Author: Chris Kenworthy
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in Roswell, more's the pity.
Pairings/Couples/Category: UC, Alex/Liz with references to Isabel/Grant (yeah, I know
) Michael/Maria, Max/Tess and Kyle/Tess, also some references to Alex/Isabel and Max/Liz. Drama/Romance Rating: Teen, at least for now.
Summary: Over spring break, Alex spends some time out in Frazier woods... and discovers an affair of the heart that he never expected.
Author's Note: Thanks to Karen Evans for her services as test reader. Hope some of you like this. There are pictures at the end of this part of the two games of 'sprouts'.
Oh, and even though I'm first posting this on April Fool's, it is *not* a joke!
Down at the river
Part One
I tried to force a smile onto my face as I walked amongst the trees. It stuck for about three seconds before beginning to slip away at the edges.
"Come on, Alex!!" I told myself in a low mutter. "It's a beautiful spring day, warm and sunny. The woods are bursting with new life all around you. Is it too friggin' much to ask to be able to forget about her for five minutes??"
There was no answer forthcoming to that question of course. (If there had been, I would probably have started to wonder if I were going crazy.) So I just kept on walking through Frazier woods, my mood growing with each step slightly morose.
Finally I arrived at this immediate destination of this journey - a small, pretty clearing in the woods dominated by a waterfall where the Chavez creek jumped off a rocky ridge eleven feet high, to land in a siwrly pool and then, as if it were late for meeting with a creek two miles down the way, rushed on southwards and through a dense thicket of cedar. I had good memories of this place, going back a long time, and it seemed like a good place to try and sort out the second verse of this sad song I was trying to write.
So I unslung the accoustic guitar from my back, (carrying it hadn't really helped my mood on the way there,) found a rock about the right height and flat enough to sit on, and quickly tuned up. Once that was done, I sang and played everything I had of the song so far, and started doing what I usually do when I'm trying to write lyrics a song - throwing in anything at all, whatever I can think of, and hoping that there's something that fits and that I like. I can't really remember much of what I tried that day, though one really bad attempt does stick out in my mind - "I gave you my heart, I offered my love. Is it callous to think, that you'd rather have fluff??"
Because I was making so much noise myself, I only heard the footsteps about a second before their owner appeared - and I probably wouldn't even have had that much warning if I hadn't stopped playing for a moment to think of what I was going to try next. For a moment I was upset. This was a very private place... what did someone else think they were doing, bugging me here? They would have heard some of what I was playing!!
Then I saw the face of the interloper, and the frustration melted away. For one thing, this person had equal rights to think of this places as 'hers' as I thought of it as mine. (If there was someone else who had discovered the clearing independently, but I didn't know of it because we were never there at the same times, would they have equal rights too?) For a second thing, I could very rarely stay upset at Liz Parker for long, no matter what the provocation was -- with one noticeable exception in the history of our friendship.
She smiled at me and hurried over - dressed in a way that suggested strong faith in the warmth of the weather - denim shorts, a bright red t-shirt, and sandals. No jewelry, not even earrings or a single finger ring. "Hey hey stranger, fancy meeting you here."
"I could say the same, I guess." I admitted. "Guess we both had the same idea for how to spend the first day of March break - or at least, for where to spend it. Since you didn't bring a guitar, and I don't think you expected me to be here so you could borrow mine."
Liz laughed. "No, Alex, you know that I don't sing or play. The music you were making as I came up the path sounded... well, angsty, but good in a bittersweet way."
"It's not nearly done yet," I disclaimed. "So, what did you come up to the old clearing for? Just hang around and, erm... not read a book since you haven't got one." Actually, she was carrying a little bundle in a grocery bag, and there could have been a book in there, but somehow it didn't seem so. Actually, I wasn't sure what she had in the bag. "Just sit here and enjoy nature?"
"Actually..." Liz blushed a little. "I was seized with the idea of taking a swim. The water's probably very cold, but I don't think I mind that horribly."
My rock was very close to the edge of the pool, close enough that I could reach out and dip my fingers in, so I did just that. "Doesn't seem so bad. Cool, maybe even somewhere between cool and cold, but no worse than that. Of course, it'll probably feel colder when you're entirely immersed in it."
"Yeah, I would expect so," Liz replied, shifting from one foot to another a little anxiously. I looked speculatively at her for a long moment.
"So, what, are you nervous about stripping down to your swimsuit just because I'm here??" I teased her.
"How do you know I've got it on under my casual clothes?" she replied.
"Umm..." That mental image had me wordless for a long moment. "Umm... because it's just good preparation, and you always seem to be well prepared. Why risk having to get naked in the middle of the forest just to put a swimsuit on, when you can wear it like underwear and avoid a potentially embarassing situation."
She smiled slightly. "I guess you know me well," she agreed. "And yes, I do feel a little awkward about it now that I know you're here. Darned if I can figure out exactly why... I mean, OTHER than the mere fact that you're still a guy."
"Umm, yeah, have been all along - at least as far as I know," I joked.
"Yes, of course you have been, but..."
"I know, I know," I filled in. "Because I've been best friends with you and Maria for so long, you kind of feel like I'm 'just one of the girls' most of the time - except when the testosterone implications of a situation are just too blatant to be ignored."
"Umm, err..." Liz didn't seem to have a quick comeback for that.
"Hmm... how about if I strip down and get into the water first?" I asked, a big grin on my face. "I didn't wear a swimsuit under my outfit, but I've got fairly thick and baggy boxers on, and that seems about as good as wearing swimming trunks." Liz was still speechless so, feeling daring, I put my instrument aaside, shrugged off my one big blue t-shirt with the sleeves almost down to my elbows, kicked away shoes, and undid the snap and zipper on my jeans. It wasn't long before I was wearing only the aforementioned hawaiian print boxer shorts, and stepping into the chill watter. "Yikes that's... comfortable," I mugged, and fell gently among the cold waves of my own entrance.
I poked my head back up above the water a few seconds later, crab-walking backwards away from the edge. Liz was giggling and shaking her head. "Are you quite through with your antics??"
"Umm... yeah," I agreed. "Now it's your turn." She still seemed to hesitate. "Come on - after I went through all that you HAVE to come in too!!"
Liz sighed, but she was smiling, and slowly, carefully, slipped off her sandals first. Then she undid the three buttons on her shorts, slipping them down her long, smooth legs -- yikes, where did that particular thought come from? Sure, I've known for a while that Liz was cute, but...
I tried to concentrate on the fact that Liz was one of my best friends as she folded the shorts twice and set them next to her shoes, and then slipped out of her shirt, wearing nothing but a black two-piece bikini swimsuit - nothing scandalous or limit-pushing, but it defintely showed off her lithe, compact figure very well. Yikes, that was another not-good thought to be having about my best friend.
But Liz just smiled as if she were entirely unaware of what I was thinking, and stepped into the pool herself. "So, is there a particular reason why you're trying to come up with really angsty words for songs??" she asked softly.
"Oh, only the usual," I mumbled. "Isabel... and Grant."
"Oh, right," she said, letting out a low sigh. Isabel and Grant Sorenson had started seein each other back in January, while I was still in Sweden, and the fact that his extensive experience with the Frazier Woods groundwaters had helpd Izzy and the other aliens find and defeat the Gandarium queen, (though Grant didn't know about any of that side of things, or exactly what he was helping her with,) had apparently only made the two of them closer as a couple.
"Yeah, that's rough," Liz mumbled. "I have to say, it looks like she's being foolish and shallow. Grant may hit a lot of superficial hot buttons... tall, dark, handsome, sophisticated, suave -- but he isn't a good match for her. Not like someone else I could mention."
"Well, thanks." I sidestroked lazily through the water, reflecting that Liz's sentiments didn't really help me out with Isabel. She wouldn't exactly listen to either of us - she'd made that fact powerfully clear already. "So how are things going between you and Max, or shouldn't I even ask??"
"Maybe better not," she replied with a long sigh. "Max seems to be caught up in a big love triangle mess with Tess and Kyle, and I've resolved to stay well clear until after he's extricated himself. Maybe longer."
I blinked, which somehow managed to throw a few droplets of water back onto my eyes. "Are you serious? What, does she get to take her pick or something??"
"I don't really know," Liz muttered. "If you really want the recap as far as I know it..." I'm not sure if I nodded or not, but she continued. "Tess and Max have been spending more time together since we got back from Vegas, though he said it was just as friends, nothing more. But Kyle started really flirting with Tess when Max was around, and she flirted back, and Max realized he was jealous about it. And he told Tess that he was jealous of Kyle, and wasn't quite sure what that meant. That's pretty much it."
"Hmmm..." I weighed the evidence that had been presented. "Tough call there... you might be getting upset over nothing much, or you might have caught an early sign of Max/Tess hookupage. " A pause. "Do you want me to touch base with Max sometime and get his take on the situation??"
"Umm... that'd be entirely up to you. Personally, I think a break from thinking and worrying about Max would do me good anyway," Liz decided.
"Alright, so. Ummm... any idea what else we can talk about then??"
Liz turned around and started to swim along the far side of the small pond. "Not really sure." She looked over at me, her hair trailing in a slightly unusual way because the bottom ends of it were wet and the root halves were still dry. "Was just thinking about how we originally found this place."
Ah, right. The woods had always been a little bit special to Liz and me... it was where we met, well, the place we really first met and talked, as opposed to vaguely seeing each other at school. I'd been playing make-believe knights of the round table, and looking for a dragon to slay. Liz had been watching some tiny little tree lizards, because she liked them, and her science teacher had said she could do an extra credit assignment by observing lizard behavior in their natural habitat and writing up some notes. As you might imagine, sparks flew quickly, when I thought that Liz's lizards would make good, if slightly small, dragons to slay.
It had been several months later when we'd been exploring together, after becoming good friends, and had first found this glade. The river had only been a trickle in mid-fall, without much rain that year to feed it, but it had been pretty, and quickly become our special place. "Yeah, that was cool," I agreed. And then couldn't really think of anything else to follow it with.
"At least Michael and Maria seem to be doing pretty well together this spring," Liz lamented. "The rest of us seem to have our love lives in permanent disarray." I sighed, not really wanting to contribute anything, since I didn't want to remind Liz about Max any more than she had reminded herself, or to get on a roll about Isabel. But I agreed with her all too well, and there didn't seem to be anything more that needed to be said.
"Oh... did you get a killer assignment for English lit too??" I asked suddenly. Liz was in a different class period than I was for literature, she was in sixth while I was in first, but we were both taking the advanced placement classes with Mrs Batterson, and a lot of the time we'd discovered she'd assigned the same homework questions to both groups, though she'd apparently learned not to give them pop quizzes on the same days if she wanted it to still be a surprise in the afternoon. In fact, she seemed to take a slightly sadistic pleasaure in giving one group a pop quiz, and then letting the other sweat it out, expecting that their turn would come over the next few days, before finally managing to announce the test right when at least half of the students were not expecting it.
"Yeah, I can't believe it." Liz groaned. "Fifteen pages on the lost Shakesperean sonnets?? Come on, this is our SPRING BREAK, lady!! If it was up to me, I'd lose those sonnets all over again."
I laughed in appreciation of that. "Want to try tackling it together some night?? We can't exactly hand in the same paper, but I'd appreciate being able to bounce a few ideas off you with my thesis and strategy." Battleson... oops, I meant Batterson, seldom allowed any team pairings in assignments, and when she did, they ALWAYS had to be two people from the same class grouping. I'd gotten into a big clash with her earlier about wanting to work with Liz. And this time... actually, I couldn't quite remember whether she'd said that team projects could be submitted this time. I wasn't really paying attention, because there wasn't anybody in the morning class I particularly wanted to work with.
"Yeah, cool!!" Liz agreed enthusiastically. Then, about ten seconds later she added, "Ehh, this water is too cold to stay in for long. I've gotten chilled enough that my unnatural obsession with swimming has worn off. What about you??"
"Ehh." I could go either way, in point of fact, but if Liz didn't want to stay in, then swimming didn't have much more appeal for me. "After you."
"No, I insist," she said, smirking. "After you."
I thought about pushing the issue back, then decided that it really wasn't worth the effort. I climbed out, stood dripping in the clearing for a second -- and then realized that I didn't have a towel or anything. Perils of being impulsive I suppose. "You don't happen to have an extra swimming towel in that bag, do you?"
"Nah, sorry mister underpants." Liz had gotten out of the water right behind me, and was already wrapping a white towel around her bikini-ed body... and that hormonal, disreputable part of my brain was very disappointed that it hadn't gotten another good long look at her figure. "Only one, and I need it. You shoulda thought about that before you stripped down and headed into the water."
"Mmm, yeah." Somewhat sourly, I sat back down on my rock, thought for a second about putting my t-shirt back on top of wet skin. It would cling in a slightly irritating way, but dry off before long, since the day was warm and breezy. On the other hand... I decided not to, and to stay in my boxers, just to see what Liz's reaction to that would be. She pretended not to notice, at least at first.
"Have you spoken to Maria much lately?" I asked casually.
"Umm... I guess not that much. We chat about stuff a little whenever we're both on shift, naturally. Why??"
"Oh, no particular reason. I was just thinking that I hadn't seen her around much lately."
"She's been hanging out a lot at Michael's, I think," Liz said. My eyebrows raised a bit. "And, if you're about to ask anything to do with what they're doing over there - I don't know, and I don't think I really want to know."
"Well, I wanna know," I said, mugging the line slightly. "I'm Maria's friend and I have a right to know!!"
Liz giggled. "Fine. You're Maria's friend, so you can find her and ask her!" The look on my face may have been impressive, because she burst out laughing again.
Another pause. "I've been thinking of getting a job myself. You know... like the three of you working at the Crashdown, or... well, or someone we both know at the UFO center." It occured to me too late, that if I'd actually said Max's name I'd probably have drawn less attention to him.
"About damn time," Liz burst out. "You've avoided joining us working-class shmoes for too long. Who do oyu think you are to be so high and mighty anyway??"
I laughed softly. "Oh, nobody special." A pause. "Any idea where I should be looking?"
"Well, we don't really need any extra help, though you could check back again around the start of June, since that's when tourist season picks up a little. Something to do with how the original crash was in mid-summer, I guess, brings the flying saucer nuts out around then."
"Hmm... okay, I'll bear that in mind, thanks," I told her.
Liz sighed agreeably. She'd sat down on the clearing floor, arranging the towel in such a way that it stayed between her tender butt and the ground. Now she fiddled nervously with her dropped clothes, hesitated for just a moment, and then shrugged partway out of the towel, so that she could use the top part of it to dry off her arms, and take some of the moisture away from the wet portion of her hair. She shot a look at me as she stood up again, and for a second I couldn't decide if the point of that look was to find out if I was staring at her, (which I only half was, at most,) or to cast a semi-appreciative look down my own nearly naked body. Oh, come on, that had to be my imagination running wild... didn't it?
Soon she had efficiently dried off her legs too, and put all four articles of clothing back on. "So... got anything you can play me on the guitar??" she asked lazily. "Something that isn't unfinished at this moment, maybe?"
I grinned. "Maybe on or two pieces... but I don't think I want to get the guitar wet."
Liz sighed, examined her towel critically as if to see if it had any worthwhile drying power left, and held it up to me with a questioning look in her eyes. I shrugged, nodded, and she tossed it over. Quickly I rubbed down the parts of my skin that the guitar could generally be expected to make contact with, trying not to think about how this same towel just a minute ago been caressing Liz's young, supple flesh... Okay now seriously, buddy, cut that out!! Sheesh, what's with you today??
I picked the guitar up and concentrated on playing a familiar melody. That came easily enough, and a few measures after the guitar line, the words arrived.
"Rainbow fire, burning through the sky.
Rainbow fire, magic to the eye.
Rainbow fire, burning through the sky.
Rainbow fire, if only I could fly.
Dark night, cold wind, too far north.
Empty field, starlight, and the fog steals my breath.
Dark night, northern light, aurora flying forth.
Emptiness and beauty, as startling as death.
Rainbow fire, burning through the sky...
Pretty girl, blond hair, reaches for my hand.
Scarves down, winter's kiss, Heart beats like a gong.
Pretty girl, phone call, 'Hope you understand.'
Desert night, not right, What did I do wrong?
Rainbow fire..."
"Wow," Liz muttered once the final chord had died away. "That was... that was about Sweden, and Leanna, right??" I sighed and nodded, just slightly. "She called and cut you loose?"
"Yeah. Probably we were both deluding ourselves to think that a long distance relationship over three thousand miles, two countries, and one ocean could ever possibly work. Two weeks ago, she met someone new. He's dutch, and his family just moved to Stockholm."
"Sorry to hear," Liz mentioned. She sighed and looked around. "I'm feeling a little bored - not used to being on break I guess. Wanna play competitve life in the dirt?"
I blinked. "The game of life I'm familiar with, the Conway one... but *competitve* life? And doing it by drawing in the dirt?"
"Umm... yeah," Liz sighed. "Maybe not the best idea... the game of life program on my Dad's computer has a competitive mode. All the spots belong to one player... colored blue or brown, generally. All spots that stay alive keep their old colors, and every new spot that is born has to be generated based on three other spots next to it, so it assumes the majority color. Two or three of those parent spots have to be the same color. With me so far??"
"Umm... yeah, except how do the players actually make moves or control anything in the game?" I asked. "Life proceeds without human interference."
"I was just *getting* to that," she said with a touch of testyness. "Let's say I'm blue and you're brown, for the sake of an example. When I take my move, I set one new blue spot, somewhere empty, and erase one of your browns. Then the pattern goes through a regular generation. Then you take your turn similarly, making a new brown, and clearing out a blue, and another generation, and so on. Whoever wipes out the enemy's color first wins."
"Intriguing... a square of four would be a highly defensible pattern," I realized. "Because three out of a square would regenerate the fourth, the enemy wouldn't be able to directly wipe out a square by clearing."
"Yep. Although you can try putting one of your own up to an enemy square and seeing what happens to it as new interactions are created," Liz replied, smiling. "If I have two or three in a shared square, I can increase my ownership, given a move, by clearing out one of your spots and letting them regenerate with my color."
"Sounds like a lot of fun," I said, "but I don't want to try it without a computer I think. Would get too confusing, *too* fast. Just figuring out how to do generation patterns, keeping two different varieties of spot separate, in the dirt with sticks... we'd get into arguments about whether a spot had been cleared out by mistake, and find it hard to establish conclusively what the pattern had been before we started making the changes."
"Yeah, I guess that's true," Liz admitted, sighing.
"We could do a simpler drawing game though," I suggested. "Sprouts, or lines and boxes."
"Hmm..." Liz thought about that. "Lines and boxes is a 'maybe.' What's Sprouts??"
"Oh, you haven't heard of that one?" I grinned. "We start by drawing a certain number of dots on the ground. Each player, in their turn, draws a line, starting at a dot, and ending at a dot, not crossing any other lines or going *through* any other dots. You can't start or end your line at a dot that already has three different line segments leading from or to it. Once you've drawn your line, you put another dot somewhere along it. If there isn't any way to make a legal move when it's your turn, you lose."
"Hmm." Liz thought about that. "That's it? Doesn't sound very... hmm. Well, I guess we can give it a try. How do we decide how many dots to start with? I guess the more of them there are, the longer the game might go."
"Yeah," I replied. "Since you're new to the game, why don't you pick the number of dots and who gets to go first... don't draw more than five though."
"Hmmm." Liz picked up a stick, found a fairly clear section of slightly dusty ground, and marked three round dots, in an equal triangle formation. "You can go first."
"Alright." I fetched a stick of my own, trying to remember what I could about the strategy for this game. Well, it didn't seem to matter much for the first move... I joined the two nearest dots with a straight line, 'sprouting' an extra dot right in the middle of the line. Liz made a similar move between two of the original dots, one of the ones I'd used and the one that I hadn't. There was now a wedge of five dots connected by two straight lines.
I connected up the two mid-points with another straight line, putting my new dot close to Liz's first line. Liz drew in the third side of her original triangle formation, marking close to my 'side' of the figure for her new sprout. (Where you put your sprout on the line, or how you curved it, didn't really matter that much for the strategy of the game, just for convenience in drawing.)
I stared... the situation had got more complicated now, and we were moving into the end-game, but I wasn't quite sure of the right move to make. There were seven sprouts now, two of which were 'dead', having already had three lines connecting them. They were the ones that Liz and I had made on our first moves, and I had connected on my second - being born off of a line automatically used up two of a sprout's three lives.
That was the key. There were five live spots now, each with only one 'lifeline' left. Each move would decrease this by one. If we both moved simply, then after one interchange there would be three, and then one... and I would lose, because there could be no legal move with only one live sprout.
But it was possible, even easy, to strand sprouts so that they could not interconnect. I could do that now, altering the parity, but Liz might then do it back to me, and things could get tricky. I decided to move simply, drawing a second, arcing, connection between my two original sprouts. Liz paused, and then drew a connection between the sprout on the internal strut of the triangle with her far corner sprout. (I'll try to attach some pictures to make the game play easier to follow, in case anyone cares.)
And suddenly I realized that I couldn't help winning! There were three live sprouts left - one within the triangle, one outside, and one on the edge. The first two were completely unable to connect with each other, but the third could still connect with either of them. Whichever way it went, the newly sprouted dot would be seperated from the last live one. I drew a connection outside the triangle, a hugely arcing loop, and let Liz figure out that she had lost.
It only took her a few seconds, and her face quirked with annoyance. "Okay... I see how there's a little surprising subtlety in here. A lot if it is just driven by the numbers, but there's some freaky topological action in there too." She sighed, examining the final playing diagram as if reconstructing the play... which she probably was. "Okay, let's see if I can figure out where I went wrong. On my last move..." she scuffed some lines and dots back out of the figure, then doodled vaguely with the design for a moment. "Can't see any way I could save myself with that. Maybe if I roll it back further... I shouldn't have completed the triangle figure, maybe... but if I didn't --" She made a different line for her second move, connecting the apex and the mid-bar of the 'A' formation that had existed back then, "you could still complete the triangular perimeter in your turn, and then I don't see how I'm any better off."
"There's a definite disadvantage to playing first or second in certain circumstances on a given number of dots," I said. "Given mathematically perfect play, someone has to win and someone else lose, after all. Not sure that I'd have wanted to go second on three dots."
Liz considered that, and then scuffed over the whole diagram. "Well, maybe we'll try that again, but not right now." She looked up at me. "You gonna put your clothes back on at this point? I think you've had time enough to drip dry pretty well."
I jumped slightly, put a hand on my arm, and realized that she was right - I'd nearly finished drying off. Shrugging, I went back to my own things and put them back on. "Want to head back into town now?"
"Sure I guess." Liz sighed. "You got a car nearby?"
"Yeah, down the trail a ways. You??"
"Nah, my mom dropped me off on her way out to Riverside. I brought a little change, in case I had to get the four thirty shuttle bus from the Ranger's station." She grinned and headed to the edge of the clearing. "After you??"
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I drove up the main highway past the city limits, through the west side of town, silently. Neither of us had said a word since leaving the forest. Finally I blurted out, "Any idea where we're going?"
"Umm... no, not at the moment," Liz replied, laughing quietly. "Let see... we could just go to the Crash."
"Do you have a shift today?"
"Nah... I'm not on much this week, actually. Maria and some of the other waitresses in high school wanted to load up on their hours, and I kinda felt like just relaxing and taking the time off, so..." She shrugged. "Got the afternoon gig tomorrow, though."
"Well, I suppose we could go and work on that Lit assignment," I mumbled. "But I have to admit I don't really feel like tackling *that* today either."
"No," Liz agreed. "Just sit down in the dining room and have a snack, hang out??"
"That's tempting," I admitted. "Or... oh, how about we go catch a movie? Just head out to the Western cinema and go to whatever's in theater 4??"
"It could be asking for trouble," she warned.
"Really?? Like what?"
"Umm... nah, I'd rather not say. Let's go. Either it'll be okay, or blindingly obvious what I meant, and I can just say 'I told you so.'"
I shrugged, and drove over to the old movie house. Parked the car, looked up at the marguee sign they had above the box office... and flinched. "Do you see what I mean?" Liz muttered with a smirk.
Theater four was showing 'Against the Rules', an R-rated thriller-drama that had stuck in my mind because every review seemed to mention the steamy love scenes. Liz was right... this plan of mine might have its drawbacks -- but I was just stubborn enough, (or crazy enough,) to want to see it through.
"Okay, yeah, maybe not the safest choice, or the one that either of us would have picked if we'd had our own choice," I admitted. "Are you chicken to go in there with me??"
"Alex!! It's... it's not a question of being chicken, it's just... um, okay, I have to admit I don't know what it's just. Kinda weird. Like I were going in there with a brother... or with my Dad."
"Oh, gee, thanks. Love hearing that."
"You... do you know what I mean?"
"Umm... maybe a little," I admitted. "But come on. It's supposed to be a pretty good movie, after all, and we're both here."
"Do you realize that we're probably going to be... um, well... probably the only people in the audience who won't be either making out hot and heavy, or, umm... taking care of business by themselves??"
"Umm... I think you're overstating the case a little," I mumbled. "But it'd be interesting to see if you're not!"
I guess that Liz couldn't come up with another reason why not at that point.
The movie *was* good... on several levels. The plot was entertaining without being too light or insubstantial, the score and the camera work in places were frankly beautiful... and the love scenes were definitely impressive in their own way. I feel that I'm on pretty firm ground that Liz's prediction did not actually come to pass, having made a point to look around the theater at a few key moments.
Yes, there were couples (and one threesome,) who were necking, or fondling, or maybe even going further around us in the theater. Maybe one or two people sitting by themselves who definitely seemed to be masturbating, and I guess there might have been others who were so subtle about it that I couldn't tell. But there were definitely a number of couples and groups who were paying attention to the flick.
Somehow, the whole situation started to make me think. About how sick and tired I was of waiting for Isabel to stop making other people a priority, and that it was a shame Liz and Max seemed to be in a messy situation too. About the unexpected rush of hormones I'd felt seeing Liz in her swimsuit, and everything else that had happened between us today in the woods. I even caught my mind drifting back to a time when I'd hoped that Liz and I could become more than friends, before Isabel Evans ever looked twice in my direction.
But then the plot of the film drew me back in again, and pretty soon it was over and the two of us were caught up in the tide of people leaving the building. I got back into the car, put on a smile, and turned to Liz. "NOW back to the Crashdown for munchies??"
She laughed. "Sure."
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Somehow along the way back, I started talking about Sweden again, and some of the big corporate headquarters in Uppsala that I had gotten to visit while I was there, like Pfizer, the multinational pill maker, (which wasn't that interesting,) and mySql, which really was pretty cool. They develop a computer database system, one of the four most widely used relational database systems in the world maybe, and the only one that's open-source and will work on just about any operating system. (Microsoft makes two of the others, in case you were wondering.) I'd actually rigged up a mySql instance on my linux desktop system last summer, just to mess around with it, and the school uses it too, mostly because it's free. When Mister Olson found out how interested I was in computers and that sort of thing, he managed to get me in for a tour at the new development wing of the facility, like the team that was working on trying to give their system stored procedure support, which is one of the features that the big guys have and they don't - yet.
Of course, I completely missed for about five muntes that Liz was nearly bored to tears by the database talk, because I was so excited talking about it that I wasn't paying enough attention to her. Whoops.
But once I *did* clue in, I forced myself to stop talking, focus on eating my alien probes... (after commenting to Liz that they really needed to come up with a slightly less gross theme name for the chicken fingers,) and Liz chatted about this biochemistry internship/scholarship project that she'd been working on. Apparently, someone was building a new factory just outside of town, and they were running this charity thing to get some goodwill from the townsfolk, probably as advance karma to store up against any charges that they were ruining the local environment or treating workers unfairly or whatever.
Liz went up to get our desserts ourselves, since our waitress seemed to have gone on break and the other girl on duty, Sarah, was trying to deal with about eleven customers at once. When she came back, I noticed that in addition to my fudge blastoff and her saturn's moon pie, she had a big grin on her face, two pencils, and a few sheets of paper. "Want to give me another try at sprouts?? I think I've got a possible strategy - oh, and maybe even a way of evening up the odds, since you say that normally based on the number of initial dots, and who goes first, one player or the other generally has an advantage?"
I grinned. "Okay, what's your equalizer system?"
"The player who's fighting uphill gets a number of 'vetos' - say, two. Anybody who's facing somebody with vetoes has to specify their move in advance, and can only make it if it doesn't get vetoed."
"Okay... how do you tell if a move is substantially different though?? I could arc from points A to B on the left or on the right, that doesn't necessarily make them different moves though."
Liz thought about that. "In general, the next move proposed can't be between the same two dots... although the player proposing a move can attempt to make an argument why it's a completely different move... if he's moving on another side of a line segment, or looping completely around a structure that he didn't loop completely around before, say."
"And if you veto a move, then I do something different, you play, and my originally vetoed move is still available, I can do it then right? Unless you have a second veto you want to waste on it," Liz nodded. "Alright, let's try it then. Three to start, I go first, and you have two vetoes."
"Make the three then," Liz urged, putting a sheet of paper between our desserts and handing me a pencil.
I did, and then pointed to two of the starting sprouts. "From A to B, as before." Liz nodded approval, of course, (since I could have made a practically equivalent move even if she'd burned both her vetoes here,) and I made the move. Liz smiled, and connected the third dot, with a big loop, to itself. A-ha.
With two of that third point's lives taken, it couldn't be used to form the main triangle. The basic strategy of this variant was becoming clear. I had to seperate live sprouts into exactly two different regions, inaccessible to each other, to win. (Or four, but that seemed like it would be incredibly difficult.) Liz had either to get them seperated into three, or keep them all together in one. I saw a possible opening, and smiled cautiously. "From here to here, within the loop," I proposed, indicating the two sprouts on the loop Liz had just made. That would trap one live sprout entirely within the loop, forever unplayable.
"Veto," Liz decided, shaking her head - as I had known she would. Now, then... if I couldn't build the original triangular perimeter, maybe I could attempt to establish a square one, using one side of Liz's loop -- and the line that I had drawn on my first move. Using two lines to connect them up...
"Alright, here to here." That was one of the ends of my line, to the newest sprout on Liz's loop. She looked unhappy for a moment, seeing what I was doing, but realized that, again, she couldn't burn her last veto here or I'd just do the same thing on the other side. So she nodded, and I made the move, drawing a new sprout. And then she connected up the sprout on the other end of the loop, the one she had started the loop from, to my newest sprout, with a slightly curvy, slightly diagonal line. That would keep me from executing my original plan.
Still, there were all kinds of ways to make a large perimeter now, and Liz couldn't block all of them. I indicated the only original point that still only had one line connecting to it, and Liz's newest sprout, along a mostly-straight path, and she paused, considered, and nodded her agreement. Now, the entire mess with Liz's original loop was entirely dead, and the only four points that were still in play were on the loop I had just formed - two of the original sprouts, the one I had marked between them on my first play, and the new sprout that I had just marked. Each of them had only one life left, and Liz still had a veto. I was beginning to get a bad feeling about this.
I still needed to seperate live sprouts into two segments... possibly inside and outside of this loop, or using smaller loops that had yet to be made. If it weren't for that veto, I was sure that I'd be able to do it, but...
Liz, after pondering the position for a long time, made a move, connecting the two outermost of those four sporuts, inside the big loop. Now there was a slightly smaller loop, with three... and two of them had a different sector outside than the third, so that they could only be connected within.
The bad feeling intensifying, I gamely pointed to the two sprouts that could be connected outside, and made a little curve outside to show what I wanted to do. "I'd-a like you to meet a friend of mine," Liz said in a really bad accent. "His name's Corleone - Vito Corleone." And a big grin.
Alright, that was her last veto, but the damage was done. I connected one of those dots to the third, inside the loop, made a new sprout, and Liz connected that to the second. The new sprout she made was the only one alive. No way for me to make a move.
"Alright... well played," I admitted. "Especially with the veto husbandry."
"Thanks." We attacked our desserts with more vigor at that point, idly deconstructing the play a little bit, trying to figure out if I could have a strategy that would have let me prevail against the vetos. Then Liz got up out of her booth, yawned, and stretched tremendously high up for such a short girl.
"Well, I think that's a night for me." I walked her into the back room, feeling... feeling more than a little odd about the whole time I'd spent with Liz today.
"So... we gonna actually tackle the sonnets stuff any tomorrow?" I asked without too much enthusiasm.
"Umm... sure I guess. Come by and knock on the upstairs door a little past one in the afternoon??"
"Sure." Liz headed up to her apartment, and I slipped out the side door and went over to my car.
The first game of sprouts, that we played in the clearing using sticks in the dirt. My moves are in blue, Liz's are in red.
The second game, that we played with pencil and paper in the Crashdown. Liz's veto plays are indicated with red crosses X-ing out the play I wanted to make.
TO BE CONTINUED...
