Searching
for Liz Parker
By Karen
Rating: R
Disclaimer: In all of my delusions, it's
mine. In reality, none of it is
Summary: Liz Parker has apparently
vanished from the face of the earth; Max and Isabel are searching for her,
slowly putting together the pieces of the puzzle. Did Liz run away from home, or
was she abducted?
Author's Note: Takes place after the gang
has graduated, S2 happened but S3 didn't. No baby story. Flashbacks are in italics.
Thanks SO MUCH to Lolita Behrbuns for my
wonderful banner! 
****************************************
Part One
Max Evans
climbed from behind the wheel of his light blue Chevelle and shielded his eyes
against the sun. He wore sunglasses,
but it was mid-summer and the desert sun was high in the sky, pounding
mercilessly down on the small, ramshackle town.
On the other side of the car, Max’s sister Isabel climbed out as well.
Blowing out a tired breath, she wiped some sweat from her forehead as she
took in the surroundings.
“Where
should we start?” Isabel asked, glancing away from Max and down the dusty
street.
Behind the
glasses, Max’s eyes shifted from one poorly-maintained storefront to the next.
All of his senses were on alert – there was nothing good going on in
this town. As a matter of fact, if
Isabel hadn’t been an ‘unusual’ woman, he wouldn’t have felt comfortable
with her being there.
“You try
that thrift store over there,” he finally suggested, thinking his sister would
be safe in that place. His gaze
shifted to a bar a few doors down and across the street from the store.
“I’ll try the pub.”
Against her
will and in light of the mood, Isabel snorted a giggle.
Max turned questioning eyes to her. “People
in
Max gave her
a half-hearted smile and issued his usual warning before they parted ways,
“Keep your guard up.”
As he walked
toward the door of the bar, he felt a thin line of sweat running down his spine
and soaking his T-shirt. Since the
Chevelle had no air conditioning, his and Isabel’s journey had been rather
dusty and quite hot. But he had to
give her credit – never once did she complain about the discomfort.
She’d signed on for this task knowing full well what it entailed and so
far had kept her end of the bargain.
Shades in
place, Max pushed open the door to the bar and was greeted with the smell of
cigarettes and stale beer. He
didn’t hesitate or loiter in the doorway; mustering all of his confidence, he
walked straight to the bar and took a stool.
On his way, however, he took in all of his surroundings in a very short
span of time. There was a grizzly,
fifty-something bartender at the far end of the counter.
There were two men at the pool table; as soon as Max had entered, the one
taking his shot had straightened, while the other man’s hand had gone to his
belt – he was packing. At the bar
sat three men of varying ages, all of them with empty shot glasses and full beer
mugs before them.
Max slid
onto the stool and stared straight ahead. He
could hear muffled whispers coming from the pool table, but remained motionless.
From the corner of his eye, he could see the bartender and the three men
at the bar staring at him. Eventually,
the bartender threw his dish towel over his shoulder and approached Max.
The man
wasn’t entirely sober himself, Max realized, as he placed his hands on the
counter palm-down before the young alien and leaned his weight forward.
Max guessed that was supposed to be a maneuver of intimidation, not that
it worked.
“What do
you want?” the bartender spat. It
wasn’t an offer to get him a drink – it was a demand for information.
“I’m
looking for someone,” Max said quietly.
“They
aren’t here,” the man snapped, gave Max a threatening look, then started to
walk away, his step deliberate and slow.
Max sat
motionless, but behind his sunglasses, his eyes moved carefully over the scene,
taking in movement with his peripheral vision.
He could hear the men at the pool table mumbling to one another and he
drew in a deep breath. He needed to
be ready for anything that might come his way.
“You one
of them city folks, ain’t ya?”
Max turned
slowly to see that one of the men who had been sitting at the bar was now
hovering behind him. It was a
godsend that his man had come to confront him – now he had the excuse to pivot
around and get a full view of the place. The
men at the pool table had moved closer as well, one of them holding his cue like
a ball bat.
“I’m
from
“What’s
with them shades?” Pool Cue Guy asked.
Max turned
his head slightly in his direction.
“You hidin’
somethin’?”
His motions
slow, calm, Max reached up and slowly pulled the glasses from his eyes.
He met his accuser’s gaze steadily, unintimidated.
“I’m looking for someone,” he repeated.
“They
ain’t here!” the bartender barked from the other end of the bar.
Max ignored him.
The first
man to approach Max didn’t seem as abrasive as the others.
In fact, he looked a little concerned; Max reasoned that maybe the
alcohol had dimmed his sense of strangers being a threat to this tiny, dead
town.
“Who?”
the man asked.
“My
girlfriend,” Max replied.
Pool Cue Guy
burst out laughing, mocking him. “Ain’t
that sweet, boys? He got a
girlfriend!”
The other
pool player started to laugh with him, until the interested man snapped in their
direction to shut up. Both of them
immediately backed down and Max quickly calculated that his helpful “friend”
carried some weight in the dynamics of this establishment.
The man
turned his attention back to Max. “Why
do you think she’s here?”
Max
shrugged. “I don’t know for
sure. I was hoping she’d passed
through here and somebody would remember her.”
Actually, he was hoping that his last tip had been false and she hadn’t passed through here – Max shuddered to think of Liz in a
place like this.
Another one
of the men from the bar staggered over. Max
guessed him to be about his father’s age and from the worry lines on his face
and the sudden sickness he saw in his eyes, he had to wonder if he’d lost
someone once, too. “Got a
picture?” he asked.
Max nodded
once. He rose from the stool and
reached into his back pocket for his wallet, all of his movements intentionally
slow so that none of them would think he might be reaching for a weapon.
He’d also had the good sense to lock most of his money and his credit
cards in the glove box of the Chevelle in case one of them decided to liberate
him of his wallet.
Keeping his
fingers from shaking, Max pulled the now-worn photo of Liz Parker from its
plastic sleeve. He didn’t look at
it but for a split second – her wide smile and happy eyes quite simply drove a
dagger into his heart every time he looked at them.
He held up the picture.
“Her name
is Liz Parker,” he said, letting the first man take it from him.
“She’s small, about five feet tall, thin.”
The first
man studied the picture for a long moment, then gave his head a shake and handed
it to the second man who had joined them.
“Hey, we
wanna see the broad, too,” Pool Cue Guy called.
The first
man growled in his direction again and he and his pool mate retreated to the
pool table, scowling and muttering under their breath.
The second
man shook his head and handed the picture back to Max.
Hopes deflated again, Max glanced to the end of the bar, where the last
man who’d been drinking and the bartender were looking at him suspiciously.
He wanted them to look at the picture as well.
“You best
be going now,” the first man said, following Max’s line of sight.
“There are better places for you to be.”
Max shifted
his gaze to the man and gave one nod of his head – he understood completely.
Across the
street, Isabel moved silently through the aisles of the thrift store, trying to
look like she was shopping. Truth
was, she wouldn’t take anything home out of this dank, filthy little store.
But she wanted to get on the storekeeper’s good side, so she could ask
her questions. Time
to whip out the Sunshine Committee smile, she mused.
Smiling
broadly, showing all of her beautiful teeth, Isabel made her way over to the
cash register. The woman behind the
counter was fiftyish, dressed rather frumpy for her age, her hair in need of a
good bath. Isabel tried to look past
all of that as she reached over and picked up a soiled sundress.
“Do you
have this in an eight?” she asked happily.
The woman
raised one eyebrow, her eyes traveling down to Isabel’s leather boots.
Then she looked at her manicured nails and the emerald ring that her
father had given her on her sixteenth birthday.
There was no way a classy – or perhaps ‘uppity’ to this person –
woman like Isabel would wear that gaudy gauze dress.
Isabel
dropped the smile and shoved the dress back onto the rack.
She wasn’t fooling anyone. “Okay.
I’m not here to shop,” she confessed.
“I’m looking for someone and I was hoping you could help me.”
The woman
reached below the counter, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, letting
the smoke drift into the alien’s face. Isabel
remained where she was, refusing to let this woman’s rudeness win.
“A
friend,” she said, reaching into her back pocket and pulling out a photo Max
had given her. She held it up to the
woman. “Liz Parker.”
The woman
took a long drag on the cigarette and stared at Isabel for a long time before
she turned her eyes to the photo. She
barely glanced at it, then met Isabel’s eyes again.
“She’s
short. Maybe she came through on the
bus,” Isabel offered.
The woman
remained motionless.
Isabel
sighed internally and felt her inner bitch rearing its ugly head.
She stuffed the picture back into her pocket and headed for the door.
Before she left, however, she turned back to the woman.
“By the way, it’s called shampoo – look into it.”
As she
stepped back outside, Isabel realized it was as hot in the open air as it had
been in the store. Apparently air
conditioning was as foreign to that shopkeeper as good hygiene.
Max was
leaning against the door of the Chevelle, his boots crossed at the ankle.
Isabel could tell even from the other side of the road that they’d
reached another dead end. Neither of
them said it aloud, but just climbed into the car instead.
“Let’s
go back to the freeway,” she suggested as Max started the car.
“I don’t want to stay in this town tonight.”
He nodded in
agreement. “I doubt if they even
have a motel,” he said as he pulled onto the road.
Mentally, he mused that he’d probably just met a whole group of men who
would give Isabel a place to stay for the night.
The thought made him shiver.
Isabel
reached into the glove box and pulled out a worn
His head
whipped in her direction, his lips pressed tightly together.
“I’m not
saying we should give up,” she said quickly, shaking her head in denial.
“I’m not saying that at all. I’m
saying maybe we should move out of
Max frowned
and turned his attention back to the road. The
fact they had no evidence was the problem. It was almost as though Liz had
disappeared off the face of the earth. It
was as though she’d been abducted.
“So, do you aliens come with a handbook or
anything?”
Max laughed. “A
handbook?”
“You know, so you know all of the things that
you’re supposed to do,” Liz said, smiling.
“Oh, and what am I supposed to know how to do?”
She thought for a moment, her dark eyes turned to
the ceiling of the eraser room. They
weren’t there to make out like most visitors to that room – they were there
waiting for Topolsky to return to her office so they could spy on her.
“How to perform an anal probe?” Liz finally came
up with, then burst out laughing as her cheeks turned crimson.
Her hands flew to her mouth in embarrassment.
Max’s mouth was open in astonishment at her
outburst, but then he had to laugh at her.
“Sorry,” she laughed, dropping her hands.
“Forget anal probes. What
about abductions?”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Abductions?”
“Yeah, aren’t you supposed to abduct people?”
Her eyes settled on his lips, then returned to his eyes.
She was showing interest in him…or was she?
Max tried to tell himself that she was just being grateful for him saving
her life. Why would she be
interested in him? He was some alien
mutant that up until ten minutes ago she thought was three feet tall and green
when he was born.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” Liz finally said,
filling the uncomfortable silence Max’s reflection had caused.
“At least I don’t think it would be so bad to be abducted by an
alien.”
Max sighed,
willed away that memory of innocence from what seemed to be so long ago.
“We’ll go back to the bus station,” he offered to Isabel.
“See if we can talk to that baggage handler again.
Maybe we got something wrong.”
His sister
nodded and appeared to be relieved that they were leaving
Max watched
the road ahead and realized that if they didn’t find Liz, he’d never feel
relieved again.
Part Two
“Let's just keep running, you and me, away from
here, away from everything. I see everything so clearly now. We'll go someplace
where no one knows us. As long as we're together, nothing else matters.”
Max
remembered speaking those words. He’d
lied to Liz when he claimed he didn’t. But
at the time, he was trying so desperately to set her free, so that she could
live a life without all of the alien madness that was yet to come.
The alcohol had made him so much more open, so unabashed at saying what
he meant – at that moment, he did believe if they distanced themselves from
everyone that everything would be okay.
But they had
to be together. And now they were
separated.
Max enjoyed
this part of the journey, if there could be any enjoyment out of it – it was
the time when Isabel went to her room and he went to his and he could be by
himself and just think. Or grieve,
although he hadn’t let himself do so just yet.
To grieve was to give up and he wasn’t giving up.
He lay on
his back on the bed, his forearm over his eyes, and tried to concentrate on Liz.
If only he had Isabel’s dreamwalking power!
He’d asked his sister to try to dreamwalk Liz, but so far she’d come
up empty. That was one of the things
that troubled Max the most – that Isabel couldn’t even locate Liz.
Usually she could find someone and maybe just not be able to get in.
But now, she couldn’t even conjure up Liz’s subconscious.
All of the
worst scenarios had already raced through Max’s mind – the worst, of course,
being that Liz was dead. But if he
concentrated really hard, if he dug deep enough into his heart, he could still
feel her there, however weak that presence might be.
As he did
every night, he clenched his eyes tightly shut and concentrated on Liz, on every
part of her face, the sound of her voice, the heavenly sound of her laughter.
He offered all of those memories up to whatever powers that be might be
out there and listening, begging for just a glimpse of his love.
Maybe he had a dormant cerebral power that he wasn’t aware of.
Maybe if he did this every night, he’d be able to find her.
A knock on
the door interrupted Max’s mind games. Letting
out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding, he called, “Come in,” and
opened his palm toward the door, ready to blast any unwelcome intruder.
But it was
only Isabel who entered, a white carry-out bag in her hand.
Her long, blond hair was wet and combed straight, and as she neared the
bed Max got a whiff of something sweet – she’d recently showered the dust
from the road from her body.
“Burgers,”
she said, plopping down into a chair by the bed.
The room was
standard budget-rate motel – a bed, a chair, a bathroom and not much else.
Max sat up
and wiped his hands across his eyes, brushing away the weariness.
He reached for the bag and took out one of the burgers.
“Thanks,” he said.
Isabel
nodded and took the last sandwich for herself.
She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a bottle of
“Carry out
store by the burger place,” she said, twisting open the bottle and squirting
some of the hot sauce on her food. “That’s
the thing you gotta love about south westerners – they love their spicy
food.”
Max nodded
his agreement and took the bottle from her, anticipating the burning sensation
the sauce would soon bring. Their
diet had been poor – mostly eating whatever was around when they got hungry.
One day their meals had consisted of ice cream from Dairy Queen and not
much more. He could feel the effects
in his body already – he was tired most of the time and felt like he was
getting run down.
They ate in
silence for awhile, then Isabel asked, “Talk to anyone?”
Max shook
his head. “You?”
She nodded.
“Michael. Nothing new.”
Internally,
Max sighed. He was glad Michael had
agreed to stay behind in
And then it
had been four of them, five of them, six of them…at some points remembering
who did and didn’t know the secret became a chore.
Sometimes Max wished there was a way to go back to those simpler times
when it was just the three of them, but that would mean he would have to give
Liz back, too.
“Max,
I’ve been thinking.”
He was
broken from his internally musing by Isabel’s voice.
“About what?”
“Well, we
know that Liz bought that bus ticket to
He dipped a
fry into some
“We’ve
been assuming that she got on the bus but didn’t stay
on the bus.”
Well, since
she’d never reached
Isabel gave
a light laugh and waved her hand. “Bear
with me. How do we know she ever got
on the bus?”
He stopped
before the fry ever reached his mouth. It
was a possibility they hadn’t considered.
Instantly, he kicked himself for not having thought of that.
“But why would she buy a ticket and not get on the bus?” he asked.
He wasn’t confronting his sister, but rather asking her to prove her
theory.
She
shrugged. “I don’t know.
Nothing has made sense so far, Max. But
we’ve tried to follow the bus route and no one remembers seeing her.”
Max thought
about that for a moment. Would
someone working in a bus station really take note of someone like Liz?
Would they notice her enough that she’d stick out in their memory a
month after they’d seen her? Make
no mistake – Max thought Liz was a beautiful woman, but there was nothing
extraordinary enough about her to mark her permanently in peoples’ memories.
It wasn’t like she was exceptionally tall, or walked with a limp or
even liked to draw attention to herself at all.
Liz would blend in with the countless other faces the bus station workers
had seen.
“Do you
think we shouldn’t go back to the bus terminal?” Max finally asked.
Isabel
shrugged again. “We don’t have
any other clues, Max. I think we
have to go back there. Maybe we can
get some other information that might help us.”
“Like
what?”
“I don’t
know that either.”
Max stopped
eating, his food slowly turning cold. He
should mention to Isabel that they shouldn’t talk about stressful things over
meals – it did nothing but spoil his appetite.
“Iz?”
“Mmm
hmm?” she answered through closed lips, chewing her dinner.
“Have you
tried to walk her lately?”
Isabel
swallowed and nodded, her eyes softly regarding her brother.
“Every night like I promised I would, Max.”
He raised
his eyebrows hopefully. “Anything?”
She shook
her head slowly. “But I’ll keep
trying.” She crumpled up the
burger wrapper and tossed it back into the bag.
“I’d better go back to my room and let you get some sleep.
We’ll go to the bus station tomorrow and see if we can dredge up
anything.”
Max watched
her leave, then despondently tossed the remainder of his dinner into the bag
with the rest of the trash.
“Give me your hand.”
“Max, I don’t want to.”
Liz’s eyes turned nervously to the abyss below her.
“Just give me your hand,” Max coaxed, trying to
make his voice reassuring.
There was a gap in the rock between them – a gap
that he’d been able to jump easily. But
Liz’s legs were shorter and there was a good chance she wouldn’t make it.
“It’s a long way down,” she protested, turning
her flashlight into the hole. She
couldn’t see the bottom.
“It will be okay,” he said, stretching his hand
closer to her. “I won’t let
anything happen to you.”
“Why do we have to do this?”
In the dim light of the cave, he could see the fear in her eyes.
“Because I heard there is something up the trail
that is not to be missed,” he said excitedly.
“What is it?” she asked warily.
“Supposedly the most amazing stalactites you’ve
ever seen.”
“You’ve never seen them?”
He shook his head.
“No. I wanted to be with
you the first time I saw them.”
She looked back to the hole, then to Max’s
outstretched hand. “But what if I
fall?”
“I’ll catch you, Liz.
I’ll always catch you.”
“Ugh!
Why do all bus stations smell like piss?”
Max lifted
one corner of his mouth in a half-smile at his sister’s spot-on evaluation.
The humor was fleeting, however, as he looked desperately around the
interior of the
The thing he
couldn’t imagine, however, was her state of mind.
Had she been upset? Happy?
Excited to be going on a trip? Or
was it as Isabel had claimed – had Liz never made it onto the bus at all?
Fear twisted
Max’s insides as he imagined Liz stepping away from the counter, checking her
ticket and not noticing that she was being followed.
He saw her stalked, assaulted, beaten and left to die in an alley.
He shuddered visibly.
“Are you
okay?” Isabel asked, her brow furrowed.
Max nodded.
“Fine. Just a chill, I
guess.”
She looked
at him curiously – it was 110 degrees outside that day.
“Right. Well, I’ll go
work the magic with the counter clerk. You
poke around and see if we missed anything the last time we were here.”
Max watched
as his sister walked away. As she
moved, she adjusted her hair, reapplied some lipstick and in a move that totally
floored him, adjusted her boobs. Shaking
his head in embarrassed disbelief, he walked in the opposite direction, toward
the storage lockers.
He walked
the length of the lockers, eyeing them and wondering if something of Liz’s
could be in one of them. They were
the small, square cubicles that travelers could rent for a quarter.
He’d seen many movies and TV cops shows where the bad guy had stashed
the money from the bank heist in such a locker.
Looking over
his shoulder to see if anyone was around, he raised his hand to the flat metal
surface and slowly walked back the way he’d come, trying to get a feel for
what was inside. He could sense
nothing concrete, only the molecular makeup of the lockers’ contents –
metal, plastic, liquid…and a dead rat in one of the bottom ones.
Withdrawing his hand as if he’d been stung, Max look down to the locker
in question and shivered. No wonder
Isabel hated these places.
He checked a
few more places and found no clues of Liz’s whereabouts.
It had been such a long period of time, he really hadn’t counted on it
anyway. When he returned to the
ticket area, he saw Isabel leaning against a wall with a rather self-satisfied
grin on her face. Immediately, his
hopes skyrocketed.
“You found
something, didn’t you?” he spouted as he neared her.
“Sh,
little brother,” she chided cheerfully. “I
don’t want the authorities to know what I’ve done.”
His eyes
narrowed. One day she was going to
get them thrown in jail. “What did
you do?” he asked warily.
She tossed
her long hair, just as punctuation to her latest performance.
“Well, Attila the Ticket Master over there wasn’t being very
helpful,” she said, jerking her head in the direction of the ticket booth.
Max’s eyes
followed her movements and he noted a pudgy, middle-aged man working the window.
The guy looked friendly enough. He
seemed sort of happy, really.
“So, I
showed him my boobs,” Isabel confessed.
Max cocked
his head. “Are you kidding me?”
She shook
her head. “Well, not all of them,
just enough to get him flustered.” She
tipped her body forward and although Max didn’t look for himself, he imagined
that her breasts were practically straining at the top of her tank top.
“Then I asked for some bus schedules – to
Max’s dark
eyes fell excitedly on the piece of paper. “What
is that, Isabel?”
“This, my
dear brother, is Liz’s credit card number.”
Unable to
contain himself, Max quickly grabbed his sister into a joyous embrace.
He knew with that number, they could track everywhere Liz had been.
Part Three
“Do you love me?”
“Yes,” she answered breathlessly.
“Tell me,” he urged, gasping.
“Tell me how much you love me.”
Her reply was to close her eyes tightly, her body
moving with a natural, carnal rhythm. She
let out a groan deep in her throat.
“Tell me,” he commanded, his voice a hot
whisper. “I want to hear the
words.”
She moved faster, the sweat beading on her flawless
skin. Her breath came in a quick
hiccupping sound. “I love you,
Max” she gasped. Then her voice
turned into a cry of release as she threw her head back, “Oh!
I love you!”
“Earth to
Max.”
Max jerked,
the memory fading away quickly and rudely. Isabel
was looking at him impatiently, her hands poised over the keyboard.
“What was
the bank name on the card?”
He flipped
open the piece of paper Isabel had written Liz’s credit card information on.
“US Bank,” he said, deciphering his sister’s hurried handwriting.
Max watched
as Isabel’s fingers flew over the keyboard, performing an internet search.
Within a few seconds, a list of possible sites relevant to “US Bank”
and “customer service” were displayed. He
leaned a little closer, quickly scanning the items.
“Try the
first one,” he suggested.
Isabel
clicked on the link and a website popped up.
She and Max studied it for a few seconds until they found the link to the
account information page and clicked on it.
Near the right hand upper corner, there were boxes for the account number
and a password.
Max referred
to the paper again and read the sixteen digit number to Isabel.
When she tabbed to the password, they both stared helplessly at the
screen.
Raising her
head slightly, Isabel looked over the wall to see if any of the library’s
patrons were within earshot. It
would be a bad thing if someone caught them trying to access credit card data
that wasn’t theirs. Reassured that
they were alone, she dropped her gaze back to Max.
“Any
ideas?” she asked, her hands hovering over the keys.
“We have to be careful – too many wrong tries and we might suspend
her password.”
Max worked
his mouth, trying to think if he knew any of Liz’s other passwords, and
realized he didn’t. “Try
Gomez.”
Isabel eyed
him curiously.
He gave a
wan smile. “Liz likes Gomez.”
As Isabel typed in the suggestion, he closed his eyes as the memory and
the lyrics played through his mind.
The same, the same, the same again
To steal the time and haunt the graves
Just because it's there
Don't mean you see it anywhere
Maybe it's a trick of the light
“That’s
not it,” Isabel said, nodding toward an error on the screen.
Max opened
his eyes and read the message. It
wanted letters and numbers both. “Try
Gomez918.”
As she
typed, Isabel asked “What’s 918?”
“It’s
the day I saved her life.”
She eyed him
with sympathy while her pinky hit the enter key.
This had to be so hard for him and it somewhat amazed her that he was
holding it together so well. A bleep
from the computer drew her attention back to the screen.
Max stifled
his shout of joy as he realized could still predict at least part of Liz’s
mind. More importantly, they were
about to find out where she was.
There were
quite a few options. By accident,
Isabel clicked on “Payment Information” first and they found that Liz’s
payment was overdue. No surprise
there, since Liz herself was overdue these days.
“Pick
account activity,” Max suggested, willing away the urge to take the mouse from
his sister and do it himself.
“Good
idea,” Isabel said, clicking on the link.
There was a
pause as the search retrieved the information, a search that seemed like a
decade but in reality was only a few long seconds.
When the screen displayed the information, both Max and Isabel deflated.
On the page
were three line items. That was it.
Sensing
Max’s impending gloom, Isabel cleared her throat and decided to narrate their
findings. “Well, the first charge
is the bus ticket. Guess we already
knew about that, huh?”
Max nodded
solemnly.
“The next
looks like she spent
Max nodded
again. Liz liked to read.
“Well,
let’s see what we have for the last item.”
Isabel used the mouse to scroll down so the full charge could be seen.
“Fifty four dollars for a motel room…in
Max cocked
his head. “
“I don’t
know, Max,” Isabel confirmed, clicking the print icon to send the credit card
statement to the printer. “All I
do know is that we’re going to
Max watched
her tiredly as she left her seat to get the copy from the printer.
Why was she still here? Why
was she helping him still? She could
be home, taking classes, finding a boyfriend, being burden-free.
But she was here with him instead.
As Isabel
slid her lithe body back into the seat before the computer, Max watched her
silently.
“You can
go home,” he finally said.
She glanced
up at him, one eyebrow raised. “Sorry?”
“You
don’t have to do this, Iz. You
don’t have to go to
She snorted.
“You’re kidding, right? There’s
no way I’m leaving you out here on your own.
Besides, Liz helped bail us out more than once – I sort of feel like I
owe her one.” Her lips turned
upward slightly at the ends, a sad smile.
He returned
an identical smile, then took the paper from her, folded it in quarters and slid
it into his back pocket.
“When you were little, tell me what you wanted to
be when you grew up.”
Max stared up at the ceiling, thinking.
Outside, it had begun to rain and he could hear the steady tapping of the
showers on Liz’s bedroom roof. Every
now and then, there was a flash of lightening and in that brief snap of light,
he could make out her features as she lay beside him, her head propped up by one
elbow.
“Come on,” she coaxed playfully.
“You wanted to be a doctor – or a lawyer like your daddy, didn’t
you?” Her fingers made a swirling
pattern in the center of his bare chest.
He kept himself from frowning and came up with a
diversion tactic. “I’ll bet I
can guess what you wanted to be.”
“You think so?”
He nodded. “I’ll
bet that you knew from the moment you took your first step that you were going
to be a world famous scientist. Didn’t
you?”
If there had been light in the room, he was sure he
would have seen her blush. “Well,
not right when I took my first step…but shortly after.”
She let out a little laugh and he found himself falling even deeper in
love with her. “But you didn’t
answer me. What did you want to
be?”
Max looked back to the ceiling and worked up courage
to put voice to what he’d been ashamed to tell her.
"Come on," she prompted teasingly.
"What did you want to be more than anything?"
“Human.”