Tess peered into the mirror. She decided that she needed more coverup for those bags. I look horrible, she realized. It wasn't something she was used to. Then again, she'd never been this depressed.

Before moving to Roswell, she'd had something to live for. All of her desires and emotions had been put away in search of her soulmate. But her "soulmate" didn't realize how they were meant to be together. And what was left for Poor Tess? Nothing. Even Isabel Evans, Max's sister, distrusted her. When Tess first came to Roswell, Isabel had been her first friend. Admittedly, Tess had walked up to her in the first place hoping to get to her brother through her, but once she'd gotten to know her, she's thought that they were actually friends. But Isabel dumped her immediately after finding out that Tess was an alien, too. It had never actually been said, but they'd stopped hanging out, and it was mostly because of Isabel's lack of interest.

She sighed, put some more powder under her eyes, and headed for school.

As she stepped into the street, she almost got run over but a brick red Jeep Wrangler. "Hey!" she sputtered angrily, looking up at the driver. As soon as she saw him, she bit her lip to keep from gasping.

"Sorry," Michael Guerin grinned sheepishly from the driver's seat of the car. "I just got it last week. I'm not totally used to it. Want a ride?"

Incredulous, she stepped in. Then she realized that she needed to come up with something smart if she was going to have any kind of spine this year. So that she wouldn't end up another Liz Parker. "I don't know if I should, though. I mean, I want to make it to the first day of junior year alive, right?"

In fact, she didn't really have a preference to whether she made it there alive or not. What did she have to live for? She didn't have Max, she didn't have Isabel, and she wasn't going to save her home planet from slavery.

Michael looked over at her. "You're not okay."

"I'm fine." Even though she avoided his gaze. She was a horrible liar--unless her life was at stake. And for some reason she felt guilty, even though she knew she hadn't done anything; not in the past few months, anyway."No. You're upset. About...seeing Max? Seeing Liz?" He knew exactly what she was upset about. It wasn't seeing Max. Or seeing Liz. It was seeing the two of them together.

"You know, you don't even know Max. You know who he's supposed to be, and who he was, but you barely know him now." He stopped for a red light and looked over at her, and this time, she shakily met his gaze. "How can you be in love with someone you don't even know?"

It wasn't a harsh voice. He was speaking in the gentlest voice she'd ever heard him speak in. He was just trying to reason with her. And everything he said made perfect sense. But still...

"I'm not in love with him," Tess denied. "I had some ideas about destiny. But I'm fine with him and Liz as a couple now." Which they weren't yet. But Tess had pretty much given up on trying to get Max. There was no way he'd ever look at another girl when Liz was around, let alone look at another girl in that way. "Nice car," she changed the subject. It must have been too obvious a switch, because he smiled in a skeptical way. "Matches your aura," she pointed out, noticing it for the first time."That's why I got it," Michael replied, obviously pleased that she'd noticed. "Only worthy people can see it. You know, like that story, with the king's clothes."

"Oh, The Emperor's New Clothes," Tess recalled. "I always liked that story. For a classic, anyway."

Michael raised an eyebrow, but he didn't ask, and she didn't answer. "One of my earlier foster homes was full of little picture books of classic kids' stories. It had some with words, too. I read every single one until I knew them by heart. Even the picture books--I knew the drawings by heart."

"You read," Tess said skeptically.

"'What incested him the most was the blatant jokes of the ones who pass it all off as a jest, pretending to understand everything and in reality not knowing their own minds,'" Michael quoted. "Ulysses, page 665. Hey, we're here." He quickly got out of the car and walked into the building.

"Don't bother opening the door for me," Tess called after him, somehow feeling better than she'd had earlier this morning. Maybe, just maybe, she and Michael could be on their way to becoming friends.

She walked into the building with a slightly higher held head than before.