by Melinda Metz
I'm dreaming, Liz realized. Another one of those dreams where I know I'm dreaming.
Was Max in this dream, too? She scrambled to her feet and used both hands to part the branches of the willow tree wide. She scanned the desert. Was anything out there that could be Max in disguise?
All she saw was earth and sky. She seemed to be the only living creature. The willow tree was the only vegetation.
Liz returned to her place in front of the tea set, leaning back on the tree trunk. It felt soft and smooth beneath her head. Maybe I can call Max to me, she thought. It couldn't hurt to try, anyway.
She stared up at the canopy of jade green leaves over her head. "Max," she whispered. "Can you feel me here? Can you come to me? Please try." A branch of the willow tree brushed against her face. She flicked it away.
"I have two teacups and everything," she added. The branch brushed her cheek again, its leaves warm as flesh against her skin. Liz was struck by the memory of Max's fingers running down her face in exactly the same way.
"It's you!" she cried. "Willow trees don't have leaves this dark. Jade green-that's the color of your aura. It's you, Max!" The branch gently slid over her hair. Max loved to touch Liz's hair. It really was him.
"Okay, communication. That's what we need first," Liz muttered. She tried to send a loud, clear thought message to Max. Are you all right? Is there anything you can tell us about the consciousness that will help us get you free?
She strained for any murmur of a reply in her mind, but none came. "So no tree-to-human telepathy in this dream," she said.
But it was a dream. Yeah, she didn't have the powers that Max and the others did. But inside her own dream, couldn't she sort of create her own reality? Especially since she was aware that she was dreaming and everything?
"Maybe I could get some tree-to-tree telepathy going." Liz concentrated on her feet, willing them to lengthen into roots that stretched into the ground.
The earth lurched beneath her. "It's working!" she cried.
Then with a groaning, crunching sound, the ground cracked open. Liz stumbled backward, barely managing to escape falling into the ravine that had formed-and swallowed the willow tree.
"No!" Liz shouted, staring down at the tree. Before she could take a step, the earth rumbled again, and the ravine began to close itself. In seconds the desert floor was smooth and flat again. As if the tree had never existed.
As if Max had never been there.
***
"Knock, knock," Maria's mother called, opening the bedroom door without waiting for an answer-one of her many annoying habits.
Maria hit the pause button on the remote and looked over at her mom. She was wearing Maria's black sweater that had shrunk in the wash. That sweater seemed to have moved permanently into her mom's closet. Majorly annoying.
"I might be a little later than usual tonight," Maria's mother announced. She shifted her weight slightly from foot to foot.
"Okay," Maria answered. She glanced at the still frame of the movie frozen on the TV screen-Karen Allen in midfaint. But did her mother take the hint that Maria wanted to get back to watching it? No.
"I'm going out with Daniel again," her mother said.
Maria sat up. "This is what? Like five times?" she asked, giving her mom her full attention.
"Uh-huh. I thought that-I'd heard that-the third date was significant, but…"
Don't go there, oh, please don't go there, Maria silently begged. She couldn't deal with talking about her mother's sex life.
"Or maybe that's just something I read in a magazine," her mom added quickly, seeming to realize that mentioning her surprise at not getting any on date three was way, way inappropriate.
"Maybe," Maria answered, her voice coming out like some weird land of donkey bray.
"You know that perfume you mixed for me? I've been wearing it a lot lately-Daniel really likes it. And I just realized I ran out, and I really wanted to wear it tonight." Maria's mom looked at her hopefully. "He's picking me up in a few minutes."
"There isn't enough time to make a new batch," Maria answered. There really wasn't time, and even if there was, Maria wasn't sure how she felt about helping her mom snag a guy. She'd given up any fantasy of her parents getting back together, but still.
"Oh, okay. Never mind." Maria's mom nervously touched her hair, which Maria noticed was styled in a slightly different way. Tonight's really important to her, she realized.
"Wait," Maria said as her mother turned to leave. "I can get you something close. Sit," she instructed, patting the spot on the bed next to her. Her mother sat with a relieved smile.
Maria plucked two vials of essential oil off her bedside table. She took one of her mothers hands and flipped it palm up, then placed a few drops from each vial on her wrist and rubbed them in. A subcutaneous tremor ran through her mother's arm. Mom's nervous, Maria noticed. She rubbed a little harder, hoping to ease the tension from the muscles, but the quiver kept right on quivering.
"Thanks," Maria's mom said as Maria started working on the other wrist. "I just want to be… perfect." She touched her hair again self-consciously, then gave her midriff-bared by Maria's sweater-a hard poke. "Not that that's even possible."
I know the symptoms, Maria thought. Not only does Mom really, really like this guy, she's not sure how he feels about her. And she's worried that there is some significance, some he-doesn't-really-really-like-me-back significance, to five dates with no-
Maria stopped herself. She extremely did not want to go there.
"I think you look beautiful," she told her mother. "And you smell good, too."
The doorbell rang, and her mother lurched to her feet. "That's him!" She bolted toward the bedroom door.
"Mom!" Maria called, and her mother spun around to face her. "If he doesn't, um…" She decided to start over. "If he doesn't appreciate you, it's his loss."
"Aw, that's so sweet." Maria's mom rushed back over and gave her a fast, lilac-and-vanilla-infused hug, then bolted out of the room.
Maria flopped back down into the nest of pillows on her bed.
"Okay, self, you take that advice, too," she muttered. "It's Michael's loss." She clicked the pause button again, and the movie started back up. A minute later she was entranced.
She was so completely immersed in the world of the movie that she practically flew off the bed when she heard her window slide open nearly an hour later.
"You scared me," she snapped, her heart pounding as Michael climbed into her room.
"It's not like it's the first time I've come in this way," he answered.
"Not lately." It came out sounding a lot more accusatory than she'd intended it to. Well, so what? It was the truth, wasn't it?
"What're you watching?" Michael asked. He took a step toward the bed, then veered off, grabbed the chair next to her dresser, and plopped down on it.
"Um, nothing. Nothing! I wasn't really watching anything. It was just background noise." Oh, God, where was the remote? What had she done with the remote? She scanned the bed, the bedside table, groped under the pillows.
"Looking for this?" Michael picked the remote off the floor but, being Michael, didn't hand it to her.
Maria lunged for the TV set, fumbling for the power button. She had to turn it off.
"Starman," Michael said. Too late. Maria glanced over her shoulder and saw him holding the plastic video rental box. "So you go out and rent stuff for background noise?" he asked, raising one eyebrow.
"Yeah, sometimes. Stupid, huh? That's me. Stupid," Maria babbled. She found the power button, hit it, and returned to the bed, sitting cross-legged and looking everywhere but at Michael.
He used the remote to click the TV back on. "Let's watch the rest. I've never seen it."
It will just be worse if I shut it off again, Maria thought. Not that it's not already totally obvious that I didn't want him to see what I was watching, which of course is why he now has to see it.
Michael stretched his legs out i
n front of him. Maria ordered herself not to check out the nice fit of his jeans. Of course, she didn't obey herself. "So what's happened so far?" he asked.
Ah, yes. Let's go for the maximum humiliation possible here, Maria thought.
"Well, that guy-" She nodded toward Jeff Bridges, who was in the middle of bringing a dead deer back to life. "He's the starman. His spaceship crash-landed, and he took on the form of Karen Allen's husband by using DNA from hair from a photo album. You know how some people save locks of hair?"
Maybe if Maria swamped Michael with details, he'd miss the fact that he'd caught her mooning over a movie that was a love story between an alien guy and a human girl.
"Anyway, he has to get back to his mother ship or he'll die, and some government people are chasing them, and a guy from SETI, too, who is basically decent. The starman, he really likes apple pie, and he just learned to drive. At first he thought a yellow light meant go very fast because he learned by watching Karen-I mean Jenny, the character's name is Jenny, Karen's the actress-drive and-"
"I'm up to speed," Michael said, cutting her off.
"Good," Maria answered. She scooted back a little farther so she could lean against the headboard and focused her eyes on the TV screen. She'd thought she'd have to pretend that she was having no problem watching it with him, but the story sucked her back in, and she didn't have to fake it after all.
When the movie got to the part where Jenny and Starman had to say good-bye, Maria's eyes got all wet and stingy, and she suddenly became aware that Michael was watching her and not the television.
Maria tried to stop the tears before they began rolling down her face, but she couldn't. Jenny's pain at never seeing Starman again was so real to her.
"Repeat after me. Movie. Reality. Movie. Reality," Michael said sarcastically.
She nodded and locked her teeth together, but she couldn't stop a muffled keening sound from escaping her. It was so sad.
Michael threw a box of Kleenex in her direction. "I've got to go," he told her.
Big surprise.
Maria wiped off her face and blew her nose hard.
"Wait," she commanded. She used another Kleenex on her face, sure it was already all blotchy. It was so unfair that she couldn't cry like Karen Allen, who looked beautiful and pale and tragic as her tears flowed.
"What?" Michael asked impatiently, getting to his feet and jamming his hands in his back pockets.
"Yesterday it sounded like Trevor expected you to go back home with him. So are you?"
She hadn't planned to ask Michael that question, even though she was dying to know the answer. But when he said he was leaving, it just came spilling out.
"Are you?" she repeated when he hesitated.
"I'm thinking about it," Michael answered.
And he was out of there, leaving Maria heartbroken and speechless.
NINE
Maria was already sitting at their usual booth at the back of Flying Pepperoni. Michael hesitated, trying to figure out if he should sit next to her or across from her. Next to her there could be some accidental skin-to-skin contact, and he'd definitely pick up the scent of the essential oils she wore. But across from her he'd have to look at her, and-
"Why are we stopping?" Trevor asked from behind him.
"We're not," Michael answered. He strode over to the table and slid onto the leatherette bench across from Maria, figuring it was marginally safer.
He still couldn't believe he'd gone to her house last night after all his mental lectures on the virtues of Operation Cold Turkey. At least he hadn't let himself sit on the bed, managing to utilize that much brain matter. And he hadn't touched her, even though when he'd seen the tears on her cheeks, he'd had this wild impulse to kiss them away and then just kiss her until the kiss became her whole world. And his.
What was wrong with him?
"Now that your entire party is here, would you like to order?" Lucinda Baker asked as she bounced up to their booth.
"I wouldn't exactly call it a party," Maria muttered. She grabbed a bread stick out of the basket and broke it in half with a sharp snap.
"How about a batch of our buffalo chicken wings with our special blue cheese dipping sauce to get you started?" Lucinda continued cheerily.
"Lucinda, check the lost and found. I think I saw your pod in there," Maria said, crunching into the bread stick.
Lucinda lowered her voice. "The district manager is here today. And I'm supposed to be a-" She pointed to her big, yellow, I'm-a-happy-waitress button. "I'm also supposed to use my happy, peppy charm to get people to order apps. If you do, I swear I'll pay you back for them at school tomorrow. I'm teetering on the brink of unemployment here." Lucinda raised her voice again and stood up ramrod straight. "Or maybe you'd like to try our supercrunchy mozzarella sticks. They're yum-my!"
"Fried cheese." Maria shook her head with a grimace. "Is it just me, or is there something obscene about the whole concept of fried cheese?" She shot an evil glance at Michael, as if he was the inventor of the mozzarella stick. Clearly if Maria was wearing a button right now, the words I'm a happy would not be anywhere on it.
"We'll take the wings," Michael said, avoiding Maria's gaze. "And a medium pie, one-third veggie, two-thirds meatball and pineapple. One mineral water, one Lime Warp-" He looked at Trevor.
"Orange soda," Trevor said.
"You got it!" Lucinda cried, and rushed off.
"Thanks for asking what I wanted," Maria muttered.
Michael wanted to yell at her to speak up if she expected a response. Instead he tried to be rational since she was obviously incapable.
"Maria, we've eaten here one billion times," Michael said, pulling a napkin out of the dispenser and starting to shred it in front of him. "One billion times you've eaten veggie pizza. What is the problem?"
"The problem is just because you're a guy, you think you get to make all the decisions about everything," she shot back, her eyes as bright as blue flames.
"This has nothing to do with being a guy-" Michael began, shredding faster.
Trevor cleared his throat and leaned forward in his seat. "Can we talk about our nonexistent backup plan?"
Maria ignored him. "You know I'm a vegetarian, and yet you still went ahead and ordered chicken wings," she said accusatorily.
"What? You wanted the pornographic fried cheese?" Michael demanded in a whisper.
"Obscene," Maria muttered, seeming to have forgotten how to speak in any other manner.
"When I was with DuPris, he made me watch all these old sitcoms," Trevor interjected in a matter-of-fact tone. "There was one where, I think it was Bobby and Peter, drew a line down the middle of their room. And then there was one where the Skipper and Gilligan drew a line down the middle of their hut. There was also one where Grandpa and Herman drew a line down-"
"Excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?" Michael exploded, ripping the last of the napkin in half.
"I was thinking that maybe if I drew a line down the center of the table, and we said that half was yours and half was Maria's, then we could start working on a plan, which is why we're all here," Trevor explained, clearly irritated.
"I didn't do anything," Michael muttered, flopping back in his seat. Little pieces of napkin fluttered to the floor, and he just watched them.
"Yeah, right," Maria muttered, flopping in the exact same way.
"Max," Trevor said. He laid his hands flat on the table and looked back and forth at the two of them. "Max Evans. Your friend. That's why we're here, remember?"
Michael shoved his hands through his hair. Trevor was right. Time they wasted now could endanger Max later. And arguing with Maria was definitely a waste of time.
"So, what did we learn with our last, massively failed plan?" he asked.
"That connecting to the consciousness and trying to shatter it from the inside is not an option," Maria answered, her voice ultracalm. Her gaze was focused on the table.
"We also know that when we conn
ect and use the two Stones in tandem, it doesn't give them more power," Trevor added. You could hear the relief in his tone, and he sat back slightly.
"So basically, we have squat." Michael dropped his head back on the booth and waited while Lucinda deposited the drinks and wings on the table. "Maybe we're going to have to go with DuPris's plan after all," he said when she was out of earshot again.
"But that means killing all those innocent beings," Maria protested. Still no eye contact.
"None of us want that," Trevor said, taking a sip of his soda. "But it's starting to look like it might be the only way. So much death to save one life-even Max's life-would be unthinkable. But this isn't only about Max. The consciousness must be shattered for every being that is fighting for the right to an individual life."
"If it comes to that, you won't have to do it alone," Michael told Trevor. His heart was pounding with fear, but he meant every word he said. "I'll go through the wormhole with you and help you lead the squadron on the mission to capture the other Stone."
Maria made a gasping, gurgling sound but didn't say anything. Michael got very busy pouring some sugar into the blue cheese sauce and stirring it with his finger so he wouldn't have to look at her.
He dipped a wing in the blue-cheese-and-sugar mixture, then took a bite, but he could hardly taste it because he could feel Maria's eyes on him. Reluctantly he looked up at her. God, her face was so pale-which made her raspberry lips look even more raspberryish. Even from across the table he could see how tense the muscles in her neck were. He wanted to reach over and smooth the knots out with his fingers, and-
"I have to take a leak," Michael blurted suddenly. And then he bolted. Ate one bite of a wing, and I turned into a total chicken, he thought, disgusted with himself for running away He stomped into the men's bathroom and did a quick foot check under the stalls. Nobody
Michael glared at himself in the nearest grungy mirror. "Face the truth. The tapering off, the Operation Cold Turkey, it wasn't just for Maria's sake. It was for yours, too. And you totally blew it last night. Now leave the girl alone. Stop even thinking about her, especially thinking about anything that involves touching."
