The Short-term Fix

by Yettaren

        “Maybe it’s just your unconscious or something telling you Isabel’s hot,” Nate suggests helpfully.

        I glare at him across the room, knowing even as I do that with the lights out, he can’t tell. “Subconscious, dumbass.”

        “Well, yeah, whatever.”

        “I grew up with Isabel,” I explain staunchly. “She’s my sister.”

        “No, she’s not,” he says. “She’s an Evans. You’re a… whatever you are.”

        “I’m nothing,” I say immediately, sharply. “Guerin, it’s just a name they gave me. It doesn’t mean anything. But we were born together. We grew up together, we’re… we’re not meant to be lovers .” I glance at the phone resting on the dresser inches away from my face, my direct line to Isabel. “We can’t be.”

        “So tell me, Alf, what do you want right now?”

        “Right now?” I ask in the darkness, staring out at the moonlight through the window. “I want Isabel,” I say softly.

        “Right,” Nate says, and that’s the last thing I hear before I slip off into sleep.
       
        She bends over the stones with grace, with beauty.

        I watch as she touches the x, her face etched with worry as she studies it, contemplating it, worrying over it.

        I want to end her worries, and show her what it means, so I move behind her, and reach out, stroking the hair back from her face, feeling a jolt of electricity as the skin of my fingers connects with the skin of her forehead. It’s meant to be.

        I run my hand through her soft, blond hair, and as I reach her shoulder, she turns to look at me, her eyes heavy with lust.

        I bend down, taking her neck in my hands, leaning in to her. Her mouth hangs open, breathing towards me, waiting for the kiss. I hear a throbbing, I think it’s coming from the symbols. The signs, they’re speaking to me…

        Our lips meet, and it’s magic. It’s heavy, it’s primal, it’s nothing else that I’ve ever felt. I can’t do anything but touch Isabel, and feel Isabel, and know that it’s what I’m supposed to do. I distantly feel her hand brushing the length of my arm, but my sensations are focused at my mouth, at the taste of Isabel, the deliciously sweet and spicy taste of someone like me, of someone made just for me.

        We rise together, the desert swirling somewhere in the distance around us, and our bodies move in together, our groins approaching, waking something deep, something powerful and profound. Something we can’t resist, something that drives me-

        “Ugh!” I sit up in bed, gasping, horrified.

        “What is it?” I hear Nate asking blearily from the next bed.

        “Isabel,” I say, and immediately reach for the phone by the bed. I punch in the numbers to her cell phone and wait, anxiously, through the first ring.

        “Michael,” she gasps, answering immediately.

        “I-“ I can’t finish the sentence. Instead, I grasp my pillow anxiously, waiting to hear her voice again, as Nate stares at me from across the room.

“It was only a dream,” she says, panicked.

“It was only a dream,” I reply, trying to remind myself as I glance down at my hands, the hands that only moments ago were holding her silky hair… I could swear I still feel it, how could it be a dream…

Fifteen minutes later, I slide open the window and help the real Isabel in through it. She’s still dressed in her pajamas, shivering in the cold night air. I help her to the desk chair as Max climbs in behind her, unassisted.

Max glances across the room at Nate, who’s sitting straight up in his bed, wide awake, rubbing his eyes and brushing blond hair back from his face. I sigh and move away from Isabel instinctively, awkwardly. “He knows,” I say, averting my eyes from what I know is coming.

“Knows… what?” Max asks suspiciously, and I feel Isabel’s cold glare as well, joining his.

“Everything,” I say with a sigh, collapsing onto my bed.

Max lowers himself beside me. “Everything?” he asks, his voice rising.

“Everything,” Nate confirms cheerfully.

“Nate, stay out of this,” I beg. He raises his hands in defeat and cross his legs on the bed, settling in to enjoy it.

“Why’d you tell him?” Isabel asks tightly.

“It’s complicated,” I sigh.

“What?” Max demands. “You’re worried that the Butlers are spying on you and you go and tell this guy?”
       
“He’s not gonna tell anybody,” I say, and Nate mimes zipping his lips.

“Michael, I can’t believe you,” Isabel says. “After all your rants about Max telling Liz, you turn around and-“

“I beat him up,” Nate says helpfully. “I made him tell me.”

        “You did not beat me up,” I snap. “I was defending myself perfectly well.”

“I was gonna,” he says quietly.

“Look, this is beside the point,” Max says impatiently, glaring across the room at Nate. “What’s going on? Isabel wouldn’t say anything on the way over,” he explains to me.

“We had a dream,” I explain.

“Standing in the desert,” Isabel chimes in.

“There were stones,” I add.

“A pattern,” Isabel says. “Symbols.”

I sigh. “Right.”

        “They meant something,” she says.

“Alien,” I confirm. “It was the symbols-“

“-From the reservation,” Isabel confirms. “And something else, over your head in the sky, Michael. The five stars. A V formation.”

“A what?” I ask. “I didn’t see that, I saw the X formation. Not in the stars, in the sand.”

She shrugs. “Maybe it wasn’t important.”

“Maybe it was,” Max says. They exchange a glance. “Isabel wanted me to bring this.” He pulls out the cave painting, the one he copied down at the Mesaliko reservation, the one that I tried to interpret and that led me to River Dog. The ones that led me to the library, to my failed mission to find Nasedo. I feel a stab of cold fear – I know exactly why she wanted him to bring it. He sets it down on the desk and we gather around it, away from Nate’s curious eyes.

“Did you… see this?” Isabel asks in a whisper. She lays her finger down on the x symbol.

I gulp a little, and touch it as well. “That’s the one,” I say, breathless, glancing at Max.

“Definitely,” Isabel agrees quietly. We refuse to meet each others’ glance.

“And you’re sure you both had the same dream – the rock formation, the map on the ground, everything?” Max asks.

“Yeah,” I reply.

“Think, was there anything else, anything unusual?” Max demands. “I mean, what were you guys doin’ out in the middle of the desert?”

“Nothing,” Isabel and I say together, exchanging a glance.

…someone like me, of someone made just for me…

“Nothing important,” Isabel says after a moment. Max frowns at us, and I shoot a sideways glare at Nate to keep him silent. “There is one other thing,” Isabel says reluctantly. “When Tess was at our house yesterday, when she told me to look for signs… she made that symbol out of sugar cubes.” She points to the x. I feel like laughing at that for some reason – sugar cubes? – but I don’t feel like smiling enough to do so.

“So it means something,” Max concludes. He pulls the symbol map closer for a better look. “If we just knew how to read this!” he bursts out, frustrated.

Isabel glances at me pointedly, and I glance away, pretending like I’m just examining Nate, who’s twiddling his thumbs in bed. “Tell him, Michael,” she urges.

“Tell me what?” Max asks, his voice tinged with dread.

I pace over to the window and lean against it, my arms crossed. “I thought I figured it out, once,” I say, “But…” I shrug and shake my head. The frustration and anger of that night, of trying to send a message in reply to what I thought was a message to us, comes rushing back to me. Isabel and I froze in the front yard of the public library for hours, hoping that Nasedo would find the burning message we made for him. And nothing. It was hopeless.

“But what?” Max presses.

“I was wrong,” I explain.

“What if you weren’t?” Isabel asks suddenly. “Michael used the V constellation to navigate the symbols,” she explains to Max.

He straightens, staring at me with new eyes. Not eyes of respect, that’s for sure. More like horror. “How’d you know how to do that?” he asks, shocked.

“I just knew,” I say, feeling an internal shiver even as I say it. I shrug. “But it didn’t work.”

        “But what didn’t work?” Max presses on urgently.

“The night you were drunk, Michael and I went to the public library,” Isabel explains. “That’s where the symbol was supposed to lead. We thought if Nasedo left us a symbol at the cave, then we should send one back to him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this, Michael?” he asks, advancing on me.

I straighten up and step towards him. “You mean, why didn’t I get your approval?” I ask.

“Do you realize what you did?” Max accuses me. “That’s why Nasedo is here. It’s why he’s pretending to be Tess. You led him right to us.”
       
“Yeah, I thought that was the goal!” I snap back in his face.

“The goal is to stay in control!” Max counters angrily. “It always has been. Discovery on our terms, no one else’s.” He looks almost instinctively in Nate’s direction, and Nate burrows under his comforter. “I mean, this whole search you’ve been on, didn’t you ever think it could lead to this?”
       
“Lead to what?” I say, my voice rising. “An answer to every question we ever had? Maybe Nasedo is here to make things better.” Max just stares at me. “Oh, I forgot,” I say. “What could be better than your comfortable little life in Roswell, New Mexico?” Max continues to stare at me. “Why are you so scared of being alien?” I ask him directly.

“Why are you so scared to be human?” Max demands, and I blink at this.

“That’s enough,” Isabel says, leaping from her seat and slamming her hand on the desk. “Both of you. Do you ever stop to think how I feel? God, you’re too busy deciding who’s right to notice that this is happening to me, too.” She runs her fingers through her hair and I swallow, the images from the dream returning yet again. The dream I don’t want to have. The urges I want to control and can only just barely. “Oh, God,” Isabel whispers. “Whatever Tess did when she was here yesterday, the sugar cubes, the… I think she made me have that dream.”

“Let’s just try to be prepared,” Max says. “You never know when these dreams may come again.”

Isabel and I glance at each other, and I see the same fear on her face that I feel. Each time, it goes further, and there’s no telling what will happen next time.

I take that back. I know exactly what will happen next time.

And maybe I’m ready.

And maybe I’m not.

“C’mon, Isabel, let’s go home,” Max says, reaching his arm towards her. Isabel breaks eye contact with me and slips across the room to Max, who helps her out the window and into the darkness.

I glance over at Nate, who’s still curled up near the top of his bed, watching me intently. “You’re not gonna remember any of that, right?” I ask him. “Never happened.”

“Course not,” Nate says immediately. “What happened?”
       
“Mmmm,” I grunt, closing the window and watching the Evanses disappearing around the corner.

“All this time, I thought Max was your best friend,” Nate says aloud. “I didn’t realize he was just another alien.”
       
“What do you mean?”

“The whole friend thing, it’s a cover, right?”
       
I pause. Images of empty Tabasco bottles, a sleeping bag on a vacuumed carpet, and hours spent driving around Roswell in the Jeep flash before my eyes. “It didn’t used to be,” I finally say.

“Oh,” Nate says, and we’re both silent for a long time, though I’m not quite sure that either of us ever goes to sleep.
       
I’m afraid. I’m afraid to go back to sleep.
       
I’m afraid of what will happen next.

Chapter 62

        “You’re really eating that?”

        Max eyes me suspiciously as I pull a celery stick from the baggie I’ve been toting around in my backpack all day. I uncap the bottle of Tabasco sauce and unceremoniously dump a bright red puddle on my lunch tray before dipping the celery stick in and crunching down.

        “Yeah, so?” Tabasco sauce will cover the taste of anything…

        “What happened to all the pizza and tacos for lunch?”

        “My doctor told me to cut back,” I say. “Plus I got a ham sandwich in my bag for later. What’d Liz find out?”

        We’re eating alone in the courtyard today, in a table tucked out of view of most of the student body. Isabel’s eating off campus with some of the girls, as are Maria and Liz, so we’re on our own for today. Thankfully.

        “Aries,” Max says.

        I blink at him. “What about it?”

        “The V formation,” he says, pushing a piece of paper between us on which he’s made a V of five dots. I shiver as my eyes dart across his crude sketch.

        The V formation. The one Isabel says she saw in her dream… our dream. Over my head in the night sky. I didn’t see it, but I felt it. Because I’ve seen it before. I shake the thought from my head as something else occurs to me.

        “Max, Aries isn’t this V formation,” I say suddenly.

        “What do you know about it?”

        “I know my astronomy, okay?” And the fact that I looked it up after seeing it in my Mesaliko-inspired hallucination. “And it’s not a V formation.”

        “It is now,” Max says, and I startle at that. He knows.

        “What do you mean?” I ask.

        “Venus is completing it, making it a V formation right now,” he says with emphasis. “It’s exactly the right formation, according to the software in the school lab. And it moved into place when Tess showed up.”

        “I’ve seen it before,” I say in a rush.

        Max stares at me slowly. “What?”

        “When I was having the visions…” I squint off across the parking lot, remembering the hazy images.

        “When you were sick?”

        “Yeah, whatever,” I say, dismissing him. “I saw this, Max.” I tap the paper on which he’s marked the dots. “It’s important.” I hesitate. “It’s how I navigated the map,” I say in a rush.

        “It’s the same symbol you marked out in the cave, isn’t it?” he asks, and I nod. “What does it have to do with Tess?” he asks rhetorically, tapping his own fingers on the table.

        I shrug and dip another celery stick into the Tabasco sauce. “I didn’t feel any meaning from it, just that there was a meaning.”

        “Tess shows up, starts messing with my mind, and you and Isabel are dreaming about a V formation, just as Aries takes its shape,” Max muses. “They’re not making this easy for us, are they?”

        “No,” I say, feeling a chill down my back. It could be that easy. “No, they’re not.” My eyes trace the V formation on the notebook paper, and after a moment, my finger drifts down to it, touching each dot in succession. One, two three. Four, five. Something about it seems familiar. Beyond my vision quest. As if there was a reason for me to see this particular symbol on my vision quest. A greater meaning.

        “Liz said something,” Max says. “She said that maybe these feelings Tess brings out in me… the ones I’m afraid of,” he says, glancing away, not wanting to look at me as he says it. “She says maybe it’s… maybe it’s my alien side.”

        I try to suppress a smirk and an I-told-you-so. “So you think maybe these dreams are our alien side? Me and Isabel?”

        “Could be.”

        My smile fades as I consider what that means. “Max, what if we’re too different to be with them?”

        “What?” he asks, staring at me, not understanding.

        “You know. Humans.” I shrug and reach for another celery stick.

        “Are we talking about Maria and Liz here?”

        “Maybe,” I say ambiguously. “We’re not like them.”

        “Liz said something else,” Max says in a lower tone. “She said we are who we choose to be, and we’re with who we choose to be with.”

        “So that means you can choose to be human, and be with Liz, or be alien, and be with Tess?” I ask. “Is she really offering you that choice?”

        “It’s not a choice,” he snaps, then collects himself again. “I mean, I choose Liz. That’s easy.”

        “Yeah,” I say, stirring the Tabasco and making lines through it with my celery stick. “Thought you would.”

        “What? Does that mean you would choose to be alien? Give up Maria?”

        I glance up at him quickly. “I didn’t say that,” I say.

        “But you’re thinking about it.”

        I stare back down at my celery stick and take a bite, quietly crunching for a moment before replying. “No,” I say, uncertain.

        “We are who we choose to be,” Max says, “and we’re with who we choose to be with. And maybe the two things aren’t necessarily connected.”

        “Do you really believe that?” I ask, staring at him intently across the picnic table. And after a moment, Max sighs.

        “No,” he says.

        “Didn’t think so.”

        “I want to,” Max says. “I want to believe it.” He takes a bite of a chip and swallows before continuing. “I want to believe it, because I’m afraid that the alien side is getting to be too strong. Something’s happening to us, Michael. To all three of us. And I don’t know if it’s Tess, or something else controlling us, but I’m afraid we’re going to lose our human side.”

        “And that would be a bad thing?” I ask.

        “Yes,” he says abruptly.

        It’s with these words echoing in my head that I stalk down the corridors of West Roswell High after the final bell, seeking out my target. I scurry out into the courtyard, and down the stairs, colliding with some skinny kid on my way down. “Whoa, sorry, bro,” I say to him, mindful of my human side, before I finally spot her, right where she should be, by her locker.

        “Hey,” I say, breathless, as I join her side.

        “Hey, right back at ya,” Maria says, with a wry smile.

        “I’ve been thinkin’,” I say, as we turn and make our way down the hall together.

        “Oh, great, this usually involves me having to get my car towed,” she says dryly.

        “What?” I ask, feigning confusion. “I’m talking about us.”

        “Us,” Maria repeats, sounding the phrase out.

        “Yeah, our relationship,” I say, and the last thing I expect is for her to burst into a snort.

        “Wait, I have never heard you use that word in a sentence before,” she says, giggling.

        “Can we get serious here?” I burst out, cutting her off.

        “Whoa,” Maria says. “Are you okay?”

        I scratch the bridge of my nose. “I’m just… I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

        “Because you were thinking about our relationship ?” she asks in disbelief.

        “Yeah,” I say without thinking. “I’ve been thinking… that we should only see each other.”

        “Wait, as opposed to all the other relationships we’re having with people?” she asks.

        I stop in my tracks beside her. “Wh- what do you mean by that?” I ask suspiciously.

        “No – I mean that… Uh, we already are only seeing each other. Right?” she asks, looking to me for confirmation.

        “Yeah-”

        “Right!”

        “So?” I ask.

        “I mean, unless you’ve got someone on the side,” she says, slightly confused.

        “N-no,” I say, stumbling over the words.

        “Okay,” Maria says.

        “No,” I repeat again, trying to convince myself of this. “So… well, then, if we’re already doin’ it… let’s make it official.”

        She laughs again. “Official,” she repeats. “Like, going steady or something?”

        “Going steady,” I say, relieved.

        “Okay,” she says, giggling again.

        “I just… don’t want anyone to ever come between us,” I tell her firmly.

        “Okay,” Maria says, not displeased. “You should have more of these tortured, sleepless nights,” she says, punching me affectionately in the stomach.

I run my hand through her soft, blond hair, and as I reach her shoulder, she turns to look at me, her eyes heavy with lust.

        “Let’s not talk about last night anymore,” I say. She nods in agreement and I lean in for the kiss, instinctively, my hands on her neck, pulling her in. But it’s then that the cut of her hair brushes my fingers, and I pull away, again on instinct. The hair’s not long enough, it doesn’t feel right, it’s… I shove the thought away, and clasp her to me again, pulling her in closer. Her hands close up around my face, and I let mine sink to her side, to pull her even closer… She puts her hand on my chin, pushing me away to take something in.

        And I feel a shockwave through me. This is right. This is where I’m supposed to be, and everything for just a moment is comfortable and familiar. I relax into the kiss, enjoying it, savoring it…

        I’m suddenly aware of a tittering behind us, and we pull apart simultaneously to take in the gathered crowd watching us make out in the middle of the hallway. We turn back to each other sheepishly.

        “Michael,” Maria says, trying to hide her embarrassed grin.

        I survey the scene calmly, looking for an easy way out, and my eyes light on the eraser room. “Let’s go in here,” I say casually.

        “Okay,” she says in a bit of a gasp, as we turn and beat our way to a private location.

        I pull open the door of the eraser room, yanking Maria behind me, and freeze dead in my tracks at what I see.

        Having yanked apart abruptly, Isabel turns to me, tucking her hair back into place. “Alex and I are together now,” she says seriously, staring right at me.

        I register this for a moment, taking in the scene, processing. Of course it would be this way. “Maria ‘n I are goin’ steady,” I say quickly and pointedly.

        Isabel bites her lip. “Great,” she says.

        “Great,” I agree.

        She glances around, not wanting to meet my eyes, but I can’t take my eyes off her.

        “Must be something in the water,” Maria says, cheerfully oblivious.

        And Isabel and I stare at each other, frightened and confused.   

Chapter 63

        The smell of baking muffins mixed with dish detergent. The sound of pop music mingled with GameBoy music. The television blaring Oprah Winfrey.

        I gotta get out of this place.

        “I gotta get out of here,” I grumble to myself, pointedly, as I shove my hand into the fruit bowl and emerge with a banana.

        “Do whatever you want next Monday,” Veronica says casually, ignoring the hatred I’m spewing in her direction as she washes dishes at the sink. “Michael, you just ate dinner.”

        “Can’t I at least go for a walk?” I manage to spit out before shoveling fruit into my mouth. I’m starved.

        Veronica finishes polishing the bowl she’s working on and gently sets it on the drying rack. “How far?”

        “Just the woods and back,” I say defensively, my interest perking up now that she’s actually taking my aside seriously.

        “I don’t know, Michael,” Veronica says with doubt.

        “What?” I ask. “It’s not like I can call Maria and tell her to come meet me and have wild sex in the woods.” She purses her lips at that, and I wonder if that’s the best thing I could have said right at that moment. “No, I’m just goin’ out to the woods for a little while.”

        She reaches into the soapy water and begins to scrub the next dish. “Why exactly the woods?”

        I slide into a chair at the kitchen table. “I’ll do my homework out there. I just can’t stay cooped up like this.” I break off another piece of banana and shove it into my mouth hungrily.

        “Homework?” she asks. “It rained the other day, the ground is still wet.”

        I chew my lip nervously. If I tell her, she’ll know where my refuge is, and it won’t be my refuge anymore. If I don’t tell her, my story is pretty much flunked out and I’m stuck here the rest of the day, which I couldn’t possibly stand. “There’s a little treehouse out there,” I finally say. “I’ll go work there. Alone,” I add pointedly.

        I hear a clank and splash, as she drops a dish into the sink suddenly. My head whips up, and I see that her face has turned ashen.

        “Um, so that’s okay, then?” I ask, studying her.

        She swallows visibly, regaining her composure. “Yes, Michael,” Veronica says. “That’ll be just fine.”

        I stare at her for a moment before hopping up and dashing to my room to grab my backpack, and race out through the backyard, back into the forest.

        I pull myself up the ladder, studying each rail, wondering what exactly it was that made her react like that at the mention of one stupid treehouse. “She knows about you,” I say aloud, to nobody in particular, as I pull myself up into the comfort of the love shack.

        It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve been here, and there’s a bit of a mildewy smell, but it’s all still here. The candles, the pillows, the posters. I throw myself across the padded floor and breathe in the mildewed air with a sigh. A refuge. A retreat. I may be grounded, but Michael Guerin isn’t caged just yet.

        I close my eyes, intending to just enjoy the serenity of being alone and unwatched, but before I know it, I’m somewhere else.

        I’m still high up, but high somewhere else.

        I’m not on top of a squeaky treehouse suspended several feet in the air. Instead, what I feel below my feet is an immense power. Something churning, humming, calling to me. I reach down and touch the stone beneath my feet, and gasp as I take in the horizon. I can see for miles, open desert in some ways, dark woods in others.

        I hear something in the distance, a drumming, a pounding. Something urging me on… but to what?

        I stare down at the symbols displayed far beneath my feet, on a ground so very far away. What are they trying to tell me, what am I missing?

        And then one thing that I’ve been missing is in my arms, wrapped around me, kissing me passionately. Everything that was comfortable and familiar sweeps away, gone, replaced by a burning desire for something I have to have… something I can’t possibly live without…

        I feel fulfilled, complete, as we press together, her body soft against mine on the rock face. I sense a pulsing far, far beneath us, something calling out, something I can’t understand.

        What I do understand is Isabel. Her lips, soft beneath mine. Her neck, caving to the sensation of my nose rubbing against it. Her hands, stroking me, then joining with me, all of our molecules pressed together.

        Something primal is growing between us, something reaching its full power as our fingers intertwine.

        It’s then that I sense it.

        And I know that it will be. Because it’s a force greater than me, willing it there. I surrender to the all-consuming power, to the primal force beneath me, becoming a part of my existence.

…Life…

        I feel something soft beneath me that isn’t Isabel, and I wake to realize that it’s the comforter I’ve fallen asleep on.

        I’m safe. I’m in the treehouse, I’m safe. Groggy, I pull myself up to a sitting position. The sun has gone down. There’s nothing stranger than a nap that begins with the waning twilight sun and ends in darkness. There’s enough moonlight coming in through the window that I can see well enough to grope my way to the table covered with candles, and grope for the cigarette lighter. I switch it on, and the light from the solitary flame flickers in front of me, warming my thumb, still on the lighter switch. I stare into the flame, at the blue tinges at the bottom, the white taper at the top.

        “Life,” I whisper again, and I glance down at my pants. This time, I don’t have an erection. Nothing at all physical. No, the power was something far greater than that, something more…

        …Alien…

        With a shiver, I touch the lighter to a candle and watch as the wick lights to life.

        “Isabel,” I whisper, staring at it. Isabel. Michael. Two words that shouldn’t go together… but they do… “No,” I say aloud, glancing at the candles Maria picked out for the treehouse. But… I don’t know what to think…

        I slide into the corner of the cabin, pressed up against the husband pillow shivering, but I can’t focus on the copy of ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ in my hands to save my life. Grows… something grows. I slam the book shut, staring at the cover trembling in my fingers.

        I reach into my backpack and pull out the papers with Max’s cave sketches on them. I unwrinkle them and set them carefully on the floor before digging out something else. Something I picked up today at school without even thinking about it, the topographic map of Chavez County from the school library. I spread it out on the floor, and stare at it.

        Nothing. Last time, it all seemed to spin together before my eyes, all the answers were there, just out of my grasp, just beyond my understanding. This time, nothing but peaks and valleys, and strange markings on paper made by Max’s hand.

        Unless.

        My fingers brush the spot that the map led me to last time, the site of the public library. Something pulses beneath my touch – maybe it’s the vein in my finger, or maybe something else, but I leap back, surprised.

        “C’mon, Guerin,” I whisper aloud. It should be second nature to me. If this is really my native language, the language of whatever parents created me, some part of my fucking brain should be able to read it. Instead, all I get is the feeling that something’s just out of reach.

        “Dammit,” I whisper, touching the strange markings on the paper again. I stare closer at the one beneath my finger, and feel a jolt. Something about it, the craggy outcropping, is familiar. From the dreams? I can’t quite remember, but it seems like something… something I’ve seen before. Something powerful.

        But where?

        I run my hands across the display, flattening it into place, and stare down at the map. Or, at least, what I think is a map. Four points on an x, a dot in each one.

        Five dots. Three of them, intact within bubbles. One, a broken bubble; one, a triangular bubble. Three and two is five. Four points on the x.

        A whirlwind, another dot at the center; whatever it means, it’s on the orbs that are safe at Max’s house. Another symbol. Something that looks like a planet with rings, a dot in the center. The symbol we left for Nasedo. I know it means the library, I just know it… but the fact remains, I’m putting human interpretations on these symbols, and I have no way of knowing if I’m doing it right.

        “Here, here, here…” I briefly touch the spots where I once placed healing stones on the wall originally bearing these markings. A stone in the whirlwind. A stone on the escaping dot from the broken bubble. A stone in the craggy outcropping.

        Bubbles and dots and stones. A whole lot of nothing.

        Patterns. Look for patterns. I touch the spot on the map where Max said he found the orb. Then where was the other orb? The one that Topolsky had? I touch the desert area, the vast desert rumored to have a crash site somewhere. The Mesaliko Reservation, where the symbols were left for us. No pattern. It’s useless.

        It’s a map. I know it’s a map. But a map to what? A map of what? And if Nasedo – Tess – didn’t leave it, who did? What is it supposed to tell us? I thought it was a map of Roswell, but I was wrong. Then what the hell is it? What if the map of Roswell that I used was the wrong perspective? I could enlarge the symbols, try them using another scale. But what scale? If this is a message I’m supposed to read, then why the hell didn’t they make it so that I could fucking read it?

        Frustrated, I grab for the protractor in the front pocket of my backpack, and idly begin measuring, to try and guess what the symbols would mean if my scale estimate was wrong. But it couldn’t have been, because it seemed right at the time…

        If Tess is Nasedo, and wasn’t the one leaving us these symbols, then who was? I sigh, and drop my protractor on the floor.

        “Where the hell are you?” I mutter.

        I hear a rustling down on the ground, and peer down through the hatch, to the forest floor far below. I see a figure standing there, staring up at me from the spongy ground, blond curls dancing around her stony face. And slowly, she turns in a circle, and I see what surrounds her – four pine cones. Sugar cubes. Pine cones.

        “What does that mean?” I demand. “Where is it?”

        “You already know,” she replies quietly, her voice carrying up to me. I stare at her, helpless. “You’ve been there before.”

        …running for my life, for safety, protection…

        …the others gone, must make it to safety, but where…

        …left something behind…

        …left something behind…

        And just when I think that I’ve gotten it, I’m startled back into awareness, and I realize with a start that Tess – Nasedo – whoever she is, has gone.

        I crouch down to the opening of the treehouse, and feel the blood rushing in my face as I hang there, silently, watching the quiet forest into which she’s disappeared.

        I saw something else.

        I saw a sign.

        And I don’t know if it means anything, but I sure as hell plan to find out.

Chapter 64

        “So what exactly is my part of the plan?” I ask the next day.

        Max stares straight ahead as he steers the Jeep towards Summerwalk Circle. “Your part of the plan is to lay low and not get grounded any more than you already are.”

        “Some plan,” I scoff at him. “What, Liz is the only one watching you while you’re deliberately going to the library in search of Tess? Do I need to remind you where I still think that damn map led to?”

        “No,” he says, irritated, “you really don’t, Michael. Listen, do I need to remind you of how stupid that whole library thing was?”

        “No,” I say, “cause it wasn’t.”

        “Look,” he sighs, “Just stay put. The last thing you need right now is more trouble.”

        “No, the last thing I need right now is you acting like a dick.”

        “Hey!” Max slams on the brakes and pulls over to the side of the road. I sigh and scratch my eyebrow, knowing what’s coming. “I’m trying to look out for you here.”

        “I don’t need looking out for.”

        “Apparently you do, otherwise you wouldn’t still be a minor,” Max snaps.

        I stare at him, taken aback by this. “What, now you think I should have done the emancipation thing?”

        “I don’t know,” Max says, avoiding eye contact with me as he drives. “Michael, I can’t tell you what to do with your life.”

        “Oh, now he decides not to tell me what to do,” I sniff.

        “When it comes to alien stuff, I kind of think I have a stake in what you do,” Max says wryly. “When it comes to your custody? I’ll tell you what I think, but ultimately the choice is yours. It always has been.”

        “Then do you or don’t you think I should have applied for emancipation?” I ask him again. I lean back against the car door, studying the familiar face of my brother, my best friend. The whole friend thing, it’s a cover, right?

        “Maybe you should have,” Max says. “Are the Butlers really helping you at all?”

        “They’re putting a roof over my head,” I say slowly.

        “And you’ve got a job,” he reminds me. “You could pick up more hours. Budget your state check yourself.”

        “So you are saying I should have.”

        “Maybe not,” he says. “Your grades have gone up, you’re more focused than you’ve ever been. You’re rankling under the discipline, but something’s working.”

        “Make up your damn mind, Maxwell,” I say, and after a moment he laughs. I have to join him. For now, the tense discussion is finished. He pulls back onto the road, continuing towards the Butler house.

        “It’s not an easy decision, is it?” he asks me.

        “No,” I grumble. “If it was, don’t you think I would have made it by now?”

        “Maybe, under other circumstances,” he muses. “I like seeing you caring about them,” he says. “When Annie was missing…”

        “Annie hates me now,” I interrupt.

        He shrugs. “The Butlers seem like the closest thing you’ve ever had to a…” He trails off.

        “Say it,” I say tightly.

        “I know they’re not,” he says. “And I know it’s only been a month. But they’re the closest thing you’ve ever had to a real family , Michael.”

        “I know you think so, but I don’t need a real family,” I point out. “I’ve got you, dammit, don’t I?”

        He shrugs. “Maybe.” He stops. “I mean, yes. Yes, you’ve got me. Whatever else happens, we are family.” Then he hesitates.

        “Are we?” I ask. “Are we really?” I shoot him a sideways glance, thinking of Isabel and not wanting to say it.

        “Maybe we’ll never know who our real parents are,” he says. “If we have the same parents or not. But Michael, you’re more of a family to me than my parents ever were.”

        I jump a little at that, the words having a reaction that I didn’t expect, shooting straight to my heart. “You really mean that?” I ask.

        “Yes,” he says, without hesitation. “Remember when we were born?”

        …running for my life, for safety, protection…

        …the others gone, must make it to safety, but where…

        …left something behind…

        …left something behind…

        “Yeah,” I say absently, trying to tune out the rush of images caused by these words.

        …blond curls…

        “What?” Max asks, staring at me.

        “Huh?”

        “What did you say?”

        “I said… what did I say? I said ‘yeah’.”

        “No,” he says slowly. “You said something else.”

        “I did?” I ask, confused. “What did I say?’

        “You said…” Max is equally perplexed. “You said ‘four’, Michael.”

        “No, I didn’t.”

        “Yes, you did.”

        “No, I’d know if I did.”

        “But you said it. I heard you.”

        I pull my backpack into my lap nervously. “What were you going to say, about us being born?”

        “Oh,” he says, “just that I knew we were supposed to stay together, that something bad would happen if we were separated. And it did, I was right.”

        “That old grudge?” I ask darkly. “Look, I was five minutes old, I didn’t know any better.”

        “That’s not what I’m saying,” Max says immediately. “We’re together now. It’s more than just coincidence, more than just family, Michael; we’re supposed to be together.”

        “But how are we supposed to be together?” I ask. “How much choice do we have in the matter?” Isabel…

        “I don’t know,” he says, then stops and peers at me curiously. “Four. Michael, you said four. I heard you clear as day.”

        “I guess…” I hesitate. “I guess I’ve just got numbers on the brain. I was looking at the map again last night.”

        “Did you figure anything out?”

        “Don’t you think I would have told you if I had?”

        “No,” he says honestly, and I have to concede the point to him.

        “Well, I didn’t find anything out,” I grumble. “Same old, same old. Lots of symbols, no meaning.”

        “I feel like we’re close,” Max says.

        “To Tess? Or to something else?” I remember her figure crossing quietly through the forest, and I shiver at the thought.

        “We’re close to Tess,” he says. “But I feel like we’re close to… to understanding.”

        “And you want to know,” I say. “You want to know what’s out there, what we really are, what we’re supposed to be.”

        “I don’t want to,” he says, and pauses. We stare at the road together, at the sprawling suburban houses passing us by as we draw closer and closer to my prison. “I have to,” he says.

        “ We have to,” I agree.

        “No, I mean… I mean I can’t help it,” Max says.

        “It’s not a choice for us,” I say. “For either of us. Any of us. We have to know.”

        “Aren’t you going to get out?” Max asks, and I stare at him, confused, before realizing that we’re stopped in front of the Butlers’.

        I hop out of the Jeep, and reach in for my backpack. “Good luck at the library,” I say.

        “Good luck there,” Max says, nodding to the house, and I scowl at him before jogging through the lawn and up into the house.

        I slam the door behind me. Veronica’s nowhere to be seen, but the screen door to the back porch is open; she must be out there. Annie’s door is shut, and she’s got Britney Spears blasting from her room.

        I drop my backpack on the living room sofa and switch on the TV. Rosie’s on. I glance towards Annie’s room, but no sign of life besides the screeching emanating from her stereo.

        The screen door opens after a moment, and Veronica bustles through, decked out in an old t-shirt and gardening gloves. She’s carrying a spade. “Oh, there you are,” she says.

        I raise an eyebrow at her. “Hi to you, too,” I say.

        “Michael, I’m going to go out for a walk for a little while. Keep an eye on Annie?”

        I glance towards the closed door, then back to Veronica. “Sure, why not?” I ask drearily. “I’m stuck here anyway.”

        “Michael,” Veronica says in a warning tone.

        “Veronica,” I say back, mimicking her tone.

        “You will still be here when I return, yes?”

        “I’m here now, ain’t I?”

        She squints at me. “I’ll be back within an hour.”

        An hour ? “Whatever,” I say, staring at the screen.

        Veronica pulls off her gloves and tucks them in a drawer before reaching for her jacket and pulling it on over her t-shirt. She shoots me one last skeptical glance before shoving her hands into her pockets and ducking out the front door.

        I stare blindly at the screen for a few moments. Rosie O’Donnell is fat and loud, but I can’t help but like her. Reminds me of someone else I know. Speaking of which…

        “So are you coming out here, or not?” I call in a loud voice.

        “Not!” Annie responds.

        “Fine!” I scream in her direction, over the horrid sounds coming from her room. Annie doesn’t have good enough taste in music to be a part of any family I’m part of. Then again, Max listens to Counting Crows.

        I stare at the screen. The very gay bald hairdresser is doing a segment. This guy cracks me up. And Annie, too. “The hair guy’s on,” I shout in her direction.

        There’s a long silence, and then the sounds of Britney Spears come to a welcome halt. After a moment, the door opens and Annie trudges out to the living room, avoiding eye contact with me. She pointedly settles herself in the middle of the living room carpet, on the floor, with her back to me to watch.

        “Veronica went for a walk,” I tell her. “It’s just you and me.”

        “Dammit,” Annie responds half-heartedly.

        “Sooner or later, you’re gonna have to talk to me, you know,” I say, a little uncomfortable.

        “Later,” Annie says confidently.

        I have to smile at her back. Even when she thinks she’s being evil, the kid’s really funny.

        The segment ends and Rosie goes to commercial. “Look, Annie,” I say. “You know that Nate doesn’t hate me, right?”

        She turns slightly, and I see the skeptical expression on her face. “That’s not what he said.”

        “Well, no,” I say, my patience wearing thin. “He’s just confused. You know he’s… he’s a dick.” My instinct is to watch my language around this kid, but I know it’s not necessary.

        “That’s for sure,” Annie agrees.

        “Then did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s trying to drive us apart?”

        “Michael,” Annie says patiently, “did it ever occur to you that we were never together in the first place?”

        “Hey, I thought we were friends,” I say, as I realize for the first time that maybe I do care what Annie thinks. I have to fight hard not to smile at her words. “Buddies.”

        “I don’t have buddies,” Annie says softly.

        “What do you mean?”

        “I don’t have friends. At school, or here.”

        “What the hell do you mean by that? I’m your friend.”

        She stares at me for a moment. “But you were mean to me.”

        “I’m mean to all my friends. Ask Max Evans some time. Or Maria, for that matter.”

        “Everybody’s mean to me,” Annie says.

        “What do you mean? Why?”

        “Cause I’m so stupid,” she says matter-of-factly.

        “Annie!” I bark out immediately. “You’re not stupid.”

        “Yes, I am,” she says. “I’m in the stupid classes, I ride the stupid bus.”

        “You’re smarter than a lot of other people I know,” I say.

        “I tried regular classes in fifth grade,” she says. “They were too hard. They’re easy for everybody else. I’m stupid,” she says again.

“Well, you’re stupid, and I’m mean, and everybody pretty much hates the both of us. So why don’t we just try and be friends?”

“Tell me why you cried at the doctor’s,” Annie says.

I blanch a little, but try to keep a straight face. “I was scared.”

“Of what? It’s just a doctor.”

“Scared… that they’d hurt me.” It’s not the whole truth, but it is a part of it.

“You seem too tough to be scared,” she notes.

I beam at her. “Really?”

“It wasn’t a compliment.” She finally turns around to stare at me, ignoring the fact that Rosie’s introducing the musical guest. One can’t say that Annie has good taste in music anyway. “What’d you really do Sunday night? Were you out in the desert again?”

“Uh, no,” I say. “Not this time, anyway.”

“Are you and your friends dealing drugs?”

“Annie!”

“What?”

“Where’d you hear about drugs?” The kid rolls her narrow eyes at me, and suddenly I feel pretty damn foolish. “Okay,” I concede, “but no. No. No! I don’t deal drugs.”

“Nathan does drugs, doesn’t he?” she asks.

I frown at her. “What makes you think that?”

“I just think so,” she says plainly.

I hesitate. “He does, sort of,” I say. “I guess. Look, I don’t think that’s a good thing. And it’s not what I’m doing with my friends, okay?”

“I know drugs are dumb,” Annie says, eyeing me narrowly. “But Nate’s pretty dumb sometimes, too.”

“He is,” I agree immediately. “But Annie, that’s not what we’re doing. I’ve got nothing to do with drugs, and Nate…” I pause. “Nate’s not doing anything real bad.” I scratch my eyebrow. “Yet.”

“You think he’s gonna get worse.”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I don’t know, Annie.”

“I wouldn’t care if he did,” she sniffs. “He’s always been mean to me, ever since he moved in here.”

“You were here first, right?” I ask. She nods. “Annie,” I say, suddenly realizing something. “Annie, I don’t know your last name.”

“Randall,” she says. “Annie Randall.”

“Annie Randall,” I repeat.

“You really didn’t know my last name?”

“I never asked,” I say. “I mean, you just seemed like a Butler.”

“I’m not.”

“Who are the Randalls?”

“My mom and dad,” she says, and I have to jump at that.

“What happened to them?”

She shrugs. “They didn’t want me,” she says. “They said when I was a little kid, they didn’t want me, it was too hard to take care of me.” She pauses. “I want to be a Butler.”

“Yeah?”

“Veronica and Toby can’t adopt me, though.”

“Why the hell not?” I demand.

“Because,” she says matter of factly, “I’m too expensive.”

“What?”

“Sometimes I get sick,” she says. “I have to go to the hospital. They can’t afford it all.”

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah. CYFD pays for my medical bills while I’m a foster kid, but if they adopted me I’d go on their insurance.” She says it so casually, and I don’t think she sounds stupid in the least right now. Then again, I would wager a guess it’s something she’s made Veronica explain more than once.

“Why do you get sick sometimes?” I ask.

“I have Down Syndrome,” she says, and it’s all I can do not to laugh. That much I knew, but I keep a straight face because it seems like it’d be cruel to do otherwise. “My heart sometimes…” She shrugs. “I’m okay for now.”

“Are you scared of doctors?”

“No,” she says. “I like my doctors. They make me feel better.”

“I guess that’s good,” I say slowly.

“Maybe if we were friends, I could help you like doctors,” Annie says seriously.

“Or maybe,” I counter, “we could just be friends. You know. Without the doctor bit.”

        “Maybe,” Annie says.
       
“So does that mean we can be friends again?” I ask.

        “Again?” Annie scoffs. “We never were.”

        “So we are now?” I ask seriously.

        “I guess so.”

        “Well, okay then, Annie Randall.”

        “Okay, Michael Guerin.”

        And she smiles.

Chapter 65

        Veronica returns some time later, and seems somewhat surprised to find Annie and I both immersed in Dragonball Z on the television.

        “You kids want macaroni and cheese for dinner, or spaghetti and meatballs?” she asks.

        “Spaghetti,” the two of us say as one. I turn around to register Veronica’s reaction, and am surprise to notice a little puffiness around her eyes.

        “Hey,” I say suddenly. “Do you people have, like, an internet thingy here?”

        “’An internet thingy’?” Annie asks scornfully.

        Veronica ignores her, thankfully. “We have AOL in the computer in our bedroom,” she says. “Do you need to look something up?”

        “Um, yeah,” I say. “For school?”

        She beckons to me, and I rise and follow her into the bedroom. I glance around uncomfortably.

        I perch behind Veronica’s chair and wait patiently as she boots up the computer and dials up to America Online. “What class is this for?” she asks.

        “History,” I say without missing a beat. Yeah. Mine.

        As the screen pops up, along with the inevitable “You’ve got mail,” Veronica pushes back and lets me slide into the folding chair in front of the roll-top desk.

        “Enjoy,” she says, before slipping back towards the kitchen, presumably to start on the spaghetti.

        I’ve done some internet stuff at school. I vaguely know what to do. I search for the internet browser, find it quickly, and go to yahoo.com.

        “Puhlman Ranch,” I whisper to myself, as I type the words into the search engine. I wait patiently as the computer thinks, searches, grabs images, and finally produces a list of sites. Here we go.

        My interest is immediately perked when I see the sites that are popping up. The Roswell Incident. 1947 And Beyond. What the Government Doesn’t Want You To Know. Patiently, I begin to scroll through the pages, and within minutes it’s clear.

        “Puhlman Ranch, once located in Roswell, New Mexico, was last seen on maps dated 1946. It is beleived to have been taken over by the government, part of it anexxed to Eagle Rock Military Base. Why, you ask? Sources close to the Roswell Incident confirm that the area once known as Puhlman Ranch was the true site of the UFO impact in 1947. This area may still hold untold secrets that the government doesn’t want you to know!!!”

        Misspellings and all, it’s still what I see time and time again. Very little information, not even the real location.

        But I know it’s got to be right. Because it feels right.

        I scroll with casual interest through the sites I’ve never seen before. Some of them I have seen, surfing them while I was supposed to be looking for scholarly citations on Charles Dickens in the computer lab during English class. There’s a lot of stuff out there, and a lot of people who, I grimly note, would very literally kill to know who and what I am.

        It’s the part of my existence I try not to think about. For all the other weirdness in my life, the fact remains that the town I’ve been raised in sustains an entire tourist industry on my very existence and the mystery surrounding that. There are people out there – these internet crazies – who are trying to find some of the same information I am, if not for the right reasons.

        “Some people even say that there are aliens living today among the people of Roswell!!!” A few too many exclamation marks for me, but I can’t help but feel a shiver down my spine as I read the words. “Rumors of mysterious happenings and conspiracies abound.” I squint at the sentence, trying to decipher it before giving up and surfing on to the next site.

        “Whatcha doin’?” I nearly jump out of my seat, realizing even as I do that it’s just Nate.

“Just” Nate.

        “Nothin’,” I say absent-mindedly, as I hurry to minimize all of the alien-themed windows.

        “Aliens, huh?” he asks.

        “Keep your voice down,” I admonish him. “It’s for history class.”

        “Really?”

        “No, you dipshit, that’s what I told her .”

        “Oh,” Nate says knowingly. “Hey, do you know what’s bothering her?”

        “Nope,” I say, closing the last window on government conspiracies. “All I know is she went for a walk and came back looking like somebody died.”

        “Oh,” he says again, this time softly, glancing around the room at the walls. “Right, okay. No, really, man, what are you looking for?”

        “If you were supposed to know, you would,” I sigh.

        Nate pushes past me and opens one of the windows. “Hey!” I blurt out at him. “Excuse me!”

        “The Roswell Incident,” he reads aloud. “So you were really on that ship?”

        “Maybe,” I say. “I don’t even really know that for sure.” I hesitate. “Yeah, I guess I was on the ship. I had to be. In a way.” I sigh and lean back in my chair as Nate scrolls through the websites.

        “That’s so fuckin’ cool,” Nate observes, a little too eagerly.

        “I’m so very glad you think so.”

        “Is it fun? Being an alien?”

        I stare at him. “Lemme see. I got no family, none of my own kind except for Max and Isabel Evans, don’t know where I come from, an entire unit of the FBI on my trail, and some alien leaving me cryptic messages all over town and messing with my mind in ways I don’t even understand. It’s a Happy Meal all the way.”

        Nate frowns as he looks at the computer screen. “It can’t all be that horrible.”

        I shrug. “I’ve done some cool stuff from time to time.”

        “Do you ever wish you were normal?”

        I hesitate again, thinking of itching incidents and tabasco sauce, flashes and quests, hunters and prey. “I don’t really think about it that much. I’m not normal. I’m just not.”

        “You don’t ever imagine?” he presses.

        “No.”

        He turns around to peer at me. “That’s too bad.”

        “Nate, fuck off. I’m busy.”

        As if I’ve said nothing at all, Nate plants himself at my side. “So this party tomorrow night, you’re covering for me, right?”

        “Apparently so,” I sigh. “I didn’t get much choice.”

        “Listen, tell Maria to come or something.”

        “To that party? Not on your life, Westing.”

        “Okay, fine, Isabel.”

        In response, I hold up my middle finger at him pointedly. “I’m driving you there, sitting in a corner, and driving you back. And you, in turn, are from now on my alibi for all things alien.”

        “That’s how I understand it, yeah.”

        I scratch my eyebrow, staring at him. “Nate, how could you?” I blurt out at once.

        “How could I what?” he asks, blinking, oblivious.

        “This. This party. It’s… it’s repulsive. I mean… beyond your normal repulsiveness.”

        “Look,” he says patiently. “I don’t criticize your morals, so how about you leave mine the hell alone?”

        “Because it’s gross, Nate. Wait for a girlfriend.”

        “Okay, Alf, first of all, unlike your self-centered self, I don’t have a girlfriend and I never have, and there’s no way to know that I ever will. And second, you have a girlfriend and it doesn’t seem to do you any good.”

        I feel blood rushing to my face in embarrassment. “Goddamn. I shouldn’t have told you I was a virgin. Maria and I haven’t slept together because we’re just not ready yet. And…” I’m sure the blush is visible now. “It does me a hell of a lot of good without the sex part, okay? There are other things you can do, just so you know.”

        Now Nate flips me off. “It’s team tradition, dumbass. No virgins on the team for playoffs. It’s not allowed.”

        I roll my eyes in an exaggerated fashion. “Stupid superstitious freaks.”

        “Hey, I’ll have you know that Goddard’s won six out of fourteen league pennants since the tradition started.”

        “Big whoop. What about the other eight?”

        He shrugs. “Maybe somebody lied.”

        I shudder. “Look, I already said I’ll drive you to the stupid party, okay?”

        “Fine.”

        “Fine!”

        “Fine!” comes a shriek from the doorway that startles both Nate and myself, and we whirl around to see Annie standing there smiling innocently.

        “You didn’t hear any of that, did you?” Nate asks immediately.

        Her face falls. “Not really,” she admits. “What’s taking you guys so long? The spaghetti’s almost ready.”

        “Hey Nate,” I say suddenly, glancing back and forth between the two of them. “Would you kindly tell Annie that I’m not evil incarnate?”

        “Evil what?” Annie asks, perplexed.

        “Dude,” Nate says, “I’m still not convinced of that myself.”

        “Ha, ha,” I say, shooting him a dark look. “We made a deal, remember?”

        “Wish I didn’t,” he sighs. “Yeah, Annie, Michael’s okay. You can talk to him.”

        She peers back and forth between us doubtfully. “I don’t know what you two are up to, but I don’t trust either of you. You’re both stupid.”

        “That’s probably for the best,” Nate says, stretching as he rises. “Point me to some pasta, I had a tough practice this afternoon. Need carbs.”

        I reach back to the computer to log off AOL, but not before printing out a few sheets on Puhlman Ranch. Just for the record. Just in case.

        And after dinner, as I spread my map out again in the closed privacy of the bedroom, I line up the symbols to see where Puhlman Ranch once was. And as the symbols fall into place, everything falls into place. And it’s then that I know.       

        “The four squared symbol on the map, that’s where it is,” I say in a quiet rush into the telephone a few moments later.

        “I’ve never even heard of it,” Max replies doubtfully.

        “That’s because the government took it over in 1947. Three guesses why,” I say enigmatically.

        “Close to the crash site?” Max guesses.

        “It was the crash site, Maxwell,” I say triumphantly. “But it’s not on any maps anymore. It’s like they erased any trace of it. But I can find it. The cave painting will lead us right to it.” It’s what everything’s been trying to tell us. The symbols, Tess’s four square, the dreams. Everything.”

        “And you just figured this out all by yourself?” he says skeptically.

        “Yeah,” I say, deciding to leave out the parts about Tess, Nate, and the internet.

        “Michael, if Nasedo is doing anything to you, you can’t trust it.”

        Caught. “Hey, I remembered it, okay? I had a flash. You’re not the only one who gets them.” Granted, it was a flash that Tess gave me. Maybe I don’t want to tell him that right now. “So, what happened at the library?”

        “Nothing,” he says.

        “What, she just took Kyle there for no reason?” I press, suddenly wondering what he’s not telling me.

        “I said nothing happened,” Max says firmly. “Are you sure you don’t want to sneak over here tonight?”

        “I thought you were looking out for me,” I spit, disgusted.

        “Yeah, and I can do it better from over here,” he points out.

        “Well, I’ll be fine from here, Maxwell,” I say.

        I hang up the phone feeling somewhat disgruntled. And I haven’t even lifted my hand from the receiver before it rings again.

        “Hello?”

        “Michael.”

        I roll my eyes. “Isabel, tell Max I’m not coming over. I have my custody situation to worry about here, got it?”

        “Okay, fine, I will,” she says, sounding surprised. Okay, maybe they’re not comparing notes. “I just wanted to…” She pauses. There’s a long silence. Hear your voice. Talk to you. Know you’re there . “Say hi.”

        “Um, right,” I say. “How’s Alex?”

        “Fine,” she says briskly. “How’s Maria?”

        “Great,” I say defensively.

        “Good,” Isabel says. “That’s really… good.”

        “Listen, Isabel?”

        “Yeah?” Her voice is quivering just a little.

        “Keep the phone by your bed again tonight, okay?”

        “Okay. Why?”

“Just in case…” I pause. “In case there’s another dream. We should compare notes? Try and get the information before we forget it. Cause I think we’re getting… important information.”

“Right,” she says breathlessly. “Okay. Right.”

“So…”

“Yeah.”

We both fall silent for a moment. I know that we both have things that we want to say, and neither of us can. Does she feel the same way about me that I suddenly feel about her? And is she as frightened of it as I am? What does it all mean, and why can’t either of us fucking say it out loud?

“Well, if that’s all,” I say.

“That’s all,” Isabel says, a little too quickly.

“Okay. So.”

“So…”

“Bye,” I say, pointedly.

“Bye,” Isabel agrees. “Bye, Michael.” The phone falls dead.

I stare at the phone in my hand for a long moment before finally hanging up.

Chapter 66

        I awaken with a start, my palms sweaty, my fingers trembling. I clutch at the empty air. Something is missing, something has been brutally yanked away from me.

        The baby.

        With a sickening feeling, I remember everything about him. The downy soft feel of the hair on his head. The fresh smell of the nape of his neck. The smile that stretched from ear to ear as he laughed, as we held him together, loving, playing…

        What was his name ? I don’t know why it should be so important now. He wasn’t real, he didn’t have a name, he was only a vision.

        But he was more than a vision. He was more than a symbol. He had feelings, and emotions. I can still see the bright eyes, hear his high-pitched squeal, feel the weight of him warm and soft in my arms.

        He was real.

        Oh, god. Oh god, oh god.

        Ignoring the phone beside my bed, I leap to my feet and reach for the dresser. Quietly, to avoid waking Nate, I pull out a pair of jeans, and slide into them. I yank on a pair of socks and my boots before tiptoeing out to the living room.

        I silently slide open the drawer of the hutch where Toby keeps the spare van keys. I snatch my jacket off the coat rack as I head out to the driveway, climb into the van and, quietly as I can, start it up.

        If you get caught your ass is toast . I try to push back the annoying voice in my head.

        I eye the needle on the gas gauge before backing out down the driveway onto Summerwalk Circle. I can refill it on the way back. Just have to hope that nobody’s paying any close attention to the odometer. I grimace at the thought of what it would mean to be caught right now.

        But it doesn’t matter. I’ll go the stupid group home if it means seeing Isabel face to face right now. I can’t take another awkward phone conversation with her, I can’t.

        This is too important.

        I reach the Evans house and park two houses past it before leaping out of the van. I sense a stirring nearby and I turn, but whatever was just out of sight is gone, and something more important is right in front of my face. Isabel’s window is open and she’s leaning out as I approach, breathless. Her hair is hanging down free in the air as she peers at me from across the yard. She could sense me, she knew I was coming, just as I knew she would be waiting. I climb over the windowsill and she helps me into her room, wide-eyed with shock, her fingers grasping my arm tightly.

        I pull away from her grasp, and she turns abruptly away from me, facing the corner of her room.

        “You’ve seen them too, haven’t you,” she says.

        “The dreams,” I sigh, voicing what neither of us has wanted to say, as I approach her across the room.

        “The rock formation… the symbol.”

        “The two of us,” I say, voicing it for the first time in a low tone.

        “The baby,” Isabel agrees, and I swallow. “I think it’s all true, Michael.” I stare at her, not comprehending. “I think I’m pregnant with your child. How can this be?”

        My thoughts exactly. I think back to the dreams, the Puhlman Ranch revelation. The power that pulls me to the map, the mind-crunching vision I received from the key that led us to Atherton’s geodeosic dome. “Something weird like this had to happen sooner or later,” I point out softly. “No matter what Max wants to think…” I pull her gently around to face me. “We’re not human, Isabel.”

        “Oh my god, Michael,” Isabel whispers. “What are we going to do?”

        I fold my arms around her protectively, and she moves into my grasp, comfortable, reassuring. We stay that way for a long moment, waiting, thinking. It doesn’t feel the way it did in the dream. My chest presses close to her breasts, and I feel nothing like the rush I get from touching Maria’s breasts. The magic from the dream, it doesn’t carry over here. Here, Isabel is my sister. I can touch her like this and I feel… I feel nothing.

        Yet less than an hour before, we were mates.

        I reach down to her stomach, feeling. Nothing. Her hand follows mine down, searching, questioning.

        “Do you think it would show up on a… on a pregnancy test?” I ask softly.

        “Why would it?” Isabel asks. “Those things are calibrated for humans. You know our chemistry is different.”

        “Then how will we know?” I ask.

        Isabel shakes her head, and her hair brushes my face as she does. Again, I feel nothing. “I know,” she says quietly. “I know.”

        She turns around and I tuck my chin onto her shoulder. The motion of a little brother, not a lover. Seeking comfort, not pleasure. “Is this what you want?”

        “I don’t know what I want,” Isabel says. “You?”

        “Don’t know,” I say quietly.

        We rock quietly back and forth for a moment, our bodies pressed firmly together, testing, feeling.

        “I don’t know what… what I want, and what this force wants,” she says. “Michael, I can’t separate from it anymore.”

        “It’s something more powerful than either of us,” I agree.

        “We should tell Max,” Isabel says.

        “Tell him what?” I ask. “You’re pregnant from a dream?”

        “He’s going to have to know sooner or later,” she says. “He should be the first to know, Michael.”

        I snort a little and pull away from her, turning her by her shoulders so that she’s facing me. “Isabel, I don’t know what’s going on, or what’s happening to us, but I support you. You know that.”

        “I know,” she says, staring down at the floor.

        I tilt her chin up so that she’s looking me in the eyes. “We’ve been resisting this,” I say.

        “I know,” she says, still staring off into space behind me.

        “But maybe we’re not supposed to.”

        Isabel shivers a bit, a tremor that passes through my body as well, before pulling away. “Max,” she says uncomfortably, and I follow her out into the hallway.

        She knocks twice on his bedroom door.

        Silence.

        “Max,” Isabel hisses, and I shift my weight nervously.

        No sound.

        Isabel pushes the door open, and a stream of light falls across the upturned covers of Max’s empty bed.

        I grope for the light switch and flip it up, light flooding the room.

        “Where the hell did he go?” I ask, not believing what I see before my eyes. I glance towards the bathroom, the door is hanging wide open and the light is off.

        Isabel ducks around me into the bathroom and emerges a moment later. “He’s gone,” she says, trying to control her panic.

        I glance towards the open window and a grim thought settles into my head. “Tess,” I say. “She did this.”

        “What?”

        “C’mon.”

        “Where are we going?”

        “Puhlman Ranch!”

        Isabel fingers the dashboard nervously as we drive through the desert, following the landmarks from my map through the sand and the rising sun. “So you saw this thing in a vision?”

        “Tess wanted me to see it,” I say. “Whatever it is she’s doing to us, she wants us to see Puhlman Ranch. It’s the missing piece of the puzzle. The four square symbol.”

        “She’s doing this,” Isabel repeats. “And you think she took Max there?”

        “She drew him there. I know it,” I say.

        “What if she’s hurting him?” Isabel asks anxiously. “What does she want from us?”

        “Only one way to find out,” I say grimly.

        She glances at the clock on the dashboard. “The sun’s going to be coming up soon, Michael. What if your foster parents wake up and find the van missing?”

        “Then I’ll be screwed. Goddammit, Isabel, that’s the last thing I’m worried about right now.”

        “What exactly are you worried about right now?”

        I glare at her. “Do I need to start?”

        “No,” she says. “No, you don’t.”

        I slam on the brakes, and the two of us lurch forward in our seats. “Oh, my god,” I say, not believing what I’m seeing. But the seatbelt snapping across my chest has inflicted pain; I'm definitely not still dreaming. “Oh, my god.”

        “Michael,” she snaps, irritated. “What’s wrong with you?” And this is not my dream Isabel, either.

        “Look,” I breathe.

        She follows my finger until her eyes catch the rock formation in the distance.

        “Oh, my god,” she echoes me.

        “It’s what you saw in the dream, isn’t it?”

        She shoots me a sideways glance. “You saw it, too?”

        “Something’s there,” I say. “Something powerful.”

        “Essential,” Isabel whispers.

        “There’s an answer there,” I say, before leaning my foot down on the accelerator. We lurch forward across the desert, toward the answer, toward the mystery.

        “There’s Tess’s car,” Isabel says after a couple of minutes, relieved. “Max is there.”

        After another moment, she leans forward in a panic. “Oh, god,” she says. “Michael, there they are.”

        I follow her finger to the spot in front of the cliff where Max is standing before the little blond siren, transfixed, hypnotized. Isabel and I leap out of the car and dash the remaining distance to the two of them.

        “Hey,” I say, grabbing Tess. “What the hell did you do to him? To all of us?”

        “Michael, stop it,” Max says, snapping out of it. He puts his hand on my chest, shoving me back. “She’s not Nasedo.”

        “Then who is she, Max?” Isabel asks.

        “She’s one of us,” Max says.

        “What do you mean she’s one of us?” I demand calmly as we face off.

        Four.

        Four square.

        Checkmate.

        One left behind.

        The balance.

        She’s one of us.

        Max stares at us, as if he’s going to say something, looks to Tess, and then starts towards the rock face.

        “Max, what is it?” Isabel asks, following him. I look at Tess for a long moment before following them.

        Max jogs towards the craggy outcropping, Isabel and I following on his heels. The rocks from the dream. The cliff. This is where it all started.

        He stops abruptly at the base of the rock and stares up at it, breathless. When Isabel and I catch up with him, he stares at us for a moment before waving his hand over a flat side of the rock.

        A silver handprint appears on the rock face, and Max’s hand hesitates above it.

Chapter 67

I stare at Max in disbelief.

        “How did you-?” I manage to get out.


        “I just knew,” Max says grimly.

        “Max, we can’t,” Isabel says desperately.

        “We have to, Isabel,” he says firmly. “We have to find out.”

        He puts his hand up to the glowing print, and I hold my breath as a rumbling begins deep inside the rock. And then it begins to move. The rock folds in on itself, revealing an entryway.

        One by one, the three of us step through the opening, and as I look around, I feel shivers racing up and down every nerve in my body. Excitement, trepidation, fear, joy. I know where we are. I know exactly where we are.

        I stare at the four glowing blue pods still on the wall, right where we left them. Four. Not three, four. There really were four of us. They’re wasted now, ruined; their precious cargo long gone. Except that it’s suddenly returned. And here the pods have sat for ten years, glowing, humming, waiting. Waiting for us. Calling to us.

        “What is this place, Max?” Isabel asks. Isabel. So far removed, so assimilated, that she can’t even sense what Max and I already know. Or perhaps she doesn’t want to admit it.

        “It’s where we were all born,” Tess says softly from behind us, a smile on her face.

        “No,” Isabel says with growing horror, “No. No, I don’t believe this.”

        She turns and scrambles out of the cave, fleeing the scene, and Max and I glance at each other. She can’t face it. Can’t face the truth. “Isabel, wait,” Max calls, starting after her. He pauses in the doorway, turning to face me. “We can’t leave her alone, Michael. Come on.”

        But I hesitate, glancing at Tess. Max waits for me another moment, then with a side look at Tess, turns and follows Isabel, leaving the two of us alone in the cave.
“You want to know, don’t you?” she asks me, approaching me with that sly smile of hers. I stare at the pods, our alien gestations. Proof. I’ve always known it, always known we were different, that we weren’t human, and this is the last proof that I needed that we’re not of this earth. “You want all the answers. I can give them to you, but first you have to convince them that I’m not your enemy.” She produces something, a book. But not just any book, a book with the library symbol on it. A book with shining metallic, foreign, alien pages. The blue of the pods is reflected on the shiny cover as I clasp my hands to it. “Max didn’t tell you about this, did he?” she asks, and my eyes shoot up to her abruptly. Of course he didn’t. “Take it,” she says, offering it to me. My heart pounds in my chest. “It will prove to them that I don’t want to hurt you. If you convince them I can explain everything.”

        I glance again at the four pods. At my pod. There’s a heavy chemical smell, one that feels familiar somehow, even though I couldn’t smell anything when I first came out of the pod. The book feels heavy and light in my hands, warm and cold all at the same time. I clutch it to my chest and turn, fleeing the cave as fast as I can.

        I emerge into the sunlight, the book firmly in my grasp, and I scan the horizon for Max and Isabel.

        Isabel glances up at the sky as I approach. “Michael, we’ve got to get back,” she says. “Your foster parents-“

        “Screw my stupid foster parents!” I say, brandishing the book. I’m satisfied with the horrified reaction I see from Max, who was gambling that I would never lay eyes on this thing and lost. “You knew about this all along?”

        “Liz and I saw Tess take it from the library,” he admits tightly.

        The two of them gather around me as we open the book, revealing hundreds of alien symbols.

        “It’s some kind of strange language,” Isabel says, and I want to smack some sense into her. [i]Our[/i] language. But I realize that even Isabel, my best friend Isabel, will never quite recognize just how alien she is.

        “Why would you keep something like this from us?” I demand, shaking.

        “Oh, my god,” Isabel gasps, startling Max and I from our staring contest.

        “What?” Max asks, and we crowd in closer to her, staring at the images in the book.

        “This is me,” Isabel whispers.

        “It’s all of us,” I breathe. Our faces, etched in metal, surrounded by alien writing.

        “How did they know what we would look like?” Isabel gasps again.

        The wheels are all clicking into place. The dreams, the map. The pods, the hatching. The book, the symbols, the flashes. “Cause we were designed,” I say aloud.

        “That’s impossible, Michael,” Max says dismissively.

        “Whether you want to face it or not,” I say, turning on him, “we weren’t born.” I glance up. “We were engineered.”

        He backs up a step. “Do you understand what you’re saying? What that means we are?” He shakes his head. “I won’t believe that.”

        “I think he’s right,” Isabel says, still staring at the pages of the alien book. “I mean, we’re paired, just like in the pods. Max and Tess. Me and Michael.”

        “No,” Max says firmly, “I belong with Liz.”

        “Not according to this,” I say, glancing at the paired sketches in the book, the couples on the page.

        “All that stuff Tess was talking about, signals and destiny, that’s what this is,” Isabel says to me. “You and me and the baby, that’s what this is.”

        “The what?” Max asks.

        Oh, yeah. “Isabel thinks she’s having a kid,” I explain softly, and begin walking away from the van before I can see his reaction.

        “Yours?” Max demands of me, following. “Now who’s keeping things from who?”

I put my hand up to wipe my mouth, not sure what exactly I can say here.

I hear Isabel from behind me, following us as well. “It’s not what you think,” she protests. “We were never really together. It - it all happened in those dreams we were having.”

        “You can’t get pregnant from a dream,” Max says.

        “How do you know?” she demands. “We don’t know how we get pregnant.” I stop and turn to face her – she’s upset. This can’t be good for the baby. I shift my weight uncomfortably. “All I know is, something is happening inside of my body, and we don’t know what it is!”

“I’m going to Tess,” I say firmly, glancing back and forth between them. “She’s the only person who could tell us what the hell is going on.”

“No. You can’t just go asking her things,” Max protests. “We can’t trust her any more than we can trust Nasedo.”

        “They may be the only ones who can help us,” I argue. “Max,” I add gently, gesturing to Isabel.

        “I’ll go,” Max says, startling both Isabel and I. “Look at the pictures,” he points out. “If she is going to talk to anyone, it’ll be me.”

        “I thought you just said we can’t trust her,” Isabel says skeptically.

        “Who said anything about trusting her?” Max asks.

        “What are you saying?” Isabel asks.

        He looks back and forth between us grimly. “I’m going to get her to tell us what’s happening to you, no matter what.”

        We all stare at each other for a moment, then stare back at the cave. “Michael,” Isabel says gently, glancing to the van and then at her watch.

I nod. “Let’s get out of here.”

I stop off on the way home to fill up the gas tank and grab a box of doughnuts. I glance at the dashboard clock as I pull out of the gas station. 6:27. Goddammit. The Butler house starts stirring at 6:15.

“Michael,” Toby says, rising from the kitchen table as I enter the house through the garage at 6:35. His forehead is furrowed.

I heave a deep breath and brandish the doughnuts. “I couldn’t sleep, and, uh, I remembered the van needed gas for tonight, so I went to fill it up and get food.” I force the doughnuts out as a peace offering.

Toby looks doubtful, and I know he’s trying to figure out whether to buy it or run to Veronica for confirmation before he does something stupid that will lead to her having his head. I stare him down until he takes a deep breath and makes up his mind.

“Thanks for the food,” he says, accepting the doughnuts and laying them out on the table as Nate comes barreling in from the hallway.

“Wow, doughnuts,” he says, grabbing two before his eyes light on me. He narrows his eyebrows as he peers at me.
In response, I grab a doughnut and barge back to the bedroom, Nate following. He shuts the door behind him.

“I woke up at 3 a.m. cause I heard the door close,” he says accusingly. “And you didn’t come back.”

        “I remembered the van needed gas for tonight, so I went to fill it up and get food,” I say again, tiredly.

Nate sighs and bites into his own cruller. “Toby bought it?”

        “Toby bought it,” I affirm.

His eyes narrow. “What’s the real story?”

        “Why should I tell you?”

        “Because if I’m supposed to be covering for you, I damn well better know if it’s worth it or not.”

“Nate, dammit, you promised.”

        “I’m not backing out on my word,” he says defensively. “But I just gotta know.”

I sigh. “Went to the desert.”

“Why, what happened?” he presses.

“We found some stuff,” is all I say.

“Important stuff?” Nate asks, raising an eyebrow.

I nod silently.

“We’re still on for the party tonight, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say absently. Only an hour ago I was the closest I’ve ever been to a real, alien-created space, making major revelations about the nature of my existence, and now here I am back in the bedroom at the Butler house, making plans to help Nate lose his…

Oh, yeah.

“Nate,” I say wearily, “are you sure you want to go through with this?”

        “Yes,” he says without a doubt.

I throw up my hands. I’ve said my piece. “Then fine.”

        He stares at me from across the room. “Look, if you’re gonna be like that about it…”

        “Then what?” I ask hopefully. “You don’t want me there?”

        “No,” Nate says, “you can keep it to yourself. That’s all.”

        I lay back on the bed and close my eyes, searching for what rest I can get before I have to be at school.

Chapter 68

        “That’s it,” Nate says, pointing to the house.

        I stare at it doubtfully. “It doesn’t look like a party.”

        What it does look like is a great big two-story house with big white columns in front, and a lot of beat-up student cars parked around it. So I guess it’s the right place. I don’t know what I was expecting, loud music or disco lights or something. I pull the van to a stop and Nate and I stare at the house together.

        “So remember,” Nate says, “I’m an orphan.”

        “All right already,” I grumble. “And I’m a human,” I add as an afterthought.

        “Right,” Nate says after a moment. “You are going to be cordial.”

        “Nate,” I say patiently, “I wouldn’t know cordial if it bit me on the ass.”

        “Okay,” he grants me this, “but at least try not to make it the worst evening ever.”

        “Is there gonna be, like, a TV or somethin’ I can watch?” I ask.

        “If not,” Nate says, brandishing a finger at me, “you damn well better be polite about it.”

        “I wouldn’t know polite if it bit me on the ass, either.”

        Nate laughs after a moment, and I have to join him. It’s a bit of a relief. I’ve been tense all day, running on little sleep from the entire week, avoiding Maria, worrying about Max and Tess and all that other… stuff. Tonight can at least take a little pressure off.

        At least, until we walk through the front door and my blood pressure shoots through the roof.

        One of the guys I recognize from the team has let us in, I guess he must be the host or whatever. The whole Goddard ball team is sitting around in the living room, laughing. A few guys here and there I don’t recognize, and a few girls. A couple of people dancing to music emanating from the stereo. Plastic cups everywhere. It’s definitely a party, and I’m definitely not in my element.

        “Hey, frosh!” one guy yells, and a couple others take up the cry. “Frosh! Yeah! It’s Westing!”

        “Who’s the chaperone?” someone else yells, and Nate’s relaxing.

        “My foster brother,” Nate says, smiling, jerking a thumb at me. “He drove me.”

        “He got a name?” the host asks grudgingly.

        “No,” Nate says. “Hey, Michael, snacks are in the kitchen, Joey, where’s the TV?”

        “In the living room,” Joey says, glancing towards the dark box in the corner of the room where the crowd is.

        “Oh, looks crowded,” Nate says. “So Michael can’t watch TV?”

        “Shut up,” I grumble, shoving past him. “Just shut up.”

        I make my way through the throng of people, who are all giving me funny looks, until I find an armchair in the corner of the room and I tuck myself down in it. I glance back across the living room and see Nate, staring at me from across the room, a look of concern on his face. He glances away as soon as he sees me looking back at him, and vanishes within a moment into the throng.

        “Hi,” says a female voice above me, and I look up to see a girl with short dark hair beaming down at me.

        “Bye,” I grumble under my breath, but she doesn’t seem to hear me as she perches on the armrest of the chair, balancing a plastic cup full of foul-smelling liquid in her hand.

        “So… you’re Westing’s foster brother?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

        “No,” I say.

        “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says immediately. She squints at me, the question clear on her face. “You’re not on the team, are you?”

        “No,” I say again, and sigh. “I am Westing’s foster brother,” I admit. “I just don’t like to say I am.”

        She chokes a laugh now. “I’ve never seen you around school,” she says.

        “That’s cause I don’t go to your school,” I say, staring down at my hands. I twist the ring on my finger around and around.

        “You okay?” she asks.

        Not really. “Mmm,” I grunt.

        “Want a beer?” she asks cheerfully, holding out her cup.

        “No!” I bark out. “No. I mean… no.”

        “Okay,” she says, confused, pulling her cup back. A little of the beer sloshes into my hand, and I wipe it off on my jeans with distaste as she chugs a sip and then wipes the edge of her mouth off. “Did you drive or something?”

        “Yeah, yeah. I drove.” I lean my head back in the chair and close my eyes. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in this loud, noisy room with shouting baseball players and talking girls in tank tops. I want to be with… no… I want to be with… who do I want to be with?

        “My name’s Daisy,” the brunette says brightly.

        “Oh,” I say. I glance to the phone. I wonder how Isabel’s feeling. If she can sense anything more about the baby… I wonder what Max has found out…

        “Do you have one?” she asks.

        “One what?” I ask, confused.

        She stares at me for a moment, and does a double take. “A name?” she asks.

        “No,” I say, sliding my ring up and down my finger. It suddenly feels hot to the touch, and I drop it in my lap. I glance at the tip of my finger where it burned my skin. My powers.

        “Excuse me,” I say, and push past Daisy to wander about the crowd, searching for Nate. In the process, I spot two flagrant cases of PDA, at least five different varieties of alcoholic beverages, and overhear three things that I didn’t want to know about what goes on in the locker room at a baseball game.

        “Nate,” I say with relief as I corner him in the kitchen. He’s sipping on a cup of something and munching on a Tostito in the other hand.

        “I thought I told you to find a corner and stay there,” Nate says.

        “Ha, ha,” I say in a rush. “Look, I gotta get out of here. Really. I can’t take these alcohol fumes.”

        Nate rolls his eyes at me, and I grab his arm, jerking him through the entryway into an empty dining room around the corner.

        “Listen, dumbass,” I hiss as he stumbles to a halt. “Alcohol messes with my powers, okay?”

        “Really?” Nate asks, interested. “Messes with mine, too.” He holds up the cup. “Coca-cola,” he explains sagely.

        “It’s not funny,” I say. “Get me the hell out of here.”

        “Um, hello,” Nate says, holding his nearly full drink and uneaten chip up for emphasis. “Mission definitely not accomplished here, Chewbacca. Ain’t even finished the appetizers yet.”

        “Look, Babe Ruth…” Chewbacca? “I could care less about your damn mission. I got a lot on my mind right now, and your virginity? Ain’t one of ‘em.”

        “You back down on your part of the deal,” Nate reminds me, “and I can back down on mine. Remember? Do you want my help in the future or not?”

        “Lotta help you’ve been so far,” I snap.

        “Could say the same for you,” he points out. “We’ve been here five minutes.”

        “Five minutes too long.” I sigh. “Look, Nate, seriously, the biggest favor I could do for you right now is to convince you not to go through with this.”

        “Westing!” Joey and another guy from the team come barreling through from the kitchen. “C’mon, we’re gonna start the games now!”

        Nate shoots me a pointed glance. “We’re staying,” he says firmly, before ducking back through the door. I watch him go with despair.

Chapter 69

        I slide into a chair at the dining room table. At least it’s quiet back here. I put my arms onto the table and, after a moment, lay my head down on them.

        I listen to the noise emanating from the party out in the living room. The shouts and laughter. This is what normal kids do? Do you ever wish you were normal? Nate wanted to know. And I don’t think about it.

        I feel a shudder pass through my body as I listen to the echoes through the wall. Normal. I’m not a part of that. These kids, having the time of their lives, part of the crowd, popular. I’ve never been a part of that. I never will be. I wasn’t born, I was engineered.

        I realize with a start what the smell reminds me of. The beer. It’s Michelob. It’s what Hank used to drink when he didn’t want to drink liquor. I feel another shudder.

        I take a deep breath, trying to regulate myself, trying to force it all back, but it comes on me in a flash, a shudder I can’t keep back, tears that won’t dry up no matter how frantically I wipe at my eyes. I sniff a little and try to set a stony face before anyone can come in and find me here.

        Because the last thing I want is to lose face in front of these kids. I’m better than them. I’m an alien, I’m special, I know it. There’s something better for me out there, and someday everybody’s gonna know it, and nobody’s gonna remember the punk kid crying in the dining room at the Goddard baseball team party. I’m cooler than them, I’m smarter than them, I’ve got a better future than them, that alien book said so. Or so I try to tell myself.

        Nobody would really believe it if I told them.

        Nobody thinks I’m worth anything. The Butlers think I’m some troubled kid who’s going to self-destruct if they don’t save me. My teachers think I’m dumb. Kids at school think I’m weird, a loser… I hear the whispers. I try to pretend it doesn’t matter.

        But it does.

        I pull myself together and push back from the table, pacing to the window. It looks back on a manicured backyard, a swimming pool. I don’t even really know how to swim. I can dog paddle, that’s about it.

        I clap my hands to my face, smelling the beer still evident on my hand. I whip them back down to my sides. I can’t go out and drink with those kids, even if I wasn’t driving. Just like I can’t get sick, and I can’t figure out what the hell is going on between me and Isabel. I’ll never be like them, I’m too different.

        Why even bother wishing to be normal? I’ll never be. It’s pointless.

        You’re a freak… I always knew it. You’re a freak!

        I feel a shiver down my spine. I am a freak. Hank didn’t have much right, but he sure did get that part dead on. And it didn’t take me busting open the cabinets and shooting off a gun from six feet away to tell him. He always knew it.

        Maybe all the sparring with Nate is bothering me a little more than I let on.

        “Hey… are you okay?” It’s Daisy, slinking into the room. I wipe my eyes one last time before turning around.

        “Fine,” I say. “Don’t like parties.”       

        “Me, either,” she says, sidling up to me.

        Whoa, whoa... “Then leave,” I say, taking a step back. “I’m a chaperone. What’s your excuse?”

        She squints at me. “You look awfully young to be a chaperone.”

        “I’m older than I look,” I say without thinking.

        “How old are you?” she asks.

        Let’s see, I was technically born in 1989… though if those metal plates are to be believed, I’ve been an apple in somebody’s eye a lot longer than that…

        “Older than I look,” I say again firmly, which I know is a flat-out lie, everybody always thinks I’m older than sixteen. “Look… maybe I wasn’t clear enough about this earlier. But I don’t want to be here, I don’t want to talk, and I don’t want to enjoy myself. So get lost.”

        “Fine,” Daisy says uncomfortably after a moment, and turns to beat it the hell out of there as fast as she can move. I can see the words written across her forehead as she leaves. Freak…

        I fold my arms tightly and lean my forehead against the window, staring out at the night sky. Any normal guy would have been all over that. She was hot. I can’t argue that. But… something was missing.

        Something. Maria’s soft lips and tight hips. Or Isabel’s long hair and breasts pressing me close? Maybe a combination of both? Neither? I don’t know anymore. I can’t get these dreams out of my head.

        Because if it is my alien side, and it is the answer to all my questions, how can I say no to that?

        Do I even have a choice? Is Max right, do we create our own destiny? Or do I listen to my dreams, to the book, to the feelings I’m having, to everything staring me right smack in the face?

        The baby. It hits me like a shot out of a cannon. I’ve been trying not to think about it, but I can still feel his weight in my arms. Assuming Isabel has a normal human-length pregnancy, in nine months I’ll be a father? The thought sends a chill down my spine. Maybe sooner, who knows? What will the Butlers do? What will Isabel’s parents do? I’m going to have to pick up more hours at the Crashdown to help support them, screw the Butlers. Can Isabel stay in school? What if I help take care of the baby? Can I stay in school?

        What if the baby’s not normal?

        After all, we’re not normal. We weren’t born normally. What if Isabel has to lay a big pod for the kid to come out of as a six-year-old? How the hell are we gonna explain that one?

        I reach my hand down to my stomach and gen