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</center>Disclaimer: I do not have any affiliation with ROSWELL or any of its components. Also...none of the pictures in my banner belong to me...they are either the product of another author/artist, or belong to the WB (or who ever owns Roswell now)...I just put them together to make a pretty picture for ya'll!!!!
Category: Max/Liz
Rating: Teen-Adult
Summary: Since the age of seven, Liz Parker hasn't uttered a word and not even she truly knows why. But when Max Evans steps off the bus on that fateful day in third grade, events are set in motion that will completely destroy Liz's interpretation of the world. Is Max simply the key to Liz's voice? Or does he hold more power than she could have ever imagined. Liz's Point of View.
Author’s Note: I know that I haven't even come close to finishing Intrinsic, but I had this idea burning in my brain after watching The Piano (it has absolutely nothing to do with the movie, I simply got the idea for a mute character from it) and I couldn't help but write it all down...Meanwhile, enjoy Porcelain...you will understand the title later on...and no, it has nothing to do with the song by Moby!
FEEDBACK WOULD BE APPRECIATED IMMENSELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
*Core evaluated is a psychological assessment of a child’s I.Q. as well as their overall neurological functions (for example, children who are thought to have ADD or ADHD are often core evaluated).
Chapter 1
Have you ever considered the importance of the spoken word? I mean, seriously thought about it? I have. I know the ins and outs of speech pathology, I have an intimate relationship with the origins of linguistics, and I can write in six different languages and read eight. I have an unusually vast comprehension of Western Civilization, and I have read some of the world’s most famous manuscripts (i.e. Plato’s Republic) in their original texts. Now, you are probably sitting there thinking ‘wow, this girl is a major dork, doesn’t she have anything better to do?’, and you would be absolutely validated in asking that. To that question, I have a simple answer. Yes, I am a dork, and no I don’t have anything better to do. But a better question would be why I’m so enthralled by language, and more importantly why I asked you about the spoken word and not language as a whole. To explain to you my passion would be no different than handing you a key to my mind and inviting you straight into the muddled canvas that is my brain. But since you’re here, you might as well take a seat and do the best you can to try and understand me. There are a few people that might be able to help you if you get confused. After all, not everyone understands sign language, though then again, not everyone is voluntarily mute.
It all started when I was six years old. I was never what one would call a vivacious child, but I did speak, and contrary to popular belief, I did have friends. Yet even at such a young age, I found much more stimulation within my own imagination than I ever did with the children in my organized play group. I would make up grandiose stories of princes and kingdoms far beyond the seven continents of our globe, or of those who lived centuries ago with an uncanny accuracy for period detail. I would spend my free time in the children’s reading room of the Roswell Public Library, inhaling book after book. It never really mattered what it was about, or if it were even in English, I would simply pick one out, read it from front to back, back to front, and once in a while, I would even turn them upside down, just to achieve a different perspective. I would do this until I’d exhausted every possible way of looking at the piece, and then I would sit for hours and mull over what I had just read. Now mind you, I was doing all of this at the tender age of six. My parents picked up on this unique behavior and quickly made an appointment to have me core evaluated*, only to find out that I was an introverted savant with an I.Q. teetering precariously between 189 and 190. Now most people think that it would be incredible to be that smart, and in some ways it is, but at the same time, there are only so many people like me in this world, and I found that forcing myself into silence is the only way for me to live a semi-normal existence.
After these “extraordinary” findings as my psychoanalyst so pleasantly called them, my parents began pushing me to the umpteenth degree. Instead of placing me in a normal scholastic setting, they hired a private tutor who began cramming my childish head with intricate ideas such as math logic, elementary chemistry, the history of socialism, and Shakespearian literature, just to name a few. I understood everything he threw at me and then some, and by the time I turned eight I was solving multivariable calculus equations using nothing but a pen, paper, and my overstuffed brain. Yet it was also during that two year period that my voice slowly began to fall away from me. The first session I had with my tutor, I was eagerly answering his questions in lengthy detail and even asking some of my own, and towards the last, I was simply jotting down my response, not even bothering to look at him while he made sure I was correct. At that point, my pink and white Nikes were far more interesting than anything he had to say. Some people blame my parents for the way I am, some people simply write it off as a malfunction of the biochemical processes in my overactive brain. But me? I’ve made my mind my only refuge from the intense pressures of the outside world to be the next great thing. Heck, Einstein didn’t speak until the age of ten, so if I have the same I.Q. that he did, why should I have to speak from the age of eight on? It only seems fair.
While I was slowly cutting myself off from the rest of humanity, I made it a point to learn sign language, just in case I ever did want to converse with others. Within a week, I could sign better than anyone who had been deaf or dumb their entire life, and much to my surprise, I actually enjoyed that form of communication; so much so that I refused to write anything down for months, forcing my parents to learn to sign themselves. My psychologist at the time, Dr. Margolis, discouraged my behavior and rejected my parent’s idea of sending me to a school for the gifted in Virginia. He thought that the only way to break my verbal silence would be to put me into public school with children my own age, knowing that they would mercilessly tease me for both my brains and my mute status, thoroughly convinced that it would push me far enough to open up my mouth and defend myself. I had to bite back a contemptuous laugh. If you haven’t figured out already, I wasn’t stupid, I knew how the other children would react if I went in there signing away and outdoing them in every aspect. But that wasn’t my plan. I would simply act like the shrinking violet I was so comfortable being, silently excel at all my work, and merely shy away from anyone that tried to confront me. To my classmates, I would be just another painfully withdrawn eight-year-old among a sea of far more interesting faces.
Two weeks after that supposed “breakthrough”, off I went to Roswell Elementary with my purple L.L. Bean book bag, matching lunch box, and a fully stocked binder and pencil case. Apparently someone informed my teacher of my “condition”, because she spent the first two weeks trying desperately to get me to speak. She would call on me to answer questions even though I never once raised my hand, she would ask me to present things during show and tell when it wasn’t my day, and during our “buddy reading” – basically the school’s way of attempting to integrate the younger and older children – she would always assign me to the fifth grader whose reading skills were no better than those of a four-year-old. Yet I said nothing, only responding with a shake of my head, staring up at her shyly through the tips of my bangs. Eventually, she gave up, seemingly satisfied with the incredible work I was able to produce in a matter of minutes. Though she could be pushy at times, she really was a wonderful woman, allowing me to study whatever it was that I was interested in at the time. While the other children were learning their times tables, I was teaching myself Mandelbrot Sets and advanced fractals. While they were struggling through Sharon Creech’s Chasing Redbird, I was engrossed in James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and rapidly approaching a six month romance with its companion, Ulysses. It was also during that class that I became so intensely interested in linguistics. During their study of the Pilgrims, I had asked (via a note) if I could study Western Civilizations. Mrs. Blatt seemed thrilled with the idea as that had been her secondary major, and the next day she came in with a bag filled with texts on practically every subject pertaining to Western Civilization from prehistory to the 20th century. Though a bit overwhelmed, I dove right in, devouring book after book. I thoroughly enjoyed practically every aspect of my studies, but I quickly found myself taken by the development of language and communications. I soon found myself immersed so deeply in the history of the spoken word, for the next two months I hardly could remove my nose from my books. When I wasn’t reading up on the history of a language, I was studying the language itself. By the end of the first semester, I had taught myself to read and write in Latin, Italian, and French, and had I any interest in speaking, I am quite confident that I could have held an intelligible conversation as well. Nothing my parents tried could tear me away from my studies, not threats, not bribes, not even pleas. Just when had myself convinced that what I was doing was a perfectly healthy, acceptable way to live my life, an unusually warm day in January picked up my private universe and set it slowly spinning in a rotation that has only since increased.
Chapter 2
I was sitting outside during morning recess under the reprieve of a weeping willow, immersed in whatever new book I was devouring at the time, when a bouncy blond plopped herself right down next to me, not even bothering to realize that I was quite obviously busy.
“Hi!” She announced exuberantly, completely unable to sit still as she took in the world through active, excitable blue-gray eyes.
I slowly drew my eyes fully away from my reading and for the first time I took in the girl sitting beside me. She was dressed in a bright pink jumper with lime green polka dot tights and mismatched Mary Jane’s. Her long honey hair was haphazardly pulled into two barrettes, behrly holding her thick waves out of her eyes.
I swallowed several times before I managed a tiny, nervous smile in response.
She seemed satisfied and quickly plowed forward. “Whacha doin’?” She questioned in a sing-song voice, peering at the enormous book resting on my tiny lap.
I looked down at the text and then back at her, trying to communicate my current activity.
“Oh, you’re reading that?” She pointed at the book with wide eyes that held a mixture of shock, confusion, and amusement.
I nodded my head slowly; my eyes now trained on her, curious as to why she was talking to me.
“Why?”
It was a simple question and one I had a million answers for, if I actually could speak, that is (at that point, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to talk anymore, it was that I couldn’t). So I simply shrugged demurely instead.
“You don’t talk much, do you,” it was far more a rhetorical statement than an inquiry, but I shook my head anyways.
“Well, that’s okay; my mom says I talk too much anyways. So…if you don’t talk, and I talk all the time, then it’s like we just talk the right amount,” she rationalized, her eight-year-old mind clearly working to sort all of this out.
I smiled brightly at this, enjoying the eccentric company of this spitfire child.
“I’m Maria Elena Deluca,” she slurred out quickly with a hint of a Spanish accent, connecting each name together to make one confusing word.
I gently removed a spiral notebook from my book bag and turned to a fresh page. I slid a pencil out of my hair, allowing my full mahogany locks to cascade down my back.
My name is Elizabeth Mackenzie Parker, but everyone calls me Liz, I wrote out neatly, angling the page towards her so she could read it.
Maria smiled excitedly and grabbed for my left hand. “Yay! Now I know your name and you know my name, so we can be best friends, okay?”
I nodded my head vigorously, and for the first time in my life, I almost felt normal.
Chapter 2b
Over the next few months, Maria and I became inseparable. I taught her basic sign language, and in turn she introduced me to a world of music. Even at such a young age, she had an angelic voice, and we would spend hours together holed up in my room listening to her latest “favorite band” (which, of course, changed by the hour) while she sang along and I signed the words. It was a unique friendship to say the least, and she remains my best friend to this day, but it was the person that came next that changed my life forever.
It was early March when that particular school bus arrived, looking just like any other that had come before it, or that would drive up after it. Yet it was not the bus itself that was important, but the person which it carried. I was standing with Maria on the play ground playing “rocks, paper, scissors”, a perfect game for the verbose and the silent, when a warm shiver trickled down my back, making me feel completely safe and at ease in my own skin. I instinctively looked up just as the glass door folded upon itself, expelling a beautiful sunflower blonde and a serious espresso-haired boy onto the uneven pavement. Immediately, his unearthly golden eyes captured mine, drawing me in like a hallucinogenic drug. The girl’s hand fell away from his as she ran off to the other children, but he remained unmoving, as did I. Suddenly the shrill whistle blew from the main entrance, signaling the beginning of the school day. He broke our connection, visibly startled by the sound. He rushed towards the noise, though his eyes stayed trained on me for a long moment, and I remained frozen in place, shaken by the intense emotions that were coursing through my demure figure. Most of it was completely muddled, making it impossible for me to decipher what I was feeling. But one thing was clear, more clear than anything had ever been in my entire life; his name was Max Evans and he had been looking for me all of his lives.[/img]
) before I revve up the angst (no, no couple angst either...I love our dreamers way too much for that...but external sources that are going to become really intense for our happy couple). So I hope you enjoy and I'll try to be more dilagent in getting the new part out.