...but before she could really react, Isabel's right hand had come back in another open hand slap to Pam's left cheek and Pam briefly stood there ... bright red handprints on both cheeks, before Pam screamed and made a grab for Isabel's hair. In seconds both girls were on the floor going at it. Within seconds Isabel was on top of Pamela sitting on her stomach, delivering one open-handed slap after another to the blubbering girl's cheeks.

No...today Isabel was no Ice Princess...and she was threatening to lose it altogether. As much as he thought Pam deserved it, he had to get Isabel off her....for her own good, if nothing else. Alex started forward but someone else had the idea first...someone much less gentle than Alex would have been.

Exactly what Bill McGruder though he was doing wasn't too clear...perhaps not even to MacGruder. But then, MacGruder wasn't his best this morning...he'd been up half the night painting a water tank. Perhaps he thought that he'd get on Bubba's good side by helping out his squeeze...perhaps he thought Pamela might be grateful enough to be rescued she'd do him a favor some night...or more likely, he'd had the hots for the Ice Princess for a long time, and breaking up the chick fight would just give him an excuse to manhandle her and maybe cop a feel as he pulled her away. McGruder wasn't anticipating any trouble...not from a gaggle of cheerleaders .... not when he outweighed the next biggest guy in the Commons by at least 50 pounds.

When he saw the big senior grab Isabel Evans...pull her off Pamela..and continue to hold her from behind...one hand gripping her breast through the tight sweater...Alex didn't hesitate. He knew he was going to get his brains bashed in for a girl he barely knew...and who normally wouldn't have even given him the time of day. Or maybe she would have, he found himself thinking....maybe he'd underestimated Isabel Evans...but it really didn't matter. He'd have done this for anyone, he thought, as he grabbed Bill McGruder around the neck.

"Let go of her...right now!" yelled Alex Whitman as he tried to pull McGruder away from the girl with a headlock.

Just that quickly McGruder let go of the girl and broke free of the headlock...turning to face Alex Whitman.

"So you want a piece of me...geek? Well you've got it..." said McGruder as his fist reached out to slam Alex in the midsection, already forgetting Isabel Evans as he prepared to give Alex Whitman a short but extremely painful lesson. Unfortunately for Bill McGruder, he was about to get a lesson of his own...that you ignore an angry Ice Princess only at your own peril.

Meanwhile, at the west end of the building:
Kyle Valenti had ridden the bus in to school that morning...the Mustang was still up on blocks in the carport...but the gossip had been in the halls as soon as he'd gotten in to the building. He'd almost run to the north side windows to look up at the water tank, and was shaking his head in disbelief as he saw what was written there.

"Damn, Valenti...," said Bubba Brigham as he stood in front of his locker fifty feet away, "...you probably should have just settled for a blow job. Now that little Parker bitch will probably be after you to marry her."

Bubba chuckled and so did the other senior standing next to him, and they high-fived one another. All at once it no longer mattered to Kyle that Bubba outweighed him by eighty pounds, or that the other guy outweighed him by sixty...or even that it was two against one. Kyle Valenti only cared about his fists hitting their faces....even if he was going to get pounded in the process. Fortunately for Kyle, he wasn't the only one with that idea, and the other person's reaction time was almost 25% faster than Kyle's.

------------------------------

Max couldn't really have been said to have been having any coherent thought as he entered the northwest entrance to West Roswell High. Even without weeks of sleep deprivation, he would have been largely overtaken by the primal emotions of shock...pain...horror. But with those weeks of sleeplessness, right now his cerebral hemispheres were reeling...unable to exert much control. Right now Max was neither the highly evolved human being that his Earth DNA programmed him to be...or the even more highly evolved Antarean that had been bioengineered into the 'nonsense DNA' of his chromosomes. Max Evans was little more than an animal...an animal that was hurting...angry...needing next to nothing to set him off. The words "Parker bitch..." were more than enough to make him explode..and as he got closer...and saw the traces of red paint on the hands of both of the former football players...there was suddenly nothing in Max Evans' universe except rage....

The last time Kyle Valenti had seen Max Evans do something physical was in third grade. It had been a dodgeball game, and the kid had moved like a cat...no one able to touch him and able to unerringly hit what he aimed at on the other side...unless of course Liz was on the other side, in which case he'd never quite seem to be able to get the ball to touch her. He'd talked to Max in junior high...trying to get him to turn out for football. Max was no bigger than Kyle himself, but had very good speed and reflexes. He'd have made a great wide receiver. But Max hadn't been interested...or perhaps the Ice Princess had discouraged her brother. But the Ice Princess wasn't around today, and Kyle was briefly stopped in his tracks as he saw Max Evans attack Bubba Brigham...and go through the other senior to get to him.

Kyle doubted Max could really hold his own against Bubba...but at least for now he had him backed up against the lockers pummelling him. That left the other guy...Art Rodehammer...free to come up on Max from behind. Kyle decide that wasn't going to happen.

Most high school fights are more form than substance...little more than pushing contests with a few blows fought to establish dominance. As soon as one person was hurt badly enough...they quit...and the fight was over. Bubba had always been somewhat of a bully and he knew all about that. Unfortunately for Bubba, Max Evans had never been in a fight before and didn't know any such thing. Besides, Max's mind wasn't really working right now anyway. It was simply channelling his rage. Rage not just at Bubba, but at himself as well for what he'd done...what he'd done to Liz.

In seconds Bubba realized that he'd never been in a fight quite like this. First of all, this guy had the speed to get through his guard...secondly, even when he got through the guy's guard...pretty easy really, because he had none, it didn't intimidate the guy...not at all. He seemed almost to enjoy the pain.

Not much of Max's conscious mind was working but what little did acknowledged the blows he was receiving...the pain that was occurring. But it didn't matter..not even to that last vestige of rational thought that was kicking around in Max's head. Whatever happened to him, he deserved it...deserved worse probably. The job of the cerebral hemispheres was to be inhibitory to the primal animal that lurked in the midbrain, but the cerebral hemispheres weren't inhibiting much right now. They were just going with the flow...letting the primal beast that lurked within Max Evans vent it's rage...vent it's pain...on Bubba Brigham.

Art Rodehammer's confusion was starting to become terror. He hadn't really believed that Kyle Valenti would be dumb enough to actually attack him and Bubba, whatever the provocation. The guy was just a sophomore and it was two against one...or at least it had been until that other guy had gone after Bubba.

In football what the Evans kid did would have been called a bull rush, doing whatever he had to to get by the blocker....in this case Art Rodehammer...to get to the guy he really wanted to tackle. The move had taken Art completely by surprise and worse...he was pretty sure the kid had cracked a couple of his ribs when he'd slammed Art into the lockers just to get by him to get to Bubba. He'd turned to help Bubba with the guy, but that was when Valenti had waded in to the action. Normally Art would have expected to be able to take Kyle Valenti...but with two or three broken ribs....and it wasn't a regular fight, either. Art was starting to realize that he and Bubba had crossed a line with the sign painting. These guys weren't out to show who was boss...they were out for blood.

Art wasn't really the sociopath that Bubba was...he was a follower, not a leader, and he'd followed Bubba because it made him feel important and even this morning he'd wondered if Bubba hadn't been taking this too far. Valenti and this Evans kids were out for blood...and they were getting it too, he thought, as the hits to his nose by Valenti cracked the cartilage and sent a fine stream of blood down his t-shirt every time he exhaled...and breathing itself was like having a knife twisted between those broken ribs. Several blows to his head stunned him and he looked out at the crowd...hoping that someone would break up the fight. That's when he saw someone he knew, and he was sure the big senior would help him end this fight...until he saw the look in Lyle Davis's face as he looked at him.

He and Lyle had been teamates for three years and worked out together all summer....until they had both been kicked off the team due to the hazing. But Davis's face had nothing but contempt for him .... even showing satisfaction as Valenti's fists pummelled into his abdomen...driving the air from his lungs, even as his ribs burned like fire ... and as one blow after another from Kyle Valenti's fists made it through his guard, even Art realized he'd let Bubba push him too far....gone beyond what even the other rowdy members of the West Roswell High athletic community would tolerate. As Kyle's right cross put him to the ground, he opted just to stay there, knowing that Valenti wouldn't keep hitting him if he offered no more resistance.
'That asshole Bubba thought up this idea...let him answer for it,' thought Art as he curled up into a ball on his side...the front of his his white t-shirt stained with blood running from his smashed nose.

It took Kyle several seconds to understand that Art Rodehammer was out of the fight, but then he turned quickly to look for Max Evans. He was already sure that Max was down, but if he could only get to Bubba...only get him off Max long enough to let Max get away....

But that wasn't what Kyle saw as his eyes cleared and he looked ten feet to his left...where Bubba was out on his feet with his back against the lockers and a bruised and bleeding Max Evans was holding him there by methodically punching away at the face and abdomen of the big guy. All Evans had to do was step back and he'd fall...but Max's face wasn't just bruised and bloody...the anger in it made him not even appear human....and Kyle knew intuitively that Bubba Brigham was going to be dead long before Max stopped punching.

Lyle Davis had watched Evans wade in to Bubba Brigham. Somehow, deep in his heart, he'd always known Bubba was a coward. Bubba had always been a bully...but not with anyone he wasn't sure he could beat. And at first Bubba HAD been sure he could beat the smaller Evans...whow even Davis had considered somewhat of a science geek. But there was nothing geeky about what Max Evans was doing this morning. The fighting technique of Max Evans....if you could call it that...was rather a simple one. All offense-no defense. Davis had once heard it described as the All-balls&dick-no-forehead school of combat, but it had worked. Evans had absorbed as much punishment as he'd needed to to get inside Bubba's defense, and his fists were now systematically dismantling the guy he had trapped against the lockers.

Davis watched Kyle Valenti finish off Art Rodehammer and look at what was happening to Bubba in disbelief...before trying to grab hold of Evans and pull him away. Evans barely broke the rhythm of his punches as he'd reached out and shoved an exhausted Kyle Valenti away and turned back to continue using Bubba as his personal punching bag.

Kyle wasn't sure how Max Evans had that much strength left....he sure didn't....as he slid across the floor to land at the feet of Lyle Davis. He looked up at the big senior and had an idea.

"Help me pull Max off Bubba..." he pleaded up at him. Davis didn't seem impressed.

"Look at Bubba's hands, Kyle. The red paint there....the asshole deserves what Evans is doing to him. Give me one good reason I should stop Evans from taking him apart...."

Kyle's eyes hardened as he took in the traces of paint on Bubba's hands...hands which were now at Bubba's side...no longer capable of even attempting any defense against the pounding fists of Max Evans. But as much as that bastard did deserve it...he knew what would happen to Max if this kept up.

"Because Max will kill him....and then Max will go to jail..."

"Well, that's not a GOOD reason, but I guess it's a reason..." said Davis grudgingly.

---------------------------

"Right this way," said Mr. Holbrook to the two Sheriff's deputies. Vice-Principal Holbrook had never liked Bubba Brigham. Brigham had always been a bully and had strongly suspected that the big football player was using steroids as well. He'd gotten in several fights...although none on school property, but the descriptions he'd heard seemed like what was known as steroid rage. When he'd gotten the first report of a fight between Bubba Brigham and honor student Max Evans he'd known instantly that it would take more than a teacher to break up the fight. The Sheriff's office had responded almost instantly. But as he rounded the corner leading the two deputies he really hadn't been expecting to see this....

Deputy Larry Haversham saw one big guy down...trying to push his bleeding nose back into the centerline of his face, while another really huge kid seemed barely conscious...leaning against the lockers, as Kyle Valenti and some other big guy wrestled another kid...about Kyle's size and age...away from the big guy leaning against the lockers. The other kid wasn't fighting them...just struggling to get back to the guy by the lockers who...even as Deputy Haversham watched...slid in a heap to the floor. The kid almost broke free again to go back after the big guy just as they arrived, and Haversham and the other deputy helped Valenti and his friend wrestle him further away.

The four of them together finally got the kid....Kyle was calling him Max....restrained enough to get him in cuffs and get him out to the car. Nobody appeared to have any life-threatening injuries, but he called for an EMT unit anyway to take the larger two kids to the ER to get them checked over. Both of the bigger guys had been roughed up pretty bad, and there was no sense taking any chances. Besides, Haversham absolutely didn't want to have either of the two around Max Evans. He'd seen people get angry before, but when the kid looked at Bubba Brigham the ferocity in his face barely made him look human. They could sort this all out at the station.

"Do I need to put cuffs on you too, Kyle," Haversham asked, "..or are you going to behave yourself."

"No, I'm good, Larry..at least until Dad gets to me."

"You got that right. Your friend always this...intense?" he asked, nodding to Max in the back seat.

"It's a side of him I hadn't actually seen before, actually....not that I blame him."

"Well, save the story for when we get downtown..for your father...and probably the judge."

With that said, the patrol car driven by Deputy Haversham drove off, with Max Evans in the back, and Kyle Valenti riding shotgun.

Lyle Davis called out as they left. "Hey Valenti...if you need someone to make bail for either of you...give me a call. I've got a little money put aside...."

As the EMT was checking over Bubba and Art, prior to loading them into the ambulance, the radio on his belt abruptly spoke.

"EMT-1....if the two you have are stable, we have a call for another casualty at West Roswell High School...in the east end commons room..."

"Roger control. I'll have the driver watch over these two and go check it out." Being a WRH graduate himself, he didn't even have to ask for directions, and the EMT quickly walked east down the long hallway to the Commons.

Ten minutes earlier

When Isabel saw Bill Magruder's hand clutching her breast she...like her brother...was almost overcome by rage. It wasn't rage at the affrontery of someone actually touching the Ice Princess's breast...over the past year she'd fantasized about someone doing that more than once...not that Bill Magruder was that guy. No, her rage had flared when she saw the residue of red paint on that hand...and realized just how it had gotten there. The rage was as much at her own self as at Bill really...that she'd created this horrible situation...but she couldn't really vent her rage on herself right now....on Bill she could.

As she picked herself off the ground Isabel whirled to confront Magruder, her palms coming up on their own volition as her body instinctively readied itself to powerblast him...but ten years of living as a human caused her to hold back...that and knowing her unknown rescuer was behind Magruder and in the path of that powerblast. All she could see was the back of his head...and the West Roswell High State Champion T-shirt she had helped to design when she'd been a freshman. She damped the power she'd summoned quickly...but an Ice Princess and cheerleader had weapons of her own she thought.... She didn't NEED to powerblast.

Magruder had watched Alex crumple around his fist as he'd driven it deep into his abdomen. The computer geek, Magruder reasoned, had been insane to provoke him. He measured him for another right...this one in the face...when his neck and back exploded in pain.

Eight perfectly color coordinated fingernails went in like the talons of a predatory bird...just above the neck of the t-shirt, and Isabel put her full 120 pounds into it as she ripped them down to Magruder's belt, shredding the back of the t-shirt and leaving eight bleeding grooves in the skin of his back. Magruder arched his back in agony and reared up to his full height as he turned around and reached out for her...it was a bad mistake...but only one of many he'd made that day.

Throughout the Eighties and Nineties, cheerleading had become almost a sport unto itself. No longer content to wave a few pom-poms from the sidelines, cheerleaders had themselves developed quite energetic gymnastic routines. Isabel Evans did a simple front kick...which she was very good at. Normally Isabel could front kick either foot high enough that her heel was above her head. Of course, normally no one's crotch was in the way.

It turned out that her kick was hardly an irresistible force...her foot was stopped by the lower portion of Magruder's pelvis. Of course, it turned out that his pelvis wasn't really an immovable object either, the foot lifted his 255 pounds almost 8 inches into the air before it stopped. The laws of physics indicate that there must have been some soft tissue compression in there somewhere...and indeed there was.

The right testicle got the worst of it...trapped almost squarely between the top of Isabel's foot and Magruder's pelvis. The exterior of the testicle is something called the tunica vaginalis...it is a fibrous capsule with a LOT of nerve fibers in it. As the internal pressure exceeded the breaking strength of the fibers it tore...PAINFULLY.

The left testicle got off easier in the short run...it was just badly contused...but in the long run it was even more at risk than the right one, because it would ultimately attempt to swell even more than the tunica vaginalis itself would permit, and once the internal pressure exceeded the blood pressure the testicle would get no blood at all...and be susceptible to gangrene within a few hours thereafter. This was something called a compartment syndrome. The penis was in the way too....but it got by with just real severe bruising.

The practical effect of the kick was that Bill Magruder collapsed onto the floor on his back, legs spread like a frog, and commenced to vomit. It wasn't a particularly pretty sight.

As Magruder vomited the people in the Commons noted a strange look of satisfaction on the face of the Ice Princess...at least until she saw the other guy on his knees.

"Omigawd, Alex...Are you alright?"


-----------

Twenty minutes later Isabel Evans was sitting on a bench outside the principal's office with Alex Whitman at her side. West Roswell High School had the same thoughtless policy that most high schools had. Unwilling to even attempt to sort right from wrong or good from bad, or for that matter..to make ANY sort of value judgement, both were subject to the mandatory three day suspension for participating in a fight, and both were awaiting notification of their respective parents to come and pick them up. Worse yet, Isabel had just found out that her brother was in police custody for his part in a fight this morning.

Of course, they were both better off than Magruder who was about to be taken in to surgery by the on-call urologist at Roswell Memorial hospital, one Peter Dickman, MD of Roswell Urological associates. Yes, Dr. Dickman took a lot of ribbing about his name and occupation from both colleagues and patients, but he was quite good at his job. Since the city put a skateboard park in...complete with a rail, the good doctor had gotten a lot of practice repairing fractured testicles as well as decompressing severely contused ones. Magruder's surgery would be successful, and he'd be out of the hospital in only three days. Neither testicle would sustain permanent damage, but they'd be sore for weeks and most of the male's at West Roswell High would wince when he returned to school a week later...still hobbling carefully ...and avoiding Isabel Evans.

But right now, that didn't seem to help much. Isabel sat on the bench ...waiting for her parents to get the word about her and Max....looking like her world had ended. Alex turned to the girl of his dreams....the girl he'd barely met...and told her, "It's OK, Miss Evans...it'll get better eventually."

Isabel buried her head in his shoulder...just as she had in all those dreams... "I know Alex. You always make it better somehow...and call me Izzy...I like it when you do that..."

And there, sitting in front of dozens of thoroughly amazed students, computer geek Alex Whitman stroked the hair of Ice Princess Isabel Evans....both drawing comfort from the presence of the other as if they'd been a couple for years. And it seemed so natural to Isabel and Alex, that it would be that night as they were going to bed before either would really realize that was the first time they'd ever touched one another and only then would Alex remember...and wonder...what 'Izzy' had meant by what she'd said. For right now, they both knew they were in trouble..but that they had a friend to help them get through it.

By 9AM the allegation that Liz Parker was pregnant actually wasn't the hot topic of conversation at West Roswell High...there were too many other incredible things to gossip about. That Kyle Valenti had pounded Art Rodehammer...that Max Evans had pounded Bubba Brigham....that Isabel Evans had hospitalized Bill Magruder...after bitch-slapping Pam Troy senseless (admittedly, the latter wouldn't take much)...but there was no story so widely told or so widely disbelieved by those who had not seen the two sitting on the bench in front of the principal's office than the final rumor...that Ice Princess Isabel Evans had a boyfriend...and that boyfriend was Alex Whitman.