by Melinda Metz
“I saw you making goo-goo eyes at my brother,” Michael told Isabel, pulling her attention back to him. She could hear the pride in his voice when he said the word brother.
“So what if I was?” Isabel asked. But she didn’t like the idea that she’d been so obvious. Obvious wasn’t her style.
“I guess he’s a good substitute if you can’t have me,” Michael teased. He dipped her, a big, dramatic dip that had the ends of her hair brushing the floor.
Isabel looked up and saw Adam staring down at her, laughing. She hauled herself back up, using Michael’s arm for leverage. Then she reached over, took Adam by one shoulder and one hand, and tried to dip him. They both would have landed on the floor if Michael and Trevor hadn’t steadied them.
This is the way it should always be, she thought. All of us together. Then she glanced around, realizing someone was missing.
Where was Max?
“Max, come dance with us!” Isabel shouted.
“In a minute,” he called back. “I promised I’d call Liz and give her a live report from the party.”
“Tell her we miss her,” Maria called.
Max nodded, then wove his way through the crowd and over to the spiral staircase. He took the steps two at a time. The apartment was empty except for a couple making out on Adam’s air mattress. Max ignored them. It wasn’t like they’d be listening in on his conversation. He could set off a grenade in here and they wouldn’t notice.
He headed for a phone in the kitchen, then paused as he got a flicker of interest from the consciousness. He deepened his connection slightly, and a group of the beings began pulsing with the rhythm of the music from the party, their pleasure almost transcendent.
Max sank down to the floor and leaned his head against the wall, deepening the connection even further until he felt the pulsing begin in his own body and the explosions of pure glee go off in his head.
“Max, I need to talk to you.” Alex’s voice sounded so far away, almost inaudible under the music. The music. The music that felt more a part of Max than his own heartbeat.
“Now, Max,” Alex insisted.
Reluctantly Max turned down the volume on his connection to the consciousness, and the music began to sound ordinary again.
But it was a different song than when he came upstairs, he realized. And the couple on the air mattress had disappeared.
“How long have I been up here?” he muttered.
“At least an hour,” Alex answered. He sat down next to Max. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you. I should have told you before, but I, stupidly, wanted to wait and try to get more info first.”
Max felt his muscles tighten when he took in the splotches of gray in Alex’s aura. “So what’s the deal? Or should we get the others before you start?”
Alex shook his head. “I was actually waiting until I had a chance to talk to you alone,” he admitted. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, opalescent stone that shone with a blue-green light.
A shudder ran through Max’s body as a burst of joy and loss from the consciousness exploded inside him. “It’s another one of the Stones of Midnight,” he whispered.
“Yeah. This is what gave me the power to come through the wormhole.” Alex hesitated for a second, clenching his fist tight around the Stone, then rushed on. “I don’t think Trevor came to earth to have some family reunion with Michael. I think he came for the Stone. And I think he would have killed me to get it.”
Max’s first thought was for Michael. If what Alex said was true, it would rip Michael apart.
“Wait—what makes you think it was Trevor?” Max demanded. “You didn’t actually see him or anything, did you? Couldn’t there have been a third being in the wormhole?”
Alex closed his eyes and rubbed them with his free hand. “Yeah, I guess it’s possible.”
He opened his eyes, the gray spots in his aura darkening until they were almost black.
“But Max, when I’m near Trevor, I get scared. I feel like an idiot admitting it. But it’s the truth. I get this physical fear response, and I’m sure it’s because I’m picking up all these subtle, subliminal clues that Trevor is the one who was trying to kill me that night.”
Yellow lines of fear snaked across Alex’s aura. Just talking about Trevor freaks Alex out, Max realized. And Alex didn’t freak out all that easily.
“I was thinking maybe you could try and get some background on Trevor from the consciousness,” Alex continued.
“Maybe,” Max answered. “I mean, it’s not like I can type in his name and get a bio, but I might be able to get something. And I’d rather not talk to Michael until—”
“That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you alone,” Alex agreed. “And I thought you should be the one to have this.”
Alex gently placed the Stone in Max’s hand. Max could feel the power churning under its smooth surface.
“Okay, just give me a minute.” Max closed his eyes and let his connection to the consciousness deepen until he almost couldn’t tell where he left off and the other beings began. He formed an image of Trevor and sent it out in a wave that he hoped would ripple all the way through the ocean of auras.
Almost immediately the auras around him began to vibrate. Their hues changed rapidly in a cacophony of color that burned Max’s eyes. Then the changes slowed down as all the auras got closer and closer to the same shade.
Red. The vivid bloodred of pure fury.
Max didn’t know what the deal was exactly, but he knew that the rage was directed at Trevor.
And he knew that the consciousness believed Trevor was a danger to Max. To all of them.
“I can see you’re having a wild Saturday night,” the scruffy twenty-something guy behind the counter of the minimart said. He dropped the bottle of vanilla in a little brown bag and handed Liz her change.
Oh, great, she thought. You know your life has hit a new low when the minimart guy finds you pathetic.
“I’m just about to head over to a party my friends are giving at the UFO museum,” Liz lied.
The guy gave her a knowing smile, and Liz felt her face get hot.
She didn’t think there was any lower she could sink, but it turned out there was—trying to convince the minimart guy you had a life. And failing.
“Thanks,” she muttered. She snatched up her bag and got out of the place as fast as she could.
But as soon as she was clear of the guy’s sight, she slowed down. She was in no hurry to get home.
I wonder if Max will have called while I was gone, she thought. She’d expected him to call hours ago, but nothing. Like it would have killed him to tear himself away from the party for a few minutes?
Liz knew she had entered the self-pity zone, but she just didn’t care. She figured she should just move in—pitch a tent or something. It wasn’t like her life was going to get better anytime soon.
She turned onto her street. When she saw the porch light on at her house, she tried to remember if she’d flipped on the light when she left. She didn’t think so.
Just as Liz reached the sidewalk, her front door swung open. Her papa stood there, glaring at her. His arms were folded across his chest, blocking out most of the line of dancing teddy bears printed on the front of his T-shirt.
“You were told not to leave the house,” he said before she was halfway across the lawn.
White-hot anger erupted inside Liz. She strode up to her father and thrust the bag into his hands so hard, he almost dropped it.
“I was out scoring some drugs,” she told him. She’d never said anything like that to her papa before, but it just came spewing out. And she was glad it had.
Her father took a quick look into the bag. His grim expression didn’t soften.
“That isn’t funny,” he snapped.
“You know what else isn’t funny?” Liz demanded, taking a step closer so she was right in his face. “It isn’t funny that my own father doesn’t trust me enough to le
t me leave the house.”
The front door opened again, and Liz’s mama appeared. “I asked Liz to go to the store for me,” she said. “I forgot I didn’t have enough vanilla to finish my cake, and I have to deliver it first thing in the morning.”
Liz’s papa jerked around to face her mother. “I don’t want Liz leaving the house except for school or work unless she’s with one of us,” he informed her, his voice as harsh as when he’d been talking to Liz.
“All I did was—,” Liz began, her anger still hotter than lava.
“Let’s discuss this inside,” Liz’s mama interrupted. “Unless you two want to ask the neighbors for an opinion poll.” She brushed distractedly at the flour covering the bib of her well-worn overalls as she led the way inside.
“There’s nothing to discuss.” But Mr. Ortecho followed his wife into the house. Liz took a deep breath, trying to get some kind of control over her temper, and headed after them.
“I agree that Liz should be punished for lying to us about the trip to the caverns,” Mrs. Ortecho said as she closed the door.
“Of course she should be punished!” Liz’s papa exploded.
The foyer was small, and his angry voice bounced off the walls. Liz felt bombarded, as if his words had physical weight.
Liz’s mother made little patting, smoothing gestures in the air, as if she were trying to shape a loaf of bread. Not going to happen, Mama, Liz thought. There’s no way to turn this situation into something Martha Stewart nice and neat.
“But not to let her go to the library or the store or even for a walk seems excessive,” Mrs. Ortecho continued.
“Excessive?” Liz’s papa repeated. “I’m trying to save our child’s life, and you call it excessive?”
Liz’s mama gave a little gasp, so soft Liz almost didn’t hear it. Then she turned away and started to run down the hall.
As Liz watched her mother leave, she felt something tearing inside her, something that ripped away as her mother disappeared into her bedroom.
She pressed her hands over her abdomen, as if her body had actually been torn open.
It was the first time any of the three of them had even alluded to Rosa’s death, even in such a roundabout way—at least in front of each other.
“I have something to tell you, and I want you both to listen,” Liz announced, her voice strong and steady. Her mama didn’t open the bedroom door, but Liz knew she was listening. Liz waited until her papa locked his eyes on hers.
And then she said the thing she thought she could never say. The thing that had been eating away at her like acid for years.
“I’m not Rosa.”
* * *
“No one left but us,” Michael said, looking around at his friends. He locked the museum’s front door.
“Should we start cleaning now?” Maria asked, checking out the empty soda cans and pizza boxes scattered around the floor. “Or be lazy and—”
“There’s something we need to talk about,” Max announced, cutting her off.
The sharp edge to his voice instantly had everyone gathering around him.
“What’s going on?” Michael demanded. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed how messed up Max’s aura was.
Max shoved his hands through his hair. “Here’s the deal,” he said, his eyes locked on Michael’s. “Alex felt something follow him through the worm-hole, something that wanted to kill him.”
“But it turned out that he was wrong,” Maria protested. “It was just Trevor.” A few of the silver sparkles in Maria’s aura winked out.
“Alex and I thought there might be a third being in the hole with him. He asked me if I could get some information from the consciousness.”
Michael’s teeth squeaked as he ground them together. He had a feeling he knew where this was going.
“I sent out sort of a feeler about Trevor because that was the starting place we had.” Max jammed his hands in his pockets and glanced around the circle without actually meeting anyone’s eyes.
“You did what?” Michael demanded, although Max had said what Michael had been afraid he was going to say. He shot a look at Trevor. His brother’s face was impassive, his aura a perfect, even beige.
“What I got back was—,” Max continued, as if Michael hadn’t even said anything.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Michael interrupted again. “If there’s anything Trevor wants us to know about him, he’ll tell us himself.” He glanced from Maria, to Isabel, to Adam, to Alex, looking for some backup.
“Usually I’d agree with you,” Alex told him. “But not this time. All our lives could be at stake. That’s why I asked Max to check Trevor out.”
Michael felt like punching something. Something he could whale on until his hands were bruised and bloody, until he was so exhausted that’s all he could think about.
“I can’t believe you’re saying this,” he burst out. “You’re talking about my brother.”
“I realize he’s your brother, but we don’t really know anything about him,” Max answered.
“Right, we don’t know anything about him at all,” Maria jumped in. “Good or bad.”
But Michael noticed that she had backed up half a step away from Trevor, and he saw that threads of sickly yellow had begun twining through her aura. She was scared.
“What possible reason would Trevor have for trying to kill you?” Isabel asked Alex.
Isabel’s question hadn’t sounded challenging. It hadn’t sounded like she was defending Trevor, either. It was more like she was staying neutral until she had all the facts.
Which was the same as siding against Michael’s brother. The same as siding against Michael. Was Michael the only one who knew that there was no way his brother could be some kind of potential murderer? This was total insanity.
Michael positioned himself at Trevor’s side, wanting him to know that at least Michael was with him however this thing shook down. He wished he had some clue what Trevor was thinking, but his brother still had that blank look on his face, and he hadn’t said a word.
“Show them,” Alex told Max.
Max reached into his pocket and pulled out a stone that was filled with a pulsing blue-green light. The glow distorted the planes of his face, making him look like a stranger to Michael.
“A Stone?” Isabel breathed.
“What does that thing prove?” Michael demanded.
Alex ignored him and nailed Trevor with a hard look. “You’re not going to try to pretend you don’t know what that is, are you?”
“Of course I know what it is. I doubt you could find anyone on my planet who doesn’t,” Trevor answered, his voice flat. “It’s one of the Stones of Midnight.” He stretched his hand toward it, then caught himself and jammed his fingers into his pocket instead.
“It’s power, pure power,” Isabel said. “I can see someone killing for that.” Her tone was still neutral, as if she were talking about the weather or something.
Michael felt like shaking her.
“I can tell you for sure that someone was searching my room last night,” Alex jumped in again. “I didn’t see their face. But they teleported out, so that kind of narrows things down.” He turned to Michael. “I mean, that does narrow things down, right?”
It’s like he was begging Michael to understand that … that this wasn’t personal or something. Michael looked away. He didn’t know what he’d end up doing if he didn’t. That I’m-sorry-but-I’ve-got-to-do-this expression on Alex’s face was about to make Michael go ballistic.
“Max, I think we need to hear what the consciousness told you,” Maria said. She shot an apologetic glance at Michael.
Oh, so she was sorry, too. Well, that made this witch-hunt just fine, didn’t it? As long as everybody felt bad, it didn’t matter that they were accusing Michael’s brother of something heinous.
“Just as, you know, a precaution,” Maria added. She bent down and picked up a soda can off the floor, then stared at it as if she’d never see
n one before.
“I think you’d all be more comfortable discussing me if I wasn’t here,” Trevor said suddenly. Then he turned on his heel and strode toward the door.
“I’m coming with you,” Michael called after him. But Max grabbed his arm before he could move.
Michael jerked his arm away. He stumbled backward, ramming into one of the glass display cases.
“I can’t believe that you just did that. I can’t believe that you all—” He stopped. There were no words that could explain how he felt right now. They’d all betrayed him, and they didn’t even know it.
“We didn’t say that Trevor had done anything wrong. We just need to talk it through,” Maria said softly, talking to Michael as if he were some kind of wild animal that needed to be coaxed back into its cage.
“No!” Michael shouted. “No!” He slammed his fist down onto the case, and the top shattered. Shards of glass speared into his skin. Michael squeezed his fingers even tighter against his palm, forcing the glass in deeper, welcoming the pain.
“Let me heal that for you,” Max said, in the same soft voice Maria had been using.
“I don’t need anything from you,” Michael shot back. He’d never thought he’d say those words to Max, Max, who’d always been there for him. But Michael meant the words, every one of them.
There was a choice to be made here, and he was making it. He turned on his heel and started toward the door.
“Don’t,” Max ordered. “The consciousness said Trevor was dangerous. He could turn on you the second you’re alone.”
Michael shot a glance at Max over his shoulder. “You don’t get it, do you?” he asked. “He’s my brother.”
He sprinted out the door into the dark night. Trevor was already more than a block away. Without hesitation Michael took off after him.
Adam swept the floor of the empty museum. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he was finished.
Should he go look for Michael? He’d been gone for more than three hours. Adam grabbed the dustpan out of the waistband of his jeans, then pushed the pile of dirt into the pan.
