I've been seriously neglecting the updates on this story, and I'm truly
sorry for that!
This part is a tad longer than usual, and I hope that it can make up for the lack of more frequent updates.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------
True Colors
Chapter 13 A
Isabel waved with her hands, trying to get the nail polish to dry as fast as possible. She was sure that the deep purple color of her nails would look perfect in combination with that new lilac shirt she had bought at the mall last Friday.
The nail polish quickly hardened - with some otherworldly help from Isabel - and pretty soon she found herself unoccupied. Her parents were in Tucson for the whole day, and Max was still at the Crashdown, probably drooling and making goo-goo eyes at Liz.
Her gaze wandered around the room, and lingered on her desk, where a deep red notebook was hidden under a couple of schoolbooks. Isabel gently picked it up and wiped the imaginary dust off of the front. While walking to her bed and sitting down on it - in Indian Style - she carefully opened the book at December 15th.
She didn't need to read what she'd written the last few weeks: ever since the beginning of October all she'd written about had been Alex.
Alex, who currently was in Sweden because of the school exchange and wouldn't be home for Christmas.
Alex, with his lame jokes and his sweet concern for her...
Alex, who was always there for her, no matter how much she had hurt him.
Alex...
Her feelings towards him were very confusing and yet they were crystal- clear: she was in love with him, there was no doubt about that and she wasn't going to deny it any longer - not to herself, and not to the others - but she didn't want to be in love with him. She didn't want to depend on someone, to get attached to him when she knew that, eventually, she'd have to leave him.
She didn't want to give him any false hope - she knew she had done that in the past - and she didn't want him to believe that there was a chance that they could be together. No matter how you'd put it, she was different, and couldn't give him the normal life he deserved to have.
She sighed and inspected her fingernails. 'Admit it,' she told herself. 'You're still afraid to let him in, to show him the real you.'
Maybe she should talk to Max about this, about how he and Liz were dealing with their alien 'inheritance', although she wasn't too sure if she'd be comfortable talking about these romantic feelings with her brother.
Especially not when Liz was concerned. Max would get this dreamy, wistful look on his face, and either he would space out - at those times Isabel left him alone with his fantasies and dreams - or he would start talking non-stop about Liz. How beautiful she was, how sweet, how it was to kiss her. All the things Isabel really did not want to know.
Her brother hadn't been doing that well, though, lately. Ever since they had gotten that message from their biological mother - she still didn't want to think of her as their real mother, somehow feeling as if she was betraying Diane - and Liz had left the cave, walking away from them, out of Max's life, he had been a different person.
Somewhere during the holidays he had decided to get Liz back and had been so determined that Isabel had been sure that a part of the old Max had returned. A couple of weeks ago, though, his demeanor dramatically changed - once again caused by a certain Liz Parker - and he had become the same devastated person he had been before.
Isabel was fed up with it, and had had enough of the melancholic lyrics and tones of the Counting Crows. She'd had enough of her brother acting as some sort of pod person, which - ironically enough - he was in reality.
Max had seemed cured from whatever disease he had been suffering this morning, though. His eyes had been sparkling again, and a smile had adorned his face. She hoped that he and Liz had cleared the whole 'destiny'-thing up.
She had to admit that she hadn't liked Liz in the beginning. Isabel had thought of her as an invader who was trying to steal her brother. She had wanted to protect Max from her, knowing that it was inevitable that he would get hurt, since things between them could never be.
She had been proved wrong.
Max and Liz grew closer, and Isabel got to know her better, and a friendship started to blossom between both of them. Isabel had come to like Liz, to appreciate her and see her as a friend and as the sister she never had. She even adopted one of Liz's habits.
It had started as some sort of test, an experiment to see why Liz loved writing in her journal that much. Surprisingly enough, she found herself enjoying those long and silent one-way conversations with her journal. It worked as some sort of tranquilizer, a way to calm her down when her emotions got too intense or confusing. It was the perfect way to escape reality by analyzing it, dissecting it into little pieces that could be comprehended, that could make her understand life in a way she had never understood it.
It seemed that, when she wrote in her journal, all of her deepest worries, feelings and thoughts flooded out of her, being absorbed by the journal, and it cleansed her from the anxiety and fear she used to have.
She had grown to love the journal, and treasured it with every fiber of her being. To make sure that no one could read her deepest thoughts, fantasies and desires, she carefully locked it with he powers, for even though she hadn't written anything about her non-human status, it did contain secrets, things that were private and shouldn't be read by anyone but her.
She took a picture of Alex out of her journal and languidly traced the lines of his face with her index finger. She missed him. A lot. She sincerely hoped that he was having a good time.
A glance on her alarm clock told her that it was almost 11 AM. That meant it would still be very early in Sweden, and that led her to the very logical conclusion that Alex would be asleep. Maybe she could try and dreamwalk him, see him, although she wasn't sure she'd be able to reach him. She could always try, right?
She slipped under the blankets of her bed, and propped a pillow under her head. After a good, deep sigh, she closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to get into the state between consciousness and sleep.
Her mind was just about to turn blank, the first symptoms of the dream plane already showing in the corners of her mind, when she heard the Jeep pull up on the driveway. She let out an exasperated sigh. She'd almost found him. It had been just a matter of seconds until she would have been able to see Alex, talk to him, touch him.
Maybe Max had brought Liz with him, knowing that their parents weren't at home, so he'd head straight to his bedroom. Isabel scrunched her nose, her expression one of disgust at the mere thought of it. At least they would leave her alone, give her the privacy she needed so that - when she'd be able to shut out any noise that could be caused by her brother and Liz - she could pay Alex a little visit.
The sound of a single pair of footsteps in the hall and Max's voice rudely pulverized any hope she'd left.
"Izzy? You home?"
Isabel locked her journal and hid it under a couple of schoolbooks before she went down. She was ready to snap at Max, make a nasty comment for interrupting her, but all of her annoyance evaporated immediately when she was faced with the look on her brother's face. The smile that had been present all through breakfast that morning had abandoned his face, leaving it cold and lifeless. His eyes expressed his tiredness, and gave away that he was confused beyond words, and somehow disappointed.
"Hey," he wearily said, and she noticed that he not only looked tired, but he also sounded tired.
"Hey," she replied, and studied his face a little longer, praying that he was all right.
"You okay?" she concernedly asked.
Max looked up at her and rubbed his forehead and temples tiredly.
"Yeah." he responded. "Just a little bit confused, you know?"
Isabel didn't know what he meant, but just nodded, hoping that she - at least to him - would look very understanding.
"Things didn't work out with Liz?" she cautiously asked, silently cursing herself for those nonchalantly uttered words when she noticed the hurt they caused in Max's eyes.
Max averted his gaze, focusing at a point somewhere in the distance, its location just over Isabel's shoulder.
"I don't know," he honestly said while looking back at her. "It's like I don't know her anymore. One moment, I'm sure that she still loves me, that she wants to kiss me just as badly as I want to kiss her, and then, a few seconds later, she acts so distant, as if nothing happened, as if she didn't feel anything," he sad, devastation very distinct in his voice, and he shook his head remorsefully.
"I know she loves you, Max," Isabel told him, surprising both of them with her statement.
"You think so?" he hesitantly asked her, hope lighting up in his eyes, a soft shimmer coating them with an even more amber tint.
Isabel nodded, willing to reassure him. "Mm-mm," she confirmed. "Don't you see the looks she's giving you during History?"
When Max looked at her with a queer expression on his face, obviously puzzled, she decided to elucidate her earlier words. "During Physics?"
Max's questioning gaze didn't shift in another, more comprehensive one, and she shook her head, amazed by the oblivion he had lived in.
"During any class, actually," she added. "She gives you those whenever she sees you," Isabel confided him.
Max's eyes started to look more understanding, and she sighed, relieved that he finally understood what she was aiming at.
"Liz gives me looks?" he asked her in awe, hope and disbelief equally present in his voice.
Isabel sighed, her previous hope that he understood destroyed by that simple question. He wasn't that dense, now was he? She simply nodded to affirm his question, not in the mood to elucidate the subject any longer.
"What kind of looks?" he eagerly asked her.
She scrunched her nose again, in a rather ungraceful way. Did he really want her to answer that question? Did he really want to hear from his sister that a girl was giving him hot, passionate looks, filled with longing and desire? And Liz wasn't the only one who was giving him these looks. Half of the female population of West Roswell High swooned over him, gave him the same looks as Liz gave him.
She sighed before answering him.
"Secretive looks," she let him know, "looks of." she swallowed, and really did not feel the need to continue, so she trailed off, hoping Max wouldn't ask further.
Max kept looking at her, still expecting an answer to his question, nearly forcing her to go on.
"Looks of. of want," she said, for the lack of a better, of a more fitting word to use in front of her brother.
Max's small smile morphed into a large, goofy one. It was a grin that was stretched from ear to ear, and it made him look more boyish, more like the old Max she used to know. He nearly jumped forward to hug her, almost crushing her with his firm grip.
Isabel smiled awkwardly first, but her smile grew broader and broader, and she quickly hugged him back. Things hadn't been that great between both of them lately, especially not with the whole 'Vilandra'- thing, but right now it seemed as if everything was solved, and Isabel truly was happy for him. Her brother had returned. Strangely enough, she had come to love the I'm-oh- so-in-love-with-Liz-Parker-Max, and she found herself immensely glad to have him back again, despite the fact that she, once again, would have to listen to more of his worship-like talking about the girl.
"I don't know what happened between the two of you," she told him, "but you have to get together again. You're so pathetic when you're apart. Both of you are," she finished her statement, her grin subduing into a sympathetic smile. If Max would leave now, she might still be in time to reach Alex.
Max pulled back and looked her in the eyes. "You really, really think that I should get back to Liz's house?" he asked her, obviously wanting more certainty, desperately clinging to her words as a drunken man to his bottle of whisky.
He trusted her, Isabel suddenly realized. He trusted her vision and opinion about one of the most important things in his life, and wanted, no, needed to hear her advice.
A sudden pang of guilt hit her. Here she was, trying to jockey him out of the house for her own, pure selfish reasons, while he trusted her.
"Yes, I do," she answered him.
"She loves you, you love her; it's as simple two plus two," she clarified, not only trying to reassure Max, but also trying to soothe her conscience. She was right, now wasn't she? It was as plain as it could be, right? Boy loves girl, girl loves boy, so they should be together, and live happily after.
Max hugged her again. "Thanks, Izzy," he whispered in her ear, "You're the best sister I ever could've wished for."
He gave her a lopsided smile, a little bit embarrassed by this sudden revelation, and fastened the buttons of his jacket again. When he walked out of the house, towards his Jeep, Isabel called after him.
He turned around, his gaze questioning.
"You'd better give Liz some time to think about all of it, and walk to the Crash," she explained.
Max nodded, seeing her point, and mouthed a thank-you to her. He hauled up his keys out of his pocket and tossed them towards her. Isabel was touched by the gesture. Max wasn't all too comfortable with her driving the Jeep, seeing as she had failed her driving test twice, and only passed the second time by using her powers and a little bit of her female charms. It was an exceptional occurrence that he was this willing to lend the Jeep to her. Maybe she should try and be nicer to him more often.
She grinned at her own thoughts, finding them very selfish, but knowing that she didn't mean it like that. She cared for her brother, and didn't know what she'd do without him.
'I'd probably drive more often in the Jeep,' she semi-wickedly thought.
She caught the keys just before they could land on the floor and proudly showed them to Max, the keys dangling between her fingers.
He clapped, quasi impressed by the 'stunt' she'd just pulled and waved his goodbye at her before stuffing his hands in his pockets and starting the rather long journey to the Crashdown, a determined look etched on his face.
Isabel smiled and softly closed the front door, placed the keys on a shelf and climbed the stairs, making a beeline to her bedroom.
A few minutes later she was completely oblivious to her surrounding, and if she would have been seen, one would have sworn she was deep asleep, her sophisticated features being graced with the dreamy smile playing on her lips.
This part is a tad longer than usual, and I hope that it can make up for the lack of more frequent updates.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------
True Colors
Chapter 13 A
Isabel waved with her hands, trying to get the nail polish to dry as fast as possible. She was sure that the deep purple color of her nails would look perfect in combination with that new lilac shirt she had bought at the mall last Friday.
The nail polish quickly hardened - with some otherworldly help from Isabel - and pretty soon she found herself unoccupied. Her parents were in Tucson for the whole day, and Max was still at the Crashdown, probably drooling and making goo-goo eyes at Liz.
Her gaze wandered around the room, and lingered on her desk, where a deep red notebook was hidden under a couple of schoolbooks. Isabel gently picked it up and wiped the imaginary dust off of the front. While walking to her bed and sitting down on it - in Indian Style - she carefully opened the book at December 15th.
She didn't need to read what she'd written the last few weeks: ever since the beginning of October all she'd written about had been Alex.
Alex, who currently was in Sweden because of the school exchange and wouldn't be home for Christmas.
Alex, with his lame jokes and his sweet concern for her...
Alex, who was always there for her, no matter how much she had hurt him.
Alex...
Her feelings towards him were very confusing and yet they were crystal- clear: she was in love with him, there was no doubt about that and she wasn't going to deny it any longer - not to herself, and not to the others - but she didn't want to be in love with him. She didn't want to depend on someone, to get attached to him when she knew that, eventually, she'd have to leave him.
She didn't want to give him any false hope - she knew she had done that in the past - and she didn't want him to believe that there was a chance that they could be together. No matter how you'd put it, she was different, and couldn't give him the normal life he deserved to have.
She sighed and inspected her fingernails. 'Admit it,' she told herself. 'You're still afraid to let him in, to show him the real you.'
Maybe she should talk to Max about this, about how he and Liz were dealing with their alien 'inheritance', although she wasn't too sure if she'd be comfortable talking about these romantic feelings with her brother.
Especially not when Liz was concerned. Max would get this dreamy, wistful look on his face, and either he would space out - at those times Isabel left him alone with his fantasies and dreams - or he would start talking non-stop about Liz. How beautiful she was, how sweet, how it was to kiss her. All the things Isabel really did not want to know.
Her brother hadn't been doing that well, though, lately. Ever since they had gotten that message from their biological mother - she still didn't want to think of her as their real mother, somehow feeling as if she was betraying Diane - and Liz had left the cave, walking away from them, out of Max's life, he had been a different person.
Somewhere during the holidays he had decided to get Liz back and had been so determined that Isabel had been sure that a part of the old Max had returned. A couple of weeks ago, though, his demeanor dramatically changed - once again caused by a certain Liz Parker - and he had become the same devastated person he had been before.
Isabel was fed up with it, and had had enough of the melancholic lyrics and tones of the Counting Crows. She'd had enough of her brother acting as some sort of pod person, which - ironically enough - he was in reality.
Max had seemed cured from whatever disease he had been suffering this morning, though. His eyes had been sparkling again, and a smile had adorned his face. She hoped that he and Liz had cleared the whole 'destiny'-thing up.
She had to admit that she hadn't liked Liz in the beginning. Isabel had thought of her as an invader who was trying to steal her brother. She had wanted to protect Max from her, knowing that it was inevitable that he would get hurt, since things between them could never be.
She had been proved wrong.
Max and Liz grew closer, and Isabel got to know her better, and a friendship started to blossom between both of them. Isabel had come to like Liz, to appreciate her and see her as a friend and as the sister she never had. She even adopted one of Liz's habits.
It had started as some sort of test, an experiment to see why Liz loved writing in her journal that much. Surprisingly enough, she found herself enjoying those long and silent one-way conversations with her journal. It worked as some sort of tranquilizer, a way to calm her down when her emotions got too intense or confusing. It was the perfect way to escape reality by analyzing it, dissecting it into little pieces that could be comprehended, that could make her understand life in a way she had never understood it.
It seemed that, when she wrote in her journal, all of her deepest worries, feelings and thoughts flooded out of her, being absorbed by the journal, and it cleansed her from the anxiety and fear she used to have.
She had grown to love the journal, and treasured it with every fiber of her being. To make sure that no one could read her deepest thoughts, fantasies and desires, she carefully locked it with he powers, for even though she hadn't written anything about her non-human status, it did contain secrets, things that were private and shouldn't be read by anyone but her.
She took a picture of Alex out of her journal and languidly traced the lines of his face with her index finger. She missed him. A lot. She sincerely hoped that he was having a good time.
A glance on her alarm clock told her that it was almost 11 AM. That meant it would still be very early in Sweden, and that led her to the very logical conclusion that Alex would be asleep. Maybe she could try and dreamwalk him, see him, although she wasn't sure she'd be able to reach him. She could always try, right?
She slipped under the blankets of her bed, and propped a pillow under her head. After a good, deep sigh, she closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to get into the state between consciousness and sleep.
Her mind was just about to turn blank, the first symptoms of the dream plane already showing in the corners of her mind, when she heard the Jeep pull up on the driveway. She let out an exasperated sigh. She'd almost found him. It had been just a matter of seconds until she would have been able to see Alex, talk to him, touch him.
Maybe Max had brought Liz with him, knowing that their parents weren't at home, so he'd head straight to his bedroom. Isabel scrunched her nose, her expression one of disgust at the mere thought of it. At least they would leave her alone, give her the privacy she needed so that - when she'd be able to shut out any noise that could be caused by her brother and Liz - she could pay Alex a little visit.
The sound of a single pair of footsteps in the hall and Max's voice rudely pulverized any hope she'd left.
"Izzy? You home?"
Isabel locked her journal and hid it under a couple of schoolbooks before she went down. She was ready to snap at Max, make a nasty comment for interrupting her, but all of her annoyance evaporated immediately when she was faced with the look on her brother's face. The smile that had been present all through breakfast that morning had abandoned his face, leaving it cold and lifeless. His eyes expressed his tiredness, and gave away that he was confused beyond words, and somehow disappointed.
"Hey," he wearily said, and she noticed that he not only looked tired, but he also sounded tired.
"Hey," she replied, and studied his face a little longer, praying that he was all right.
"You okay?" she concernedly asked.
Max looked up at her and rubbed his forehead and temples tiredly.
"Yeah." he responded. "Just a little bit confused, you know?"
Isabel didn't know what he meant, but just nodded, hoping that she - at least to him - would look very understanding.
"Things didn't work out with Liz?" she cautiously asked, silently cursing herself for those nonchalantly uttered words when she noticed the hurt they caused in Max's eyes.
Max averted his gaze, focusing at a point somewhere in the distance, its location just over Isabel's shoulder.
"I don't know," he honestly said while looking back at her. "It's like I don't know her anymore. One moment, I'm sure that she still loves me, that she wants to kiss me just as badly as I want to kiss her, and then, a few seconds later, she acts so distant, as if nothing happened, as if she didn't feel anything," he sad, devastation very distinct in his voice, and he shook his head remorsefully.
"I know she loves you, Max," Isabel told him, surprising both of them with her statement.
"You think so?" he hesitantly asked her, hope lighting up in his eyes, a soft shimmer coating them with an even more amber tint.
Isabel nodded, willing to reassure him. "Mm-mm," she confirmed. "Don't you see the looks she's giving you during History?"
When Max looked at her with a queer expression on his face, obviously puzzled, she decided to elucidate her earlier words. "During Physics?"
Max's questioning gaze didn't shift in another, more comprehensive one, and she shook her head, amazed by the oblivion he had lived in.
"During any class, actually," she added. "She gives you those whenever she sees you," Isabel confided him.
Max's eyes started to look more understanding, and she sighed, relieved that he finally understood what she was aiming at.
"Liz gives me looks?" he asked her in awe, hope and disbelief equally present in his voice.
Isabel sighed, her previous hope that he understood destroyed by that simple question. He wasn't that dense, now was he? She simply nodded to affirm his question, not in the mood to elucidate the subject any longer.
"What kind of looks?" he eagerly asked her.
She scrunched her nose again, in a rather ungraceful way. Did he really want her to answer that question? Did he really want to hear from his sister that a girl was giving him hot, passionate looks, filled with longing and desire? And Liz wasn't the only one who was giving him these looks. Half of the female population of West Roswell High swooned over him, gave him the same looks as Liz gave him.
She sighed before answering him.
"Secretive looks," she let him know, "looks of." she swallowed, and really did not feel the need to continue, so she trailed off, hoping Max wouldn't ask further.
Max kept looking at her, still expecting an answer to his question, nearly forcing her to go on.
"Looks of. of want," she said, for the lack of a better, of a more fitting word to use in front of her brother.
Max's small smile morphed into a large, goofy one. It was a grin that was stretched from ear to ear, and it made him look more boyish, more like the old Max she used to know. He nearly jumped forward to hug her, almost crushing her with his firm grip.
Isabel smiled awkwardly first, but her smile grew broader and broader, and she quickly hugged him back. Things hadn't been that great between both of them lately, especially not with the whole 'Vilandra'- thing, but right now it seemed as if everything was solved, and Isabel truly was happy for him. Her brother had returned. Strangely enough, she had come to love the I'm-oh- so-in-love-with-Liz-Parker-Max, and she found herself immensely glad to have him back again, despite the fact that she, once again, would have to listen to more of his worship-like talking about the girl.
"I don't know what happened between the two of you," she told him, "but you have to get together again. You're so pathetic when you're apart. Both of you are," she finished her statement, her grin subduing into a sympathetic smile. If Max would leave now, she might still be in time to reach Alex.
Max pulled back and looked her in the eyes. "You really, really think that I should get back to Liz's house?" he asked her, obviously wanting more certainty, desperately clinging to her words as a drunken man to his bottle of whisky.
He trusted her, Isabel suddenly realized. He trusted her vision and opinion about one of the most important things in his life, and wanted, no, needed to hear her advice.
A sudden pang of guilt hit her. Here she was, trying to jockey him out of the house for her own, pure selfish reasons, while he trusted her.
"Yes, I do," she answered him.
"She loves you, you love her; it's as simple two plus two," she clarified, not only trying to reassure Max, but also trying to soothe her conscience. She was right, now wasn't she? It was as plain as it could be, right? Boy loves girl, girl loves boy, so they should be together, and live happily after.
Max hugged her again. "Thanks, Izzy," he whispered in her ear, "You're the best sister I ever could've wished for."
He gave her a lopsided smile, a little bit embarrassed by this sudden revelation, and fastened the buttons of his jacket again. When he walked out of the house, towards his Jeep, Isabel called after him.
He turned around, his gaze questioning.
"You'd better give Liz some time to think about all of it, and walk to the Crash," she explained.
Max nodded, seeing her point, and mouthed a thank-you to her. He hauled up his keys out of his pocket and tossed them towards her. Isabel was touched by the gesture. Max wasn't all too comfortable with her driving the Jeep, seeing as she had failed her driving test twice, and only passed the second time by using her powers and a little bit of her female charms. It was an exceptional occurrence that he was this willing to lend the Jeep to her. Maybe she should try and be nicer to him more often.
She grinned at her own thoughts, finding them very selfish, but knowing that she didn't mean it like that. She cared for her brother, and didn't know what she'd do without him.
'I'd probably drive more often in the Jeep,' she semi-wickedly thought.
She caught the keys just before they could land on the floor and proudly showed them to Max, the keys dangling between her fingers.
He clapped, quasi impressed by the 'stunt' she'd just pulled and waved his goodbye at her before stuffing his hands in his pockets and starting the rather long journey to the Crashdown, a determined look etched on his face.
Isabel smiled and softly closed the front door, placed the keys on a shelf and climbed the stairs, making a beeline to her bedroom.
A few minutes later she was completely oblivious to her surrounding, and if she would have been seen, one would have sworn she was deep asleep, her sophisticated features being graced with the dreamy smile playing on her lips.