by Melinda Metz
Oh, and just FYI, so you have the whole story, Michael, Isabel, and I were in pods just like it, but Clean Slate didn’t find us.
Anyway, when the alien in the pod Clean Slate found finally completed the maturation process and broke free more than forty years later, your dad locked it in a secret underground compound. You following me, Kyle? He called the alien Adam, and, oh yeah, he had Adam call him Dad. So I guess that makes Adam like your brother or something.
Anyway, this other alien, DuPris, the big enchilada of aliens, the alien who caused the ship to crash in the first place, he took control of Adam and used Adam to kill your dad. Yeah, Adam, well, really DuPris, blasted him with enough power to turn him into a pile of ashes on the floor. Anything else I can help you with?
Yep. That would go over real well.
Michael picked up one of the pictures. Max leaned over to get a look. It showed Michael and Maria sprawling on Michael’s bed at his last foster home, in the middle of a serious kiss. Valenti had to have been practically right outside the window when he took it, or else he had a state-of-the-art telephoto lens.
Max shot a glance at Maria. She’d finally started chewing her carrot. He could see that she was trying to act totally normal—they all were. But the loose sleeves of her poet’s shirt were fluttering, and it was totally clear that Maria was trembling.
“I don’t think you should show these to people,” Michael told Kyle, giving up the attempt to hide his fury. He slapped the photo facedown on the table. “Unless you want everyone to know your dad was a perv.”
Kyle locked eyes with Michael. Max frantically tried to figure out what to do in order to get one of them to back down.
Then the bell rang.
Kyle shoved himself to his feet and swept up the photos. “This isn’t over,” he warned them. “Sooner or later, I’m getting the truth about what happened to my father. And I’m getting it from one of you.”
* * *
“Go, Kevin!” Maria leaped to her feet. “Go, go, go!”
Michael reached out, snagged her by the elbow, and pulled her back down to her seat next to him on the bleachers. “That is a ten-year-old boy out there on the court,” he explained. “What you just did qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.”
Maria smiled at him. “I know. But my mom and dad aren’t here to humiliate him—since the big D they try never to be at the same place at the same time—so I have to do it,” she explained. “I mean, isn’t complaining about your family’s behavior key to ten-year-old male bonding?”
“I guess,” Michael mumbled. Like he was supposed to know? Well, maybe he should. He’d had more families than pretty much any kid. Foster families, anyway. He should be in The Guinness Book of World Records.
He suddenly got the feeling that he was being watched. Oh yeah, he told himself. Everybody is staring at the pathetic boy who doesn’t have a family. They’re all about to burst into tears over your hard, hard life.
“Oh, I’m so stupid. How could I have asked you about fam—you don’t have a—” Maria turned to the mom type sitting next to her. “Can you give me a hand?” she asked. “My foot is stuck so far down my throat, I don’t think I’ll be able to get it out by myself.”
“I know the feeling,” the woman answered. Then she jumped up. “Great job, Robbie!” she shouted, punching her fist in the air.
“Don’t sweat it,” Michael told Maria. “It’s not like I need a family. Not now that I have my own place.”
He still could hardly believe that Ray Iburg, the only adult survivor of the crash besides DuPris, had left him the UFO museum and the apartment above it. Free at last. Oh, baby, he was free at last.
“But a family isn’t just—,” Maria began. Then she stopped herself.
“I have you and everyone else for the other stuff,” Michael answered. He couldn’t quite believe he’d actually said that out loud. But it was true. They were his family in every way that mattered.
Maria gave his hand a quick squeeze, then let it go fast. “I guess that means I have to humiliate you, too, then, huh?” she asked. “Come on, do a wave with me.”
“You can’t do a wave with two people,” Michael answered.
“Just because it’s never been attempted before doesn’t mean it can’t be done,” Maria insisted. And Michael knew that in another minute he’d be jumping up with his hands over his head. When you were with Maria, some things were just inevitable.
Like that time she’d made him help her decorate a cake. Not just watch. Help.
He was struck by a flash of memory—him licking a glob of icing off Maria’s finger. A jolt of heat zigzagged through him as he thought about it. Don’t even go there, he ordered himself. He and Maria were finally getting to be friends again. Real friends. There was no way Michael was going to mess things up by even getting close to that line between friendship and the kind of thing Valenti had immortalized in that picture.
Yeah, it would feel good to kiss Maria again. It would feel amazing. And his body wanted it, no question. But his mind, or his heart, or whatever knew that there was still a girl called Cameron out there. And that—
“Okay, if Kevin’s team makes this basket, we do it,” Maria told him, yanking him out of his thoughts. “You first, then me.”
Michael watched as the kid with the ball hurled it toward the basket. It bounced from the backboard to the rim, teetered, then swish.
“Whoo-hoo!” Michael shouted as he jumped to his feet and swept his arms up and down. He figured if he was going to do it, he should do it.
Maria jumped up next, going all the way up on her toes as she thrust her arms into the air. Michael tried very hard not to notice the expanse of creamy, soft-looking skin bared by her hiked-up sweater.
He forced his eyes back to the game, then got that feeling again. That prickly feeling of being watched. Of course you’re being watched, you big idiot, he told himself. You just did a two-person wave.
A kid with a crew cut grabbed the ball from one of Kevin’s teammates. He took off for the other side of the court. The ref blew the whistle and rolled his hands around each other.
“No way!” a man in a suit yelled from the opposite bleachers. “Cameron’s never gotten called for traveling!”
Michael felt Maria stiffen, just slightly, but enough for him to notice. He thought, at least he’d wanted to think, that Maria was over the Cameron situation.
But she’d really laid herself on the line when she’d told him that he had to choose between her and Isabel. She’d made herself—what was that chick word?—vulnerable. And he’d all but shoved it in her face that he wasn’t choosing anyone but Cameron. Cameron, who then left without even bothering to wake him up and say good-bye.
Michael shot a quick glance at Maria. She was watching the game, seemed okay. If he hadn’t caught that little reaction when that man had shouted out, “Cameron,” he wouldn’t even know she’d been bothered by it.
It’s not like Maria and I were a couple, he thought. It’s not like I dumped her for Cameron.
But he’d known that Maria loved him. She’d told him that before he even met Cameron. Maria had guts that way. She would tell people how she felt even if she wasn’t sure she’d like what she heard back from them.
“Want to do another wave?” he asked her. He wanted to do something to show her that she was important to him. A wave was probably an exceedingly dorky way to do it, but hey, this was Maria. Dorky things made her happy.
“Not now. The other team’s about to score,” she answered. At least she looked at him when she said it, looked at him and smiled one of her Maria smiles. “Besides,” she added. “People are still staring at us from the last one.”
So she felt it, too.
Michael did a quick scan of the people sitting around them. Everyone was watching the kids play, except one older-sister type who was surreptitiously reading a book.
But he still couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. In fact, the feeling was getting
stronger.
Michael did a sweep of the opposite bleachers, methodically glancing from face to face. His muscles instinctively tensed when he got to a pair of eyes drilling directly into his.
Kyle Valenti was giving him the death stare. Which Michael couldn’t care less about. Even if Michael didn’t have powers, he could take on Kyle.
But the hair on the back of his neck stood up when Kyle moved his gaze from Michael to Maria. Maria didn’t have any powers. She didn’t have any way to defend herself against Kyle.
Michael slid a little closer to Maria. He wasn’t going to let anything happen to her. If Kyle took one step toward Maria—one step—Michael would take him out. Permanently.
Liz and Max sat on the sofa in the Evanses’ living room. Key word: sat. Liz tried to remember if there’d ever been a time where they’d been alone in his house and just … sat.
Okay, Max wasn’t a guy who attacked one second after they found a semiprivate place. But when Liz was alone with Max, the air just got sort of charged. Liz loved that pre-make-out time, where she became more and more aware of everything. The heat that she could feel coming off Max’s body. The tickle of her long hair against her back. The sound of Max’s breathing getting just subtly faster. The feeling of her own breath easing in and out of her lungs. It felt almost like they were touching each other even before they started touching.
But now … they were definitely just sitting. The air didn’t feel charged. It smelled stale and felt almost too thick and heavy to breathe.
I’m going to suffocate if I stay in here too long, Liz thought wildly. Then she told herself she was being idiotic. The air had just as much oxygen as it always did.
Liz shot a glance at Max. She wondered if he was aware that she was in the room with him. Or if he was aware that he was in the room. She doubted it. He had that look he always got when he was in deep communion with the consciousness. Liz hated that look—all vacant and deanimated. It was like Max wasn’t Max anymore. The thing sitting next to her was shaped like Max, but it was totally lifeless.
I could slide my hand up his thigh right now, and he probably wouldn’t even twitch, Liz thought.
And the worst part was that Max liked connecting to the consciousness. He liked being part of something so immense. He didn’t seem to realize that submerging himself in the ocean of beings meant being away from her. Or if he did realize it, he didn’t care.
Liz tucked one leg under herself. Then she twisted around and sat cross-legged. She just couldn’t get comfortable. She tried a pillow behind her back. Didn’t help. She tossed the pillow over onto the armchair.
I have to get out of here, she thought. If I stay here another minute, I’m going to start screaming and never stop.
“Max,” Liz said loudly. “Want to head over to the Y? We can still catch part of Kevin’s game.”
He didn’t answer. She leaned over, braced her forefinger against her thumb, then flicked him on the head. He blinked twice.
“The creature stirs,” Liz muttered.
“Sorry. Did you say something?” Max asked. He rubbed his temple, right over the place she’d just flicked. Poor baby, Liz thought. Even in her head it came out sounding sarcastic.
“I asked if you wanted to swing by the Y, hang out with Maria and Michael,” she said.
“Actually, I’m not feeling that great,” Max admitted. “I don’t know what’s going on in the consciousness, but it’s something mega. I keep getting hit with all this fear and anger and, I don’t know, sadness, I guess.”
“Is it about Alex?” Liz demanded.
“It’s something new. I know that. Maybe it could be connected to Alex, but I don’t think so.” Max shook his head, the movement making him wince.
Liz felt a lance of guilt stab into her. She’d been so caught up in whining to herself about how Max wasn’t paying any attention to her that she hadn’t noticed what was going on with him. Now that she was really looking at him, she could see the signs she should have caught before—the purple smudges under his eyes, the way the skin of his forehead appeared somehow tight, the tense muscles in his neck.
“Want me to rub your shoulders?” Liz offered. “My papa always does that for Mama when she gets all stressed, trying to fill too many cake orders in one day.”
“Um, actually, I think if you touch me, it’s only going to make it worse,” Max said. He gave her an apologetic smile. “I feel like even a feather brushing against me would be killer right now.”
Liz nodded. “How about some ice water? Or could I get you a pillow or something?”
“You know what?” Max said. “Why don’t you head out? I think I’m just going to try and sit very still until this goes away.”
Going out into the fresh air sounded wonderful. Going over to the Y and hanging out with some people who might actually laugh and talk and everything sounded even better. But she wasn’t sure Max should be alone.
“I could sit with you,” Liz volunteered. “That way if you need anything—”
“No, it’s okay,” he said, cutting her off. “I don’t want you to waste the rest of the day baby-sitting me.”
He meant it. She could see that. He wasn’t just trying to be nice.
“Okay, well … I’ll see you later, then.” Liz stood up slowly so she wouldn’t jar him. She thought about leaning over to kiss him good-bye, but it would probably just hurt him.
“Bye,” Max said.
Liz felt a little shiver skitter through her when she realized that even though he was talking to her, he was already halfway back into the deep connection. Without another word, she turned around and rushed out of the house, glad to step into the sunshine.
As she headed to the bus stop, she broke into a run. She didn’t plan to, but it just felt right. Suddenly she had to get away from Max’s house as fast as possible. Her dark hair streamed behind her as she pushed herself faster and faster, pulling in breath after breath of the cool air.
When she reached the stop, the bus was just pulling up. The door wheezed open, and Liz occupied herself digging out the right change and depositing it. Then she took a seat and stared out the window. As the bus rolled down the street, she forced herself to look at each building, each little store in each little strip mall. She just wanted to blank out for a while. Not think. About anything.
When the bus got close to the Crashdown Café, her father’s restaurant, she reached out and rang the buzzer. She’d been planning to hook up with Michael and Maria, but—
But the Crashdown stop is the same stop as the UFO museum, and you want to see Adam, a knowing little voice inside her head informed her.
I don’t want to see Adam, Liz told herself. But when she climbed off the bus, her feet turned toward the museum.
Okay, well, it’s not like I want to see him, she amended. But I need to tell him that Kyle Valenti is going all stalker, trying to find out what happened to his father.
Oh yeah, right, the little voice retorted. Why does Adam need to know that? Kyle Valenti has no idea Adam even exists. And besides, Michael and Adam are roommates. Michael will tell Adam everything he needs to know.
“I’m not going to be one of those people who has these conversations with herself,” Liz muttered, glad no one was on the sidewalk to hear her.
Fine, I’ll be quiet, the little voice answered. As soon as you admit you want to see Adam. Can’t wait to see him. Because when Adam looks at you, it’s like you’re the most beautiful, wonderful person he’s ever seen.
It’s just the way Max used to look at you.
“Honey, I’m home,” Michael yelled as he unlocked the apartment door.
“Okay, honey, I’m in the kitchen,” Adam called back. There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice. That was what happened when you’d lived most of your life underground with only picture books from Dad Valenti to read and no TV or Internet access. You took everything way too friggin’ literally.
“Uh, Adam, I was just joking around when I called you honey,
okay?” he explained as he entered the kitchen and took a seat at the table. “Don’t get the idea that that’s the way guys usually, you know, address each other or anything.”
“How long is it going to take me to get all this stuff?” Adam burst out. “I spend all day studying, trying to catch up and become seminormal, and I still—”
“The joking thing makes it confusing,” Michael interrupted. “Besides, this is Roswell. You qualified as seminormal around here about your second day. On the way to Maria’s brother’s basketball game, Maria and I saw a guy wearing his underpants on the outside and a T-shirt that said Abductee Volunteer.”
Adam gave a snort of laughter. “You want some cereal?” he asked, holding up his own bowl of little oat rockets and marshmallow planets.
“I’ll pass,” Michael answered. He tilted his chair back on two legs and opened the fridge. He studied the contents for a minute, then pulled out a plate of cold spaghetti and a squeeze bottle of chocolate sauce. When he’d slammed the fridge closed and turned back to the table, he saw Adam looking at him with a worried expression.
“What?” Michael mumbled through his first bite.
“Is it normal to eat cereal for dinner?” Adam asked.
“You’re a guy living on your own. It’s totally normal,” Michael told him. “And anyway, being too normal isn’t normal.”
He was careful to keep his voice low and casual even though a flare of anger had gone off inside him. If Sheriff Valenti wasn’t already dead, Michael would cheerfully kill him for what he’d done to Adam. The guy couldn’t even eat a bowl of cereal without feeling like a freak.
“Can I ask you something else?” Adam sat down across from Michael. “I’m trying to figure out the kissing thing.”
“The kissing thing,” Michael repeated. “O-kay, go ahead.”
“Friends kiss each other sometimes, right?” Adam said. He shoveled a couple of spoonfuls of cereal into his mouth.
