A different Roswell
Chapter One: A real day dream
It was a warm and dry afternoon. The mellow colours of the sand, flying throught the air, carried by a hot breeze, were shining brightly through the windows of the Crashdown Café, Roswell, New Mexico. The glass reflected the sunlight that nobody outside the café was able to see, what happened inside it. Usually there was nothing that would have been worth to watch, but not this day. Today something strange was happening, something that would change Liz's life forerver ...
***
`Can't understand all these tourists' , Liz thought and looked at the two people she was going to bring the meal to they had ordered.
`Why do they think Roswell is that fantastic? I've been living here my whole life long and I haven't met any aliens yet` The sixteen-year-old smiled when she arrived at table number nine where the tourists were waiting.
She gave the burgers to them and explained in a friendly way: "One Weaver and a Smith, right? Something else? A green alien-milkshake?"
The woman shook her head. "No, that's all. ... Uhm, Miss?"
"Yeah?", Liz answered knowing the question the tourist was going to ask. They never wanted to know any real facts about Roswell, what they wanted was sience fiction and that was the thing she would give them.
"How long does your family live in Roswell, Miss ..." , the man stopped to read her nameplate, "Miss Parker?"
"Since four generations", she answered. The tourists' faces reflected all their disappointment.
"But my grandma gave me that" Liz took an old looking photo out of her pocket. "I've never shown it to strangers before, but I'm sure a can trust you two"
The woman's hands grabbed the piece of paper showing a creature that could be everything.
Maria's voice came from behind her: "Liz?!"
Liz looked around and saw her friend near table number fiveteen where she tried to wait two quarreling guys. One of them pushed her away.
"Please, don't show it to anyone, I'll be right back!", Liz whispered to the tourists and went across the room to talk to Maria who wanted to speak about the latest news or anything else as she did every day during her work.
"You cheeky little girl! You didn't give them the faked photo, did you?", Maria asked her friend who just started to grin. Both laughed.
"Liz, don't turn around", Maria's voice said while she was on her way to the kitchen to take new coffee.
"Why?"
"Guess who's sitting at number two!"
Liz turned around. "Max Evans!"
Her face turned pink when she recognized the tall young man.
She knew him from the biology lessons, but she was sure he wouldn't remeber her.
The door bell rang and somebody came in, a girl at the age of 16 or 17. She sat down at number four, Maria's table. The blonde student grinned at her friend, took a new writing pad and a pen and left Liz where she was.
Liz started to clean her tray, heared the noise in the café.
`Max Evans will never realize that I am alive. And I'm still together with Kyle, so Max-`
Suddenly her thoughts were cut off.
Everything around her seemd to stop and Liz's body started to scream soundless.
Coolness flew through her veines and pain splitted her mind. Something had hit her stomach and made her fall down backwards.
"Liz? LIZ!" Maria yelled.
One of the men who had argued a couple of seconds ago had shot Liz!
He threw the gun away and escaped followed by a second guy who crashed into Maria. He jumped on his feet and ran away.
Liz had still not realized what had happended. She was lying on the floor half-hidden by a table.
Max got up. Micheal catched his arm and said: "What are you going to do?" His voice sounded seriously.
The girl next to their table ran through the room, passed people who were unable to move.
"Call the police!" she shouted at Maria and crossed the room quickly.
Max looked at her and followed no matter what this decision would mean to him or to Micheal.
He reached Liz and kneeled down next to the girl who who had just rend Liz's dress to look at her wound. She turned her head to look at Max behind her.
"She's almost dead"
"Go out of my way!", he shouted and pushed her away. He touched Liz's stomach that was covered with blood, deep red, but now shining black in the light of the café.
"Liz, look at me, come on. You must look at me!"
`Wasn't there a voice next to me, Max's voice?', asked the dying girl herself. She opened her eyes in slow-motion and throught the deep darkness which was destroying her a beam of light was shining.
Max smiled and put his warm hand on the wound.
Millions of pictures rushed through his brain, when he started to use his power to rescue her life: Liz wearing a blue dress, Liz talking to Maria, Liz on her fifth birthday, Liz ...
She felt the warmth of his skin flowing through her body, healing her wound. Suddenly the pain had gone.
Max took a quick look around. He shattered a bottle, spilled the ketchup inside it on Liz's stomach.
"You broke the bottle, okay? Can you tell them that?", Max said nervously and stood up.
He turned and looked at the other young woman sitting on the floor behind Liz. Her blue eyes were starring at his hand. Her own ones were holding Liz's head.
"Thank you for helping me", Max told her. "Don't tell them, what I did, don't tell them ...", the boy added before leaving them.
"Are you okay?, a voice wakened the two 16-year-olds up. Maria was standing in front of them.
"Yeah", answered both at the same time.
Maria watched them sceptically. "Shall I help you, Liz?"
"No, thanks, I'm fine", her friend told her. Her cheeks' colour turned from extreme pale back to normal and Liz started to smile. Her eyes went through the café until they reached the face of the young woman next to her.
Both girls stood up and shook each other's hands.
"Thank you for helpin' me, although I've been okay all the time!", Liz lied to hide the truth.
"I think the shock about the noise of the shot saved you", the strange girl replied.
"Yeah, I think so. Ev'rything went too fast to realize what really happened", Liz said friendly.
"I think so, too. ... I'm Emily, Emily Frost", the blue-eyed girl told both of the other young women.
"Liz Parker and that's my friend Maria"
***
Ten minutes later Sheriff Valenti arrived at the Crashdown, ten minutes too late as usual. He entered the café and took a look around.
Liz, his son's girl-friend, sat shivering on one of the small silver-blue painted tables. Her dress seemed to be full of dried blood. Another girl, he did not recognize her, was putting her own jacket around Miss Parker's shoulders. Her hands were coloured like the cloth of Liz's dress. The sheriff crossed the room and passed some shocked tourists.
"Are you okay, Liz?", he asked with a soft voice.
The girl nodded. "It's not what it lookes like" She tried to smile. "It's only ketchup, I'm okay, really. I broke the bottle and spilled it", the young women explained.
"Fine, I think we should ask the people who have been here during the man shot", the sheriff told his deputy still viewing Liz's dress.
The first one the deputy asked was Maria, who tried to describe the person with the gun and the other one by comparing them with cartoon-heros.
Emily smiled about her explanations.
"Sheriff?" One of the tourists wanted to talk to Valenti "There was a shot, but there's no bullet! We looked for it, here!" He pointed at the wall. Valenti's fingers went over the surface of it, but he could find nothing but spilled ketchup.
"And, Sir, there was a boy, I think 17 or 18, with short brown hair. He did something with that girl" This time he pointed at Liz. The woman standing next to him nodded enthusiastically holding a dirty, old photo in her hands.
"And she gave us that!", she added and showed Valenti the image of the thing that could be an alien.
"Yeah, Liz, do you know that boy or this photo?"
The girl shook her head. "No, I think he's a tourist", she said.
"That's a lie! She seemed to know him, sheriff, and that girl, too"
He was going to talk about details the sheriff should never hear about.
Emily laughed. "I think that's impossible, Mister. I've been to Roswell exactly two times: Once when I was five and this is the second time I visit this town"
"I'm understanding ... Could you describe the boy?", the sheriff wanted to know while he played with an empty tabasco-bottle in his hands.
"Uhm, I cannot remember exactly, `cause it all went very quickly", Emily started . She was starring at the ceiling above her head.
"Try it!"
"Well, sheriff, I think six and and a half feet tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Uhm, I think he weares jeans and a green pullover" Emily described a boy that she had just thought, up a person that did not exist, instead of the one who had helped Liz. .
"Something else?", Valenti interrogated still watching the bottle in his fingers.
"Nothing special ... O, I think he had a button with a little alien on it right here", she pointed at her left shoulder. Valenti nodded, but he seemed to know that she was not telling the truth.
"May I have your number Miss?"
She took the pen he offered her and wrote on the back of the faked photo Liz had given the tourits, than she handed it back to him.
"What about you, Liz?"
Liz shook her head again. "I only remember the green pullover, but nothing else, Sir"
"I'll call you both, okay? Shall I drive you home?"
The girls looked at each other.
"No, you needn't. My dad takes us home in half an hour", Liz aswered.
"Are you friends? I thought you're new in town, Miss Frost", Valenti said sceptically.
"Liz invited her!", Maria lied quickly.
The sheriff nodded and left them to talk to his deputy.
***
The three girls, Liz, Maria and their new friend Emily, sat in Mr Parker's Jeep, driving south the empty road leading to Maria's house. They did not talk about the happenings of this afternoon, although there were things that nobody of them understood.
After keeping quiet over half an hour Maria asked: "What did he do?"
"Uhm, I don't know what you want to hear, but he did nothing, really!", Liz answered with a kind of nervousness in her voice.
"Who did what, darling?", Mr Parker wanted to know while stopping at a red traffic light.
"Nobody, dad", she tried to lie.
Liz's father smiled and passed the traffic light which had turned green again.
"Okay, okay, you won't tell me, I understand"
The girls kept quiet for ten more minutes until they arrived Maria's house.
"If you are my friends you'll tell me tomorrow", Maria adviced them and left the car.
"Bye, Maria", said Mr Parker.
"Bye, Mr P, bye, Emily! See you Liz!", the blonde, young woman shouted while crossing the garden in front of the house.
"O, Maria ...", Liz muttered quietly. The girl seemed to be very sad about the crack in her friendship.
"It's not your fault", Emily explained.
"I know, but what shall I do now?"
The warm brown eyes of the sixteen-year-old reflected all her sadness.
Emily put her arm around her friend's shoulder.
"Try to arrange your feelings around one point that could be the centre of all these strange things"
"And what about Maria?"
"She's your best friend, right?"
Liz nodded slowly and tried to smile, but she was not able to look much happier than before.
"Then you can only do one thing: Listen to your heart", Emily told her softly.
Suddenly the car stopped. They had arrived at Liz's home, a small house standing far away from the center of Roswell.
"Liz, tell your mother that I'll be back at 9 o'clock, okay?", Mr Parker said friendly. His daughter smiled and nodded. She wanted to get out of the jeep, but the other girl stopped her.
"That's for you Liz Parker, perhaps this diary might help you to bring strange things into the right order"
Emily handed her a small book and smiled warmly.
"Thank you, Emily", Liz answered and left the car, "Hope I see you again!"
Then Liz walked towards the wooden door of her family's house. She heared the motor of the jeep and stood outside until the the car had disappeared behind a couple of houses.
***
After emplaining six times to her mother, that she was okay, Liz had gone to her room in the first storey.
She changed into jeans and pullover and began to examine the whole the bullet had left in her dress.
"I would be dead without Max!", Liz cried out and stuffed it into her bag. She did not want to see it anymore.
`I need to ask him about the thing he did with me in the Crashdown'
Carfully the girl touched her stomach.
`Nothing! There isn't even a scratch or anything like that! No whole, no blood, noth-` Liz forced herself to stop thinking about it. She stood in front of the mirror and viewed the reflection of her body. There was somthing on the skin of her stomach that looked like a fluorecing hand-print.
"Oh my god!"
Liz stepped a few centimetres backwards and let her fall onto one of the chairs.
'What shall I do now?` , Liz asked herself.
Suddenly she remembered the words Emily had told her before leaving: `Listen to your heart´
The girl did as her new friend had adviced. She closed her eyes and tried to hear the beat of her heart.
Slowly she felt the calm filling her mind. The soft melody deep inside her helped to arrange all the confusing happening of the past day around one point: Max Evans, the boy who saved her life today. Then she opened the diary Emily had given her and started to write.
***
At the same time Mr Parker's jeep stopped in front of a shabby hotel, called "Seventy-Four-Inn". He glanced at it through one of his car's windows which was covered with dust.
"Here do you live?", he wondered.
Emily smiled. "Yeah, that's my home at the moment. I would move to a better hotel, but they're all overcrowded because of the festival"
"How long do you want to stay here in Roswell?"
"I don't know. Three month, perhaps four", she said and waited for the driver's answer.
"If you have any problems to find an apartment, phone Liz. We might be able to help you", he offered friendly. Emily nodded and opened the door of the parking car.
"Why did you come to Roswell, Emily?"
"Thank you very much", the girl ignored his question and got off the jeep, "Good bye Mr Parker!"
She did not wait for his answer and left him alone.
The sixteen-year-old entered the hotel quickly. After getting the key to her room in the second storey she glanced through one of the small, dirty windows and realized that Mr Parker was gone.
"I had to be that impolite, `cause he started to ask the wrong questions", she told herself when she arrived at door number twenty-three. Then the girl disappeared in her small room.
***