Buddha Boy

By Desirae Wilson

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It was dark, as any other night in Roswell. The time had to have been around Midnight because somewhere around 10 and 11, Tess Harding had lost track. Tess Harding the teenage alien practically came crumbling into the living room at the Valenti house. It wasn't that she had been sneaking out or anything, it’s just that for an alien, she was still afraid of the dark, a fact that she would hardly admit to anyone, especially her roommate and friend Kyle Valenti, who as well as his father lived in the house as well.

But she was shocked and almost startled to find herself stopped in the middle of the living room. Usually, on any other night like this, she would have quickly gone to the kitchen, gotten her usual glass of water and gone back to her room without a silent peep, or even her eyes open to see the dark that was all around her. But tonight was different. She couldn't help but notice Kyle’s crinkled body on the couch. It was almost as if this was the first time that he was ever really, and truthful peaceful. That he could ever really accomplish anything, and don’t get her wrong. Tess herself had admitted openly that she was not all to fond of the joke. But deep inside, really, really deep inside she found it hard to resist his cunning charm and simple smiles.

Something far below Tess, and her rate of stature. Tess was no ordinary girl, of course you have the fact that she was an alien, but I’m not talking about that. You see, Tess is a reincarnation of a person how lived a long time ago. A princess married to a King. That King was Max Evans, and ever since the first time that she ever saw him, she knew that there was something about him. Something familiar and it wasn't just Nasado’s influence. It was something more then that, but also something less then that. Because she didn’t truly love him, she remembered loving him, but she didn’t love him. She knew that Avandrea, her former self did love him, very much so. But in this life, she wasn't very sure.

And in that room, where Kyle was, and in the dark, she couldn't help but be unusual to herself by standing there. Silent, but still almost whispering to him, talking to him in forms that he would never remember and she didn’t understand. Something unusual, different, she must have been standing there for at least 10 minutes because by the time the clock chimed 1:00, and the raped noise startled her, she realized how long she had been standing there. Confusing though she may have seemed to the world outside, and all who knew her, she could not tare herself away.

She crept to the couch silently, forebodingly, almost asking to get caught, but not really wanting it, just simply begging. Little begs not large ones. She knelt down beside the couch where Kyle’s head lay, and looked at him, really looked at him. His face was like something she had never seen before; it was an expression that she never thought existed. Something so simple could be so reminiscing, so comforting; she didn't quite know what to do.

And in looking at him, she found herself searching. Searching for things that had happened between them, Moments, sometimes lost, sometimes found. And watching him as he slept with his crinkled noise and his mouth half-open and drooling all over the place. She found it more comforting then his look of awake-ness, when he was awake he would look at her with eyes only of that of a football player, and a Buddha Boy. Not quite that of the real Kyle Valenti. Not the Kyle Valenti that she was seeing now.

She was astounded by this, and she couldn’t stand to withdraw herself, not even for a few minutes. She had to watch ever single moment which was completely strange for Tess Harding. She wasn't, the type of person that you would think be interested in people’s sleeping habits. But she did realize that if Kyle did wake up, and it now being 2:30 in the morning, it was quit likely. He would see her and probably think something quit strange, and probably what ever they had between them would change automatically and something new would take form and whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing, she didn't know. She wasn’t into that human stuff as of yet. She hadn’t progressed to her new surroundings that quickly.

So she huddled herself in the kitchen, she sat atop the counter, with Kyle’s old football jersey hanging over the side. And a glass of water kneeling next to it. Simple, but truthful. The Valenti house was not large; it was a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, living room, kitchen, small dinning room and a garage. And a back yard the size of Texas that was never taken care of, never maid, never wedded, and it pretty much looked like a forest. God only knows what lived in there.

The furniture was old, and creaky, from the 80s; something left over from a honeymoon sweet. Mrs. Valenti, whom Tess had never met, or new the name of, or had even seen a picture of. Had left sometime in the early 90s. Kyle and his dad never really talked about that. It was just the silent thing of the house that Tess learned on the first day. She wasn't spoken of, she wasn't thought of. It equaled less pain; but Tess knew that Kyle was deeply upset by it. But who wouldn’t be, when your mother up and leaves you and never calls and never comes back, it does make you wonder.

It was probably the same for the sheriff. But neither of them would ever admit their feelings or comfort each other. They were too manly, much, much, much, much, too much testosterone. But that was kind of what Tess liked about them. They were completely original. Completely Human. No trace of anything left over. And herself, growing up with Nasado, she had never known that. Nasado was as cold and as lifeless as any dead human could be. And any live alien, probably much better. He was what, on there home planet they would refer to as a warrior. Silent, and calm. Dictating, almost. With no life at all other then to protect, and please, and keep sacred. Perhaps that’s why he took Tess; it would have been much easier to just leave her there, seeing as how the other three had already gone. But he took her, and in a since endangering her, to the world of aliens, and letting the other three grow up in humanism.

But Nasado never let Tess do anything human. They were always on the run; she had grown up in so many different places that she stopped counting long ago. She had had so many names, but her name, the one that he always called her was Tess, In private only. And if they were in public he would call her something different like Ashley, or one time her name was Nevada. It was always something connected to the desert, she had never figured out why. She had spent time in almost ever state, and almost ever country. And she had been hunted by almost every man.

That was the one bridge that Kyle and Tess had between them. They didn’t share that fear, that pain that Tess kept inside herself, from being on the run all those years. He didn’t know about all the times that she would set in the front seat of a car in total silence. Nasado never let her have a magazine; for fear that she would grow too human. She never got to listen to a radio, unless she was in private, she never got to watch television. It was always about how to get away from all that. How to stay true to there own way and there alien side, and never letting the human side in.

Tess has a human side, she knows that she does, it’s just that it’s hard to break through. But that’s what the Valenti house is to her, a way to break through a way to find herself. And think of something to do to define herself. She has complete freedom here, she can buy as many Seventeen magazines as she wants, and she can watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and learn new ways of fighting and she doesn't have to worry about what Nasado will do or what Nasado will say or if her comes home early, or if he happens to come into the room.

She doesn’t always have to be on the run, for the first time in her life she’s settled. And a word that she has never been able to say before for fear, she can now say. She’s Home.

Another turn of the clock. It’s now 3:00 o’clock. Tess was borderline. On some kind of psychotic episode, or it lest that’s what she told herself. She had to be, no alien on earth, not a skin, not a shapeshifter, not even the hybrids themselves would stay up all night and watch a human sleep. It was unheard of, and more then likely had to do with something in her brain. A weak cell that she had gotten in the process of being re-created. But even when she told herself that, she still couldn’t get away. She was still on that counter, setting, watching, looking, and facing eyes that would never look back at her. Seeking a time when they would. Daydreaming about future encounters and meeting at the Crashdown with him. Little glares in the school hallway. Little meeting here and there about alien business, that really wouldn't hold any enjoyment for either of them. Only the fact that his being there would please her.

Of course all of these new developments and new feelings would never be revealed. She wasn't that kind of person yet. She wasn’t the kind of person who would go around and reveal her feelings like Michael, Isabel, and Max. They were far too human, or maybe, she was far to alien. Either way they were both cursed.

It would be like, an alien in love with a joke, and a joke in love with an alien, it was just too, scifi, like something that you would read in a cheap novel, with Leo on the cover. And something that would never work out in the real world. And ever minute that she was in there she told herself that. "It would never work out. It would never work out."

But she didn’t listen to herself, and she continued to watch. She kept seeing faces with blank names, and names with blank faces. Daydreams and memories. And everything that ever-teenage girl could feel, she was feeling, at that very moment. It was like a burst all in one night.

And with that, she stayed. Possibly because she did feel close to Kyle, not just in a brother, sister kind of way which he felt for her but in more of a solemn kind of way. In more of a deep down kind of way.

But you have to think about Romeo and Juliet in this situation. Kyle was no Romeo, and Tess was no Juliet. So you can’t really put them together in that situation. But what she wouldn’t give to her Kyle say. "Oh, Tess, Tess, where for art thou Tess."

Another hour and 4:00 o’clock passed, and she realized that she was never going to make it back to her room that night. She gave herself up to that thought. This night had been totally and unbearably unusual. But to her it was so enjoyable. It was an addiction, and she was unable to stop.

By the time the sun came up, traveling through the desert, and then, in the sunlight she realized how truly beautiful he was. How kind he could be, and how special her Buddha boy was. She really didn’t mind all the magazines, that he hid under the couch pillows, or the jokes that he would tell his friends about his girl friends and how many times he did it with her in the back of his car. It was just about feelings and looks and moments that were all mixed up together in space and time. And something new that was so old and raggedy that it was ready to full apart.

By the time, she did go back to her room and lay in her bed and through the covers over her stomach, her arms hand in hand, and her face dropped on the pillow, and she thought with no motion. And she thought about what she was going to do about herself. Because she would not be able to go to school the next day feeling like she did, she wasn't tiered, but she was restless.

But with the alarm clock in the living room playing Green Day full blast, She new that Kyle was up, and with a wake up call, she new it was her time to.

By the time she lifted herself out of the bed, and went to the kitchen she found Kyle standing there, in front of the counter, wearing his colored Calvin Klein Boxers. He was singing along to Green Day and pouring two glasses of Orange Juice for the two of them. It was completely normal. And she was home with her Buddha Boy.

The End