(The Awesome Background And Secret Chronicles Of Michael Guerin)
Episode 110
Feeling The Heat (Toy House)
After my experience with the balance, I knew, somewhere deep down inside, that Maria and I were meant to be together. I had seen it… and felt it. But that didn't make things instantly change. First off, Maria was acting very cool toward me, and I found out it was because I hugged Max and Isabel after coming out of the trance or whatever it was and didn't hug her. She felt shunned… She said I acted like it was all an "alien" thing, just between the three of us. Actually, it kind of was an alien thing. Max and Isabel and I share a similar biology, so it was something that kind of affected the three of us… or could have. But I understood Maria's feelings. I never intended to shun her. So I decided to try to make it up to her…
Maria had this woodshop project to do for school, and she was trying to make a napkin holder… only I thought it was a shoe tree. Maria's good at a lot of things that I can think of, but none of them involve wood… uh… real… uh, you know, the stuff you get from trees… What? I am not blushing, Maria! I don't blush! It's the angle of the sun. Maybe I'm getting a little burned. I'll turn the other way. No, it was not my imagination, I saw the way you smiled. Yes, you did! It wasn't just a smile, it was one of "those" smiles. That's why I… Never mind. Let's move on. Does anyone else think it's getting a little warm out here?
Where was I? Oh yeah, the wood-working project…
I was trying to compliment Maria for making this great shoe tree, only it was supposed to be a napkin holder, so I tried to help her with it, but it kind of got broken. I really wanted to do this for her, so I built her another one myself and put it in her locker… with a note that said "Handmade by Michael – Thanks." It was beautiful… It was spring loaded… It redefined the term 'napkin holder.' It would have got her an A on the project. But you know what she did? She turned in her original one and got an F. I was floored. But what floored me even more was why she did it…
…I, um, I… I didn't use yours. I kept it. Thank you.
She took an F so she could keep the one I made for her. That just totally blew me away. I couldn't believe she did that.
I got something to say to you… If anything like that happens to me again, like when I got sick, don't help me. I can't get indebted to anyone, and I can't get entangled. I got to be a stone wall. And when I'm around you… sometimes I don't feel like a stone wall anymore.
Well, what do you feel like?
I don't know. Like confused.
It left me not knowing what to say, which isn't normal for me. But the thing is, see, then I knew that Maria still liked me. That was pretty cool… especially since I was feeling kind of down after the balance thing. I had become accustomed to thinking of myself as this powerful avenger-type guy, and then the balance knocked me right off my feet. I needed to get my confidence back. Realizing that Maria still liked me was what it took!
Around the same time as this was happening to me, Max had a problem pop up that had the potential to affect us all as much as my experience with the balance did. He was talking to his mom in the kitchen when she spilled some oil. It touched the burner and went up in flames, along with the oil in the skillet. Max yelled, and his mom dropped to the floor, then Max used his powers to put the fire out. He told her that he had poured a pot of water on it, and she believed it.
You saved my life, Max.
Mom, I… I just…Poured water on it… You told me.
Right.
She believed it… but Valenti didn't. See, the fire set off the alarm, and the fire department came. That gave Sheriff Valenti an excuse to drop in, too, and do some snooping on Max. Of course, Valenti said he was just making sure everyone was okay. But he was always snooping on Max. When I told him that stuff about me before, I intentionally left Max and Isabel out of the conversation. But he suspected them, too… and he wanted to know everything there was to know… about all three of us. At least there was one bright spot, though. He wasn't leaning on us and threatening to arrest us all the time anymore like he used to do before I made my deal with him. But he still used every excuse he could to try to get more information… on the sly. So it was no surprise, really, that he showed up.
Heard you had an incident here. Just want to make sure everything's okay.
Oh, we're fine… really. Just a little grease fire, but thank God my son put it out… He just came right in, pulled me out of the way, poured this pot of water on it, and suddenly everything was okay. It was miraculous, really.
Miraculous…
The sheriff thanked Mrs. Evans and left, but he came back later with a brochure on household emergencies. He had highlighted the section on grease fires to make sure she read it. In the brochure, it said that water won't put out a grease fire, it only spreads it. He also told her that Max was involved in some way in the shooting that went down in the CrashDown, and that according to some witnesses, Liz actually got shot and Max healed her. That made Max's mom start wondering about a lot of things, and when she was alone, she pulled out some old videos. One of them showed Max picking up a bird that appeared to have a broken wing and then releasing it. When he did, it flew away. She had always wondered about that but had written it off as coincidence or something, but now Valenti had placed a real seed of doubt in her mind, and she was starting to question everything. And that was driving a wedge between her and Max. She even quizzed Isabel about him…
Have you ever noticed anything about your brother? Anything… unusual?
Like what?
Well… I don't know. Anything that… maybe you were unable to explain.
Mom, what's this about?
Oh, forget it. Never mind. I guess I'm… I'm just a bit shaken still from the fire.
But that wasn't true. She had more questions for Max…
Mom, why are you doing this to me?
I'm not doing anything to you.
…You're supposed to be my mother. You're not supposed to investigate us.
I remember meeting with Isabel and Max in the quarry to talk about what was happening, and I was upset that Max had healed a bird and given himself away like that. I think I may have accused him of trying to be Doctor Doolittle. But he pointed out that he was only six years old at the time and didn't even know he had powers. He just did it somehow.
Isabel had always hated keeping secrets from her mom, and she wanted to just come out and tell her everything about us. That's when I decided I had to intervene… well, not me maybe… the Avenger. Somebody had to do it. But first, I had another situation to fix…
Outside Maria's house, I waited just out of view until her mom left. She had a box under her arms… probably more blow up alien balloons for the gas station to sell to tourists or something. As soon as the Jetta was out of sight, I tossed a small pebble at Maria's window, and a moment later, she opened the window and looked out…
"Michael?"
"Hey! I thought I'd come over and, uh… you know… uh… maybe… apologize… I guess… or something."
Maria smiled, then she stuck her head out the window and looked toward the road. Her mom's Jetta was gone.
"Alright… but you can't stay too long. Mom will be back in an hour."
I climbed through Maria's window and sat down on the chair in front of her computer desk, and Maria looked at me questioningly…
"So…?"
"Huh? Oh! Yeah, uh, look… uh, what I wanted to say, Maria, is that… maybe, you know… maybe I… I should have shown you that I appreciated you more than I did… and, uh… well… I was wrong to… to say what I said about not wanting your help ever again. Even an ali… uh, a person like… me… can't always be a stone wall. What I'm saying is I don't want to be a stone wall when I'm with you, Maria. A stone wall can't feel the things I feel when I'm with you… And there's one more thing…"
"What's that?"
"Something I owe you… that I was supposed to give you and kind of… forgot."
Maria looked puzzled. I got up and walked over to her and put my arms around her. Then I hugged her. I heard her breathe in deeply then let it all out as her arms encircled me and her lips met mine. And I knew I had done the right thing… because I felt good all over.
About five minutes later… maybe it was ten or twenty… I kind of lost track of time while we were kissing… we looked at each other again, and Maria smiled. I smiled back, and she took her arms back from around me and turned around to get something…
"You made that great napkin holder for me, Michael… I wanted to make something for you. Here."
"What is it?"
"Open the bag and find out."
I opened the bag and removed something that looked like pajamas… Maria's pajamas. But they had been… well, I don't know how to describe it. She had dyed them electric blue and had sewn a gold-colored zigzag lightning stripe down the side of each leg. She had dyed the top fire-red and had sewn something on the back that looked like a… I can't even say it… Yeah, that's it… what Maria just said… a cape. A blue cape! On the front of the pajama top, she had sewn a gold letter "A," for "Avenger." To say I was in shock might have been an understatement…
"Uh, uh! No! I am not wearing this! No way, no how! Not happening!"
Maria started to look hurt again, and I suddenly saw everything about to crash right into the basement, so I swallowed hard and looked at it again…
"It's… it's nice… But I wouldn't need to wear it all the time, you know. Even Superman looks like Clark Kent most of the time. He wouldn't go to school in… uniform."
"Well, of course not! I don't expect you to wear it to school and everywhere, Michael! I just thought if you had, you know, any more Avenger-type problems to solve… maybe…"
Well, I knew of one problem I had to solve… how to keep from having to wear this and not lose Maria forever, but I couldn't say that…
"Maybe… maybe I could wear it once… and we'll see what happens. I've got someone I have to talk to right now, and it's sort of an Avenger matter."
Maria's eyes lit up, and I knew I was in real trouble.
I would have walked in the front door like any normal person, but wearing Maria's pajamas I wasn't exactly feeling "normal." The last thing I wanted was to have to explain this to Hansen and a bunch of curious deputies. Valenti was drinking a cup of coffee when I climbed in through his window, which was unfortunate, because it took him ten minutes to get all the grounds out of his nose… after he sprayed the rest of it all over his office.
"I have really got to get… a new filter… for that pot! God, that coffee is strong!" he said, blowing his nose again and mopping some more grounds up as they came out. "Michael… what the hell is that?!"
"Don't start! It was kind of a gift, and you'd better just say you like it. I could blast you through that wall, you know."
Valenti snickered and lifted my arm up, sniffing the material.
"What are you doing?"
"Looking for traces… of cedar oil… or cypress oil."
"Leave her out of this."
"Oh, I'm not going to arrest her, Michael… though that outfit might be some kind of crime… if I can find out what statute it breaks."
"Very funny! Remind me to laugh… when you're hanging from the arm of a light pole."
"You wouldn't do that."
"Don't be so sure."
Valenti grinned. "At least they're not tights… more like… a nifty harem outfit. What's the "A" for?"
"Avenger."
Valenti nodded, picking up the rag again and wiping off a few more coffee grounds, which continued to work their way out of his nose.
"This coffee could be declared a deadly weapon… when inhaled. I really need to get Hansen to buy us a new pot."
"You could clean this one out."
"What for? Heat kills germs. Hell, this coffee kills germs!"
"Maybe it would taste better when it comes out your nose, though."
"Good point. So, Michael… why are you here? Did you hope to kill me with my own coffee?"
"No, that was just a lucky bonus."
"Plotting to kill the sheriff. I could lock you up for life."
"You could… after they got you down off the lamp post."
"You know, Michael… I understand you. I do. That's what you don't know about me. And it's a good thing I do, because anyone else wouldn't be so easy to deal with."
"I'm just lucky."
"Yeah, you are. You joke about it, but you really are."
"How do you figure?"
"Well, you and I, we have a similar past…"
"Which planet did you come from?"
"I don't mean like that. I mean… we both grew up challenged… challenged to become something that… we didn't become easily… and to do it without a great amount of help. And because of that, we grew up a little rough around the edges. We understand each other. Well, I understand you anyway."
"I understand you, Sheriff. That's why you're the only person… almost… who knows what you do about me. I know that you're driven to find out everything you can, but I also know that you, more than almost anyone in Roswell, will keep those secrets… because if you betrayed us… betrayed me… you would be betraying yourself now. That's why I told you what I told you. It's why I made the agreement with you."
"Maybe you do know me better than I thought, Michael. I'm not sure how I feel about that… especially with you standing there in harem jammies."
"Well, I'm starting to like them."
"Really?"
"Yeah. They annoy you. They're also comfortable, in a weird sort of way."
"They… distract me. They don't annoy me. Getting back to my question, Michael, why are you here… and dressed like that?"
"I came to ask you to lay off of Max, Sheriff."
"Why? Is he one of you?"
"Yeah. One of my friends… one of my BEST friends. And I don't like what's happening to him. You're driving a wedge between him and his mom. Max is talking about leaving town because his mom is suspicious of him and asking a lot of questions that he can't answer. And you know why, Sheriff? Because he doesn't have the answers. He was abandoned when he was little… him and Isabel both. But they grew up and became something in spite of their early life. Can you see why I feel a kinship with them? Like me, they don't know who their real parents were… only mine are on some other planet. It takes a lot to overcome some kinds of scars, Sheriff. And in Max's case, you're adding to them by making his mom suspicious of him."
"Listen, Michael… it's not my intention to drive a wedge between Mrs. Evans and her son. It's just… good police work. Divide and conquer… It's… well, it's… yeah, I guess I see what you're saying. I didn't think about it like that. What can I do?"
"Don't put any more ideas in his mom's head."
Valenti nodded pensively. "I'll, uh, I'll try to take your advice, Michael. I will."
"Thank you, Sheriff. And regarding your other question…"
"What was my other question? I forgot now."
"Why I came dressed like this."
"Oh, yes! Now I remember! Well…?"
"I thought you might need some help on one of your cases… so I came dressed for the job."
Valenti smiled. "I could use some help… but God help me if anyone associated you with me… dressed like that. Could you put something else on?"
"You won't tell… anyone… on me?"
"No. Maria will never know."
That's when I had this pang like I'd never had before. It was something I had said to the sheriff earlier… about why he couldn't betray me now because he would be betraying himself, too. And there was something else… I took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling for a moment…
"I'm sorry, Sheriff. There's someone who means more to me than my self-respect… apparently. I have to wear this. But, hey, it's not so bad. It's comfortable… and it's not tights, right? Besides, someone took an "F" on a project because something that I gave her meant more to her than a grade. She means that much to me. The PJ's stay.
Valenti shook his head and grinned. "Michael, if I ever have another son… I would be proud if he were a lot like you. Come on… I'll show you some cases I'm working on. Lock the door. We wouldn't want Hansen walking in on us. He might get the wrong idea."
End of Episode 110
tbc…