Roswell Fanatics

It was 5PM as Diane Evans walked in to the little tea shop several blocks from the Crashdown and saw Nancy Parker waving at her from the back table. Nancy had seemed a little anxious when she’d asked her if they could get together somewhere after the school picnic for a discussion about the kids, and Diane was curious as to what was so urgent. Nancy smiled up nervously as she approached the table.

“Hello..”

“Hi Diane…I’m glad we could get together so quickly.”

“It’s always fun to get together…although usually it’s at the Crash so the kids can have milkshakes….I take it you didn’t want them to hear what you wanted to discuss?”

“That would be correct. I have Liz rolling silverware up in napkins for a banquet we are catering tomorrow. That ought to give us a half hour to talk. Max isn’t around, is he?”

“No. He’s helping his father change the oil and filter in the station wagon, and Isabel is making her second attempt at fixing dinner for the family this week ..she’s learning how to cook now,” said Diane, rolling her eyes skyward.

“I take it that the first dinner didn’t go all that well?”

“Well, at the end of it, Max told his sister that the meal was fit for the gods….waited until she had started to smile, and then finished that it had been a burnt offering.”

Nancy smiled and shook her head. “Yeah, I had a brother like that too…constantly teasing me.”

“Actually, I don’t even think Isabel minds. We are all so happy that Max seems to finally be coming out of his shell…and I think most of that is because of your daughter.”

“Mmmm…that brings up the topic of conversation for this meeting…Liz and Max.. Did you notice they wandered off away from the group this morning?”

“And that you brought them back…?”

“Well, by the time I caught up with them they were on their way back anyway, but before that ….well, I really wasn’t trying to spy on them, but they were down in the arroyo and I was walking along the edge trying to find them and tell them they ought to get back to the picnic, and I wound up seeing a few things that caused me some real concern…that still concern me a somewhat, although I think I was tending to over react to them initially,” said Nancy, concerned that she was starting to babble. “Tell me...has Isabel started to notice….boys?”

“You mean notice boys as in…puppy love, or something like that?”

“Well, something like that…I guess….but maybe something more, too…”

“This is starting to sound serious. Do I need to go somewhere I can get something stronger than green tea?”

“Well…. let me tell you what happened…and then you can tell me. I got up to the side of the arroyo and saw Max and Liz off in the distance. They were down in the arroyo looking for fossils and it was miserably hot…even up on the rim where I was where the wind was blowing..I can only imagine the temperature down on the floor where the kids are. Well…do you remember the outfit Liz was wearing?”

The campshirt and cargo shorts….they looked real nice in kind of a safari sort od way….”

“Well, Amy DeLuca and I took the girls shopping and they picked out outfits like that. That pink camisole top was supposed to ‘soften’ the look and make it more ‘feminine’…that’s started to be important to Maria and Liz all of a sudden.”

“Isabel too, I think the girl has a makeup fetish…”

“Yeah, well Amy and I both warned the girls that the material on those tops would be like wearing saran wrap, and neither of them listened, and I imagine that Liz was really hot under there…she was certainly sweating enough…anyway she took the campshirt off and I was a little freaked out I guess that the whole thing seemed to be sticking to her like a cheap paint job when she took off the campshirt….”

“Oh, and it embarrassed her..?”

“No..that’s what freaked me out, it didn’t seem to embarrass her at all, in fact she handed a tube of sunscreen to your son and asked him to sunscreen up her back.”

“Oh, it embarrassed Max…?”

“Not that I could tell,….no, what embarrassed me was the expression on Liz’s face as Max was applying the sunscreen….I haven’t seen her that happy since….Omigawd, I’m not sure I ever saw her that happy…until today.”

“Oh no….Liz has a crush on Max….”

“It gets worse….what happened next was not so much risqué as…naïve. Liz spotted a fossil about halfway up the arroyo wall…”

“I saw that…it was a beautiful specimen….”

“Yeah, well it was a beautiful specimen about three or four feet higher than they could reach. It looked like Max wanted to give up, but Liz had him put his back to the wall and make a stirrup with his hands, and slick camisole top and all, climbed up over Max…not quite rubbing his nose in what little bosom she has as she went by….to stand on his shoulder and dig away at the fossil. Max sttod there like a miniature colossus of Rhodes with sand and rocks raining down on his head…obviously humoring my daughter.”

“I wish you’d taken a picture of that…”

“Only because you don’t know what came next. Liz drops the hand trowel and starts pushing and pulling on the rock trying to get it free and Max looks up to see what she’s doing. Let me set the stage for you, she has one shoe on either of his shoulders and he’s looking up right between her legs to those cargo shorts with the somewhat wide cuffs….”

“Oh my….”

“I have never seen Max’s face that animated. His jaw dropped, his eyes popped wide…I thought I saw his knees wobble…”

“What did he do?”

“What could he do? If he moved, she’d have fallen. He got his eyes back level…I think they were a little unfocused…and held them there playing statue again…at least until Liz nearly fell. When that happened, he grabbed her legs…which I think put another smile on the girl’s face, actually, although the alternative would have been to let her slip and probably hurt herself. “

“Oh dear, you mean Liz….”

“I don’t think she did it on purpose, but it was pretty clear that she wasn’t offended by it….but it gets worse…”

“Worse?”

“Yes, getting down with the fossil…well, she did fall..or would of, if Max hadn’t grabbed her and pulled her against him as she fell. They ended up with Max supporting her by the tush…her feet about an inch above the floor of the arroyo….straddling Max … lap to lap…chest to chest…face to face…”

“Oh, Lord…I bet they were both mortified,” said Diane, trying hard not to laugh.

“No…I was…watching my daughter hang there in that position….it didn’t seem to bother Lizzy…or even your son…at least until Liz kissed him…then he blushed like fury.”

“Oh my….”

“Yeah, well let me assure you, Diane, it seems a lot funnier now than it did at the time …”

“I can well imagine…”

“But then it got REAL interesting. The kids walked along for awhile and came up to this flat rock. Lizzy sat her pack down and took off her camisole….I was probably a half a mile away, and thought she’d gone topless…but she was wearing a sports bra…not that THAT made much difference…she had sweated through the thing and it was sort of like a mini wet t-shirt. I’m afraid Max got somewhat of an eyeful.”

“Oh Lord, that must have embarrassed both of them….”

“Not that you could tell…in fact, in only another minute, Liz was sitting on the rock with Max standing behind her giving her a second application of sunscreen…it was a very sunny day after all….and a back massage as well, and your son apparently has awesome hands…judging by the facial expressions of my daughter…”

“Nancy, I don’t know what to say….”

“Oh, we aren’t done…not by a longshot…the massage continues up over the shoulders and down the neck….”

“He didn’t….”

“No…he didn’t…I’m sure he got a good look….but he didn’t touch…not that I’m sure that my daughter would have done anything if he had…well, drooled a little maybe. He seemed more comfortable with the second kiss than he had been with the first though…but then Liz wasn’t straddling him for that one….”

“Oh God, Nancy…I’m so sorry.” It obviously hurt Diane to say it…Liz had been so good for Max, “I understand if you think we ought to keep them away from each other…”

“Well, that’s exactly what I thought…until I saw where your son put his hands next… He put them on the neck of the rattlesnake that was about to kill Liz. Max grabbed it and threw it away from her….she never even knew he saved her life…again. Diane, they aren’t bad kids…they made a mistake…and it was mostly Liz that made the mistake. But they’ve been so damn good for each other….God Diane....., my little girl would be dead if it wasn’t for your son….I’d like to give Liz a real talking to…have you give Max a talking to….let them know that young men and young ladies have to behave a little differently than young kids…and give them another chance.”

“Are you alright with that, Nancy? I mean, really..?”

“Was I ready to start to have to think about my daughter being concerned about ….sex…., …not really. The perfect Liz Parker made some mistakes today, but I think I can settle things down with a mother-daughter talk and we don’t need to do anything too Draconian. Maybe that’s being selfish…maybe I’m just afraid that if something happened to her and Max wasn’t there…I’d never forgive myself. I’m too grateful to your son to be altogether objective I guess, but I think we can trust them if we give them a second chance. Actually, they are good kids…that’s not even what’s really worrying me.”

“What is then…”

“That second kiss Liz gave Max …it wasn’t passionate…but it was so self-assured. Liz thinks Max is hers…and while Max certainly showed he cares…almost gotten himself killed to save her…it’s not the same thing.”

“That may be a problem…Max doesn’t give affection easily…I can vouch for that.”


“But my daughter is falling for him….or at least thinks she is. I’ll try to talk to her about that, too, but…I don’t want to separate them, Diane,…I really don’t.”

“OK, Nancy…”

Humans showed their love for one another in a bewildering variety of ways thought Max Evans. That was why he was flat on his back under a station wagon next to his father, looking up at the bottom of the engine. The car was up on ramps, and the intention was to change the oil. It wasn’t going well.

Max knew that his father enjoyed his work as a lawyer, and was quite good at it. He also knew that 15 minutes of doing that would have easily paid for an oil and filter change at the local service station, and already they were 40 minutes into this, with no immediate end in sight.

But this was part of ‘bonding with Max,’ as his father had told his mother. The plan was for them to learn to work on cars together as a father-son team, and in a few years his father wanted to find an old jeep for the two of them to fix up before he turned sixteen…well, what the state of New Mexico believed to be sixteen, anyway. At the rate it was going, Max thought they might not have the oil changed on the station wagon by then…let alone a jeep fixed up.

It wasn’t his father’s fault really, it wasn’t easy to get to the ‘spin-on’ oil filter canister. His folks had bought the station wagon new, and they’d gotten a high-desert special sort of equipment package…oversize radiator and transmission cooler for towing…and the largest air conditioning capability available. It was a nice car, but that had resulted in a rat’s nest of heater, air-conditioning, and oil lines that encircled the oil filter. That…plus the fact that it appeared to have been put on by a gorilla, was frustrating their efforts to get the old oil filter off. Max had learned several new words that he was pretty sure weren’t Latin legal words.

“Maybe I can get to it better with a strap-wrench,” said Philip Evans, as he slid out from under the car to go get a different tool from the garage. Max reached up through the surrounding hoses and grasped the filter and used his telekinesis. He was getting better with that power, since he’d done some reading and started to understand it. He grasped the filter and sent his power through the filter and the engine block, and felt the filter loosen.

His initial problem with his telekinesis had been not understanding the conservation of momentum. In this particular case, it was the conservation of angular momentum. For him to exert sufficient force on the filter to free it, an equal amount of force had to be appled in the opposite direction to something…in this case the engine block. Without that the amount of telekinesis he could apply was trivial. He and Michael had experimented out in the desert with something they called a powerblast…sending a blast of energy out in one concentrated direction. To make it work, they had to send a similar amount of energy….diffused over all the other directions. Turning the filter by mentally using the engine block to absorb the angular momentum of the filter really wasn’t all that hard.

What was hard for Max as he removed the filter…the warm oil running down his forearm before he could get the filter completely down into the drain pan…was deciding what to do about what had happened between him and Liz today.

While Max was physically twelve, he had no real memories of the time he’d spent in the pod…which gave him all of six years total experience. While he’d loved his sister the day they hatched from their pods, it had taken almost a year for him to begin to return his parents love, not because of anything they had done or not done, simply because he had known that he wasn’t like them, whatever they thought, and that once they discovered that, they’d reject him. But they hadn’t discovered that, and eventually their obvious love, care, and concern had led to him loving them both. Neither he nor Isabel had ever told them about the ‘not from around here’ business. They felt guilty about it, but losing their parents would have crushed them, and both were pretty sure that’s what would happen if their secret was discovered. Perhaps if they’d really been twelve years old…and had a dozen years of love from their foster parents, they would have thought otherwise, but with the social experience of a six year old, you don’t necessarily make the best social decisions.

When Max had met Liz his initial love for her had been almost instantaneous. He had felt her fear…felt the dog’s aggressiveness, and moved instinctively to protect her. Her subsequent kindnesses to him…despite his terror of human society…had made that love blossom. But he’d loved her like he’d loved his mother and father….always pretty sure that they loved him only because they really didn’t know what he was and doubting their love would survive that knowledge. And like the love for his parents, his love for Liz had been any sort of romantic love…it was simply love, like his love for Isabel.

Max wasn’t any too sure if he understood the strange way Liz had acted today. Academically, Max was at least the equal of the average twelve year old, whatever his social age, and he had to wonder about what had CAUSED the change in the way that Liz had expressed her affection for him…the boy-girl thing…rather than just the affection they’d long felt toward each other, and there was a reason for his uncertainty.

Puberty is not only later with boys than with girls, but it is more gradual…more subtle. Max was only at the very start of puberty, subtle changes in his hair growth the only evidence..and that not obvious…that he was getting to puberty at all. Under any circumstances his love for Liz would have probably evolved into romantic…and sexual….love, probably by the time he hit sixteen. But the circumstances now had changed.

Max had felt her body against his, his olfactory nerve had sensed the pheromones in her sweat, and his lips had tasted the sweetness of her lips upon his. He’d looked into those big brown eyes, and deep in his soul a fundamental change had started. Max didn’t know it now but he’d spend the next six months reliving those feelings in his thoughts and in his dreams and by the end of that time, he would love Liz no less…but not at all like a brother. Yes, it would certainly have happened eventually regardless…but Liz’s actions today had started a chain reaction that would inevitably change the character of his love for her. Max had become the property of Liz…he simply didn’t know it yet.


Knife, fork, spoon, wrap with a napkin, tuck in both ends…. knife, fork, spoon, wrap with a napkin, tuck in both ends…It was a deadly boring job, but it gave her time to think.

Liz normally would have had her mother helping…or at least supervising…but her mother had gone off to a meeting with Max’s mother…and Liz was pretty sure why. When she and Max ran in to her mother, Nancy had been coming from the general direction of the arroyos edge, and her mother’s face had been an awful pasty white, considering what a bright sunny day it had been. That and the binoculars that Nancy had been carrying indicated to Liz that she…and quite possibly Max…were likely to get a lecture on proper behavior for soon-to-be teenagers and Liz realized it was her fault.

The sweat-soaked sports bra HAD been just a tad transparent, but by the time she’d noticed that, the camisole was already off…and it really wasn’t like it mattered all that much any way. Not only had Max not shown any interest in boy-girl stuff so far….something that Liz intended to work on more in the future…but her mother’s fears about her and Max weren’t going to happen regardless.

Nancy had been even more traumatized by her attempted abduction by the sex predator than Liz had…Oh Liz still shuddered when she thought about Max hitting the man and the two of them hurling over the ledge but her mother still feared that someday Liz would again be sexually attacked, and while Liz couldn’t deny that was a theoretical possibility, ....the idea that Max might do it? Never!

Which wasn’t , she decided, going to make the coming talk any more pleasant. Unlike Max, Liz DID have substantial social skills, her reputation as the ‘perfect Miss Parker’ was due in great measure to her skill at negotiating between what others wanted and what she herself wanted out of life. She knew what her mother wanted….for her not to even THINK about sex until she was about twenty-five…and married. Well, it was already too late for that, so this mother-daughter conversation would be more interesting than most.

A year ago she could have honestly told her mother that she had no interest in ever having sex with Max Evans, and it would have been true, but puberty does NOT creep up on young ladies with subtlety. It announces itself with cramps, a gush of blood and endometrial tissues, and considerable hormonal changes that reshape one’s pelvis to become a birth canal and reshapes ones chest to become the object of interest of every passing teenage boy and…eventually…the children born from that birth canal. What’s more, it reinforces those lessons every 28 days or so, and you get to see these changes daily as you shower. After six months, it was apparent to Liz that sometime, at least, her having sex WAS going to happen.

So what Liz would LIKE to tell Nancy today is the truth….that she has no immediate interest in having sex with Max, but she knows damn well that the single qualifier… ‘immediate’ would be all Nancy would hear. And while Liz is still a little uncomfortable with the whole notion herself, her body for six months has been reinforcing in her mind that…like it or not…she IS a sexual animal and eventually she will want and need a partner.

She’s loved Max for sometime now in a nonsexual way, but looking around there sure doesn’t appear to be anyone on Earth she’d rather have be her special someone, and a girl’s got to have a plan if she wants her life to turn out the way she’d like.

Liz's plan is Max Evans, the one who cares for her…has defended her...shown his willingness to die for her …even killed for her. She really doesn’t have any doubts about him being the right one. As she absently fondled the pendant on her chest, she couldn't help but smile. But the smile only lasted for a few seconds before she considered the more immediate issue.

Now exactly how she’s going to get through this upcoming talk with her mother….THAT she has real questions about……

One might have thought that given a lifetime of living a lie, Max would have been quite adept at handling his mother. That really wasn’t the case. Max really wasn’t adept at any interpersonal relationships because he lacked the experience to really understand them, for all Liz Parker was doing to try to get him up to speed. Still, sometimes naiveté can be its own defense…

It was bedtime in the Evans house and after Philip had left Max’s room, Diane stayed around for a quick mother-son talk to Max.

“I noticed that you and Liz went on a long walk this morning at the picnic together.”

“Liz found a Diplomystus Dentatus. Mr. Raff talked to the museum in Albuquerque…they want to put it on display. It’s 50 million years old.”

“I saw that….that’s real old. You know, Max, …you and Liz are getting older too.”

Max’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “Not THAT old.”

“No,” Diane smiled, “not fifty million years old, certainly, but you are getting older….and both of you are changing. Have you noticed that Liz is changing, Max? Physically, I mean?”

Max nodded. “Her bum is getting bigger and her front is getting…..lumpy.”

The expression on Diane’s face was somewhere between a smile and a wince. “Probably a better way to put that would be that her hips are getting fuller and her bosom is developing, dear.”

“Oh..”

“Actually, you and Liz are both changing…she’s becoming a young lady and you are becoming a young gentleman, and when that happens, you kind of need to make some changes of your own, Max. Young ladies need and deserve a certain amount of privacy. A young gentleman doesn’t do things like place himself in a position where he can look down her neck, or up her shorts…things like that.”

Diane watched her son blush deeply and look away. “I told her she needed a step ladder…”

“Well Max, I don’t think there’s any irreparable harm done, it’s just that the two of you are getting older, and politeness is important. It’s also important that you be a little bit more careful about how and where you touch Liz as you get older.”

“I just put on sunscreen….”

“And that’s probably just fine, Max, as long as she asks you to…and as long as you don’t put any sunscreen on…well…areas that Liz is entirely capable of putting sunscreen on all by herself. You might want to stop giving her any back rubs either…”

“She had sore muscles from pulling on the fossil. She pulled too hard and hurt herself. Liz can be very…stubborn.”

Diane smiled. “Well, no real harm done…just be careful about what muscles you decide to rub…..and Max, boys are stubborn…young ladies are merely determined…or goal-oriented.”

Max looked at his mother doubtfully. He wasn’t sure about a lot of things, but he was pretty sure that Liz was stubborn. In point of fact, neither of them were yet entirely aware of just how goal-oriented Liz Parker could be. That would come later...

Diane kissed Max goodnight…”I understand you have gotten a number of these kisses today,” she said smiling down at him…

Max blushed again,…but even as he did he thought that…nice as his mother’s kisses were…they weren’t quite the same as the ones that Liz had given him. He’d think about kisses awhile before he drifted off to sleep...and maybe even afterwards, and they almost certainly wouldn't be Diane's kisses, nice as those were......

A lot of people would think that a battle of wits between a twelve year old girl and her mother would be a pretty unequal competition…particularly if those people had never had a twelve year old girl of their own….and one of near genius IQ as well. Unlike the situation with Max, Liz’s social skills did match her chronological age, in fact, the ‘perfect Miss Parker’ was far better than your average twelve year old at dealing with people, and that would turn out to include her mother.

“Elizabeth,” said Nancy, standing in the bathroom door, “I’d like for us to talk for a little…just a mother-daughter talk…as soon as you’re done.”

Whatever lingering doubts Liz had about whether or not her mom was going to discuss the morning’s walk with Max had disappeared the second her mom had called her Elizabeth, and not Liz. This was definitely going to be one of THOSE talks.

“Uus a minu’,” said Liz, continuing to floss. Dr. Daniels, her dentist, was going to be proud of the great job of flossing she was doing tonight. She figured for every two minutes she dragged out the flossing, the upcoming ‘discussion’ would shorten by one minute. But even so, one could drag things out only so long without imperiling their gums altogether, so in another ten minutes, she found herself in her room sitting on her bed, her mother on the other end looking at her.

“You are growing up, Elizabeth, and you are becoming a beautiful young lady.”

Liz blushed demurely…still waiting for the second shoe to drop, “Thanks, Mom…I obviously get my looks from you…Daddy’s more than handsome type.”

"But as you grow up things change. Things that were once less important become more important...like how you dress and act in public."

"I was JUST thinking about talking to you about that. Mommy," said Liz truthfully. The thought had come to her as she'd been flossing her right upper incisor for the third time, not two minutes ago.

"Two weeks ago when you and Mrs. DeLuca took Maria and me to go shopping....both of you said we'd be miserable in those camisole tops made out of that rubbery stuff. I should have listened to you. The fabric didn't breathe...not at all...and even though it looked pretty, I had to take the top off before I passed out today after I spent about fifteen minutes struggling to get that fossil out of the wall of that arroyo."

"Yes, well, I really wanted to talk to you about that too, Elizabeth...a sports bra is NOT a public garment."

"Oh Lord, don't I know it. I didn't even realize that the darn thing was almost transparent when it got sweat-soaked...if I'd actually been in public, I'd have been mortified."

"But you were in public, Liz, Max was there..."

"Mother...," Liz said indulgently, "..Max isn't public. Max is Max. You know Max....you're friends with his mom. Max doesn't even remember anything before he was adopted. Emotionally it's like he's a seven year old now, practically. Max thinks girls are just sort of soft boys, Mom."

Nancy had to concede the point. Max was the most shy kid she knew, and Diane had told her that neither Max nor his sister remembered anything prior to six years ago, and how withdrawn Max was around anyone except Liz. And Max, she remembered, had seemed more embarrassed than aggressive when it came to what Liz had been doing...and the kisses she'd given him.

"Well...even so, Liz....," said Nancy, Liz fighting back the smile when she heard her name go from Elizabeth to Liz once again, a sure sign she was winning this engagement, "...Max is a human being. You go flaunting yourself at him...kissing him...even Max will notice."

Liz looked at her mother with the face of innocence itself, as the thought went through her mind...,'From your lips to God's ears, Mommy...' "Mom...he kept me from falling and breaking my neck....twice. I hardly think that a couple of simple kisses was 'flaunting myself,' under the circumstances."

"I suppose not," said Nancy reluctantly. "Of course, you seemed to be enjoying yourself enough...what with the back rub and all..."

"Mother...were you actually PEEKING at us?"

"Well, it wasn't so much peeking as trying to catch up to you two and remind you about lunch. But yes, I saw the incident with the back rub....and when you were standing on his shoulders. Do you have any idea of the view you were giving him, Liz? Oh, you're probably correct...it's not like little Max would hurt you...but if it had been some other boy?"

"It would have never happened with some other boy, Mommy...but if I can't trust Max, who can I trust?"

"Well, young ladies CAN'T be TOO trusting, Liz. Oh, I'm not saying there was any harm in what happened today, but in a few years even Max will be a teenage boy in puberty and that's a tough time for them, and for Max it may even be worse. If you do something that the boy believes is encouraging him, he might very well act on that belief...even Max."

Liz smiled up at her mother, her face again the embodiment of innocence. She certainly hoped so. No sense sending signals if no one is listening...not that a couple of twelve year olds were going to do much besides hold hands and kiss anyway. "Mother...I can handle Max. But you are entirely correct. I'll never act like that in public with Max again."

"Well, OK then...have a good night's sleep, dear," said Nancy as she kissed her daughter's cheek and tucked her in to bed. The talk ahd really gone quite well, and Liz had agreed, although an hour later, still trying to fall asleep beside her snoring husband, she'd still have a vague uneasy feeling that there was something about Liz's last sentence that was less reassuring than it might have been.

In her own room, Liz was looking at the ceiling thinking about Max. Here mother was wrong. It wasn't like Max would ever lose control...push her to do anything. Her mother underestimated Max because of his shyness and how naive he was socially...most people did. But she'd seen Max under pressure...with her own life on the line. Max had an inner strength that he kept hidden...not letting anyone see it, not even her. It was only those few times that he'd been too busy saving her ...those times he'd let the mask slip. There was far more to Max than his mother knew...more even than Max's mother knew.

But as she fondled the pendant he'd given her as she drifted off to sleep, Liz knew she'd have time to discover all of the mysteries of Max Evans. She had her whole lifetime ahead of her....a lifetime she planned on spending with Max Evans...

It was 8AM the next morning and the line of cars of kids being dropped off at the elementary school was somewhat shorter than usual. Kindergarten was not in session on this, the last half-day of the year, and the business of the day was little more than graduating the sixth-graders, cleaning out lockers, saying last good-bye's before the summer, collecting report cards, and taking home a vast array of artwork done throughout the year, much of which would be gracing the front of refrigerator doors before nightfall.

As she was leaving, Dianne saw the Parker car and rolled down her window, waving at Nancy. "Got time for tea?"

"Sure, Diane. That'd be great."

Ten minutes later, they were settling in to a table.

"Well, how'd your talk go with Liz," Diane asked.

"Oh, I think I got my point accross..." said Nancy, still not quite sure about why that last sentence Liz had said last night was still troubling her. "How'd it go with Max?"

"I think Max was as much embarrassed by the very notion that he might be interested in girls as anything else."

"You know, that's kind of what Liz said. Max was Max, not really ready for boy-girl stuff, and sort of how she justified being more casual with him than she otherwise would have been. I warned her that might not always be the case."

"Well, probably not, but Max is socially awkward. Lord knows where he would be socially without Liz to prod him along."

"Yeah, well as long as she doesn't prod him too quickly in THIS particular direction."

"You know, Nancy, I've been thinking about that. The school board has asked for parent volunteers to work with them to revamp the sex-education curriculum for the sixth graders. From what little I've seen of their lesson plans and literature...it could really use it."

Nancy nodded her head in agreement. It was perhaps the ultimate in hubris for a US educational system that was oftentimes failing in its primary job...providing good academic instruction to kids...to believe it was necessary for them to instruct students.....everyone of whose ancestors had been procreating successfully for millenia, but over the last half century that had become the norm...even while academic scores continued to fall. But worse, they didn't do a particularly good job of even that, as rising STD and teen pregnancy rates had demonstrated.

"Yeah...I think sex education ought to be something other than plumbing...and latex."

"Well, let's do it then. Let's help get a curriculum that reflects the need for commitment to one another that will really let these kids have a better life....not just a more sexually active one.."

"I think that would be a great idea..if we can get the school board to go along..."

The two continued to talk and eventually agreed to volunteer for the committee. And the changes they would inspire in the curriculum would be successful for most of the kids who took the sex-ed program in sixth grade. In fact, there would only be two who wouldn't benefit from those changes....who the law of unintended consequences would decree that those changes would cause great pain.

Nancy and Diane were right about the problem with lack of commitment. The public health authorities as early as the 1970s had constructed a mathematical model...a regression equation that explained much about the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies that had accompanied the 'sexual revolution' inspired by the Pill and the feminist desire for equality of the sexes.

Part of the regression equation was a binomial function....as the population of infected and uninfected people grew closer, the likelihood for transmission of sexually transmitted diseases increased, because there were more infected individuals in the population, but the REAL factor that governed infection was the value "n" where "n" was the average number of sexual partners. Everything else being equal, infection rate increased to the (n-1) power, with monogamy having no infections, and the infection rate climbing steeply as n increased. Pregnancy rates, which could be somewhat callously equated to STD rates, behaved in similar fashion.

Both Diane and Nancy considered themselves feminists, but they had come to understand intuitively what the observational model showed mathematically.... that in the absence of commitment, all of the adverse outcomes that sexual education was designed to prevent were more likely to occur, and too many of their feminist sisters had bought in to the same casual sex without commitment that typified the very worst of male sexuality.

But the problem was that in the sixth grade class next year there would be two students, one of whom had no intention of ever committing to anyone but Max Evans, and one of whom had long since commited to Liz Parker and was now becoming a sexual animal...not without a few gentle nudges from Liz...but was unable to believe that she'd ever want him if she knew his true origin. And THAT would be a problem.

It was 7AM on the first monday of summer vacation. Had it been during the school year, Liz would have been turning off the alarm clock and ignoring it altogether...pulling the covers back over her eyes until her mother had come in and warned her she was going to be late for school. It wasn't that Liz didn't like school, it was just that she really liked to sleep in. So OK...why was it that on her first Monday of the summer vacation...a day she could sleep in until noon if she wished....Liz Parker was down in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal and fixing sandwiches for lunch? The answer was easy, she didn't HAVE to get up, and she wanted to get ready to spend the morning with Max.

They had made plans over the phone. Liz and Maria were actually going to be working in the restaurant late this afternoon, as 'junior hostesses' for a birthday party for a new seven year old and about twenty of his friends and relatives, and they were going to actually get paid to do it. That left the morning for a trip to the quarry, and the early afternoon for a trip to the public pool...but not if she was going to sleep in.

The old quarry was about four miles out of town. It somewhat resembled a crater, roughly oval in shape with a greatest diameter of something less than a mile. It was where the Army Air Corps had gotten the rock to make the gravel that underlay the runways and the concrete for the runways themselves at what now was Roswell Airport when they'd built it as an Army Air Corps base back in the 1930s. The quarry was between eighty and a hundred feet deep and had two entrances. The only one usable by vehicles was on the far side of the quarry from town and it was sometimes used as an impromptu dump and shooting range at that end...especially on weekends. The end closest to town was usual deserted even on weekends, and it could be accessed down a narrow cleft in the cliff where once a huge conveyor belt had lifted hundreds of tons of rock and gravel daily to the road above. Now with the conveyor belt long since removed as scrap metal, she and Max could ride their bikes to the top of the cleft and leave them there, working their way on foot down into the floor of the quarry.

The quarry, even moreso than the arroyo, could be a treasure trove of fossils, and exploring for those fossils was the reason that they were going to spend the morning in the arroyo....'....that, AND some quality time with Max....

Liz finished making the second sandwich and tasted it....and made a face. She had heard Mrs. Evans tell her mom that Max and Isabel liked sandwiches made from peanut butter and jalapeno jelly, so she'd made one...'THAT can't be right...' she thought to herself. She quickly made another peanut butter and jelly...just in case, and threw all three sandwiches into the backpack, tossing in a couple small bags of chips. Max was supposed to bring the drinks, but she tossed in a couple of water bottles just in case.

It was still cool outside, so she wore a light jacket over her plain cotton camp shirt, and started toward the door, just as Nancy came into the kitchen.

"OK, you and Max are going to the quarry to look for fossils, then you'll be at the pool with Maria and Alex at 1:00. "

"Right, Mom."

"The birthday party is at 3:30, so don't be late getting back from the pool and...you have the cell phone if anything happens, right..?"

"Yes, Mom...but don't get freaked if you can't get us on it...it doesn't work on the floor of the quarry...just up along the rim. But I'll be with Max...he wouldn't let anything hurt me."

Nancy looked at her daughter and gave a long sigh, remembering the thoughts she had last night. "Well.....watch out for rattlesnakes this time, OK?"

"Mom...I ALWAYS watch out for rattlesnakes..."

"Yes dear...," said Nancy. 'Max never even told her... "Well. you two have fun....and don't get sunburned..."

Perhaps it was the morning sunrise on her face...or perhaps it was the slightest of blushes as Liz thought of the sunscreen in the bottom of the pack...and the places on her back she couldn't reach by herself. "We'll be careful, Mom. Don't worry."

As she saw Max riding his bicycle down the alley she put her pack on and donned her helmet. "See you later, Mom..."

"Yes, dear...Hi, Max."

"Good morning, Mrs. Parker..."

Nancy smiled as the two bicycled away. Max was making progress. For him that was being fairly social. She'd be meeting his mother in an hour...she needed to get going herself.

It took almost a half hour to get to the west end of the quarry. Liz and Max were able to ride their bikes partway down the cleft in the edge of the quarry where the dumptrucks had once come to be filled at the long departed rock conveyor, but that still left them almost seventy feet above the floor of the quarry itself. The path through the rocks was steep but manageable. Twice Liz let Max precede her and then assist her in getting down to the next level, knowing somewhat guiltily that she could have gotten down by herself, but unable to quite resist letting him help her down.
His hands on her waist did more than steady her....they sent a flutter deep down inside her....seeming to promise a future in which they would be more than just sixth grade friends.

By the time they got to the floor of the quarry, it was warm enough that both of them took off their jackets and stuffed them in their backpacks. True to her word to her mother, Liz had dressed a little more conservatively, the campshirt now overlying a scoop neck t-shirt that was more modest than the tight fitting camisole top, and made of cotton so it could breathe. Already Liz found herself hoping the day would be warm enough to take the camp shirt off as well. The cotton t-shirt left a reasonable amount of her upper back exposed, and she was already anticipating imposing on Max's assistance in getting sunscreen on it. In addition to having him help her down, she'd made sure they'd bumped in to one another a few times in the close quarters of the trail through the cleft. Liz still had no immediate plans of doing anything serious with Max, they were only twelve after all, but she did have the immediate objective of helping him get over his shyness...at least with her. She rationalized that she didn't have cooties or anything...it shouldn't be necessary for her to be lying in the street with a broken arm in order for Max to touch her.

But even as she thought that she found herself marveling at just how special she felt towards Max...she couldn't imagine actually encouraging any other boy to touch her. 'But Max IS different,' she told herself, feeling the pendant sway on the chain moving softly to and fro against her developing breasts, '...Max IS the one....'

Max loved times like this with Liz...time when it was just the two of them....time when they could just be friends...be together...times when he could almost forget that he was a freak...that he was living a lie. He loved to see her smile as she walked along, scanning the walls for any little fossils in the quartzite of the quarry. Max had been a little disconcerted coming down the trail. Helping Liz down from the larger steps...holding her waist in his palms while he brought her toward him...looking in to that smiling face...something had sent a flutter deep inside him...a flutter that he really didn't understand....but had somehow made him feel that this day...this moment...was perfect. As good as it got...as good as it could be...for an alien pretending to be a human being...which on this morning somehow seemed to be very good indeed.

"Look, Max...there's a fossil."

Max spotted it...a small fossil of a fern. It was well-preserved, but kind of small. Quartzite seldom had as many fossils as sandstone, but the ones in it were well preserved in the hard silica. Liz took a picture of it with a disposable camera, and they marked it on their map. They would send the information and picture to the museum in Albuquerque to see if they wanted to recover it...here on federal land, the public was not permitted to collect fossils themselves. As Max watched Liz's excitement something inside him just seemed to melt. He'd do anything....anything at all to keep Liz happy like that. He looked around the quarry...making sure that no one was was there to see them...and that Liz was occupied with her picture-taking, and let his power flow into the rock.

To manipulate matter one must first be able to feel it, and Max let his senses flow into the rock. He felt the difference between the fossil and the quartzite substrate...and sought through the rock for a similar feeling, finding one only a dozen yards away. The fossil was barely at the surface and he brushed his hand oer the rock while Liz was busy...the quartzite turning to sand grains as he did so...enabling him to uncolver the fossil a half inch deep.

"Look at this one, Liz..."

"Omigawd, Max....that...that's ... that's an oreodont jawbone...that is SO COOL," she said, the camera now snapping additional photos.

They spent the next two hours carefully brushing away additional sand that Max had softened with his powers, exposing a beautiful specimen. During that time the sun got higher and Liz's campshirt came off. "Uh, Max...would you put some sunscreen on back there? I can't reach it..."

"Sure, said Max. 'Just where she can't reach...,' he told himself although he could feel the muscles of her shoulders calling out to his hands..and soon found himself massaging her trapezius...not altogether sure how it happened. Liz, he decided, was sort of like a cat...you started petting it, and pretty soon it was just pushing itself against you, demanding more. That was something about cats that Max had never really liked....although, somehow...with Liz...it was pleasant enough. In fact, he was halfway down her shoulders toward the neckline of her t-shirt before he remembered his mother's talk with him again..."Uh..I think you can handle it from here, Liz..."

The fluttery feeling had been approachiung critical mass when Max quit rubbing her shoulders and her own surprise at just how pleasurable it had been was distracting enough that it almost offset the sense of disappointment than seemed to go through her muscles as Max stopped the massage. "Uh...yes, I guess I can, Max...," she said, turning to look at him. "I kind of get carried away when you touch me....uh..when you rub my back that is. You're a good back-rubber, Max...although you might not want to share that comment with just anyone."

Max blushed deeply, but the small smile never left his lips.

It was two hours later that they were back on the trail in the cleft, climbing back toward their bikes. They stopped halfway up for lunch, and Liz looked at Max doubtfully. "I have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for you...but I've also got a peanutbutter and jalapeno jelly sandwich too if you want to try it."

"You do? Those are great. I'll split it with you..."

"No...that's OK. I've uh....sworn off jalapenos for Lent, Max."

The sandwich was gone before Max looked up with a puzzled look on his face. "It isn't Lent, Liz. Lent is before Easter..."

Liz looked up with a pleasant smile, "..Oh, silly me...Want some more chips?"




By One o'clock, they'd bicyled back to the public pool and met Maria and Alex. They swam for nearly an hour before Liz got out and told the other three to keep swimming...that she was going to rest up after ten miles of bicycle riding and two miles of hiking, and work on her tan. She lay on her back on the towel over by the fence, and put her sunglasses on. Leaving Max with Maria and Alex was intentional....he needed to learn how to get along socially with others beside just herself. She watched him....appearing to be tolerating her two friends without her assistance and smiled. The plan was working well. She drifted off to sleep.

Ten feet away from her, the fifteen year old boy watched her carefully. In a very real sense, he was in the process of becoming a child molestor, and he'd just selected Liz as his next victim.....

There is an old saying…that sheep get lost three feet at a time. It’s much like that with sociopaths as well. Few are born serial killers…or rapists…or child molesters. Many have particular risk factors for sociopathy…coming from broken homes…poverty…social circumstances less well off than the average…but that doesn’t either explain or excuse it, for there are the vast majority of people in those circumstances who do not make the choice to become sociopaths.

People who profile sociopaths say that the people who become sociopaths generally do so gradually. The person who will one day become a mass murderer, may start with destroying toy soldiers, moving up to torturing and killing small wild animals they have caught…then kittens or puppies…each divergence from the norm serving to establish a fresh baseline for other …later…incremental excursions from the norms of society.

Child molesters evolve in much the same way….small acts…building gradually over time to bigger acts. But in the case of child molesters, there is also an interplay with the victim, for while it starts out about sex perhaps….it gradually becomes warped…becoming not just about sex but about sadism and power as well. In the end the child molester feeds on the terror he induces…the fear and guilt of the victim becoming inextricably linked to the eroticism….the hurting becoming an integral part of the rush.
Donnie Worthington was very early into that process, and Liz was the first victim he was actually stalking.

Worthington had many of the risk factors for becoming a child molester…a distinction he shared with millions who had never succumbed to the influences to which Donnie had started to succumb. He came from a single parent household…the child of a mother who was herself abused as a child and as a consequence had little self-esteem and had settled for a series of increasingly abusive relationships. He had never had a prominent male role model …or ANY kind of a father figure…that had treated his mother…or any other woman… by the norms of society to which most people adhered. In fact, neither had his mother. Abuse tended to reproduce itself from generation to generation. Donnie had never had a girl friend….let alone a girlfriend. He was intimidated by girls his own age…had been since they started into puberty first, and he suddenly found himself surrounded by girls who were more mature than he was.

Even so, Donnie’s first experience with molesting a child had been almost unintentional. It had been at the public pool in Las Cruces where he normally lived, on one crowded day last July. The pool was crowded and a bunch of 11 year old girls were playing tag, and in an effort to avoid her pursuer who was ‘it’ one of them swam in to Donnie while looking over her shoulder. Donnie saw it coming and braced for the impact…and it was more coincidence than any intent that his hand managed to slip into her suit as they impacted. In fact, the girl herself didn’t consider herself a victim…she apologized profusely and went off to rejoin her friends, having been made ‘it’ in the ensuing chaos after the collision.

The second and third times he groped girls in the Las Cruces pool, were not quite so accidental. He placed himself in situations where a repeat of the first episode was likely, and managed to get in a little groping in the ensuing chaos, neither of his victims actually sure enough that it had been intentional to report him to the lifeguard.

But now Donnie was in Roswell for a week, visiting cousins, and over the long winter he had thought often about those first three girls…and he had decided that now was an opportunity. He was unknown here, and wouldn’t be here very long. It would be the girl’s word against his…even if she wasn’t too embarrassed to actually report him, and the twelve year old he was watching…doing his level best to peer down the top of her swimsuit from ten feet away, was the girl he had chosen.

The psychologists who have studied this phenomenon theorize that a feedback loop develops between victims and predator as a child molester develops. That’s how it becomes about power rather than just sex. Eventually the perpetrators actions become such that even the naivete’ and innocence of the victims doesn’t protect them. They KNOW that they are being used as things rather than people….come to believe that 50% of humanity regards them as nothing but sex objects. Their pain and humiliation….their loss of humanity….their SHAME…become inextricably entangled with sexuality in the mind of the perpetrator. Once this pattern is established, the victims are damaged and the perpetrator is trapped forever in the mindset of the child molester, feeding on the loss of innocence to get his thrills. And that loss of innocence would forever haunt the minds of the victims.

But today Donnie had made a mistake in the victim he’d chosen….two actually.

The first mistake was the nature of Liz Parker herself. Liz Parker’s self-esteem was not going to be crushed if some scumbag groped her in the pool. Liz’s psyche was not given to considering herself merely a sexual object, no matter if Donnie considered her such or not. Liz knew…knew with absolute certainty, that two males loved her enough to give their lives for her without any expectation of sexual favors in return. Her father for twelve years had demonstrated his love for her, and she had a boy friend who had already shown his willingness to put his life on the line for her…repeatedly.

In fact, Liz had spent the morning getting applications of sunscreen to her back that she probably didn’t entirely need from her boy friend, in the rather earnest desire that he understand he was her choice to be a boyfriend and that as such, his hands touching her weren’t something she would necessarily define as unwelcome. So if indeed Donnie had managed to grope her in the pool, she certainly wasn’t going to internalize the idea that males were evil or that she was worthless or brought nothing to a relationship but sex. Donnie would have just been some individual scumbag groping her. In fact, Liz was probably the least likely female in the pool to actually suffer psychological trauma from a groping by Donnie Worthington, but Liz’s strong sense of self confidence was only the least of the two factors in why Liz wasn’t going to be victimized by Donnie today. The more immediate one was Max Evans.

The boy moved between him and the girl, and Donnie automatically shifted from staring down the neckline of the girl’s swimming suit to the boys eyes, even before Donnie heard the boy say softly, “A gentleman doesn’t look down a girl’s shirt.”

Donnie was shocked at being confronted…all the more so because the kid was a head shorter and 50 pounds lighter than him. Reflexively Donnie gave a typical schoolyard taunt reply, the words out before he even really realized what he was saying.

“Yeah, well who is going to stop me….you?”

Suddenly the large brown eyes of the smaller boy seemed to be looking into his soul, as his soft voice said with absolute certainty. “Well, yes....”

"Well, yes..."

• Sometimes a lot can change in fifteen seconds. Fifteen seconds ago, Max was at the other end of the pool...and 393.7 inches in the air, convinced not only that Alex Whitman wanted to kill him, but that Alex himself was a suicidal lunatic.
  
  The Roswell Public Pool had been approved two decades before as a bond issue for the "safety of the kids" in Roswell. And it was true, kids from southwestern desert areas had an abysmally poor chance of knowing how to swim, and on those rare occasions they actually did find water deep enough, they had an unfortunate habit of drowning. That was the rationale advanced by the people who had pushed for construction of the pool, a facility, they claimed, that could serve the entire spectrum of needs of the community for recreation and the junior high and high school for physical education and...of course...drown-proofing classes for the elementary school children. The fact that the public spirited citizen most pushing for this had been an olympic platform diver didn't really register, until the platforms themselves were being built.
  
  The pool had a five meter, a 7.5 meter, and a ten meter platform, and only moments ago he'd been on that top platform...at Alex's urging...looking down 32.81 feet at the water. Jumping off the high platform was somewhat of a rite of passage for elementary school boys in Roswell, and it wasn't without its hazards. There is very little to stop the winds in Southeastern New Mexico, and when they start blowing hard in the afternooon...which they routinely do...they can do funny things to a body in a thirty-two point eight foot freefall. The boy immediately before Max had caught a gust of wind just as he'd jumped, and that had blown him partially over on his front during his fall. It wasn't really a bellyflop...Max was reasonably sure the boy would not have survived a bellyflop...and Max had seen him climb painfully up the ladder from the pool, so he had indeed survived.
  
  "Come on, Max....." Alex had encouraged him...from safely behind him...,"..you don't want Liz and Maria to think we are chicken..."
  
  Actually, Max wasn't at all sure Liz would think he was chicken. She'd mentioned only this morning that she was still sometimes troubled by nightmares of him going over the side of the arroyo on his bicycle. That at least had been for a purpose...this was just doing it for bragging rights as a sixth grader. He'd looked out across the pool over to where Liz had gone, wondering if she was worried about him being up here. If she was looking as worried as he felt, he might have to go down the ladder...just to keep HER from worrying, of course.
  
  His eyes found her...sleeping in the sun across the pool from him and his face softened into a smile. Liz had always been cute, but she was developing into a young woman whose beauty was going to be truly stunning. As he recalled putting the sunscreen on her this morning, that strange fluttery feeling came back, and even standing thirty feet in the air being blown by the afternoon wind, he found himself smiling down at her.
  
  But the fluttery feeling went cold as he saw the older boy looking at her...felt the way he was looking at her...the predatory way that reminded him of the kidnapper.
  
  "Come on, Max," said Alex. "Just step off, and point your toes down, and you'll drop straight into the water. You only have to jump...NOBODY dives."
  
  But Max didn't jump off the platform...he wasn't going to waste the time. He took two quick steps and launched himself at the far side of the pool, entering the water in a dive that barely caused a ripple as he converted the potential energy of the high dive into speed in the water...speed that carried him quickly to the far end of the pool where he pulled himself up to face the high school boy.

"...yes," said Max. "I'm afraid If you need someone to stop you from looking at her like that...if you can't do stop yourself, I'll have to be the one to do it for you."

Donnie looked at the boy in alarm. He was in fact, early in his transformation into a child molester, and found it difficult to deny that what he was doing was wrong when confronted so forcefully about it. And as he looked in the boys eyes, he knew it was going to be forceful.

Staring into those eyes, it was like he was somehow connecting with the boy's mind...and there was no give in it whatsoever. It was like staring in to the eyes of a police dog...there was going to be no negotiation...no compromise...he either backed off, or there was going to be all out war. The brown eyes staring up at him told him that. The kid had an intensity in his face that made him scarcely seem human. It was....terrifying.

"You don't scare me, I'm bigger than you are," Donnie tried to bluff, but even as he spoke the words, he could see in the body language of the grade school kid that the kid wasn't bluffing as Max moved slowly forward..somehow forcing him to back up just by the force of his presence. Suddenly, this did NOT seem like a good idea at all. Suddenly adolescent sexuality was not linked in Donnie's mind with the thought of forcing himself on an unwilling girl who was far younger than he was. It was instead linked to the very real possibility of having the shit beat out of him by a very willing boy who was younger than him. As his back suddenly touched the fence, Donnie changed his tune.

"Hey...I don't want to hurt you...don't want to bother your friend, either. Heck, it's time for me to go anyway. I uh...really didn't mean anything about your friend...I mean I'm sure she's real nice and I sure wouldn't want to do anything that might embarrass her or anything...so I'll just go now....OK?"

"Yeah, that'd probably be a good idea. Go. And stay away from Liz...stay away from all girls if you have to look at them like that.."

"OK...OK...Hey, I'm sorry, OK...I didn't mean anything..I'm leaving."

As Donnie headed for the exit, his two younger cousins joined him. "Where you going?"

"I'm leaving. This place is...lame..."

"OK, hey were you talking to Max Evans?"

"Who is that?"

"The guy putting that towel over the girl."

"Yeah, what about it?"

"He's a strange kid. I saw him break an arm of a kid in my school...the guy had run Parker...the girl there...off the road on her bicycle. He broke her arm. Evans caught up with him on the playground...broke his arm the same way, and the guy was three years older than him."

"He broke his arm?"

"Hey," said his other cousin, "..that's nothin. Somebody tried to kidnap that girl ...an full grown adult. Evans chased him down and killed him."

"KILLED him? You're shitting me, right?"

Both cousins looked back at Max who was now moving an umbrella to keep the sun off a sleeping Liz. "Nope," they said, shaking their heads slowly. "He's not even in the sixth grade yet, but he killed a guy. I sure wouldn't want to piss him off."

"Neither would I, said Donnie quietly, "..neither would I..."

It would be almost seven years before Donnie would even look at another girl. In his Junior year in college he would get a female lab partner. Over the course of the semester she would become his first female friend. By their senior year, she wopuld be his girlfriend. He would propose to her that Spring, and they'd be married in June immediately after graduation. They would eventually have two children, and Donnie would end up a devoted husband and father...but that's another story.

As the three boys left the pool, Nancy Parker watched them go. She had figured out during a somewhat restless night what Liz had really meant when she said she wouldn't act like that with Max in public again....that she wouldn't act like that IN PUBLIC with Max. And that had sort of bothered her during the night, but she'd kind of come to terms with it. Nancy had worried today when they'd been out to the quarry together, but not about Liz being there with Max Evans. The concerns had been more snakes...scorpions...whatever other sort of trouble Liz might get in to, because frankly Liz seemed to be like a trouble magnet, and in fact only the fact that Max WAS with her had reassured Nancy enough to allow her to let Liz do her fossil looking, Lord knows the boy had protected her often enough.

Nancy had talked to Diane today while they were working on their input to the sex-ed program and told her the truth, that her daughter seemed to have her cap set for little Max, who she believed currently believed that girls were just soft boys, but that she thought Liz was trying to convince him otherwise. Diane had again warned her that Liz shouldn't get her hopes up, that in fact Max didn't bestow affection very readily, and Nancy thought herself that Liz was quite likely to be disappointed. Puppy-love crushes were like that. But right now, Nancy wasn't so sure.

Nancy really wasn't spying on Liz and Max. The mother of the kid with the birthday party had called in and moved it up a half-hour, and Nancy had tried to call Liz's cell phone to tell her that, but it was apparently in the locker while the kids were in the pool, so she'd driven over just to give Liz and Maria a head-up.

As Nancy had approached the fence, she'd first seen Max and Alex ...up on the highest diving platform, and Max had looked....terrified. But then Max had looked down and smiled...and she'd followed his eyes to her daughter, and seen the love in those eyes as he'd looked down to where she was sleeping. But then she'd seen his eyes go wide and his smile turn to a frown, and again her eyes had looked back to where Liz was sleeping, only then noticing the boy ogling her. Just as there is good and bad touching, there is good and bad looking as well, and as the boy had appeared to undress Liz with his eyes, Nancy had felt her own terror start.

But before Nancy could do anything...even take her eyes off the boy...Max pulled himself from the water like Poseiden rising from the sea, and suddenly was standing between the older boy and Nancy's sleeping daughter....and Max had changed...just in those few seconds. The look on his face...Nancy had seen it before...the first time she'd really seen Max...when Max had stood between Liz and a dog named Lobo... and his body language said it all. The boy wasn't getting near Liz...not while Max lived...and suddenly Max didn't seem like a shy almost sixth grader.

She had watched the boy back off, flee in fear and confusion from a boy much smaller...but a boy who clearly was not going to back down..whatever the cost. The very same boy who had looked down fearfully at a thirty foot jump into the water had forgotten his fear instantly once Liz had been threatened.

And as those three boys walked off, Nancy remembered the look on Max's face...as he'd gazed out at Liz just before he'd noticed the threat of the boy standing near her. If that wasn't the look of love, then Nancy didn't think she'd ever seen love.

No, Nancy decided, Liz was wrong...Max clearly understood that girls were different than boys, and he had reacted immediately when the older boy had looked at her like that...practically undressing her with his eyes. And Diane....Diane was wrong too, when she said that Max didn't give his affection easily. He just gave his affection to Liz in a very special way. He was her protector...her paladin...her knight in shining armor. He pulled her out from in front of moving vehicles. killed arachnids, drove off dogs, chased away voyeurs, broke the arms of those who would assault Liz....even killed to protect her. And it wasn't because he was someone who was fearless, someone who wasn't a normal human, because that would have made him just a freak....not the special person he was. Max protected Liz despite his fears because he did love her. And like with the snake...he wasn't even going to let her know he'd done it. That was how he showed his affection.

Nancy watched just a little longer, as Max carefully covered Liz with his own towel without waking her, carefully pulled the big umbrella over to shield her face, and then rejoined Alex, still keeping an eye on Liz from time to time.

Nancy walked over to the fence and called to Maria...told her about the change in the time for the party, and left the pool. She'd have to talk to Liz tonight...Mother-daughter...or girl-to-girl. The subject would be Max Evans...

It was almost 11PM when Liz was ready for bed. It had been a great day. She'd had quality time with Max, they'd discovered a new fossil in the quarry and two graduate students in paleontology from the University in Albuquerque were going to be meeting her and Max tomorrow, to go out to the quarry to decide if the university would do a summer dig there to fully uncover the fossil she and Max had found. The birthday party had gone very well, and she and Maria had even gotten PAID to act as junior hostesses for the little kids...and then gotten cake and ice cream on top of that. And tonight, Liz knew, she was going to be able to dream about warm hands softly spreading lotion on her back.

Assuming, of course, that she survived the talk that her mother wanted to have with her about Max before she went to sleep. But as much as Liz might be concerned about that talk, it wouldn't be all that bad.

As Nancy knocked on the door, neither of the Parker gals was looking forward to what was coming.

Nancy had known since the doctor reading the ultrasound said that it was going to be a girl that someday there'd have to be a discussion like this, but she'd never really thought that she'd wind up having a discussion with Liz at age twelve about ...well...what Nancy was desperately trying to deny to herself was her daughter's sex life. Hell, she was only thirty-three. She and Jeff hadn't yet ruled out the possibility of Liz having a sibling. She absolutely would have liked to put this off a few more years. Unfotunately, that didn't seem possible.

For Liz...well, Liz would have rather taken a moderately severe beating, supposing of course that Max would have actually let anyone do that to her, than to discuss her sex life with her mother. But what can't be ignored must be endured, and there was no way of ignoring her mother when Nancy had THAT look in her eye.

"Liz...I want to talk to you about you and Max." With those words, the contest was joined.

"What about Max, Mommy?"

"Well...old and dense as I am, I lay awake last night thinking about what you said to me...about Max thinking that girls were just soft boys...and about you not doing stuff like that with Max....in public...again, and I think I realized what you really meant. Not that you weren't going to do it, but that you weren't going to do it in public...and I think I know why you feel that way and Liz...I think you're making a mistake."

"Omigawd, Mom, I cannot talk to you about this..."

"Liz...this is going to be a different sort of talk than we've had before. You are becoming an adult, and you are going to have to make your own choices about some things. I can't stop being your mother...I need to be able to give you my opinion because just by being older I have experience you don't, and I would forever feel guilty if I let you make some mistake I could warn you about, but just opted not to tell you. Of course much of that experience comes from having made those same sorts of mistakes, and much as my mother wanted to pass along her experience to me...and sometimes failed. But we do need to have this talk, and it probably won't embarrass you any more than it does me. This isn't going to be a parent telling a child what to do and expecting them to obey. It's me giving you advice, but you've reached the stage where whether you obey me or not is up to you...I only ask that you listen."

"Mother...." said Liz, rolling her eyes skyward in frustration, "...I'm not a baby anymore."

"I know that Liz, and that's precisely the reason we are having this talk. Lord knows, there's always a temptation for any mother to tell their daughter to never grow up, never have sex, never stop being my little girl, but that's not realistic...."

"I am NOT having sex...."

"Something for which, seeing as how you are only twelve, I am extremely grateful, but you are starting to think about sex, and to think about Max, and...while that's not a bad thing, however much it frightens me that you are growing up so fast...I believe you are making some ...wrong assumptions..., and before you do something that I think may be a mistake, I just wanted to give you another opinion to consider...OK?"

Nancy waited for several seconds for a response, before deciding to interpret the stoney faced glare from her daughter as approval to continue.

"Max's mom and I had quite a talk about you two today....most of it pretty positive. Diane thinks that you are an angel for all you've done to help Max with his shyness. We've both watched you do it...first at school...then after school doing things together. Diane pretty much gushed about all you've done for him."

"All I did was be friendly."

"No Liz, you did far more than that...you got through to Max. Whatever happened to Max and his sister before they were adopted must have been pretty traumatic. Somehow Isabel was able to work through most of that...Max wasn't. Diane said that until he met you it was almost like Max couldn't really decide if Roswell could ever be his home....that he was holding back...afraid to really commit to even being part of their family. Diane thinks maybe his commitment to you .... and yours to him ... kind of made Roswell a home for him finally."

"He's done a lot more for me than I've ever done for him..."

"Don't I know it," Nancy said, sighing deeply. "..and Liz...I'm not sure even you understand just how much. Today at the pool when I came to tell you the time for the party had been moved up...Max was up on the high dive platform getting ready to jump off."

"That is so silly. All the boys do that...even Alex who is usually smarter than most. They say it's part of becoming a sixth grader. Sometimes they do bellyflops and you wince even if you are just watching."

"It did look sort of silly, and Max was up there....and you could tell he was scared...that he really didn't want to jump off....and then he looked at where you were sleeping. First, he got this look in his eyes and a smile on his face...just looking at you. Then he saw some creepy high school boy who was looking down the neck of your swimsuit and sort of undressing you with his eyes. I was going to go talk to the lifeguard about the boy when Max dove off the platform...swam almost the length of the pool underwater, and popped up next to you."

"What happened?"

"I don't know what he said to the boy but the boy backed off...left the pool. Then he covered you with his towel, so nobody else would get a peek I guess, and then pulled one of the big umbrellas over you...so your face didn't sunburn, then went back to playing with Alex...checking on you about every fifteen seconds or so...and you think I'm a mother hen being overprotective."

"I can't believe he dove off headfirst. I still have nightmares about that day when he went over the side of the arroyo....when I never thought I'd see him alive again."

"Diane....Mrs. Evans, told me that Max doesn't give out affection very readily, but you know....I think she's wrong....at least when it comes to you. He really cares for you, and his form of affection is doing whatever is needed...anything at all, to keep you safe. You know, the Bible says 'Greater love hath no man than this,: that a man lay down his life for a friend,' and Max would do that for you, Liz...without even a second thought."

Liz twisted the pendant in her hands nervously before replying, "I know that Mommy...he almost did."

"You know, when I saw the two of you out in that arroyo...you practically doing a striptease for Max..."

"Mother.....I explained that...and that Max doesn't look at me like that....that he just sees girls as kind of soft boys..."

"Oh, he was looking alright...and blushing mightily...he knows you are a girl, Liz. Even if his actions at the arroyo didn't prove it, what he did at the pool today did. But my temptation back at the arroyo was to keep the two of you apart...afraid you ... Liz Parker...were getting carried away too much...too soon....and I even was afraid Max might put pressure on you...imply you owe him something for saving your life."

"I do owe Max, but he would never....."

"I know, Liz. He saved your life again that day at the arroyo. He caught a rattlesnake that was striking at you with his bare hands...and he never even told you, did he?"

"A rattlesnake? Mom, I'm not sure any human being could catch a rattlesnake in mid-strike."

"Well, perhaps it was sleepy or something, but catch it he did. But instead of bragging, it's almost like he seemed embarrassed about it all. Anyway, I decided right there...and talking with Diane just reinforced it, that you two were too good for each other to actually keep you apart. But I do have some real concerns, and that's why we are having this talk."

Liz looked down at the pendant she was gripping in her hand, and seemed to draw strength from it. "OK, Mom...what's bothering you?"

"Well Liz....I know that you have been pushing Max socially...like today when you kind of forced him to interact with Alex and Maria. I'm pretty sure you knew he'd rather be with you, and I'm pretty sure you'd have rather been with him than just baking in the sun....something you'd already been doing all morning in the quarry already."

"But he needs to do that, Mommy. He needs to get more comfortable with other people, and I know Maria and Alex wouldn't make fun of him or anything because of his shyness."

"And I think that's a good thing, dear,...but I think you may be trying to push Max a little bit uh....let's just say, to notice that you aren't just a soft boy, and that probably isn't such a good idea. Puberty comes later to boys, Liz, and it's hard enough for some of them to handle emotionally even when they are older and more experienced. Max in particular probably isn't as socially ready as most to deal with the situations that will come if what right now is a good friendship turns into something more...romantic. He does love you, Liz, just not that way....at least not yet...and putting pressure on him may not be a good thing."

"This is all so unfair," said Liz, fingering the pendant. "I mean....my breasts hurt...I get all nervous...then I get cramps...then all the messiness to put up with....doesn't it seem fair that if I go through all of this I ought to at least get a boyfriend with it?"

Nancy smiled at her daughter. "I'm afraid fair has nothing to do with it Liz, it's about biology, not fairness. And you will get a boyfriend...you're only twelve. You ...and Max...have plenty of time."

"Pamela Troy already has a boyfriend.."

"Is she that blonde girl that comes into the Crashdown with the Weaver boy...they wear matching pink t-shirts?"

"Uh-huh."

"O Lord, Lizzy, if you ever did that to little Max I'd never forgive you. Those two look like tweedle-dum and.."

"...and tweedle-dumber," continued Liz, starting to giggle. "Mother, I'd never do anything like THAT to Max."

"It's not just embarassment, Liz. I don't want either you or Max to get hurt."

"Max would never hurt me," Liz said emphatically, "..and I would never hurt him."

"No Liz, Max would never mean to hurt you, and you would never mean to hurt him, but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen...or that it won't happen. You may think you are ready to handle the emotions that go with romantic involvement, but I think even you'll admit that Max isn't....and forcing him to confront those emotions before he is ready to handle them....it could hurt him, Liz, it could hurt both of you. Even loving one another...it isn't enough sometimes, if you can't communicate well enough to handle the situation...and becoming a couple...sometimes that's when you need your social skills and the ability to communicate the most. I'm worried, Liz. Not that Max would ever mean to hurt you...or you him. But sometimes things just take time to develop. A lot of time, with young people they just normally slow things down because they are unsure...unsure just how much the other is committed to them. That's going to be real difficult for you, Liz. I'm sure you have no doubt in the world Max would die for you, because he's proven that he would, but that very certainty may make you push him too fast....faster than he's ready for."

"But we have to grow up some time, Mom."

"Yes,...yes you do, " said Nancy, running her fingers through her daughter's hair as she looked at her and smiled. "...and someday I'm going to be older...and I won't have you anymore...and maybe part of my compensation for becoming an old lady will be having grandchildren around me....and Liz, if those grandchildren have soulful amber eyes, I think that'd be wonderful. I love Max too....how could I help it? He's saved the life of my only child. I'm not trying to keep you or Max from growing up, I just don't want you to get hurt along the way...either of you. You know,Liz,..Max isn't a puppy dog...or some kind of toy you can dress in a pink t-shirt to show him off. He's a human being, Liz, and you need to give him time...space...to develop the skills that let him feel comfortable in a more....oh God, I do NOT want to say this....intimate relationship with you. "

Liz looked at her mother,unsure if she should laugh or not. Her mom was right, she really hadn't been thinking about Max. He did need time...and they were only twelve.

"OK, Mom....I'll give him time....lot's of time. I owe him that. But a girl needs a plan, and I want you to know my long-term plan is Max Evans."

"As long as it's long term, I think that would be lovely dear...of course, Max may have a little say in that."

"Yeah, well I may have a long term plan for that, too," said Liz grinning.

The two Parker gals hugged one another and both were happy as Nancy went down to the master bedroom. They really did love one another and thought they were in agreement. But it was one of those 'communications' issues again. Long-term to a thirty-three year old meant three or four years. A twelve year old had a different perspective. She'd turn thirteen in ten months.

'That certainly ought to be long enough...,' thought Liz.