Part Two I’m Max Evans. Five months ago I died. I read words similar to those in Liz Parker’s diary once. She meant she’d died literally. Me, I died inside. I’ve been a walking corpse since last May. I’m seventeen years old. Not long ago, I had the weight of two worlds dumped on my shoulders. Too much information, all at once. Apparently I’m reincarnated. Apparently I’m the king of another world millions of light years away. Apparently I am betrothed to someone I really can’t stand. And I could deal with all of that. Really, I could. What I couldn’t deal with was Liz walking away from me. She just turned and walked down that mountain, only looking back once so that her expression could rip my heart from my chest. That was the last time I saw her. She was supposed to go to her aunt’s in Florida for the summer. She never came home. Maria Deluca tells me that Liz has settled in, has new friends, likes the sun. I don’t think she misses me. Deep down, I sense that she is relieved to be living a normal life. I don’t think Liz will ever come back to Roswell. And I’ve accepted that. It’s just dealing with it that is sometimes hard. My parents think I’m suicidal or something. They keep dragging my ass to a psychiatrist. And my poor sister Isabel is getting dragged along for the ride – if her brother’s nuts, she must be too. Sometimes Iz looks at me like this is all my fault, that my inability to just deal has put her into a position of lying to a shrink. I know she lies. That’s the way she is – she has fabricated some big dramatic story she tells the doctor just to make him think she’s a lunatic. She does it out of boredom, I think. She’s toying with the poor guy’s mind. But I endure all of his probing questions. Yes, I’m upset about my girlfriend dumping me. Why did she dump me? Because I’m an alien king, you silly dolt. Of course I don’t tell him that. I tell him we just didn’t get along any more. Was it sex? God, I wish. Speaking of sex, I think of Tess Harding and give a little shudder. My supposed wife. Not in this life. Maybe the last but I must have been a silly dolt myself. I avoid Tess like she is walking Herpes Complex. She’s sneaky, she’s manipulative and I don’t trust her. Part of me is glad that Liz moved a few thousand miles away – I have no doubt that some day Tess might try to harm her if she deemed Liz competition. I go about my teenage life, just trying to keep a low profile and not fail out of school. I smile to my parents to make them feel like all is okay. And it will be. Someday. There’s a three foot hole inside of me that Liz Parker left behind. Once that heals, I’ll be fine. Of course, I could be ninety by then, but I will definitely be fine. Walking through the quad at school, I spy Maria sitting by herself eating her lunch. Most people seated alone will immerse themselves in a book to make themselves less conspicuously single. Not Maria – she chomps on her sandwich and surveys all of her passers by. She spots me and smiles, motions for me to join her. I smile in return and approach her table. I feel bad for her. Michael went all Commando and broke up with her so he could be the Universal Soldier. Moron. “Hey, hot stuff,” she says as she scoots over on the bench so I can sit. I laugh. She’s always coming up with a new nickname for me. “You’re looking especially hot today,” she teases, squeezing my bicep. “More pull-ups in the doorway?” She bats her eyelashes and I have to laugh again. She caught me once – doing pull-ups in my boxers in my bedroom. “Great way to work off aggression,” I tell her and start digging in my backpack for my own lunch. She pumps my arm again and makes a little whistling noise. “Wow. Who ever knew you were so aggressive?” She winks at me. It’s a cute gesture. I peer into my lunch bag. My mother packs the blandest food of anyone I know. Either that or my alien palette just thinks so. I must be scowling because Maria asks me what my problem is. “Nothing looks good,” I explain, then eye her barbequed potato chips. “Oh no!” She grabs the chips and holds the bag protectively to her chest. “These are mine.” I push out my bottom lip in a full pout and give her the puppy dog eyes. She bursts out into a girly giggle and I have to laugh with her. She is such a cute girl. “Here,” she says, handing me the bag. “But you have to give me something of yours.” Just then Michael walks by and gives us both a sour look. I can literally feel Maria’s mood plummet. I want to rush up to him and biff him on the back of the head. Maria’s a great girl – she pretty, she’s funny, she’s witty, she loves him more than her own life. He dumps her and then treats her like this? Why am I so pissed? I look back to Maria and she has literally withdrawn, her shoulders rounded and slouched. She’s frowning. I have no idea what to say to her, so I reach into the bag and pull out a pastry. “Twinkie?” I ask, my smile tooth-paste-commercial wide. She meets my gaze and in a flash I see her dour mood slip away and she burst out giggling again. “What?” I ask. She touches my arm as she catches her breath. “You have teeth,” she laughs. “I’ve never seen a smile so wide. It’s cute.” My cheeks are suddenly burning. Oh God – am I blushing? Shit. I am! I hang my head to hide the redness. I can’t recall any girl ever calling me “cute”. It’s embarrassing…in a fun way. Maria leans over and looks into the brown paper bag. “What else do you have?” I pull out the contents one piece at a time – turkey on wheat, an apple, a can of soda. She wrinkles her nose at all of it. Looking at her lunch, her nose is still wrinkled. Light bulb above my head – so bright that everyone looks skyward to see if someone has dropped an atomic bomb. Okay, that’s exaggerating, but it’s one of those ideas that hits so fast that I give a little gasp and can feel my eyebrows literally touch my hairline. “Tacos,” I suggest and she looks to me in confusion. “There’s that roadside taco stand a few miles out of town,” I explain. She glances at her watch. “I have phys ed in about a half hour.” Is she kidding me? I cock my head and give her a look that says, well – are you kidding me? She laughs. “Well, I supposed I could miss one session of girls only volleyball,” she relents. I have more than that in mind – I’m not planning on coming back to school today. What are they going to do to me? Anything that could hurt me has already happened. In the jeep, she sings with the radio and hangs her arm out the side, letting the air current swoop it up then down. She’s put on a pair of John Lennon-esque sunglasses and pulled her hair into a ponytail to keep it from tangling in the open air. I admire her abandon, the fact that she can leave Michael and his hateful looks behind. I feel that Liz is always with me, like a second shadow. Maybe Maria feels that way about Michael, too, but she hides it much better than I do. I know she still cares about him because of her reaction in the quad. You don’t let people you don’t care about hurt you like that. We eat tacos at the stand and just sit and bullshit. Never once does she look at her watch. Which is a good thing – it means she didn’t really intend on going back to school either. We don’t talk about Liz. We don’t talk about Michael. We talk about music, the movies we saw over the weekend, Isabel and Alex doing the stand off in a much less aggressive manner than the rest of us (my prediction – those two are rolling in the sack by Christmas). After lunch we drive to the rock quarry, the place where all of us used to meet to talk about alien business. The last time we were here, we’d been discussing Alex’s run-in with Agent Pierce, the whole Topolsky situation and whether she was to be trusted. Alex had had the best instinct on that one and no one had listened. Well, except for Liz… I look over to the edge of the quarry where we’d last stood together, Liz leaning on my shoulder as we agreed that no one was to meet with Topolsky, that no one new was allowed in. Maria had been the tie-breaker. She’d sided with us, the aliens, instead of following what should have been a natural instinct to side with the humans. I think it was then that I truly realized Maria could think for herself. She looks lost in thought, too. But she blinks and picks up a rock and hurls it into the water. I hide my grin – she throws like a girl. Which she is – a girl – but she really throws like one. I pick up a rock and give it a vicious hurl, letting out a manly grunt as I do so. My rock hits the water a good twenty feet past where hers did. She cocks her head. “It was the grunt,” I explain. “You didn’t grunt – your rock isn’t going to go very far if you don’t grunt.” She gives a little snort and picks up another rock. This time she goes into full wind-up like a major league pitcher, reaches back and throws the rock. She lets out an absolutely horrid noise that I can’t even explain. So violent is her throw that her body spins around, she loses her footing and falls on her ass. The rock never makes it to the water. I can’t help it this time – I nearly double over with laughter. She pouts, then looks at her hand. I follow her gaze and see that she has scraped her palm. A little puddle of blood has accumulated there. My laugh fades away and I drop to my knees beside her. “You okay?” I ask. She nods and gives a little grimace. “Nothing a little Bactine won’t cure.” She winces. “That stings.” I take her hand in mine. “Here,” I offer and run my fingers across her open palm. For superficial stuff, I don’t need to connect. I wouldn’t have done that without asking her permission, anyway. It’s too much of a privacy violation. Beneath my fingertips, her scrapes close and the blood dries. Maria looks at me in utter amazement, her hazel eyes wide. “Cool, dude. Thanks.” I smile and pull her to her feet. We walk back to the jeep, chattering. She really is a cute girl. |
| PART 2 |