Part Eight Later that night, when Max called and Amy came to Maria’s door to tell her she had a phone call, Maria acted like she was already asleep. Amy closed the door quietly behind her and Maria could hear her down the hallway explaining to Max that he would have to talk to her in the morning at school. But when morning came, Maria feigned illness and told her mother she was staying home. She may not have been sick physically, but she felt sick in her soul. She’d been up all night just staring into space, contemplating the hand fate had dealt her. That was how she spent her day – lying on her side with the blankets pulled to her chin staring into space. She hated this world, hated life in general. Maybe Tess would kill her instead of Alex this time. It would be a welcome reprieve. But, no. Much like Alex, Maria loved life. Even if it was as fucked up at this one. As the sun started to set once again, Amy appeared in her doorway. “Maria, look at me.” Maria rolled over, saw her mother with her arms crossed, her shoulder against the door jam. “Are you taking drugs?” Amy asked. Maria snorted. “No,” she answered indignantly. “Then are you pregnant?” She sighed and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “No, Mom, I am not pregnant.” “Well, you never spend an entire day in bed. Never.” Maria rolled back over, wished her mother would just go away. “I’ll be okay,” she mumbled against her pillow. “Alex had the flu – I think I caught it from him.” That was all the explanation she was willing to give up and eventually her mother went away. Alone again, Maria thought about how life had changed for her. She would have to make the best of it if this was where she was now meant to be. And that meant letting Liz go on a virginity-ending road trip with Kyle on Saturday, letting Tess live for awhile, and being with Max and forgetting Michael. But maybe she didn’t have to stay with Max. Perhaps she had to stay in this world, but why did she have to stay with someone she didn’t love? She did love Max – as a friend, as a brother – but she would never be in love with him. Was she supposed to stay with him just because she was the only female he’d divulged his secret to? Did that bind them for life? If she did stay with him, how many years would it be before he followed his heart straight to Liz Parker and broke Maria’s in the process? Now would be a good time to give him the boot. They’d fought. He was angry with her. She had the perfect out. Almost on cue, there was a light tap on her window. She looked toward it, realized that the sun had nearly disappeared. Sighing, she pushed the blankets away from her body and walked to the window. She couldn’t believe how sore her muscles were, but then figured that’s what she deserved for lying in bed all day. Parting her curtains, she saw Max on the other side of the glass. He looked sad, afraid of rejection and more than a little apologetic. Heaving another sigh, she hoisted her window up and was greeted with a warm blast of New Mexico night air. “Can I come in?” he asked tentatively. Might as well get it over with, she thought and nodded her head. Max squeezed through her window, his body contorting in a way she hadn’t thought possible. He was a flexible guy, she realized, like a human pipe cleaner. Well, half-human pipe cleaner. In his typical uneasy demeanor, he put his hands in his back pockets and hovered near the window. There was no assumption that he was welcome to take off his shoes and slide between her sheets this time. Maria walked back over to her bed and sat down. “I, uh, wanted to talk,” Max began, his eyes only resting on her momentarily. “You weren’t at school today.” “I wasn’t feeling well,” she lied. “Alex had the flu. I think I got it from him.” “Oh,” he said. “I thought you were avoiding me.” Maria was thrown for a moment. He was a blunt one, wasn’t he? “No,” she responded. “Just sick. But I feel better now.” “Good,” he said and Maria wasn’t sure if he bought her story or not. Not that it mattered – she was dumping him soon anyway. “I think we need to talk about what happened,” he continued, looked away from her again. “Okay,” Maria agreed. “Look, I know you hate Tess-“ “Hate her?” Maria echoed, her skin prickling at the mere mention of her name. “I’d like nothing better than to rip her nipples off.” Max gave a nervous but amused laugh and scratched his head, his cheeks reddening slightly. “I’d almost pay to see that, I think.” He shook his head, willing the image away. “But, listen. I know you don’t like her –“ he caught her expression and changed his words –“I know you’d like to rip her nipples off, but we have to try to get along.” Maria looked at him incredulously. After all he’d seen, after all he’d been through, how was it possible that he was still so naïve? No wonder he’d ended up falling into the bitch’s trap in the last life. “I don’t trust her, either,” he admitted which prompted an even more surprised look from Maria. “But she’s one of us. We’re all she has. I try to keep the two of you apart, but I can’t do it all the time. I didn’t know you’d be at the Crashdown last night or I wouldn’t have had the meeting there.” Dump him, Maria reminded herself as she realized she was starting to take his apology to heart. “Your happiness is all that matters to me,” he said, looking at his shoes. “I don’t want to do anything that makes you unhappy enough to stay home from school and avoid me.” Maria was stunned. She couldn’t stop herself from staring at him. He was serious – he really cared that much about her. And he didn’t care that she knew it, didn’t care that he’d just put his emotions out there on display for the whole world to see. Michael Guerin would never do that. Hell, he’d never even admit that he cared about her. Maria couldn’t dump Max. Not yet. Rising from the bed, Maria reached him in two short strides and put her arms around him. Immediately, his arms circled her small waist and he pulled her to him. “I really do love you,” he said into her hair. “Even when you smell a little funky.” Maria pulled back, laughing. “I do need a shower, don’t I?” Max glanced to the hallway, toward the bathroom. “I could use one, too…” He paused a moment, then shook his head. “Too soon, isn’t it?” She nodded. “Yeah.” Standing on her tiptoes, she gave him a little kiss. “You have toothpaste, right?” he joked and Maria was happy to see that he wasn’t too serious to tease her. She smacked his shoulder playfully, then moved to get clean clothes from her dresser. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* In the days that followed, Maria spent her time more constructively that she had in her previous days in this world. She paid attention in class, tried her best at her job. This was her life now and she needed to take it seriously. She went on an information-seeking mission, trying to gather as many facts as she could about her new past, this new reality. She discovered that Max was too serious a person to have any sense of the rhetorical and while this would have irritated her to no end in the old world, she used it to her advantage to wheedle much information out of him in this new world. For instance, once he was obsessing about what to order on a pizza and when he asked her what she wanted, she rhetorically said, “Come on, Max, how long have we been dating now?” and his response was, “Nineteen months, why?” Not all of her information came from Max. Some of it came by mistake. She found out Max’s mother didn’t like to be called Mrs. Evans after Maria had done so. “Mrs. Evans?” she’d said. “Why the formality? I’ve always been Diane to you.” Maria had laughed, covering her slip and explained that she’d been around her mother’s friend who liked to be addressed as Mrs. Whoever. Each day, she and Max bonded a little more, though she was using the fight excuse to keep him out of her bed. She wasn’t ready to be intimate with him, mostly because she was still remembering Michael and partly because she was still entertaining the idea of breaking it off. Every time she went to make the move, however, Max would do something incredibly sweet or say something totally beautiful to her and she’d retreat. It was no wonder Liz had been so ga-ga over him. Liz returned from her trip to Las Cruces with Kyle with a whole new glow about her. A little piece of Maria felt sad that Liz hadn’t waited for Max, but then Max hadn’t waited for Liz either – in this world or the last. Liz wouldn’t give up any details of her trip, only saying that when Maria felt like telling her what sex with Max was like, then she’d tell Maria what sex with Kyle was like. Another piece of information. Alien sex. Liz didn’t know Max was an alien, so Maria had obviously kept the details of extra-terrestrial lovemaking a secret. If Max was Maria’s one and only, it was highly possible that she didn’t know what “normal” sex was like and had just refused to give any details for fear that she’d let go with something that wasn’t normal. Little by little, Maria adjusted to her new life. She looked at the notepad less frequently, but when she did study it, she found that those memories were still fresh in her mind. They were probably always going to be a part of her. But she thought she could be happy here. She’d make herself be happy. One night after going to the UFO Center to surprise Max with lunch, she came home feeling a sense of calm, of acceptance. This was now life. She could deal with that. As she kicked off her shoes, her phone rang. Grabbing the receiver, she said a chipper, “Hello?” into the receiver. The voice on the other end nearly made her drop the phone. “You have a collect call from the New Mexico State Correctional Facility. Will you accept the charges?” |
| PART 8 |