"It makes no sense that these so-called 'roads' are just barely one lane wide anyway," Liz grumbled, peering back at the sedan following us, which just might have an FBI officer in it following us. "If we came upon a car coming the other way, everybody would get stuck."
"Most vehicles that leave the main highway going into the desert can off-road, at least a little," I pointed out. "And the desert floor right near the road is pretty flat and even, almost as good as a paved shoulder really. As long as at least one vehicle can drive off the gravel, then they'd both be okay."
"Alright," Liz admitted, and there was some silence for a few moments. "Why are you slowing down, Max?"
"Well, I want him to not be lurking quite so far away from us, and this seemed to be the easiest way of forcing the issue," I commented. "If he's either innocent or pretending to be, then he should stop hanging back and start to crowd us if I go slowly enough."
"Okay, yeah, if that's what you were going for, then it's working," she reported, a bit dubiously. "What next?"
I smiled a bit to myself, enjoying what would be coming up next. "That car of his, I wouldn't say that it would be much good at going off the road, would you?"
"Umm, no, actually," Liz admitted. "He could probably just manage to get off the lane to let somebody else pass if he had to, nothing more adventurous. Why do you ask?"
"Just hoping that you'd realize the beauty of this as I'm doing it," I bragged, and steered to the left, taking the Jeep off the gravel lane and onto the flat dusty ground, turning in a medium-size arc, neither as tight as the Jeep could manage if really pushed to it nor as wide as I might try if I had all the concrete in the world to circle around in. Just after passing the point where we were parallel to the road, I straightened out the steering wheel, and for a moment we were pointed straight at the sedan, but of course it was moving at a different vector, so there was no risk of a collision.
Liz giggled with appreciation as I climbed our vehicle back onto the road - now we were behind the other guy and he was behind us, (in our own respective orientations,) and each driving further away from the other. But we were pointed back towards route 285, and he was going further out into the boonies. There was no way that the guy, (if it really was the guy that Liz had spotted, or any kind of guy,) could stop us from getting back to the main road, and he'd probably have to do a lot of fancy manoeuvring just to turn around in time to keep us well in sight - and that would be completely obvious what he was up to, then. Of course, what we had done made it reasonably obvious that we knew we were being followed and were trying to shake pursuit, but that didn't mean that they would be smart to make it even more blatant trying to keep up. I admit that I don't really know how an FBI alien hunter would think that well, but it seems that if you know that your target sees you coming, it would be better to back off and try from another direction, or another day. Like Topolsky did, actually, in a way - as soon as Alex and Liz really knew anything about who she really was and what she was really doing in Roswell, bam she was gone so fast that she nearly left burnt rubber, no tying up loose ends, no explanations, and no sign of her since. To me, that made sense, and worried me a little, in that it made it obvious that the people who were giving agents like Topolsky instructions weren't at all stupid.
"Okay, so," I said after a moment, turning toward Liz - and realized that was craned around so far to peer behind us that her butt was sticking up into the air above her seat. (A surge of hormones flooded through me, again, at that sight which I hadn't been at all prepared for at that moment.) "Ooh, guess I don't need to tell you to look closely and see what he's doing."
"Yeah, nothing much, just driving away," she reported, and then, as the highway was drawing close, "Okay, I think that he's trying to do a three-point turn and look like he just figured out this is the wrong road or something. He might have been trying to time it for when he was nearly out of our sight."
"Yeah, but that works both ways," I said, pressing just a bit harder on the gas. "We're nearly out of view from him as well, and if he doesn't realize that we've sped up while he's still turning around, in time..."
"Then he won't know where to find us," Liz said, returning her rear end to the bucket seat as the car started to shake back and forth slightly, and grinning back at me. "I like it. Let's make tracks."
#
"Alright, still no sign of anybody," Liz reported, having checked just as we were passing out of sight of the highway again - this time on the right desert side road. This one was wider, and roughly paved instead of gravel, but still had the same impression that would keep anybody from just heading down it for a casual joyride - unless they had unusual tastes in joy, that is.
"Okay, then I guess we can go back to the 'getting to know each other better' stuff for a little while," I decided. There hadn't been much conversation between us during the stretch of time that I just skipped over, just a lot of nervous watching the road behind us. Whoever the guy in the sedan was, we seemed to have gotten rid of him, (or her,) without attracting attention from a different side. "Let's see, what was your toughest decision you've made in your life - up until that moment in the cafe, let's say, and why?"
Liz immediately burst out laughing. "Sorry, sorry, it's just - except for your little special requirement, that sounds so much like the kind of a question I expect to get for college applications... or a bit like the ones on... do you remember the journalism assignment that we had, the day that Michael went off to Marathon in Maria's car, and took her with him?"
"Well, yeah, I think most of the things about that day are pretty firmly locked in my memory," I admitted. "Including having to deal with Kyle Valenti as my partner for that torture exercise. I can't decide which was worse, having to answer his questions, or listening to his answers... no, I take that back. Answering was harder."
"Yeah, I can appreciate that it was tricky, under the situation," Liz admitted softly. "Dealing with Isabel wasn't that much fun either, and I gather that Michael and Maria used that questionnaire, among other handy things, to drive each other crazy." She sighed. "Should I take this opportunity for even hanging out with Kyle for as long as I did? He's going to cause more trouble, I'm sure of that."
"No, come on, that's not necessary," I insisted, wanting to keep a lid on this line of thought, especially because there were still times when I thought that Kyle would be a better match for Liz than me in the long run - though we were hardly her only options when it came to that. "You thought you liked him, you broke up with him when you realized that it was right, and you don't owe me any apologies, or any other explanations other than that."
"Umm, okay," Liz said, sounding a bit puzzled by the intensity of my response - well, I could understand her confusion. "Let's see, umm - oh, I guess I didn't mention this to you already. I was chatting with Mister Sommers on the last day of class before Christmas vacation - you know, after he'd handed out the grades and was letting people come and see him if we had any problems. I just thanked him and mentioned that I'd been worried that the assignment would hurt my average, because I only got a B-minus on the paper I turned in. He was mentioning that he hadn't actually given much weight to that exercise in the final reckoning, and then - you'll never guess who he told me had helped him organize the assignment and the partners?"
"Let me try," I told her. "Kathleen Topolsky, neighbourhood guidance counsellor, FBI undercover agent..."
"...And big fat liar, as Maria said when we found her number in that other guy's motel room," Liz finished "Yep."
"Sorry that I stole your thunder," I said.
"Nah, that's okay. Did you know before I even brought it up?"
"Not really - I'd had an outside suspicion. It fit the pattern. As you might imagine, since you told me what you saw on her computer screen, I've made a bit of an effort to reconstruct what Topolsky had been doing since she got to town and arrived at the school - to figure out what she might be able to report about us. There were quite a few clues staring us in the face."
"Like how she went into full investigation mode on Michael as soon as she arrived," Liz put in. "I was so sure at the time that was glaringly suspicious..."
"But the job posting she'd been given as guidance counsellor gave her an alibi," I said. "We all swallowed it, especially since I can understand how a real guidance counsellor might be worried about him. I was also thinking of those in-depth interviews she gave everybody for career preparation week."
"Ooh, yeah," Liz said, groaning. "I - well, I was trying not to give anything away about you, especially since it was only a few weeks after I'd found out, but - if she had any real psych training, she probably figured out a few interesting things from me there."
"Not more than I gave away, I'm pretty sure," I told her seriously. "When she did the picture exercise with the playground full of kids, she actually managed to draw me out a little about - well, about how lonely I feel at school most of the time. Doesn't take too much to make the leap from lonesome to..." I faltered, not sure of the right word.
"Alienated?" Liz offered, and I couldn't resist a round of chuckles.
"Okay, now that we've taken a side trip down memory lane, do you have an answer to the original question or not?" I pressed.
"Hmm... what was it again?" Liz asked, and I was about to repeat it when she found that in her memory again. "Toughest decision before I really met you?"
"Yeah, I guess that's what it comes down to," I said.
"Hmm again... a tougher inquiry than it looks," Liz insisted. "I really do think that my life was very sheltered before that day, and I didn't have that many difficult questions put to me." I nodded soberly, hoping to prompt her to come up with something interesting through silence. "I suppose if anything, it would have been the whole mess with Cousin Rose, two years ago."
"I didn't - well, I didn't know that you had any cousins," I said. "Nobody's ever mentioned them."
"I'm not surprised," Liz said, and took a deep breath. "Alex and Maria know, of course, but they know that it gets me a bit - well, worked up even to hear her name, so they generally don't mention it. Kind of an awkward subject anyway. Rose is my only first cousin - on Mom's side, Rosa Ortecho. Her father, Uncle Steve, is half Mexican and half Native American, and I suppose that Rose looks a bit like I would if I had those elements in my ancestry too."
"She must be pretty in an exotic way," I said without thinking about it. "Not that I'm complaining about your girl-next-door kind of beauty, of course."
"Heaven forefend," Liz said. But the exchange seemed to have kept her from getting too deeply into whatever upset her about having to mention Cousin Rose. I was tempted to call the question off, to save Liz any kind of distress, but maybe if it was a tough question it really would help me understand her more and bring the two of us closer together. We'd agreed that today was a day to work on our relationship, and Liz should understand that that wasn't always easy. I'd get into some tough answers myself - as soon as I wasn't behind the wheel, which seemed like a reasonable excuse.
"Rose and I weren't that close - her family live several hours away, up just on the other side of Santa Fe from here, but whenever we visited, we always had the best fun," Liz continued. "She's two years older than I am, and I nearly idolized her. The last time they came - well, I guess that she was around the same age that I am now, and I was fourteen." Liz took a deep breath. "That's the time that she brought out some white stuff and a needle and asked if I wanted to learn how to shoot up."
"Oh, god." I nearly swerved off the rough road. "I - how did you react, you didn't..."
"No, come on, girl scout like me? I'd heard too many stories about the evils of drugs, and I couldn't loosen up enough to ignore them completely. I told her no thanks, and for a while things got ugly enough that I thought she was going to insist on sneaking out so she could do it alone. If she had, things might have been - but I persuaded her that it was okay, that I didn't mind if she did it while we hung out together."
"Uh-oh," I muttered. "So what happened?"
"Umm - nothing right away," Liz said after a long moment. "Rose got high, we talked and watched some videos that I had around, and she found them outrageously funny." She sighed. "But - well, I guess that I saw enough to worry me; that it wasn't all harmless fun, that something nasty had hold of the Rose that I knew. And so, after wrestling with it, I took action before it was too late, the only way that I knew how." Another slightly ominous silence. "I betrayed her trust, told my parents and hers about what I'd seen and what she'd told me."
"Aunt Elaine said that she'd known that Rose had fallen in with a crowd that she was worried about, but none of them had any idea that the drug stuff was that bad," Liz continued after a moment. "They took her away, while she was still under the influence, and found a public drug treatment facility that would take her within a few days. And since that day, I've been dead to Rose Ortecho. She never forgave me for what I did."
"Oh," I said, not at all sure what to think of all of this. To think that Liz had broken the code of silence imposed on her by one of the people that she loved most in the world at that time, and she had this big huge secret about me and the people that I loved. But she had spoken up about Rose for her own good, because she was worried about her dear cousin, and in a way, Liz had done that already, and my world hadn't come crashing down yet.
She had told the truth to Alex, in Valenti's jail, because Alex had known too much already and not understood enough about why Liz was keeping the secret. At that same moment, (or nearly,) Isabel had been making the case to me that Alex was dependable enough to be told, as we watched the Sheriff's station from the far side of the parking lot. I guess that they had both been proved out.
And Maria - Liz had been the one to tell her, too, and though I wasn't sure yet if that would save us from some danger, Maria had proved that she wasn't out to ruin our lives. She'd had the chance to tell Valenti too, been pressured to it by the lawman, and she had stood firm. (Or lied like a rug, which amounted to the same thing in this case, if you ask me.)
"But how's Rose doing now?" I asked, and trying to prepare myself not to judge Liz on the outcome of the rehab.
"Pretty well, as far as Aunt Elaine and Uncle Steve know," Liz said with a smile. "She's in Narcotics Anonymous, and seems to be sticking with her program, but still bitter towards them too. She's moved out, into Santa Fe, and is working at a restaurant there."
"Waitressing work runs in the family?" I asked lightly.
"Nah, she's just a hostess," Liz shot back. "So, is that enough? Did I answer the whole question?"
"Yeah, more than," I agreed. "I wouldn't say that any of that qualifies as 'sheltered' either. That was a hard decision, and you made the right call."
"Yeah, I keep telling myself that when I think of it," Liz agreed. "That if it hadn't been for my warning, Rose might be a crack-whore by now, or dead of an overdose or whatever." She sighed. "But I guess I'm bitter too, that things couldn't go back to the way that they used to be between us, that I had to give up my relationship with my cousin to save her from the evils of drugs. Maybe - maybe if I'd been more patient, more convincing, I could have..."
"May motherships in the skies above protect us from the 'maybe I could haves,'" I intoned, and Liz broke up laughing.
"I guess that you're right. I took action when I saw the need, and I did the surest thing that I could think of," Liz agreed. "I don't have anything to apologize for over that - not to Rose and not to myself." She looked around. "So, how much further to the spot where your parents found you guys?"
I looked around myself, and groaned. "I think I was so busy listening to your story that we passed it. Hang on; guess it's U-turn time - again."
She laughed merrily as I slowed down and got ready to turn on the wheel.
#
"Okay, I'm pretty sure that our route lies over that-away," I said, pointing over towards a nearby hill that looked a little bit like a giant crawling turtle - as good a landmark as any to remember to find my way around in a place like that. (Especially handy because the turtle resemblance more or less stuck with me no matter what vantage I looked at the rocks from.) "Anything to say before we start hiking?"
"Umm, yeah, a few," Liz admitted, looking around where we had parked. "So, is this where you guys were found?"
"No, I didn't think that we had time to retrace the whole route," I pointed out. "Nearly six miles, remember?"
"Right, I - well, I admit I was thinking of that," she admitted.
"We turned off the road that we were picked up from and down an even - well, I won't even call it a trail, sort of a rough track through the desert," I added, to recap. "Thought about pointing out the spot as we passed it, but I guess I was on a roll with the story about Isabel and Malamud Johnson."
"And this particular spot on the track was picked how exactly?" Liz asked. "I don't think it's the end of the line, though it does seem to turn left up ahead and go along the edge of that little escarpment. Is this the closest we can get the Jeep to somewhere?"
"That's it exactly," I said, getting out. I tried to get around to the other side of the Jeep in time to open Liz's door for her, but she was having none of the little chivalries today, and met me on her feet.
"Well, start talking about where and how you figured this much out," she explained. "I don't want to just be along on this trip for company and conversation, I need to help you figure out your way if I possibly can, but I can't do that if I don't know how much you've already worked through."
"Isn't there something to be said for coming from the problem from a completely fresh perspective?" I asked.
"Not enough, really. Ignorance is no substitute for critical judgment, and you can be sure that I'll be thinking very critically about your methodology, and pointing out anything that I think is fallacious."
"Oh, boy," I muttered. "Okay, well - it's not like I had a completely logical and rational methodology for most of what I've been doing, I'll admit that much. Just trying to sort through the memories and impressions I've been able to gather about that first long hike, and plotting them against maps - my own maps that I've made of this part of the desert, and other ones that I was able to find online. You can look through my work if you like, and see if it makes any sense to you." I opened up the right door into the back of the Jeep. "In fact, since we came out here without much preparation aside from grabbing lunch beforehand, it probably makes sense to search the Jeep for any supplies and tools that might possibly be useful." It only took a few seconds to find the Velcro binder with my desert maps in it and hand it to her.
"Yeah, I guess that we did charge off with precious little planning, or at least I did," Liz admitted. "That's not terribly like me - but then, I guess I'd gathered up so much nerve and chutzpah into just going to your house and talking to you that I wasn't really thinking clearly about anything else. Umm - we should have brought snacks and drinks that we can carry along..." I gathered some junk food into an old backpack from the floor of the back seat. "Umm - and a compass and a flashlight, in case we actually do find some likely caves and need to see inside them." Both of those I was also able to produce. "And of course a blanket."
"Can't actually help you there," I said. "But what do we really need a blanket for, anyway? We're not staying out all night, and we're definitely not supposed to be sneaking off somewhere and kissing, right?"
"Well, no - and you've caught me, I guess that was what I was thinking of, you're right. Bad Liz - going against the pact." She playfully slapped at the back of her own left hand - and somehow I found that titillating. (I can't even explain that to myself.) "Anything else in there that looks useful?"
"Hmm... tire iron, probably not, unless we're terribly worried about evil aliens or armadillos attacking us?" I looked at Liz, who shook her head, dark hair flying everywhere. "Ponchos - when does it actually rain around Roswell anyway? And - ooh, a camera. Might be good to immortalize our search, huh?"
"Definitely," Liz said, taking the small handheld from me and tucking it into her purse after looking at the controls. "Only 9 shots left on that roll of film - and we'd better save most of them to document the pod cave when we find it."
"Definitely," I agreed, shrugging the knapsack on. "Okay, next step, turtle hill."
"Huh?" Liz turned and saw me pointing. "Why do you call it a turtle hill? I don't see the resemblance."
I blinked, and led the way a bit off to the side, hoping that she'd see the turtle from a slightly different angle.
#
"Okay, okay, yeah, I can get the resemblance," Liz said, just as we were leaving Turtle hill behind, and I wondered for a moment if she were just saying it to make me feel better or if her perspective had really snapped in from this unlikely vantage. Then I let those worries go for now.
"Alright, so - there was something that you were asking me just as we were leaving town, and I deferred basically because I was driving the car," I reminded her. "Can't remember quite what it was - can you?"
"Uhh - yes, I can, but I don't want to bring it up again just right now," she said. "We can deliberately go into something that's kinduv traumatic like that later, but - oh, I guess I'm just not just for the angstiness right now. Is - well, it sounds weird to ask, but is that okay?"
"Sure," I told her. "But only if you come up with something else to ask me about."
"Hmm." Liz considered that one as we walked down a fairly flat and solid stretch among the rough rocks that was just wide and straight enough to be used as a footpath, though I wasn't sure if anybody else had used it for that before I came along. "What do you want to learn most, about your alien side?"
"Huh." That question took me a long time, and eventually what I got first was a clarification that I had to ask for in return instead of an answer. "Do you mean as in, what questions do I want to get the answers to, no matter what they are, or what answers do I hope most are true?"
"Ohh, yeah, I guess there's that to consider," Liz admitted. "A lot of questions that you're not even sure if you'd want to ask, because the answers could be good or bad." She sighed. "Okay, questions, but - the questions that you're most curious about, leaving aside, as much as you can, the fears about what the answers might me."
"There's so much that I can't help but be curious of," I said, the words nearly pouring out of me with no space between them. "What's life really like back home for - well, for our parents, or whoever they were who came aboard that ship so long ago? I - I guess that 'where' their home was isn't big on the list, just because it's likely to be not something that has much meaning in my experiences, but - but I do wonder if the 'where' is even a planet anything like Earth."
"I guess I always assumed that," Liz said. "What other possibilities are you thinking of?"
"Well, it sounds a bit geeky to be listing them off, but - maybe just spaceships, travelling through the galaxy and never really stopping anywhere for long. Or domed cities on an airless moon, hollowed-out asteroid settlements, artificial rings that look exactly like the surface of a planet except that the horizon curves up because you're inside..."
"Oh, like the Ringworld?" Liz said. "I read that for a book report last year. It was alright - a few things that I didn't expect, but generally..."
"Umm - actually, I was meaning smaller, but I suppose even something as big and improbable as the Ringworld is possible," I agreed, wondering if the parts Liz 'hadn't expected' were the sex scenes in the book. "But we're getting away from your original question, so I'll move on to another answer. The other thing that I guess I'm really curious about is why aliens came to Earth after all - were they looking for something particular? Was it just an accidental landing that they hadn't even meant?"
"Could be neither," Liz pointed out. "Just having a look around every planet in this - this sector of space, or something like that, and it was Earth's turn."
"That could be it too," I agreed. "Like an interstellar survey mission or something."
"How about what other aliens - ones who weren't born here on Earth - what they're like?" Liz asked a bit more quietly. "Are you curious about that too?"
"I - I guess so," I said softly. "I'm scared enough, really seriously scared of serious consequences from finding out, that it reduces the curiosity factor a lot."
"Because of the stories we heard about - about Nasedo?" Liz asked.
"Well, yeah. Not just from River Dog, either - though hearing how an alien turned on Atherton and killed him was definitely a bit chilling. And there's Valenti's collection of photos of dead bodies with alien silver handprints on them. Any way you look at it, there's an alien murderer out there."
"Ugh, yeah, but do remember that we don't know the alien's side of it," Liz admitted. "He's dangerous, I'll admit that, but consider that he's been stranded on an unfamiliar planet, and may have had people like Topolsky and the ones that she worked for hunting him - for decades. For all that we know, some of the people Nasedo killed could have been trying to kill or capture him, or expose his existence to people who would come after him if they knew that there was an alien around." She sighed. "And although this is much more of a dark grey area, he might have been driven to the murder and robbery of innocents just to stay alive and one step ahead of the FBI. That's a horrible thing, I know, but - I don't know, I wonder how I'd deal if I were in his situation."
"If I were in his situation, I might well hate all human beings just for being human, and want to see the lot of them dead," I muttered quietly. "That's something I can relate to, but not excuse or condone. If that's what he's come to, then..." I took a deep breath. "Then it's better for everybody that Nasedo should die, instead of more innocent people who just happen to get in his way."
"Okay." Liz took a deep breath. "But promise me, if you find out about some new alien, that you'll take the time to find out the truth before you react, alright Max?"
"Of course," I assured her. "People like Valenti have been jumping to enough conclusions about evil aliens; I don't want to ever do that myself."
Liz nodded, and we walked along in silence for a while.
#
"Okay, I think that this is the furthest in this direction that Michael and I have ever been," I pointed out to Liz. "We're technically on the Puhlman property, so be careful. I - I think from what I can remember of that dream, or repressed memory or what have you, I more or less know which way to head from here, but... don't laugh, okay?"
"At what?" Liz asked. I shot her a serious look. "Okay, do you want me to promise, cross my heart and hope to die?" She even ran a finger in two diagonal lines down the front of her sweater - which only emphasized the bumps on the taut finger. I didn't answer out loud, just got down on my knees to look around - and then tried sitting and craning my neck. "What the heck are you - ohh, trying to get the same perspective on things about you that you had when you were just a little boy?"
"Yeah, that's the idea," I agreed. I wasn't entirely satisfied with the results of the activity, but it did seem to reinforce the sense of what direction I'd have 'come' to this spot from, so I got up and led the way. "We've never actually done that before. Maybe it'll help somewhat."
Liz was by my side quicker than I'd have expected, reaching out to take my hand. I got a sensation like an electrical shock from her hand touching me, only not quite. It wasn't a full flash with visual or sound information, more like an awareness of how Liz's body felt, the same way that she felt it herself at this moment. Not as clear, which was good, as it would have been confusing for me and probably embarrassing for both of us if I'd felt - the sensations of having anatomy that isn't actually part of my own body, but something of a revelation nonetheless. My own skin started to flush hot and I could feel my pulse beating more quickly, not in direct sympathy with the reactions that Liz was having herself, but out of realization of what it meant that she was feeling something that could induce such physical feelings. Of course, I'd already been experiencing something of the same sort being around Liz, but I guess I hadn't realized until just now that we were on a two-way street.
"Why do I matter to you so much, Liz?" I blurted out. Maybe it was a good question to ask, considering what we were supposed to be working our way towards today, or maybe my timing was way too soon. I hadn't really stopped to think about that before asking the question, and now had to soldier on. "Why does it make a difference to you if we kiss tonight, or never again in our whole lives? I - I know that it's a bit of an unfair question to ask, but if you can come up with an answer, it might help."
"I should be able to answer it, so I don't think that it's so unfair," Liz answered slowly. "I could turn it around on you, but though I know that you - you want to kiss me, you're the one who said that we shouldn't, so you're not the one who has to explain it." I was wondering if she would come back and ask me why I didn't think I was ready to kiss her yet, but I definitely wasn't ready to come up with an answer to that yet. As it happens, she didn't right then. "I'm the one who pushed the issue, so it's only fair that I should have to..." She trailed off on that phrase, probably deep in thought.
"You - meeting you was like nothing that's ever happened to me before in my life, Max," she finally said. "I feel this resonance with you, ever since you looked into my soul and showed me a glimpse of yours, and I don't want our lives to ever drift apart, no matter what we are to each other, whether that's true loves or maybe just friends or whatever. But you're also - well, you're ridiculously handsome in a kind of soulful, brooding, just slightly dangerous way that drives my hormones crazy even more than just being sixteen was doing to start with, and I only need to look at your face for my lips to start to pucker up as if they're already getting ready to kiss anything at all. Maybe - maybe that isn't the best reason in the world for us to be dating but I think it's a pretty good place to start, in the absence of a reason that we shouldn't." She took a deep breath.
"And I refuse to believe that the fact that you're an alien and I'm human is a good reason for us not to get involved, if only just because I care about you and know that you don't know any other alien girls other than your sister, so by that logic it's hard for you to have a love life - or a love life that's not squicky. Except for - well, never mind that, because I know that you do like girls, and without meaning to sound full of myself, I'm pretty sure that I get your motor running with plenty of RPM. Do we really need to make it any more complicated than that?"
"Umm... I'm not sure, I guess we'll have to figure that out before midnight," I said, trying to judge the position of the sun in the sky. We'd made pretty good time out this far, but would probably both have to rest more frequently on our walk back towards the car, and it'd at least be approaching sunset by then. A lot of the snack foods were already gone, and I'd probably be ravenously hungry by the time we got back to town - so dinner, somewhere on the north side that wouldn't be too busy on New Year's Eve, and no hurrying back to the party. That sounded good. I hoped that we'd have some luck on the search before we had to head back, and sped up my pace just slightly. "Overall, though, I have to say that that's a pretty good reason - and it got my motor running faster just to hear it."
"Really?" Liz asked, pleased, running her fingers over mine. "Okay, diving into the deep end quickly - do you still want to read stuff from my journal about you? I - I have it here with me, in my purse, and I guess that now is the time, if ever. If I have to explain to you why I feel that we should be together, then maybe what I've written to myself as I try to sort out and process those feelings will be more persuasive than what I can manage to say extemporaneously with you right here in front of me."
I only really hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Yes, certainly, if that's okay with you, then I'd be interested in reading whatever parts of it you show to me." Pause. "And if this isn't too weird, I'd like a page of my own to write in."
That stopped Liz in her tracks. "Really? Why? I guess I never expected you to ask that."
"Well, I don't know," I said. "When I first thought of it, I just wanted to try - working out what I was feeling by writing it down, like you were talking about. But - but I wouldn't need to be in your journal to do that, just to have paper." I stepped around so that I was facing her, and dared to reach out with my free hand and stroke her cheek. "Maybe the truth is that I want to share this most private part of you in both obvious ways - not just reading your own thoughts, but committing mine into your book forever."
That was definitely the right thing to say if I'd wanted, (or needed,) to win Liz over any further. "Okay, well - writing especially could be tricky while walking, so..." She looked around. "Why don't we keep on until we get to that rocky shelf thing, and take a break there?"
I turned to look where she'd pointed, and nodded my agreement. It was the perfect place, a stone formation that looked like it had been built as a two foot high riser next to the pathway, almost completely flat on top. So I walked over with Liz, hand in hand, and we sat on the shelf with our feet hanging down and not touching the ground. I took the knapsack off as Liz fished in her purse for the journal and a pen. "Do you always carry it around with you?" I asked.
"No, but quite often - I do feel safer when I know where it is, though I guess that's not perfect - but it's probably as safe as I am," she said, flipping through the pages. "Okay, here's the first one that I thought of. I - I hope that it's okay if I say I'd still prefer that you don't go riffling about on your own?"
I thought about that for a moment. It was still very slightly galling that Liz was only opening up this diary to me on her own terms - but I could understand if she had parts that she didn't want me to see, particularly if she was working through (understandable) fears about my alien side. And the whole point was that she was trying to get me to understand her well enough to change my mind about the two of us being a couple, so she'd certainly pick passages that were intense and revealing. I decided not to make an issue of it, but something else occurred to me as she handed the journal over. "Alright, but I guess I didn't remember just how small these pages are. I want a double for my own."
"Of course, Max," she assured me. "It's a deal."
So I started reading the entry that she'd indicated - it was September twenty-first, and Liz started off the page by describing how I'd come to the Crashdown to talk with her, and had 'probably deliberately' let her know about the imagery I'd absorbed from her mind while healing her by mentioning the dress with the cupcakes on it. (That much was true - I'd felt that Liz needed to understand how intimate that contact had been for me, and known that she was easily smart enough to figure out that I couldn't know about that dress by normal experience.)
When she got to the part about how I'd reversed the connection and sent her a stream of uncensored thoughts from my own mind, things really got interesting. 'I could feel everything he was feeling,' Liz had written. 'I could feel his loneliness. For the first time I was really seeing Max Evans, I saw me as he saw me, and the amazing thing was, in his eyes, I was beautiful.' (The word 'beautiful' was underlined twice.) That instalment ended with a fairly terse description of how I'd asked her if the process had worked, and left soon after. On the same double page was a shorter entry, dated the next day:
"Max Evans has put a force on me. It's like my whole life changed in an instant. It's just so ironic that when something like this finally happened to me, it was with an alien."
"I - I guess that I do see some of how much I've affected your life, ever since the beginning," I said softly after I'd read that. "There's a lot that it helps me understand. But - but do you really think that it's surprising I can see you're a beautiful person? Maybe I can see you a little deeper down than most of the other people in your life, but - but if Kyle Valenti, say, could really convey to you what he saw when he looked at you, then maybe that impression you got from me wouldn't have been so surprising."
Liz giggled. "Maybe. I guess that my self-image has adjusted a little for the better just in the weeks and months since I wrote that, for the better. But Kyle couldn't or didn't. That's another part of the point, that we can communicate so clearly, without even needing to use words."
"That's not so unique, either," I tried to protest. "You'll meet other guys, before you turn..."
"No, no, you don't get to use that argument on me, Max, not today," Liz interrupted. "I'm not interested in waiting for some other man who might come into my life one fine day. I want to move ahead with my life with the amazing person who I've already met, to give away my heart and risk letting it break and let the future worry about itself." She took a deep breath. "Are you up for any more reading, before you try writing?"
"Umm - okay, yeah," I said, not sure if I was as eager to give away my heart and risk it as Liz was, and if she gave me hers and I accepted it, I knew that I couldn't keep holding my own back for long. But that was something to mull over for my own writing, more than anything else. "How about two others, from different time periods? Good things come in threes."
"Alright, let's see." I held the journal out, Liz took it back, and started to riffle through the pages, going forward, since that first passage had been close to the day of the shooting, when we'd first come to know each other as anything but lab partners. "This is a long one, but good I think. I wrote it the night - the night that Grandma Claudia died."
"Okay." I should have guessed that Liz would have lots of big feelings about that event - about what she'd asked me to do for her beloved Grandma, my response, and what I'd been able to offer her as a consolation prize. I took the journal back and started to read:
"October Nineteenth. This is what I've been thinking: Can life ever go back to normal? Grandma Claudia told me that if things with Max weren't complicated, then he probably wasn't my soul mate. The tough thing about following your heart is what people forget to mention, that sometimes your heart takes you to places you shouldn't be, places that are as scary as they are exciting and as dangerous as they are alluring, and sometimes your heart takes you to places that can never lead to a happy ending. And that's not even the difficult part. The difficult part is when you follow your heart, you leave normal, and you go into the unknown. And once you do, you can never go back."
I could tell that there was more, talking about having dumped Kyle because he didn't trust her and because 'He didn't even seem to understand that he had some ultimate responsibility for what happened to Max, even if he'd never laid a hand on him...' I looked up at Liz. "I - I didn't expect to read something like this here, not today. I - I'm scared of all of the same things that you are too, of those places that never have happy endings, of the unknown and leaving normal."
Liz smiled just slightly. "Ah. I didn't realize that you were - well, were so far behind me. Maybe - maybe what I was pushing for wasn't such a good idea, then. If you really do need more time, then just let me know, and I won't push the issue."
Somehow, her way of phrasing that as she backed off actually nettled my pride. (Had she been trying for that, as a kind of reverse psychology trick?) "Are you saying that you've already worked through these fears, that you're not scared of any of that stuff anymore?"
"Um - working through it sounds about right," Liz agreed, nodding. "Not that I've removed the fear from my heart - fear can be healthy, and this is scary stuff, scarier than most relationships. But I've made a decision to keep moving forward, to not let the fear stop me. And I do believe that happy endings can be found in the most unlikely places, Max." She sighed. "One more page, as we agreed, and then you get to write for yourself?"
"Sure, I guess," I said, wondering what she would come up with next.
It took Liz a long time to decide, realizing that she had only one share coming, and I watched as she flipped back and forth, marking different entries with her fingers, and finally narrowed the list down to two - and no further. "Can't make up your mind?" I asked sympathetically.
"No, not really," Liz admitted.
"What are the two choices, briefly?" I said. "I can read a few more after I write my own."
"Okay, umm - one is from after you got out of the hospital, before I was going to meet Alex and try to convince him not to tell Topolsky about the blood swap," she said. "The other - well, I had started it after we all got back from the Mesaliko reservation, and you came up to the balcony - do you remember? I finished it later."
Oh, right. The night that I told her I had to take a step back. I did remember that she'd been writing into her diary on the lounger when I first announced my presence. Immediately I shied away from reading Liz's before and after thoughts on that night. "Give me the Alex one."
Liz snickered, as if she had guessed what was going through my head. "It isn't all about Alex - but okay, here." She opened the book to the earlier of the two finger-marks and handed it back over.
"23 Nov 1999.
"Have you ever had a moment when you're with the one person in the world you want to be with and the wind is blowing through your hair and the song that just describes your entire soul happens to come on, and then the person that you want to be with happens to love the same song and suddenly you realize that you're listening to it together? And that no matter how crazy your life has gotten there's this one moment - this perfect moment - where you could just say that 'no matter what happens, nothing can take this moment away from me.'
"And then, something does.
"Max hit a horse up on the old highway, when the two of us were out cruising yesterday, skipping fourth period when Miss Hardy was out with the stomach flu. He banged himself up pretty badly, and he's physically okay now, but I'm not sure if everything will turn out all right, because the consequences of that moment have fallen down over our lives like dominoes. The ambulance came before either of us were really thinking clearly, and long before I could have moved Max safely by myself, and of course they took him to a hospital. Max and Isabel have never been to a hospital before this, never gotten sick, and known above anything else that they couldn't let somebody that they didn't trust absolutely run tests on their blood. But Max didn't have any say about the Emergency room staff taking his blood and sending it down for routine labs, and by the time any of us could do anything about it, there was only one workable plan.
"Switch out the samples for somebody who had perfectly normal, everyday blood with no surprises. And I could only think of somebody who would be a close enough match for the test results that Max wanted to get back.
"So I asked Alex, and after pouring on the pleadings, he agreed to help, but got really angry when I couldn't explain why Max needed the switch done, and why I was so concerned about him. I know that I can't tell Alex the truth, not yet when he's this angry, but Topolsky's trying to find some kind of evidence, and I almost think that Alex trusts her more than he does me. We don't know what Topolsky's really after or who she's working for, but she does seem to be on some kind of alien hunt.
"Moments. It's amazing how one can just change things so radically. How a wild horse deciding to cross the road at that exact time could be responsible for Max being discovered. I need one more moment now. One more chance to change direction, to stop something bad from turning into something worse."
That one was several pages, and I checked with Liz before turning the page each time, and she kept nodding. When I got to the end, I had to sit and think, though I wanted to actually say something out loud to Liz, but couldn't decide on what. Again, this wasn't a passage that I'd have expected Liz to share with me, since it wasn't even directly talking about the two of us dating, but the sequence of feelings that it painted was compelling. The exhilarated high of riding along that road together, listening to the same song and loving it simultaneously, the worry that she must have felt as the paramedics were checking me over, as they wheeled me into the emergency room to get tests that she knew could expose me, and that she didn't have any authority to stop. The wrenching conflict of having to drag Alex into this awkward situation for a favour without telling him the truth, and bearing the brunt of his anger without cracking in her resolve, and the desperation of coming up with one last attempt to win Alex over to trust her, at least temporarily, and still not telling him the secret that she believed could not be told.
That entire sequence, from the amazing high to the gut-wrenching low, it started and ended with me and Liz's feelings for me, and I was awed by the intensity and conviction that, like Liz's beauty, she might not be able to see with her own eyes. How could I possibly react in words spoken out loud to any of that?
"I... I still remember that song," I whispered, knowing that it sounded lame but not knowing any better way to start. "If I could have, I'd have stopped and avoided that horse safely - but maybe, looking back with a bit of hindsight, it's better that I didn't. For all the trials that we've been through - all three of us have been much more careful because of my stupidity, and we've learned a few things about covert ops in a hospital that just might be useful again. More importantly - because of that day, Alex knows, he's in on the conspiracy, and I do think that we're stronger with him than we were without, especially because you and Maria both have a weak side for him, because you've been friends for so long. He showed us that we can count on him - with Topolsky, with Valenti, and with the ritual when Michael was sick. And, of course, if it weren't for the opportunity she saw to use Alex against us, Topolsky would still have been spying on us, and we might not even have figured out anything about what she was up to yet." I took a deep breath. "And it brought us all closer together."
"Yeah, I guess I've thought the same sort of thing," Liz said softly. "Okay, so, do you want the pen now?" She offered it to me for the first time.
"Yeah, but - how far do I flip ahead? I don't want to..."
"For crying out loud, don't worry about it," Liz said. "Just skip ahead yourself, and don't dwell on anything you see - yet. I'm not sure I have anything that I'd really be embarrassed about, now, come to think of it."
"Okay," I said, found the first double-page that was entirely blank, and started off. 'December 31st. I'm Max Evans, and...' Had to think about what came next for a moment, especially with Liz looking over my shoulder. (Well, beside my shoulder, she doesn't really come up over my shoulder when we're sitting next to each other like that.)