Part 54

Alex was elbow-deep in Calculus homework when he started to feel like someone was watching him. He forced himself to finish the complex equation before giving in to his curiosity and looking for the person responsible for the weird feeling that had settled over him. He really hoped it wasn't the guys from the football team because he wasn't ready for another beating. Nah, he thought, if they had come in the restaurant wouldn't still be fairly quiet.

Most Friday nights were spent sitting in the back booth at the Crashdown, waiting for the girls to get off so they could go hang out. It was an opportunity to load up on food his mother wouldn't let him eat at home while getting his homework finished so his weekend was left free.

He glanced up when Liz sat down across from him and placed a fresh glass of orange soda and a plate of Saturn rings in front of him.

"How's your homework coming along?"

"Almost finished." He shrugged and reached for one of the onion rings, quickly dropping it when it burned his fingertips. "Ow!" He frowned as he examined his fingers for any serious damage. "I thought you were supposed to be off tonight?"

"I am. Well, technically, I am; I'm not on the clock. I was just giving my dad a hand until Alice gets here; she called and said she was running late."

"Then we're still hangin' out tonight?"

"I was gonna ask you the same thing."

"What?"

"I thought maybe you had made plans with Isabel," Liz said, sliding the ketchup across the table when he motioned at the bottle. "She came in and sat down at the counter about fifteen minutes ago and she's been staring at you the whole time."

Well, that explained the earlier feeling of being watched. "No, I haven't made any plans with Isabel," he said, forcing his eyes to obey him and stay focused on the plate of perfectly golden-fried Saturn rings.

"What's going on with you two?"

Alex shook his head. "No idea. She's been keepin' a low profile the past few days."

"Maybe she feels bad because her friends beat you up."

He shook his head. "Those people aren't her friends, Liz, they just run in the same social circle. Bein' seen with Isabel just gave them another excuse to kick my ass; it didn't really have anything to do with her." He picked up an onion ring and broke it in half. "Isabel is probably the loneliest person I've ever known and Max is the only one she's ever been able to really talk to." He chewed thoughtfully for a few minutes, working his way through several of the large onion rings. "It's not that surprising that she's so concerned about us knowin' what we know or that she comes across the way she does."

Liz grabbed one of the last two onion rings and bit into it to keep from smiling. She wondered if Alex had any idea that he was falling for Isabel Evans.

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From her seat at the counter Isabel watched the two friends as they talked quietly and wondered what they were discussing. She was jealous of their easy camaraderie and she wished she were able to have friendships that were so open and accepting.

If she were honest with herself she would have to admit that Alex was the closest she had ever come to actually having a friend. Max didn't really count because he was her brother and he had no choice, he had to put up with her. But, Alex had a choice; he didn't have to put up with her… so why did he?

Isabel shook her head to dislodge the doubts that were starting to creep in. Why was she wasting her time thinking about someone who was clearly too dense to realize that she was waiting for him to come over and speak to her?

"You could've just come over and said hi."

She was startled when Alex suddenly appeared and sat down beside her. "What?" She had been so lost in thought that she hadn't even seen him move. Not that she had been watching him, she silently denied. No, she definitely hadn't been doing that.

"I realize the friendship thing is a relatively new concept for you so we're gonna start at the beginning," he said with a teasing smile. "When you see someone you know – and especially if it's a friend – it's customary on our planet to walk up to said individual and exchange a greeting."

Isabel quickly glanced around and relaxed when she realized that no one was close enough to have overheard his comment. "Your statement assumes that I had noticed you were even here."

"Ouch!" If he hadn't known that she had been watching him earlier or seen the teasing glint in her dark eyes he might have taken her comment personally. "Maybe I should've specified that the greeting should also be pleasant. We'll need to work on your greetings." He sat up straighter and his expression turned serious. "Lesson one, you have a friend who happens to be without a vehicle for the evening… what do you do?"

"Offer to call him a taxi?"

Alex rolled his eyes at her response. "Try again."

"Oh, you wanna borrow my phone to call your mom to come and get you?"

"Third time's the charm, give it another shot."

"You want me to offer to give you a lift to your house?"

"Well, since you offered so graciously I'd be happy to accept." He grinned. "I'll even duck down so no one sees me and none of the football players make either of us a target again."

"You think I'm a target?"

"I'm sure you've had plenty of hassles to deal with because we've been seen together."

"I think it's safe to say that the guys from the football team will leave you alone. Matter of fact I think they'll be leaving all of their usual targets alone from now on."

"You did somethin' to them," he guessed. He leaned on the counter when her dark gaze focused on him, wondering what she was going to say.

Isabel glanced around, making sure no one was near enough to overhear what she was about to say. "I may have taken a short tour through their subconscious."

"You shouldn't do that," he said, but he couldn't help the smile that surfaced.

"Probably not, but they shouldn't have done what they did to you." She finished her cherry soda and set the glass aside.

"What makes you think they're just gonna leave me alone?"

"The fact that they're bullies who only bother people when they're together; they never cause a problem unless they're in their little pack."

"Yeah, I've noticed that they've been maintaining a lot of distance from each other as well as everyone else." He reached for his glass and took a drink.

"That's because the three of them are in the process of asking themselves where their sexual preferences lie."

Alex barely had time to slap his hand over the lower half of his face when her ill-timed response caused him to choke and soda came pouring out through his nose. "Well," he rasped as he tried to clean himself up with a handful of napkins, "that had to be one of my top ten personal best moments." His only saving grace was that he hadn't been facing her when he sprayed soda everywhere.

"Alex, are you all right?" Liz asked, rushing over to him.

"Fine, just uh, just…" He cleared his throat and glanced at Isabel. She was just starting to be a little more at ease around him and he didn't want to do anything to jeopardize that or make her uncomfortable so he shook his head. "I somehow managed to breathe in at the same time I swallowed and now I've got soda everywhere."

"You want me to give you a ride home?"

"Nah, I thought I'd impose on Isabel since she was getting ready to leave."

"Only if you promise that you won't drink anything in the jeep," Isabel stated, her tone imperious.

"No problem." He grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder as he stood up. "Liz, I'll see you in a couple of hours, and don't forget to bring the movie."

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Maria went through the radio stations several times before she found something she liked. She started to sing along with the singer and only made it through part of the chorus before the station changed from alternative to hard rock. She turned her head to glare at Michael despite knowing he couldn't really see her expression in the near-darkness inside the car.

"You don't just change the radio station in someone else's car," she snapped, reaching out to change the station once more. "That's road trip etiquette 101."

"I don't give a damn about road trip whatever," Michael growled as he leaned forward and changed the station once more. "I'm not gonna listen to some chick whinin' about life bein' ironic when there's real music playin' on another station."

Maria listened to the lyrics of the current song – if one were to be so generous, she thought – and shook her head. "Cowboy's From Hell? I'll assume that's the name since it's just about the only phrase I can make out." She rolled her eyes. "And this is better than Ironic, in your opinion?"

"At least he's not whinin' into the mic."

"Yeah? Well, first, she's not whining. And second, all he's doing is screaming into the mic." She changed the station again and shook her head when she realized the song was over. She smiled in satisfaction when the next song started, certain that he probably hated boy bands.

Michael cringed at the sound coming out of the speakers. She couldn't honestly expect him to listen to this crap.

Maria slapped his hand away when he reached for the radio again. "Don't touch that tuner."

He stared at the lighted face of the radio for several long, painful seconds before he placed his fingers against it and slid them to the left.

Maria watched the numbers on the display change until they stopped at the station he obviously preferred. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what he was doing when he placed the palm of his hand over the radio, but when the music paused for a moment and his hand started to glow she changed her mind.

"What're you doing?" she demanded.

"Attempting to keep you from torturin' me any longer," he said as he settled back into his seat once again.

Maria pressed the tuner button and frowned at it when nothing happened. "What'd you do to it?"

"I'm not listening to angry chick music or a bunch of boy bands and their unrealistic lyrics."

Maria paused and sorted through her mental lyrics file, searching for the words to the song that had been playing before he messed with the radio. "I'll never break your heart… I'll never make you cry?" She waved her right hand in the space between them. "What's wrong with that?"

"It's disturbing that you have the lyrics memorized," he muttered. "Look, it's unrealistic, that's all I'm sayin'. How do you promise that you're never gonna break someone's heart or make them cry? You can't promise that."

"Don't you think that's a little cynical?"

"Don't you think it's foolish for people to let themselves believe they're never gonna get hurt by the people they love? It's the people that love you and care about you that're most likely to hurt you."

"Okay, I'm not denying that," Maria said, her thoughts immediately turning to Liz and Alex.

Michael silently swore when he heard the sadness in her voice. He had not meant to bring that subject up. "What's your opinion of Native American music?"

"I like some of it. My mom listens to a lot of it, especially at her shop. Matter of fact, there's a tape in the glove compartment; I can't remember the guy's name, but I know he's local. His stuff's pretty good."

Michael opened the glove compartment and pulled out maps, loose papers, and a broken flashlight before finding the tape. "There a reason you're carryin' around a flashlight that doesn't work?" he asked as he shoved everything back inside. He frowned when he pushed the door shut and it wouldn't lock into place. "Why is it this crap never goes back in the way it came out?" he growled as he shifted the stuff around. As soon as the door closed and locked to his satisfaction he opened the cassette case and dropped the tape into his hand. "How 'bout a compromise?"

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"How're you doing with the research?"

Alex glanced at Isabel when she parked the jeep in his driveway and he nodded at the house. "You wanna come inside and take a look?"

"Don't you have plans?"

"Not for a couple of hours. Dad's away on business and Mom's at one of her book club meetings, so I'm on my own until Liz gets here."

"And why is Liz coming over?"

"We hang out and watch movies on Friday nights if neither of us has a date."

"You have dates?" Isabel winced at how harsh that had sounded and she turned to look at him when he chuckled unexpectedly.

"Believe it or not, I have had dates before." He opened the door and got out, turning and leaning down to face her. "Anyway, if you wanna come inside and take a look at what I've done this past week, you're more than welcome to do so."

Isabel stood in Alex's room several minutes later, looking over the short list that he had compiled over the past few days and frowned. "The closest one lives in Nebraska." She shook her head and looked at him. "How does this help us?"

"We're getting closer, aren't we? The closest we had found last week was in Ohio." He reached out to take the paper from her. "What happens when we do find a code talker who's close enough for us to take the next step?"

"What?"

"Well, logically, the next step is to go see the code talker, talk to him one-on-one, and see if he'd be willin' to decode the letter for us. So, I guess my question is, are you gonna want to take that next step?" He sat on his bed and watched her move around restlessly, straightening up things on his shelves. "I realize Max vetoed any further investigation into the letter and its origin, but you've got every right to know where you come from, Isabel. He can do what he thinks is best for you and he can try to protect you, but he can't live your life for you."

Isabel pondered what Alex was saying as she found herself staring at the photographs of him with Liz and Maria, his parents, and other people that she didn't know. She envied the sense of belonging that was so apparent not only in the pictures but also when he was around his family and friends.

"I don't know if I'll be able to take that next step, Alex," she admitted finally.

"Okay. Tell me why."

She motioned at the shelf filled with framed photographs. "Do you know what I see when I look at these pictures?"

"What do you see, Isabel?" he asked, sensing that this was important.

"You belong here, with all of these people, and you don't have to question that. You know who you are, you know that you belong here, these people accept you for who you are, and they love you unconditionally."

"You don't think your parents love you unconditionally?"

"My parents don't really know me, Alex. I want to believe that they would still love me if they knew, but in a way I'm glad that Max is so damned cautious because I can blame him for them not knowing." She paused a moment and her fingers brushed along the edge of one of the picture frames. "We don't know how we got here; neither of us can remember anything from before we were found out in the desert… we don't know if it was intentional or accidental… I mean, who leaves their children in the desert? What kind of parents abandons their six-year-old children like that?"

Alex moved to stand beside her, daring to reach out and gently pry her fingers off of the shelf she was gripping. He knew she and Max were adopted, but he hadn't known that they had been abandoned in the desert at the age of six years old. That one small piece of information actually explained a lot about her and why she acted the way she did a lot of the time. It was no wonder she had reacted so badly to them finding out about the secret she shared with her brother; she felt like she had no control over the situation. "Maybe we don't know the answers to those questions yet, Isabel, but they're out there somewhere, and if you decide you wanna keep lookin' that's what we'll do; it's totally up to you."

"I don't know what I want to do." She stared at his hand, holding hers so securely in his own, solid without pressuring her to return the gesture. "What if we find something? What if we find the answers and…"

He heard the slight catch in her voice and his right hand came up to lift her chin so he could meet her shimmering gaze. "I can't guarantee that the answers will be the ones you want, Isabel, all I can guarantee is that if you decide you wanna pursue this as far as we possibly can that's what we'll do."

Why was he so willing to do this? What did he expect to gain by helping them?

Alex shook his head when her expression changed from confused to suspicious and she pulled her hand free from his loose grasp. He was certain he knew what she was thinking as she backed away from him and moved closer to the door. She was questioning his motives, wondering why he would help them, and what he expected in return.

"I should go," she said suddenly. "My mom will start to wonder where I am if I'm not home soon."

His expression turned somber when she practically ran from his room and within moments he heard the front door slam shut. He stood at the window and watched her hurry to the jeep and drive away, his expression pensive. He wasn't surprised that she had pulled away or that she had run from him, and he wondered what her decision would be. He intended to keep looking for a code talker who lived closer, hoping that if they found one the man would be able to decode the letter… if she chose to pursue that option.

Isabel needed answers, she wanted answers, but she was afraid of them. He could understand that better after her earlier revelation but he hoped she could find the courage he knew she possessed to take that leap of faith. She was obviously torn between wanting to know the truth and leaving things as they were, afraid that the truth might be more than she was ready to deal with. The fear that she and Max had been abandoned in the desert intentionally had to be terrifying and he didn't want to contribute to that fear. He was hoping that the answers they might find would alleviate her fears and put her mind to rest that they hadn't been discarded without a second thought by their biological parents.

With a sigh he glanced down at the paper in his hand before sitting down at the computer to start researching again.

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Michael listened to Maria as she sang along with the song playing in the background, glad that they had finally found a compromise. Her voice dropped down until she was making a sound somewhere between a hum and a mumble, indicating that she didn't know all of the lyrics, and he had to smile.

When the song reached its end and the music began to fade she reached out to turn the volume down and he glanced at her.

"I know we're still about an hour and a half away from where we're going, but would you mind if we stopped for just a few minutes?"

"Told you not to drink both of those sodas," he grumbled. "You seen any signs for a rest stop?"

"I know you don't think I'm using a rest stop bathroom."

"What's wrong with it?" Michael smirked at her irritated huff and waited for an explanation. He wasn't that dense; he had been on enough road trips with his sister, her friends, and their cousins to know that rest stop restrooms were unacceptable except in the most dire of circumstances.

"Have you ever been in one of those bathrooms? Disgusting doesn't even begin to cover it, and I will not be stopping in any rest area for any other reason than to stretch my legs." She crumpled up the empty potato chip bag lying on the console between them. "Besides that, we're outta things to snack on and I want chocolate."

"Fine, but we'd better not stop for long," he warned. "Since a rest stop's not good enough, how close is the next town?"

"I don't know; I haven't seen any signs for a while now."

He reached into the back and pulled his bag to the front, unzipping it and feeling around for the map. "Is it gonna bother you if I turn on the overhead light?"

"Huh-uh, go ahead."

"Keep an eye out for the next mile marker," Michael said as he unfolded his map and ran his finger along the road they were on. He slid his finger further along the line that marked the highway when she called out a number. "Okay, we're about twenty miles from Cuba; it's not that big but…" he glanced at his watch. "It's early enough that whatever's there should still be open." Hopefully they could get in and out without anything holding them up because he was in a hurry and he didn't want to be any later than they already were.