Title: In another world 3/5
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Rating: PG?
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or premise of 'Roswell,' look for Melinda Metz, Jason Katims, or the Fox head honchos. I just write stories here. :]
Category: Very AU, skewed reality version of... well, early season 1 to start with. UC couples leading to CC couples - yes, it's homecoming backwards. ;-)
Spoilers: Well, if you haven't seen the pilot, what are you doing here? ;-) Any events from the show might appear here, somewhat distorted. Familiarity with early season 1 will probably help you to make sense of all the clever things I'm trying to do. :-D
Home archive: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Dedication: To all you rabid dreamers and candygirls. I dunno if you're gonna love this or hate it, but either way it's *all for you.* hehehehe.
Note: Anyone with a sensitive stomach when it comes to Max/Tess affectionate scenes... SUCK IT UP!! :-D It's not that bad.
"Go over it for me again."
Alex looked up from his fish sticks to Maria DeLucca and sighed. "I've already gone over it, like, what, four times??" He sighed. It wasn't that easy to sway Maria once she made her mind up. "Okay... you go on bathroom break."
"Gotit."
"Liz and I make a few awkward comments, trying to deal with the Maria DeLucca 'Real Deal' backwash," Alex enumerated, getting a sour look from his friend. "The first guy starts yelling, knocking over plates and such. The second guy draws a gun, and everybody's ducking and covering while they grapple for it. Except Liz, who doesn't have anywhere to go, and looks too stunned to move anyways."
"Alright..." Maria replied, the gears turning inside her head as she processed this.
"Now, I didn't have a great view of what happened next, but the gun went off, and Liz kinda lost her balance, and it looked like there was red on the front of her uniform. I was just going to take a closer look when that Max Evans guy comes rushing up and tells me to call an ambulance, which didn't sound like a bad idea." He sighed. "It looked like Tess was doing crowd control, keeping the tourist nuts from getting in the way while Max saw if Liz was hurt."
"Okay, and then...?" Maria prompted again.
"Well, once I've given all the details to the 911 operator and got back to Liz... well, she was fine. Telling everybody that she'd fallen, and spilled ketchup, and all that. Max and Tess were leaving just around then... and it wasn't too long before the paramedics and the deputy showed up."
"Okay... thanks, Alex," Maria smiled at him. "I just needed to hear that one more time. It was a non-event, right? One of those things that could have become a tragedy with a little bad luck, but we got good luck and it didn't, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah, maybe..." Alex replied, eating one of his fish sticks. For the first time he looked more worried than Maria about the whole thing.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, several miles away, radio loudspeakers were announcing the prize for the best costume at the Crash festival at he Mexican food stand out on route 256. Max and Isabel Evans, Michael Guerin, and Tess Martin were having lunch at one of the wooden tables set up on a patch of desert between the kitchen and the parking lot.
"I can't believe this, Max," Isabel hissed quietly but intensely at her brother. "You know, I finally feel like we have a quasi-normal existence and you go and *blow* it all with one random act of LUNACY!" Frustrated at the reaction she wasn't getting from Max, she turned to a new target. "How did you let my misguided brother do this??"
"Hey, I didn't *let* him do anything," Tess maintained with a quaver in her voice. "He WENT. Once the deed was done I *tried* to help cover all our tracks, but I accept no responsibility here."
"Look, I said I was sorry," Max offered weakly.
"'Sorry'?" Michael mimicked. "You wouldn't let me get away with anything approaching sorry if I pulled the same kind of thing, and admit it. We all swore to that pact, Maxwell, and put our own blood to it. And *you* were the one who insisted to it in the first place. So forgive us if we're not gonna let you off the hook easy."
"You use *your* powers all the time," Max argued weakly at Michael.
"Yeah, when I need to, to keep Hank off my case or something. But it's not about the powers, it's about how you use them. I don't do anything that would look suspicious."
"The important thing," Tess broke in, intent on keeping Max and Michael from going at each other's throats when the four of them, as a group, had whales to fry. "...is to contain this. We just have to figure out what to say to 'Miss Scientist.'" Max had just gotten up to telling the three of them how Liz Parker had confronted him about his strange cells when Isabel couldn't contain her frustration any longer.
Isabel considered a moment, and then caught the awkward expression on Max's face. "Oh my god," she breathed, "you told her the truth."
"I didn't have a choice," Max claimed. "It's gonna be okay."
"Don't you realize that everything has changed?" Tess chimed in.
"No, it hasn't."
"Max, she's right, we're screwed." Michael stood up, leaving the rest of his lunch sitting on the table, and added "It's time to leave Roswell." In the silence that followed, Michael walked off towards Max's Jeep. Somewhat awkwardly, the other three got up and followed him.
"Michael, we can't just leave," Isabel said. Something about the air around them had changed when Michael said that last phrase. Suddenly it wasn't three of them playing 'gang up on Max' anymore. The dynamics had suddenly gotten more complicated.
"Yeah, we can," Michael insisted. "We've always known this day might come. We *said* that when it did, we'd be prepared."
"Michael, were are we gonna go?" Max asked as he opened the driver's door to his car. "You know that Roswell's home."
Checking to make sure no-one else was within earshot, Michael shot back "Roswell's not home," as he got into the back seat diagonally opposite Max. "It's not even in our solar system."
"Well, this is the closest thing we *have* to home right now," Isabel put in.
"For you two maybe," Tess argued. She was sitting in the shotgun seat, as per usual. "It was you the Evans' found on the side of the road, not us. The Martins might have adopted me, but it's not like they're real parents to me."
"My foster dad just keeps me around for the monthly cheque," Michael put in.
"This is gonna be okay," Max said, trying to cut through the same old arguments. "We should just lay low. Go back to school and act normal."
"Act normal?" Isabel repeated, suddenly turning on her brother. "That's your big plan, Max? Don't you realize it's only a matter of time before they find us and turn us over to a labful of government doctors who are going to prod us and examine us and... what was that last one? Oh yeah, *EXTERMINATE US*?"
Max knew better than to argue with her sister when she was in a mood like this, so he just put Bob (the Jeep,) into gear and pulled out of the parking log in a cloud of dust.
About a minute later, as they sped back into town, Tess caught his eye and nodded slightly, which was enough to make Max feel better. She was scared, like they all were scared, but she'd stand by him. That meant the world to Max when things were falling apart.
* * * * *
Maria was waiting for Liz when she got out of the bathroom. "Hey, homegirl, how's it hanging??"
Liz smiled, grateful for the distraction. "Is that it? No more badgering me about what happened at the cafe last night?" she whispered, falling into step beside her best girlfriend.
"Nah... I figured after dealing with Alex, your parents, and the Sherrif, you'd have had enough," Maria replied with a wide smile in return. "Hey... you're blushing. Did Alex neglect to dish in a little gossip at lunch??"
Liz grinned, shaking her head. **How does she DO that??** "Hmm... well, our good friend Alex Charles Whitman invited me to *another* friendly movie evening. 'Bowfinger.'"
"Oh... I *hate* Heather Graham," Maria commented in an aside. "Nobody should be allowed to be that pretty *and* that perky. As far as Alex, what can I say? The poor boy's got it bad."
"Maybe..." Liz sighed, pushing the whole Max Evans bit further out of her mind, and concentrating on Alex. "If so, then why does he never mention the 'date' word? Well, I know, not everybody uses the 'date' word anymore, but... you know what I mean. If he called it a 'thing,' at least then I'd have some idea where we stood, you know?"
"Isn't it a 'thing' by default?" Maria joked. "Well... maybe he's nervous. You know, YOU could always say the 'date' word to *him* and see what happens."
"Why should *I* have to?" Liz joked back with a laugh.
* * * * *
Max threw a glance over his shoulder to check his blind spot, and noticed that Isabel was playing one of her CD's by holding it up to her ear again. "Could you please *not* do that??" That little trick of hers always freaked Max out - not because it would be suspicious if anyone ever caught her doing it. Isabel was always very good about pulling alien tricks like that only when privacy was secure.
The thing that got up Max's butt about the CD player routine was that he hadn't been able to learn it. Isabel always said she'd been able to figure it out by 'instinct' and practice. Recently, Tess had been giving signs that she was starting to get the hang of it. As far as Max himself, he suspected that he knew too much about the theory behind compact discs and players and the stats were freaking him out. He could 'sense' the codes burned into the underside of the CD - he could make 'sound' by maniuplating the molecules of the air and making them vibrate. He could even create passable music, if he was doing it from memory. But to convert the CD binary codes into the music that they represented on the fly?? Max couldn't do it, and it galled him that Isabel, who knew nothing about the complexities involved, somehow *could.*
"Yeah, like listening to a CD is the problem," Isabel wisecracked, taking the disk down and storing it in its case.
"I couldn't just let her die," he argued weakly. Suddenly a siren sounded out of nowhere from right behind her. Isabel looked back as Max scanned using the rearview mirror. The flashing lights on Valenti's light brown van were obvious.
"Is he pulling us over?" Tess asked somewhat unnecessarily.
"Max, go," Michael recommended, kicking at Tess's seat for emphasis. "Let's get outta here."
"We can't start acting guilty," Max reminded him. He carefully put his right blinkers on, slowly decelerated, bore left until Bob was crawling along the shoulder, and braked. "He *always* pulls kids over," he reminded no-one in particular, turning the ignition off. "He does it all the time. It's nothing."
"Yeah, 'nothing,'" Michael mimicked savagely just before Valenti got to Max's window.
"Your license and registration, please?" the lawman asked crisply... the same exact words he'd used in tens of thousands of similar situations, Max was sure. Tess handed him the small slip of paper from the glove compartment, and Max paired it with the small laminated card from his wallet and passed them to Valenti.
"Thanks, Mister *Evans,*" Valenti said with a nod, stressing his name ever so slightly. Did he suspect something? "We had a little trouble at the Crashdown Cafe yesterday. You kids be careful out there."
**Is he deliberately baiting me? Trying to read something from my face??** Max did his best to not let anything slip, but he couldn't be sure how much success he was having. Of course, with those sunglasses on, it was almost impossible to read Valenti's expression.
Valenti handed back the license and registration. "Yes, sir," Max muttered belatedly.
As the sheriff was getting ready to walk away, he noticed something down in the footspace next to Max's brake pedal. Max followed where he was looking - a half-full bottle of Tabasco sauce. Did that have some significance to him??
"Watch your speed," Valenti said in an offhand way. "Arrive alive." He nodded and headed back to his van.
"We will," Max called after him. He reached for the ignition keys, but Tess snatched them away before he could start the Jeep. Max sighed. "Tess, it's gonna be okay."
"No, it's not!!" Tess lashed out at him. "Our cover is blown! And *I* for one don't wanna hang around and wait for him to catch us."
"No-one is 'caught' yet!!" Max argued back as Tess stepped out of the jeep and turned back to face him. "We don't even know if Valenti is looking for aliens yet."
"Someone is!!" Tess railed back. "Somebody buried the bodies of our parents, Max, whether you want to believe that or not. Why else were we left in the middle of nowhere with nobody to take care of us? Why else does the official report on Roswell say 'weather baloon'? Because somebody doesn't want to face up to the reality of alien vivisections. But they want to find US. You can bet that they do. And guess who could lead them right to you?"
"Liz won't tell anyone," Max countered. "She's..."
"And how did 'Liz' react when you told her who you really were? 'You're an alien, great, that's fantastic!?'"
Max looked away nervously and caught a smirk on Isabel's face, which she replaced with a serious expression and a shrug.
"I didn't think so." She threw the keys onto the seat and stormed off into the desert, leaving Max to figure out what to do now.
"Gee, and I thought *I* was pissed," Michael wise-cracked from the back seat.
* * * * *
"Well, goodnight," Liz said, looking up at Alex as they approached the back kitchen entrance to the cafe.
"Yeah," Alex replied, a smile crossing over his face. "See you in the quad tomorrow morning before first class?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure."
"Liz?" Alex asked a little more intently. Liz caught herself and looked up at him with a more alert expression. "Sorry, it just seems like you've been out of it ever since we left the theater."
"Oh, that. Sorry, it..." **I've been thinking about Max Evans and aliens and the fact that you could have been figuring out what to wear to my funeral right about now.** "I was just thinking. You know, about the movie. With that guy... the big star actor, you know, not realizing that these weird people he was bumping into were other actors. Not realizing that his life was being caught on tape without his permission."
"I don't believe it," Alex scoffed. Liz looked up at him, shocked. "Only Elizabeth Parker could take a screwball comedy like that and figure out a way to squeeze deep thoughts out of it. 'Alien love! Why did you say I prefered *ALIEN LOVE??*'"
Liz cringed. That line had been haunting her too. What a pick for Alex to have made on today of all days! "See you tomorrow, Alex," she replied, forcing a smile.
Alex smiled back and threw her a wide wave, It was getting pretty late, so Liz reached up to switch off the light that shone above the doorway.
She didn't make it to the switch. "Liz?" Alex asked. Liz froze, and then realized that in that pose her nubby sweater and her T-shirt were riding up, exposing her skin right where the handprint could be seen. Quickly she yanked the sweater down. "Goodnight, Alex."
He stared at her, for a second, and then turned away. "Goodnight, Liz."
Once Liz was back up on her balcony, finally alone, she sighed and tried to make sense of the past day and change. First there was Alex. She didn't know what she felt about Alex. She hung out with him, she traded caustic wit with him, she watched movies with him. Maria kept going on about the chemistry she saw between them... was that all in Maria's head? She was dating a guy, so she wanted to see her friends romantically involved too - with each other, if at all possible?
Liz could see dating Alex. He was sweet and funny and not-bad-looking and things were always interesting when he was around, and usually good. The only problem was that she wasn't sure Alex could see dating her. And she didn't want to be the first one to mention it, because with the Maria thing, Alex might well agree to a date - even a long string of dates - just out of curiosity and goodnaturedness, when he really wasn't interested in her that way. And Liz didn't like that idea.
**But what if he's thinking the same thing about you, right now??**
And then there was Max. Liz didn't understand where Max was coming from. **How do you understand an alien??** She had been frightened by that scene in the music room... when he slammed the door on her. On the other hand, he had saved her life... and in the process, had clearly been putting at risk the secret he wanted very much to keep safe.
Liz sighed, staring up towards the stars as if expecting them to answer her questions.
But no answer came.
* * * * *
Max took one last look at the clock on his bedside table and nodded. He had to go and see if Liz Parker was back from whereever yet. He'd spilled the secret to her and he needed to be sure that she wouldn't blab it. He pulled on his jacket and opened the bedroom door.
Tess Martin stood on the other side, her hand lifted up to knock.
"Oh, uh... hi," Tess mumbled awkwardly into the silence. "Your mom let me in."
"Right," Max said, closing the door and irrelevantly remembering how he had overheard his paretns talking about how concerned they were that their 'kids' were so serious about dating the only other orphans they knew in their age group from Roswell. After a few discussions about that Isabel and Michael had volunteered to 'go on break' publicly for a while and see what the Evans' reaction to that would be.
Something like this might be only a minor annoyance to any other teenagers, but nothing seemed to be minor. Anything could mean the difference between life and death if it had the potential to draw suspicion their way. Not least running up to a dark-haired girl in a cafe after a shooting incident.
"I'm sorry about... well, you know, blowing up at you earlier," Tess said, sitting down on his precisely made bed. Max could feal his pulse starting to beat stronger - not just because Tess was pretty, though she was. 'Startlingly beautiful' might be a better term. But it was a combination of reactions that normally knocked Max for a loop the first time in any given hour or so he took a good look at her. The 'Tess Effect.' He shook it off and tried to find his place in the conversation.
"I understand," he said supportively, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite her. "We're all scared, and we're all taking it out on each other."
"Except you," Tess pointed out, and sighed. "But it's not just that I'm afraid. Not of Valenti and alien-hunting doctors, and what have you, I mean..."
Max knew what Tess would probably dance around for five minutes or so, if he let her, and spontaneously he cut to the chase. "Liz Parker."
Tess nodded, ever so slightly. "I dunno what to make of this, Max. You rush up and do your healing mojo thing on a girl from your bio class, throwing common sense, caution, *and* the pact out the window all at once." Tess took a deep breath. "That I could handle. But at lunch today, it was like everything was 'Liz this' and 'Liz that.'"
"Well... what did you expect?" Max smiled ever so slightly. "Michael and Isabel were double-teaming me. I don't know this Liz girl that well, but I don't think she's the kind of person who'd turn us in, and I wanted to reassure them about that, except neither of them were listening."
"Is that all it is?" Tess pressed. "And why did you risk all of us for her sake in the first place? Was it just instinct? Seeing someone hurt, maybe someone that only *you* could help, and not thinking about the consequences? Or not wanting to let her die and keep yourself - keep all of us safe, when maybe with a little good luck we could all be okay?"
Max fought back a nervous gulp. "Yeah... pretty much. Somewhere in there." He looked up into those brilliant blue eyes of hers.
"Good. Because I'd hate to think that you'd throw me over - and your sister, and Michael - because you were secretly, madly in love with some human girl who you don't even know." And then Tess giggled - it was obviously a joke to her. "So... where were you headed?"
Max thought a second. "Huh? What do you mean??"
Tess laughed again. "The jacket, big boy. Or do you just kind of lounge around in it??"
"Oh." Max joined in the laughter. "Nowhere that can't wait." He took off the jacket. "Oh... I napster-ed a few Sarah MacLachlan songs for you. Wanna take a listen?" He gestured to the desktop computer underneath his bedroom window."
"Twist my arm..." Tess replied in that throaty, flirty voice that she used on such occasions, and laughed out loud. They switched places, Tess taking the chair and pulling it up to the computer table, and Max sitting up against the pillow on his bed and watching his girlfriend's face.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Author: Chris Kenworthy
Email: kelworth@chriskweb.net
Rating: PG?
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or premise of 'Roswell,' look for Melinda Metz, Jason Katims, or the Fox head honchos. I just write stories here. :]
Category: Very AU, skewed reality version of... well, early season 1 to start with. UC couples leading to CC couples - yes, it's homecoming backwards. ;-)
Spoilers: Well, if you haven't seen the pilot, what are you doing here? ;-) Any events from the show might appear here, somewhat distorted. Familiarity with early season 1 will probably help you to make sense of all the clever things I'm trying to do. :-D
Home archive: http://www.fanfiction.net/~chriskenworthy
Dedication: To all you rabid dreamers and candygirls. I dunno if you're gonna love this or hate it, but either way it's *all for you.* hehehehe.
Note: Anyone with a sensitive stomach when it comes to Max/Tess affectionate scenes... SUCK IT UP!! :-D It's not that bad.
"Go over it for me again."
Alex looked up from his fish sticks to Maria DeLucca and sighed. "I've already gone over it, like, what, four times??" He sighed. It wasn't that easy to sway Maria once she made her mind up. "Okay... you go on bathroom break."
"Gotit."
"Liz and I make a few awkward comments, trying to deal with the Maria DeLucca 'Real Deal' backwash," Alex enumerated, getting a sour look from his friend. "The first guy starts yelling, knocking over plates and such. The second guy draws a gun, and everybody's ducking and covering while they grapple for it. Except Liz, who doesn't have anywhere to go, and looks too stunned to move anyways."
"Alright..." Maria replied, the gears turning inside her head as she processed this.
"Now, I didn't have a great view of what happened next, but the gun went off, and Liz kinda lost her balance, and it looked like there was red on the front of her uniform. I was just going to take a closer look when that Max Evans guy comes rushing up and tells me to call an ambulance, which didn't sound like a bad idea." He sighed. "It looked like Tess was doing crowd control, keeping the tourist nuts from getting in the way while Max saw if Liz was hurt."
"Okay, and then...?" Maria prompted again.
"Well, once I've given all the details to the 911 operator and got back to Liz... well, she was fine. Telling everybody that she'd fallen, and spilled ketchup, and all that. Max and Tess were leaving just around then... and it wasn't too long before the paramedics and the deputy showed up."
"Okay... thanks, Alex," Maria smiled at him. "I just needed to hear that one more time. It was a non-event, right? One of those things that could have become a tragedy with a little bad luck, but we got good luck and it didn't, you know what I mean?"
"Yeah, maybe..." Alex replied, eating one of his fish sticks. For the first time he looked more worried than Maria about the whole thing.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, several miles away, radio loudspeakers were announcing the prize for the best costume at the Crash festival at he Mexican food stand out on route 256. Max and Isabel Evans, Michael Guerin, and Tess Martin were having lunch at one of the wooden tables set up on a patch of desert between the kitchen and the parking lot.
"I can't believe this, Max," Isabel hissed quietly but intensely at her brother. "You know, I finally feel like we have a quasi-normal existence and you go and *blow* it all with one random act of LUNACY!" Frustrated at the reaction she wasn't getting from Max, she turned to a new target. "How did you let my misguided brother do this??"
"Hey, I didn't *let* him do anything," Tess maintained with a quaver in her voice. "He WENT. Once the deed was done I *tried* to help cover all our tracks, but I accept no responsibility here."
"Look, I said I was sorry," Max offered weakly.
"'Sorry'?" Michael mimicked. "You wouldn't let me get away with anything approaching sorry if I pulled the same kind of thing, and admit it. We all swore to that pact, Maxwell, and put our own blood to it. And *you* were the one who insisted to it in the first place. So forgive us if we're not gonna let you off the hook easy."
"You use *your* powers all the time," Max argued weakly at Michael.
"Yeah, when I need to, to keep Hank off my case or something. But it's not about the powers, it's about how you use them. I don't do anything that would look suspicious."
"The important thing," Tess broke in, intent on keeping Max and Michael from going at each other's throats when the four of them, as a group, had whales to fry. "...is to contain this. We just have to figure out what to say to 'Miss Scientist.'" Max had just gotten up to telling the three of them how Liz Parker had confronted him about his strange cells when Isabel couldn't contain her frustration any longer.
Isabel considered a moment, and then caught the awkward expression on Max's face. "Oh my god," she breathed, "you told her the truth."
"I didn't have a choice," Max claimed. "It's gonna be okay."
"Don't you realize that everything has changed?" Tess chimed in.
"No, it hasn't."
"Max, she's right, we're screwed." Michael stood up, leaving the rest of his lunch sitting on the table, and added "It's time to leave Roswell." In the silence that followed, Michael walked off towards Max's Jeep. Somewhat awkwardly, the other three got up and followed him.
"Michael, we can't just leave," Isabel said. Something about the air around them had changed when Michael said that last phrase. Suddenly it wasn't three of them playing 'gang up on Max' anymore. The dynamics had suddenly gotten more complicated.
"Yeah, we can," Michael insisted. "We've always known this day might come. We *said* that when it did, we'd be prepared."
"Michael, were are we gonna go?" Max asked as he opened the driver's door to his car. "You know that Roswell's home."
Checking to make sure no-one else was within earshot, Michael shot back "Roswell's not home," as he got into the back seat diagonally opposite Max. "It's not even in our solar system."
"Well, this is the closest thing we *have* to home right now," Isabel put in.
"For you two maybe," Tess argued. She was sitting in the shotgun seat, as per usual. "It was you the Evans' found on the side of the road, not us. The Martins might have adopted me, but it's not like they're real parents to me."
"My foster dad just keeps me around for the monthly cheque," Michael put in.
"This is gonna be okay," Max said, trying to cut through the same old arguments. "We should just lay low. Go back to school and act normal."
"Act normal?" Isabel repeated, suddenly turning on her brother. "That's your big plan, Max? Don't you realize it's only a matter of time before they find us and turn us over to a labful of government doctors who are going to prod us and examine us and... what was that last one? Oh yeah, *EXTERMINATE US*?"
Max knew better than to argue with her sister when she was in a mood like this, so he just put Bob (the Jeep,) into gear and pulled out of the parking log in a cloud of dust.
About a minute later, as they sped back into town, Tess caught his eye and nodded slightly, which was enough to make Max feel better. She was scared, like they all were scared, but she'd stand by him. That meant the world to Max when things were falling apart.
* * * * *
Maria was waiting for Liz when she got out of the bathroom. "Hey, homegirl, how's it hanging??"
Liz smiled, grateful for the distraction. "Is that it? No more badgering me about what happened at the cafe last night?" she whispered, falling into step beside her best girlfriend.
"Nah... I figured after dealing with Alex, your parents, and the Sherrif, you'd have had enough," Maria replied with a wide smile in return. "Hey... you're blushing. Did Alex neglect to dish in a little gossip at lunch??"
Liz grinned, shaking her head. **How does she DO that??** "Hmm... well, our good friend Alex Charles Whitman invited me to *another* friendly movie evening. 'Bowfinger.'"
"Oh... I *hate* Heather Graham," Maria commented in an aside. "Nobody should be allowed to be that pretty *and* that perky. As far as Alex, what can I say? The poor boy's got it bad."
"Maybe..." Liz sighed, pushing the whole Max Evans bit further out of her mind, and concentrating on Alex. "If so, then why does he never mention the 'date' word? Well, I know, not everybody uses the 'date' word anymore, but... you know what I mean. If he called it a 'thing,' at least then I'd have some idea where we stood, you know?"
"Isn't it a 'thing' by default?" Maria joked. "Well... maybe he's nervous. You know, YOU could always say the 'date' word to *him* and see what happens."
"Why should *I* have to?" Liz joked back with a laugh.
* * * * *
Max threw a glance over his shoulder to check his blind spot, and noticed that Isabel was playing one of her CD's by holding it up to her ear again. "Could you please *not* do that??" That little trick of hers always freaked Max out - not because it would be suspicious if anyone ever caught her doing it. Isabel was always very good about pulling alien tricks like that only when privacy was secure.
The thing that got up Max's butt about the CD player routine was that he hadn't been able to learn it. Isabel always said she'd been able to figure it out by 'instinct' and practice. Recently, Tess had been giving signs that she was starting to get the hang of it. As far as Max himself, he suspected that he knew too much about the theory behind compact discs and players and the stats were freaking him out. He could 'sense' the codes burned into the underside of the CD - he could make 'sound' by maniuplating the molecules of the air and making them vibrate. He could even create passable music, if he was doing it from memory. But to convert the CD binary codes into the music that they represented on the fly?? Max couldn't do it, and it galled him that Isabel, who knew nothing about the complexities involved, somehow *could.*
"Yeah, like listening to a CD is the problem," Isabel wisecracked, taking the disk down and storing it in its case.
"I couldn't just let her die," he argued weakly. Suddenly a siren sounded out of nowhere from right behind her. Isabel looked back as Max scanned using the rearview mirror. The flashing lights on Valenti's light brown van were obvious.
"Is he pulling us over?" Tess asked somewhat unnecessarily.
"Max, go," Michael recommended, kicking at Tess's seat for emphasis. "Let's get outta here."
"We can't start acting guilty," Max reminded him. He carefully put his right blinkers on, slowly decelerated, bore left until Bob was crawling along the shoulder, and braked. "He *always* pulls kids over," he reminded no-one in particular, turning the ignition off. "He does it all the time. It's nothing."
"Yeah, 'nothing,'" Michael mimicked savagely just before Valenti got to Max's window.
"Your license and registration, please?" the lawman asked crisply... the same exact words he'd used in tens of thousands of similar situations, Max was sure. Tess handed him the small slip of paper from the glove compartment, and Max paired it with the small laminated card from his wallet and passed them to Valenti.
"Thanks, Mister *Evans,*" Valenti said with a nod, stressing his name ever so slightly. Did he suspect something? "We had a little trouble at the Crashdown Cafe yesterday. You kids be careful out there."
**Is he deliberately baiting me? Trying to read something from my face??** Max did his best to not let anything slip, but he couldn't be sure how much success he was having. Of course, with those sunglasses on, it was almost impossible to read Valenti's expression.
Valenti handed back the license and registration. "Yes, sir," Max muttered belatedly.
As the sheriff was getting ready to walk away, he noticed something down in the footspace next to Max's brake pedal. Max followed where he was looking - a half-full bottle of Tabasco sauce. Did that have some significance to him??
"Watch your speed," Valenti said in an offhand way. "Arrive alive." He nodded and headed back to his van.
"We will," Max called after him. He reached for the ignition keys, but Tess snatched them away before he could start the Jeep. Max sighed. "Tess, it's gonna be okay."
"No, it's not!!" Tess lashed out at him. "Our cover is blown! And *I* for one don't wanna hang around and wait for him to catch us."
"No-one is 'caught' yet!!" Max argued back as Tess stepped out of the jeep and turned back to face him. "We don't even know if Valenti is looking for aliens yet."
"Someone is!!" Tess railed back. "Somebody buried the bodies of our parents, Max, whether you want to believe that or not. Why else were we left in the middle of nowhere with nobody to take care of us? Why else does the official report on Roswell say 'weather baloon'? Because somebody doesn't want to face up to the reality of alien vivisections. But they want to find US. You can bet that they do. And guess who could lead them right to you?"
"Liz won't tell anyone," Max countered. "She's..."
"And how did 'Liz' react when you told her who you really were? 'You're an alien, great, that's fantastic!?'"
Max looked away nervously and caught a smirk on Isabel's face, which she replaced with a serious expression and a shrug.
"I didn't think so." She threw the keys onto the seat and stormed off into the desert, leaving Max to figure out what to do now.
"Gee, and I thought *I* was pissed," Michael wise-cracked from the back seat.
* * * * *
"Well, goodnight," Liz said, looking up at Alex as they approached the back kitchen entrance to the cafe.
"Yeah," Alex replied, a smile crossing over his face. "See you in the quad tomorrow morning before first class?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure."
"Liz?" Alex asked a little more intently. Liz caught herself and looked up at him with a more alert expression. "Sorry, it just seems like you've been out of it ever since we left the theater."
"Oh, that. Sorry, it..." **I've been thinking about Max Evans and aliens and the fact that you could have been figuring out what to wear to my funeral right about now.** "I was just thinking. You know, about the movie. With that guy... the big star actor, you know, not realizing that these weird people he was bumping into were other actors. Not realizing that his life was being caught on tape without his permission."
"I don't believe it," Alex scoffed. Liz looked up at him, shocked. "Only Elizabeth Parker could take a screwball comedy like that and figure out a way to squeeze deep thoughts out of it. 'Alien love! Why did you say I prefered *ALIEN LOVE??*'"
Liz cringed. That line had been haunting her too. What a pick for Alex to have made on today of all days! "See you tomorrow, Alex," she replied, forcing a smile.
Alex smiled back and threw her a wide wave, It was getting pretty late, so Liz reached up to switch off the light that shone above the doorway.
She didn't make it to the switch. "Liz?" Alex asked. Liz froze, and then realized that in that pose her nubby sweater and her T-shirt were riding up, exposing her skin right where the handprint could be seen. Quickly she yanked the sweater down. "Goodnight, Alex."
He stared at her, for a second, and then turned away. "Goodnight, Liz."
Once Liz was back up on her balcony, finally alone, she sighed and tried to make sense of the past day and change. First there was Alex. She didn't know what she felt about Alex. She hung out with him, she traded caustic wit with him, she watched movies with him. Maria kept going on about the chemistry she saw between them... was that all in Maria's head? She was dating a guy, so she wanted to see her friends romantically involved too - with each other, if at all possible?
Liz could see dating Alex. He was sweet and funny and not-bad-looking and things were always interesting when he was around, and usually good. The only problem was that she wasn't sure Alex could see dating her. And she didn't want to be the first one to mention it, because with the Maria thing, Alex might well agree to a date - even a long string of dates - just out of curiosity and goodnaturedness, when he really wasn't interested in her that way. And Liz didn't like that idea.
**But what if he's thinking the same thing about you, right now??**
And then there was Max. Liz didn't understand where Max was coming from. **How do you understand an alien??** She had been frightened by that scene in the music room... when he slammed the door on her. On the other hand, he had saved her life... and in the process, had clearly been putting at risk the secret he wanted very much to keep safe.
Liz sighed, staring up towards the stars as if expecting them to answer her questions.
But no answer came.
* * * * *
Max took one last look at the clock on his bedside table and nodded. He had to go and see if Liz Parker was back from whereever yet. He'd spilled the secret to her and he needed to be sure that she wouldn't blab it. He pulled on his jacket and opened the bedroom door.
Tess Martin stood on the other side, her hand lifted up to knock.
"Oh, uh... hi," Tess mumbled awkwardly into the silence. "Your mom let me in."
"Right," Max said, closing the door and irrelevantly remembering how he had overheard his paretns talking about how concerned they were that their 'kids' were so serious about dating the only other orphans they knew in their age group from Roswell. After a few discussions about that Isabel and Michael had volunteered to 'go on break' publicly for a while and see what the Evans' reaction to that would be.
Something like this might be only a minor annoyance to any other teenagers, but nothing seemed to be minor. Anything could mean the difference between life and death if it had the potential to draw suspicion their way. Not least running up to a dark-haired girl in a cafe after a shooting incident.
"I'm sorry about... well, you know, blowing up at you earlier," Tess said, sitting down on his precisely made bed. Max could feal his pulse starting to beat stronger - not just because Tess was pretty, though she was. 'Startlingly beautiful' might be a better term. But it was a combination of reactions that normally knocked Max for a loop the first time in any given hour or so he took a good look at her. The 'Tess Effect.' He shook it off and tried to find his place in the conversation.
"I understand," he said supportively, pulling out a chair and sitting down opposite her. "We're all scared, and we're all taking it out on each other."
"Except you," Tess pointed out, and sighed. "But it's not just that I'm afraid. Not of Valenti and alien-hunting doctors, and what have you, I mean..."
Max knew what Tess would probably dance around for five minutes or so, if he let her, and spontaneously he cut to the chase. "Liz Parker."
Tess nodded, ever so slightly. "I dunno what to make of this, Max. You rush up and do your healing mojo thing on a girl from your bio class, throwing common sense, caution, *and* the pact out the window all at once." Tess took a deep breath. "That I could handle. But at lunch today, it was like everything was 'Liz this' and 'Liz that.'"
"Well... what did you expect?" Max smiled ever so slightly. "Michael and Isabel were double-teaming me. I don't know this Liz girl that well, but I don't think she's the kind of person who'd turn us in, and I wanted to reassure them about that, except neither of them were listening."
"Is that all it is?" Tess pressed. "And why did you risk all of us for her sake in the first place? Was it just instinct? Seeing someone hurt, maybe someone that only *you* could help, and not thinking about the consequences? Or not wanting to let her die and keep yourself - keep all of us safe, when maybe with a little good luck we could all be okay?"
Max fought back a nervous gulp. "Yeah... pretty much. Somewhere in there." He looked up into those brilliant blue eyes of hers.
"Good. Because I'd hate to think that you'd throw me over - and your sister, and Michael - because you were secretly, madly in love with some human girl who you don't even know." And then Tess giggled - it was obviously a joke to her. "So... where were you headed?"
Max thought a second. "Huh? What do you mean??"
Tess laughed again. "The jacket, big boy. Or do you just kind of lounge around in it??"
"Oh." Max joined in the laughter. "Nowhere that can't wait." He took off the jacket. "Oh... I napster-ed a few Sarah MacLachlan songs for you. Wanna take a listen?" He gestured to the desktop computer underneath his bedroom window."
"Twist my arm..." Tess replied in that throaty, flirty voice that she used on such occasions, and laughed out loud. They switched places, Tess taking the chair and pulling it up to the computer table, and Max sitting up against the pillow on his bed and watching his girlfriend's face.
TO BE CONTINUED...