Fateful Moments (CC ALL,ADULT) Part 55 COMPLETE Dec 13 2008

[Chrisken]

Part 31

(Tess):

"You can't just put them on to cook like that!"

Isabel turned around to shoot a fierce look at Kyle. "Obviously you know nothing about pancakes. Yes, I can and will put them on the grill like that, and they will be DELICIOUS. Just wait and see."

"Come on, what could it hurt to..." Kyle made a grab for the bowl of batter, but Isabel twisted away easily, leaving Kyle to windmill his arms slightly and almost fall.

"She's right, Kyle," Max chimed in. "The big danger with pancakes isn't lumps - it's overmixing. Lumps in the batter just kind of dissolve and go away while you cook. On the other hand, if you overmix, the results can get... err... rubbery. It's not a pretty thing."

Frustrated, Kyle looked around for a friendly and supportive face, and ended up fixating on me. It broke my heart to side against him, but... "Well, I'll be the first to say I know nothing about cooking pancakes, but I've eaten them at the Evans house, cooked by the people that you're arguing with, Kyle. Fluffy, tender, delicious. So, err... shut up and give them a chance to put their hard work where your mouth is before you complain."

Ava chuckled softly from where she was sitting around the campfire circle, and Kyle shot her a nasty look. But after that, he seemed to realize that stubbornly insisting he was right and everybody else was wrong wasn't earning him any points. "Okay. I'll go check on the cereal situation... just in case." He tromped off towards one of the cars.

"Hey, anybody want bacon hot off the cooker?" Alex asked with a knowing smile. He hadn't gotten involved in the pancake argument... probably because he knew that Isabel could put Kyle in her place without any help. I remembered him cooking pancakes that time I had breakfast chez Evans... the time I ran out of the kitchen and Max followed me, and he could obviously see what Isabel was doing. If he'd had any suggestions to make, he could definitely have found a discreet way to convey them. Instead, he'd just kept himself frying various meat products.

The batch of bacon disappeared almost instantly, as had the last two that Alex had cooked. "Okay, c'mon guys, we've gotta save some for the pancakes," Michael said, somewhat hypocritically, as some of the crispy meat had just disappeared down his own throat.

"There's a fair bit," Maria commented. "We can always run into town for more supplies... I've got money."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Up until sunday evening I guess. Then most places will be closed for the day itself, right? I mean, the fourth."

"Well, there are convenience stores that never close at all, but generally yeah," Max said. "And they won't have a great selection. We should check and make sure that we're okay for everything tomorrow afternoon, just to be safe."

"How're those sausages doing, Alex?" Ava asked.

"Umm... pretty good, be ready in a few minutes. You want more?"

"Errr." Ava considered this question. "Not yet, something's missing. Hmm. Did we bring any fresh potatoes??"

"Umm... yeah, actually, I think I did," Maria said after a moment. "Should be in the trunk of the jetta. There's a recipe for a campfire beef stew that I wanted to try."

"Mind if I steal some for fresh hash browns??"

"Umm... no. There's probably a few extras, if it comes to that."

"Thanks." Ava got up and headed off towards where Maria's car was parked. (Well, her mom's car, though it's hard to tell that lately.)

The rest of breakfast went pretty smoothly. Kyle had to admit that the pancakes were great, around the time that he started his third one, drizzled with honey and melted butter. Ava's hash browns were pretty good... well, she just peeled and diced the potatoes using her powers, (not a bad trick,) and Alex grilled them and added a little salt and pepper... not hash browns the way that Mister Valenti makes them, or the place I sometimes go to grab a quick breakfast before school, but really nice. (Ed? Well, Ed never cooked anything that was fun or interesting... I think he didn't have much in the way of a sense of taste.)

Kyle had showed up by about this point with the cereal, but he did take a a pancake when they were ready, sprinkling grains of sugar onto it, and he liked it enough to ask for another. Isabel said that she wouldn't give him one until he sang about how good her pancakes were, which he balked at for a while, and poured himself a bowl of cereal. Alex and Max tried to get Isabel to back down a little, and she was being stubborn, and finally Kyle made a joke out of it, singing this really corny and inane jingle that he'd obviously made up on the spot, the kind of thing that they'd show during saturday morning cartoons for frozen pancakes you could buy in the supermarket and put in your toaster. I guess that was kind of appropriate since it was saturday morning. Everyone gave him a round of applause, and Isabel gave him several pancakes with pretty good grace.

Breakfast was pretty much winding down by then, everyone quite satisfied, and somehow or other the trading started again. I'm not sure who started it - maybe Michael and Liz. Everybody seemed to be taking the whole thing a lot more seriously this time, nobody really eager to make a deal unless they were sure that they'd get the better side of it. I noticed that several people, like Alex and Isabel, were waiting for other people to make them offers, mostly because they were wanting to find out what other people wanted. Soon that kind of notion began to spread, which meant that no-one wanted to ask for anything, which kinda dragged things to an awkward halt.

By the way, I should probably let you guys in on a minor secret at this point. Kyle and I are working together, though we're doing our very best to keep anyone else from figuring that out. It was my idea to be stealthy about it, because I thought that we'd probably get more opportunities if everybody else thinks we're free agents than if they know we're a team. Alex and Isabel really haven't made much of a secret out of the fact that they're working together... well, they haven't announced it out loud or anything, if you don't count Isabel's question to Max before the game started. On the other hand, it was quite clear that they were agreeing on something as soon as the starting gun went off, and that they'd have had plenty of time to confer, sharing a tent together. So most of the other players have started to distrust them a little, knowing that they're pooling their resources, which might put them in a good run for the gold ring, or whatever.

I don't think that anyone else suspects about Kyle and me -- we've been pretty cautious about it. Max and Michael, well, like the two unsubtle guys that they are, I'm pretty sure that they're free agents for real, not working with each other, not teaming up with their respective girlfriends. As far as the other three, Liz, Maria, and Ava... I'm pretty sure that there's some other kind of alliance there, but not sure what it is. Probably not Maria and Ava, since that wouldn't make much sense on the face of it. But Liz is probably working with one of them.

After the dealing, (what deals were actually negotiated successfully,) were done, and the dishes cleaned, conversation immediately turned to what to do next. Alex mentioned that he'd like to go for a swim, since he hadn't had a chance to before breakfast, and Isabel agreed, and kinduv looked at me, because I was the only other one who hadn't been down there.

"Hmm..." I shrugged, and turned to the nearest people who HAD gone swimming, who turned out to be Liz and Maria. "How's the water??"

"Really nice, I think," Maria said. "Cool but not cold, shallow but not too shallow."

"Yeah, you should give it a try," Ava put in.

"Okay, I guess I'm in," I said. I had packed two different swimsuits, and started wondering which I should wear. Well... since there wasn't any particular point in showing off, or anyone that I really wanted to show off for, might as well wear the plain old, boring, comfortable, tank suit that practically covered up everything interesting. I wasn't quite sure if that logic made sense, but it seemed as good as anything else.

Max suggested that a hike through the woods to gather more firewood could be fun, and would be practical in any event. Michael, Liz, and Maria agreed to help with that, and Kyle said that he wanted to drive through the forest trails and see if he could find this lookout hill that his dad used to take him up to, and he shot a look at Ava that was almost weirdly blatant. But she agreed to go along with him, so I dunno. Maybe she likes him too.

Soon, breakfast was well and truly over; Max, Michael, and Liz drew the short straws for cleaning up the dishes. I went into my tent and changed for swimming. The tank suit was one that I'd bought last summer, when Ed was off in Washington pretending to be our worst enemy, and I had the house, and a nice little charge account, all to myself. It was a slightly greeney blue in color, stretchy reinforced lycra or whatever... v-cut at the bottom, high scoop neck at the top, no arms... just a pretty basic bathing suit, as opposed to the fancier barely-there bikinis I bought to try to make an impression on Max, and didn't even have a chance to use because he was so busy avoiding me. Well, that's bygones anyway.

When I'd found my towel and got out, Alex was already changed, (bright red trunks, mid-short but not really short, quite loose,) and waiting for Isabel, who emerged maybe thirty seconds after I did. Alex's eyes bulged and his mouth dropped open a little... I snickered without even thinking about it. Talk about barely there... Isabel's suit was just a little black string bikini bottom, and one of those mini-triangle tops... which, well, considering how much space the triangles have to try and cover on her figure, is really something. I rushed off down to the water, giving them a chance to flirt in peace before joining me.

I had waded out to about the point where I could actually float and tread water, instead of just walking on the river bottom, when I heard the two of them splash into the water behind me. Isabel was cutting a pretty good swathe through the water, so I turned around and back-floated to let her approach me. "I... I'm sorry if I'm being a grouch or a wet blanket or anything," I blurted out, and hit myself for it mentally as soon as the words were out. I didn't even know that Isabel had noticed my 'love bah humbug' routine.

"Yeah, you are, but I kinduv understand why," she said, getting out a little further into deep water than I had been and treading pretty well. I noticed that Alex was still hanging around in much shallower water, so that he was maybe twenty feet away. Had Isabel asked him to give us a little privacy for this. "You're feeling like a ninth wheel, and not liking it very much. I can't say I'd be in a good mood if I were in your shoes either."

"Is it that obvious??" I asked. "Umm... about Kyle and Ava, I mean. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions - I'd like to get your take."

"I'm not sure," Isabel admitted. "Kyle is definitely interested in her, that much seems nearly inarguable. Whether it's the jocker lust bunnies, or something a little closer to sweet romance, I'm not sure. And Ava... well, she's still a little hard for me to read, but my take is that she likes Kyle as a person and a friend, but isn't sure enough of what's what here in Roswell to move on to anything more... yet."

"Well, if it's true, that's something," I mumbled. "Not... not that I'd wish Kyle bad luck with Ava just so that I'd have a partner in misery, but..."

"You won't be miserable for long, Tess," Isabel blurted out softly. "I... I know that this situation is tough on you. You can't just go and pick somebody from our class at school to go out on dates with, someone who you could never tell about our secret, someone who doesn't understand what we have to go through. I tried that, before I got to know Alex, and even without anything to compare it to I could tell that it wasn't working out. I don't think you're much different than I am, when it comes to that kind of thing, Tess. And you've seen what I have with Alex, what Michael has with Maria... and what you hoped to have with Max."

"Get to the part where this cheers me up," I grumbled at her.

"I... I'm not quite sure where that part is," she admitted. "Somewhere you'll find someone who fits, I don't know where or when." She giggled. "Maybe Zan isn't dead after all, and he'll show up here soon."

I looked at her dubiously. "Do mean that even slightly??"

"Ummm..." Isabel thought about that. "Only a little bit. First off, to disclaim, I realize that even if Zan *is* still alive, there's no particular reason to think that you two would make a good couple - though you never know. But... well, he was a healer, Tess, and he knew more about his powers than Max does. Maybe Rath and Lonnie underestimated what it would take to kill him. Maybe his own powers were able to regenerate him. Ava was looking, and she says that his body didn't crumble into dust, or any of the more impressive things that an alien body tends to do after death. He just went limp. Maybe his system went into a death-like coma to avoid being found out as nonhuman -- like Nasedo could do."

I blinked in surprise. "Yeah, maybe. But as you said, there doesn't seem to be any easy way that that helps me out, in the short term."

Isabel thought about that, and nodded. "Well, keep your eyes out for someone human. If there *is* someone special, someone with enough depth to take the situation well, I'll support a decision to expand the club by one member. After you've spent enough time with the guy to be sure we can trust him, I mean."

"Well, thanks." Wasn't sure I could really picture myself doing any such thing, but it was kinda nice to know that I had an option.

"And... and one more thing?" Isabel asked. "Maybe you should talk to Kyle about the Ava thing... let him know you feel a bit weird about it. I don't know what you'd want to say exactly... but you mean the world to him, or nearly, Tess. Rely on that. Maybe he'll think of a way to make things better."

I smiled. "Okay. And this ends the big heart to heart session for today." I took a deep breath, dived down, and swam along the river bottom, tugging on one of Isabel's toes along the way. She splashed me when I surface about a minute later... and then made a squeak of surprise. I was still reorienting, so I asked out loud, "What's wrong??"

"Umm... I musta moved wrong, I popped out of my top." Isabel was hugging her arms around her chest, staying down low so that the water was up to her neck. "And Alex is coming near, of course. Well, not like it's anything he hasn't seen before, but... awkward situation, maybe a little teasing."

"Leave it to me," I said, swimming forward and doing some quick molecular alterations. Only seconds later, everything was done - my own suit had two fairly large cutouts, one on each side, from the waist halfway up to the armpit, and Isabel's top was refastened, with the triangles being each twice as large as before - one black, one greeney-blue.

"Hey, that was good work," Isabel laughed. "Fits perfectly."

"Practice makes perfect," I said. "This isn't the first time I've redesigned clothing on the fly, though it might be the first time I've worked on another girl."

"Um, hey ladies," Alex said, coming up. He looked at Isabel's shoulder straps, one of which was now blue as well, and blinked in surprise. "Umm, did..."

"Long story, I'll tell you later sweetie," Isabel said, and turned to me. "By the way - got any high spades??"

Ah-ha, so we were back to the game. "Maybe... what'll it get me? Got a rule slip saying anything about green index cards?"

"Actually, yes. What'll you offer for a look at it?"

"Ten of spades."

"Done, and done."

"Oh, and one other thing, for my curiosity. You guys are completely working together, right??"

"Umm... yes." Alex admitted. "Any idea who else is allied together?"

"Ehh, you're going to have to find something else to trade," I teased. "I don't give strategic information away for free."

"Alright, fair enough," Isabel said, shooting Alex a look. I wonder if she was thinking he shouldn't have blurted out the confirmation that they'd been working together? Well, it didn't really matter I think. If both of them had played hard to get about it, I'd have tied it into the deal for their precious little ten of spades.

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(Kyle):

"Umm... I'm glad you decided to come along," I mumbled, mentally scoring it eight out of ten on the lameness scale. How was it that I could be... well, I thought I was a pretty smooth operator when it came to girls in general. Why did this one chick manage to strip away all of my mojo without even, apparently, trying??

Well... maybe there was the fact that she grew up a punker in Manhattan, of all places. Anybody who's been there and done that could eat small town jocks like me for breakfast. Buddha jocks, or whatever. And then, maybe, there was the fact that looking at Ava made my pulse race more than any girl I'd ever tried to put the moves on. That might have something to do with it.

"S'cool," she mumbled casually, flashing me half a smile. "This lookout point place seemed interesting. And I didn't really mind an excuse to get out of the entire gang and just spend some one on one time. Umm, with anyone I mean."

Well, that wasn't a bad signal, if not entirely a good one either. "How's living with Michael been so far? And working at the UFO Center?"

"Oh... I haven't forgotten my promise to try and get you a gig there too," she quickly blurted out, and then two very small areas of pinkness showed on her cheeks when I smiled calmly in reply, as she realized that I hadn't been hinting around or nagging about that little detail.

"It's been pretty good, actually, especially the alien museum stuff." She laughed out loud at that. "Been a trip seeing what these guys think about UFOs half the time. As far as Michael... well, he's cool, but I kinda get a weird feeling being around, especially when Maria comes by. I try my best to give them some privacy, you know, but it doesn't always work out. Might try asking Liz if her parents would possibly be okay with me crashing on their couch again. Of course, I don't think they know that I did that the first time I was in Roswell."

"Well, I'm sure that you'll work it out somehow," I said. "I'm glad you decided to stick around town. You know, I didn't even find out anything about the three of you arriving from New York until, well... um, I guess I heard something around thanksgiving, which was a few days before you left, right? When Max was getting ready to attend the Summit."

"Heh?" Ava turned around sharply at that. "But... but Tess was staying with you then, right?? Didn't you wonder about where she'd gone??"

"Not that much," I admitted, looking down at my sneakers. "She left my dad a note, and he just told me that she'd be out of town for a few days or maybe a little more, on... well, he didn't say the words 'alien business' as such. Not sure if I can remember exactly what term he DID use."

"I didn't ask any further... not until I found out that Max was also gone, and that Isabel and Michael were upset that he hadn't told them he would be leaving. That's when I heard the whole deal about the night that you guys came to the center and told them your story." He sighed. "Isabel mentioned that she thought you were still around, but she didn't say any more than that. Not sure if she knew that you were staying with Liz."

"I'm not sure I was, at that point... unless you could the alley out back behind the Crash," Ava admitted. "I was used to bunking down on the street in out of the way places, from the Big Apple. Liz found me the night after Thanksgiving, when she was taking out the trash, and insisted that I come in and get myself cleaned up and fed." She smiled at the kindness that had been shown to her.

"Yeah, that sounds like her," I agreed. "Oooh, okay, I think this is about as close as we can get in the car. I'd better park it, and we can continue on foot."

"Park away." We got out of the car, and I started through a fairly well cleared, but narrow, path through the trees.

"Well, I guess if you hadn't left Roswell the first time," I said after a minute, "you wouldn't have found out about the big Nicholas/Lonnie/Rath teamup and been able to come riding in at the last moment and save all our lives... so thanks for that much."

"Well, I'm not sure that your lives were in... Oh, holy shit, I forgot to tell Max or anyone about that part!!"

I jumped slightly, surprised by the slightly contradictory nature of her choice of swear words, not to mention that it was a little unusual being around girls who cursed so freely at all. Waited to see if she would explain further. But she didn't for a long moment, and when Ava realized that I was particularly intent, she mentioned. "Oh, just, umm... I was reminded of something that Rath and Nicholas were trying to put the squeeze on your friends for. Something that it just so happens that I have."

I thought back to that dark afternoon. "The crystal key??"

"Damn, good memory!!"

I smiled. "Always been good remembering things that people have said, for some reason. Okay, so how did YOU get it, and why didn't Rath or Lonnie know it?"

"It's a bit of a long story," she muttered. "Okay, short version - our protector gave it to Zan and told him to be very careful who else he let in on the secret, right before he left. Zan mustuv had his suspicions about Rath and Lonnie, guess he figured that they weren't above putting their own interests ahead of his, or the good of the group. He told me a little... not enough about how to find it, but I was able to work it out when I was back in New York, about the same time as I found out the terrible twosome had signed on with Nicholas."

"Making it a terrible threesome," I quipped.

"Yeah, totally."

"Alright, well, I guess that's good," I reasoned. "If our guys ever want to duplicate what the bad guys wanted to do - they have the Granilith, and with you, they have the key. Just need to get the book translation done, and they'll be all set."

"Yep," Ava agreed. "So, Kyle..." She trailed off, and looked up me with a self-mocking expression. "Sorry, was just trying to think of something decent to ask. Liz told me some of your story."

"Oh?? I'd be curious to hear what that was," I replied.

"Umm... popular school athlete, she's known you for a few years, hooked up at a fourth of july party, the one and only time Liz has ever had a drink to hear her tell it, and you ran off a senior who was trying to feel her up, and sang 'Love machine' to her in front of your teammates." I groaned, remembering the retrospective humiliations of that night. "Got very twitchy when Liz started spending more time with Max, the guys from the football team beat Max up, and Liz dumped you."

"You spent a little while trying to figure out what was going on with Max's secret and the rest of the gang, got mixed up in a deadly shootout when they were confronting the head Agent of the FBI Special Unit, and your father accidentally put a bullet into your left lung, tearing the main blood vessel leading from your heart into your lung. Max almost didn't manage to heal you in time to save your life."

I blinked in surprise. "Really? I didn't realize it was that serious... or that time was such a critical factor. Don't really remember anything between hearing the sound of the gunshot and waking up with Max kneeling over me, come to think of it.

"That might have been a hint," Ava pointed out. "Yeah, it was much closer with you than with Liz, say. She was in rough shape, yeah, but she had at least twenty-five seconds to spare." Awkward pause. "Should I continue on?"

"Um, yeah, okay."

"Go away to football camp that summer, come back all Buddhist because you need something new to believe in after your world's been turned upside down, or something like that. And, umm... I guess that's really all of it."

"Okay." There was a silence as we walked on, but this time the quiet seemed a little easier and more... well, I wasn't going to say 'comfortable' because it seems like a cliche, but I can't think of a better word, so yeah. The silence was just slightly comfortable.

Ava told me about some of the pther places she's been, and then I realized we were getting close to the hill. It was a pretty steep slope to climb, especially after already having worked up a bit of exercise just walking through the woods, but the view was great. A huge swath of greenery surrounded the peak on all sides, visibly arcing in a kind of a lens or crescent shape. Beyond the woods was rocky desert, the main highway cutting through both to the south, and faraway, a few tiny little buildings - not within Roswell city limits I knew, but just past the edge of town.

"Not a bad setup," Ava admitted. "You wanna hang here a bit and let it sink in?"

"Sounds really good," I admitted, stealthily casting an admiring glance at Ava's trim body as she admired the actual landscape.

(Michael):

"Is that piece too green to burn?" Maria asked. She was pointing at a piece of tree trunk maybe three an a half inches wide, and nearly two feet link, kinduv ragged at both edges. Most of the exposed wood was a fairly light yellow, with green tinges around the edges, and most of the bark was still in place, a whitey-grey. kind of bark, nearly paper thin.

"Umm, yeah, leave it," Liz said regretfully, looking at the chunk of wood. I agreed with her judgement, as far as it went, but...

"Just a moment." I took a few steps towards the piece and waved at it. Suddenly it was old deadwood, graying brown, the bark already starting to peel away from it in dozens of places. Liz and Maria did a double-take, until they realized what I had done. It was just molecular changes over time that made the difference between a piece of fresh, green wood, and an older piece of wood ready to burn. It was simple to accelerate that process with my own powers.

Liz was giving me a scandalized look. "What?? It wasn't connected to anything, it wasn't rooted. And we're gonna need a LOT of firewood to stay out here through the whole long weekend. Every little bit helps."

"It may not have been rooted, but I think it was still alive," Max said softly. "Which makes you a killer once again."

I had kind of realized that before I did it. "Well, then I call it a mercy killing. It would have died slowly, over the course of the next few days, completely helpless and seperated from its roots, its leaves and branches. I'd want someone to put me out of my misery if I were in a state like that. It'd be like..."

"I'll give you anything I own on this earth if you DON'T tell us what that would be like," Maria quickly put in. I laughed, and decided not to take her up on that offer.

We chatted a bit about the stuff that Max has been doing with Brody, looking for flying saucers, and quickly had enough wood to return to camp with again. We had already each delivered one load already, and with this second batch, we would probably be okay for a while.

Isabel, Tess, and Alex had come back up from the beach when we got back, and built the fire up a little. (I tried not to picture our gathered firewood going up in smoke just slightly quicker.) Kyle and Ava still weren't back yet, which maybe I should have guessed. Max asked about going out a third time for wood, but Maria and Liz said that they weren't really interested, and people started exchanging opinions about lunch.

Didn't seem to take long before a majority had decided in favor of roasting hot dogs over the flames, along with a little cold salad and canned corn heated with alien powers, which sounded good enough to me. We had a fun lunch, and the trading for the game started all over again. I scored a brown color card, and saw another rule, which was something about extra points for having a lot of cards of the same suit.

Once lunch was done, Maria and Alex and Isabel were feeling lazy, and I decided that I was content enough to sit around the campsite with them and not do much of anything. Liz said that she'd heard about an impromptu rock concert that was going to be held about a mile south of us, at the edge of the woods, and she talked Max and Tess into going with her, (which made for a slightly odd group in terms of old relationship history, but if it works for Liz it's fine by me.)

Alex showed me an odd game that we could play by drawing with sticks in the dust... a strategic challenge based on two intersecting grids of dots that could be thought of as friendly and unfriendly towns. In each turn, I could connect two friendly towns, attempting to forge an unbroken route from east to west. For each connection I made, I kept Alex from linking two of HIS towns, and vice versa. If Alex could make a route from the north to south, he could seperate my east and west, and vice versa. It was a surprisingly complcated and intriguing puzzle.

-----------

It was around the middle of the afternoon, well, two o'clock or quarter past, when Kyle and Ava got back, and they made a big deal out of how hungry they were at first and devouring the first supplies they could find. That set off another brief round of trading and storytelling, and Kyle tried to get a capture the flag game organized, but nobody else seemed too interested.

It was maybe twenty minutes after that that I realized I hadn't seen Maria in a while. Checked down at the river, around the cars, and finally scurried into our tent, where she was laying down on top of our sleeping bags. "Hey, everything okay??"

"Umm... yeah." She yawned slightly. "Just feeling a bit dozey I guess."

"Hmmm." I wondered whether I should say what was on my mind. "Think it has anything to do with our growing little one?"

"Not sure... that's obviously a kind of effort that I've never had to make before, if effort is really the right word. Certainly the fact that I've got a bun in the oven makes me feel a lot more inclined to rest if I'm tired, not push other kinds of activity... you know, just in case."

"Yeah, I think I can understand that much." I laid down too, next to her. "You know that if there's anything I can help you out with, all you need to do is ask, right??"

"Hmmm... you promise?"

"Um, yeah -- why??"

"Got any sixes, then??" She grinned and chuckled softly.

"That doesn't count," I shot back. Actually, I didn't have any sixes, but that didn't change the principle of the thing.

"No?" She pouted at me, and I could feel my devotion to principle starting to weaken. Fortunately, she abandoned the joke, rather than make a real attempt at suasion and cajolery... though she might just be keeping that in her pocket to try later. "Okay. Any idea what the big prize is?"

"Not sure," I admitted. "Can't think of much that Max and Valenti would have been able to arrange on such short notice, that would appeal more or less equally to all of us, considering we have such varied interests."

"True," she admitted. "Okay, well..." She reached out to wrap one arm around her shoulders. "Why don't we just lie here, and not have to say anything? Just being near you is enough to relax me."

I smiled, caught the hint, and slipped the fingers of one hand into her hair, stroking through the strands. She made a sound that was almost like a purring.

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Max and Tess and Liz came back from the concert a little before six - they hadn't been too impressed, and even though there was going to be more acts stretching into the evening, there had been some sort of mutual consensus to head back in time for dinner. This led to some teasing from Alex and Isabel, that they'd only left in the first place so that someone else would have to do the cooking for supper, and then they showed up just in time to eat it.

The food was pretty good, actually. Alex had found a recipe for an all-in-one-dish stew that you could put among the embers of a fire that wasn't burning too hard, and pretty much leave it there for about an hour and twenty minutes, and at the end of that time it would be all ready to eat. There were big chunks of tender beef and rich gravy and potatoes and carrots and peas and corn and some other kind of vegetable, and Isabel had managed to bake a kind of soft, fluffy biscuit on the barbecue that was great for mopping up leftover gravy. Delicious.

As the sun sank down low in the western sky, we started to make campfire s'mores again, (corny I know, but man are they sweet!!) and Max actually managed to get more than half of the group singing campfire songs. It was right after the third song that a familiar and unexpected sound intruded... a car, and it was pulling into the parking lot for OUR campsite. (Or trying to -- there wasn't really much room in the parking lot proper, but it was pretty clear that the new car was coming to a stop somewhere very close to there.)

Alex and I jumped up to go and have a look, and I blinked in a bit of surprise as I recognized the Jetta - which Maria hadn't driven to get here. I picked her up at the Cafe yesterday, in the Bronto. And as we watched, Amy DeLuca stepped out of the driver's seat of the Volkswagon.

"Umm... hi," she said, making that same nervous smile when she looked at me that Maria does sometimes when she's feeling really unsure of herself. I guess now I know where she gets it from. "I... I know that this was supposed to be a special weekend all by yourselves, the whole 'gang', but... I've been thinking about what you said, Michael. I want to be able to accept it... to be okay with knowing who you guys really are and what's going on between you and Maria. But I feel like I need to know more. So, um, so that's why I came down. If you don't want to, umm, to have anything to do with my tonight, that's your call. But I thought I'd make an offer."

I blinked in surprise, and Alex nodded at me slightly and drew back - a way of saying that as far as he was concerned, this was my call to make. She was right - I hadn't expected to have to deal with any of this stuff over the long weekend. However, she had come here, making a very positive gesture... more positive than anything I'd expected to get for a little while. Seemed like it might be a very bad idea to rebuff or put her off at this point. And really, what was the harm of telling her a few more alien stories around the campfire? I could hardly think of a more relaxed and appropriate setting.

"Well, umm... I guess it's okay by me," I said, reaching out a hand to her. "Let's see what Maria and everybody else think."

Maria was very surprised to see her mother there, but nobody had any objections to raise about Amy joining the circle for a little while, and several people seemed to echo my own feeling that it was a good place and time. Since there wasn't any extra tent, Amy agreed to leave later that evening, to go back and sleep in her own house. "Okay, umm, so -- is there anything in particular you'd like to hear about first??" I asked her.

"Umm... I can't think of anything specifically," she admitted. "Why don't one of you get me started, and I'll probably come up with all kinds of questions then."

There was a restless stirring around the fire. "What did you tell Ms DeLuca about the other night, Michael??" Max asked.

"Umm... not that much, before she bolted," I said. "That first night when we came out of the pods... how you guys got picked up by the Evanses, and how Tanning found me and dropped me off at social services."

"Yes, that'll do for a starting point," Amy agreed. "Max, Isabel... what was it like for you after you were 'found'?? When Philip and Diane... I assume that they got you into their car somehow, and..."

"Yeah," Isabel said in a soft voice, smiling. "I... I still don't have any real clear memories of that part, probably because I hadn't yet learned English, so I didn't know what they were saying to us or anything like that." She looked over at Max, who nodded. "But I knew that I liked them, and that we could trust them. And... and we were fascinated by the car - Max especially." She winked, and Max shook his head, but he was smiling, and he definitely didn't deny what she was saying. "They... there was a discussion. Mom - definitely didn't want to leave us there, all alone. Dad was just really surprised by the whole situation, like he hardly knew what he wanted to do. She opened the back seat and made a little gesture to invite us in if we wanted to come, and we were inside in about a second."

"Yeah," Max said, pretty far back into memory himself. "Mom was... she'd fallen in love with us from the first second - that's what she told us a little later, and it certainly matches against what I remember. Dad... he must have insisted that they had to drop us off at social services, that Mom couldn't take us home that evening. But she... she did everything she could to make the drive last as long as she could, driving down this street and that, showing us things. We had never seen a place like Roswell, of course, and it probably showed, we must have had our faces up against the window the whole time."

"Then, umm... a big place with a lot of people around," Isabel resumed, shooting Max a look for confirmation. "It was so late in the evening that the social services proper was closed, so Dad brought us straight to the orphanage."

"Right," Amy nodded. "I think I don't quite need this level of play-by-play. They came back later, after Social Services had had a chance to look for your 'real parents,' and adopted you?"

"Yeah," Max agreed. "It took a while, and Mom came several times, to visit us and see how we were doing. It was over that period that we picked up enough English to get by, and started to learn about the other things that most six-year-olds have already had a chance to master."

"That's... well, that's connected to a lot of things I don't understand," Amy mentioned. "Why were you in those pods until you were... well, I guess it was decades, but when you came out you looked like six year olds? Is that part of the natural alien life cycle? What happened to your real parents? And how come you were able to pass for human beings almost perfectly, for so long?"

The entire company had been struggling to hold back outright laughter just long enough for Amy to finish her questions, and now it erupted, to Ms DeLuca's shock and consternation. "I... I'm sorry," Liz managed to gasp out between her peals. "It's just... those are the same questions that EVERYBODY asks, more or less, when they find out. I did - Alex did. Kyle... did you and your dad? I don't think I was there when... okay." Kyle had nodded a half confirmation. "I guess Maria was asking them around the same time I was, and I think even Max and the others were wondering about it themselves."

"The answers kinduv take a long time to get through explaining, Mom," Maria warned. "Might be best if we go through things in order, how we worked things out ourselves."

Amy looked a little dubious about that. "I dunno... don't mind hearing the whole story eventually, but we don't have that long tonight and I'd rather get the answers to the important stuff ASAP, if that's alright." From her expression, it had either better be alright or she'd hear a darn good reason why not. "At least as far as possible... I understand if you haven't gotten complete information yet."

"Okay," I spoke up. "Let's see... no the pod thing isn't usual alien life cycle stuff, as nearly as we can work it out. It probably has something to do with the fact that we're genetically engineered hybrids. Half our DNA is alien and half is human, more or less..."

"All right... ish."

"Exactly how they were able to *make* hybrids is one of the longer parts of the story," Alex supplied. "Which ties into one of the scarier parts, because they used these weird blue critters, Gandarium, who got loose in Frazier woods and were trying to infect planet Earth."

Amy looked at him. "I was hoping that that was a joke, but somehow I don't think I'll be so lucky."

"No," Max said. "And much as I hate to believe it, there are going to be bits that are even stranger and harder to believe. Like the fact that I'm supposedly the reincarnation of this alien king." He sighed. "The alien side of my DNA came from him, along with some part of his energy essence, or spirit, or something like that."

Amy looked at him for a long time, but didn't say anything. "We think the hybrids thing also has something to do with why we pass for human so well," Isabel added in. "Our human genes were meant to be dominant in a lot of superficial ways, so that we could hide well. As far as WHY they dumped us here..."

[Chrisken]

Part Thirty-two

(Alex):

"Oh, stars above!" The phrase might have been particularly appropriate to the outdoor setting, but wasn't strictly a reference to the night sky visible around their Frazier woods campfire. Michael and Maria, with some help from the rest of us, had just finished telling Maria's mother about the most recent evil alien attack, when a powerful Skin and two duplicate hybrids had taken most of the group for hostage... how Ava had helped Michael break free from his bonds: they had killed Nicholas and Rath, and run Lonnie out of town with a warning to never the hell come back to Roswell. Amy had met Ava before this, of course, but she hadn't known the true story of how Tess' 'identical twin' had come to Roswell to stay.

"Yeah, I know," Liz whispered, guessing what was going through her honorary aunt's mind. "It's really scary, especially when stuff like that happens. But..."

"But, for most of you... there's no way to be sure of getting away from the scary stuff," Amy whispered unhappily. "Nobody to call who can help you -- except for a few brave people like Jim who are willing to risk everything for what they believe is right." She turned to Maria. "I... I couldn't understand why you wanted to have anything to do with Michael, when I first found out, never mind... have, having his baby, becoming his wife, when you're so young. I - I think I'm starting to understand it a bit more now. It's not just love, though you certainly have a lot of that, and I hope it'll be strong enough to see you through what lies ahead."

Amy looked around, took a deep breath, and continued. "But... but all of you have been through an incredible experience... an adventure that you're still living. You share a coming of age tale that frankly I'm jealous of, and that suggests that nothing any of us did would be able to tear you apart." She sighed. "I don't think I really want to hear any more alien stories at this point, kids."

"Well, that's okay," Ava pointed out, "because that one was pretty much the last really interesting thing that happened. We'd have to go back further, and face it - that's always more than a bit confusing, skipping back and forth through time. When telling a story, or watching a movie, you know. Whatever."

"How about a few songs, then," Maria suggested. "Campfire songs, before you go back home, Mom."

"Umm... sure, sounds good to me," Amy agreed.

"Can anybody think of any good ones?" Max asked.

"Down by the bay," Kyle immediately sang out, "Where the watermelons groww..."

"Back to my home," Ava joined in, and with some chuckling, the rest of the group started to sing. Michael suggested 'John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt' and Maria taught us a round about working in a chemical factory that she called 'the process man.'

"Alright, one more, and then we go to bed," Isabel suggested. "Anybody think of a good one?"

"I..." Ava spoke up shyly. "I can think of a really good song, but it's not a traditional campfire song. For one thing, it's an instrumental."

Amy DeLuca blinked, but then nodded encouragingly. "Well, this doesn't sound like any kind of night for sticking to tradition very much. What's the song."

"It... it's called Chasing rain," Ava said, nervous now.

"Yeah, I've heard it," I said. "Might even be able to figure out how to play the line. But that song was written for a huge band with a bunch of fiddles, and a piano, and a tall double bass, and drums and step-dancers... none of which we really have here."

"Oh, psshaw," Maria waved a hand. "First things first... do we have ANY instruments here?"

"Yeah, I've got my accoustic guitar," I admitted. "Thought it might come in handy at some point." Looked over at Isabel after i said that, and she smiled.

"I've got a kind of a whistle flute," Ava put in.

Maria moved sideways a bit on the wooden bench, so that she was sitting just behind another one where they overlapped. "I've got a makeshift drum here." And she hit the wooden surface with the heel of one hand and the back edge of the other, which did create some pretty impressive percussive notes. Tess, who had been sitting near to the part of the bench that Maria was playing drums on, got up and circled round the fire until she found a free spot, sitting down near Mrs DeLuca.

"Do you know the song close enough to do the rhythm?" I asked Maria, once I had my guitar, and while Ava was still looking for her whistle.

"Umm... I was hoping I could pick it up from you," she said.

"Yeah, I'll try to cue you in," Ava said. "Just remember, the beat is an important part of the song. Above all else... try to think of horses."

"Horses?"

"You'll see... if this works," I assured her. "Okay, Ava... umm, I start?"

"Yeah, please." She held her whistle, but didn't bring it to her mouth, and I started to strum a chord. Quite quickly, the music that I'd heard weeks ago came back strongly to mind, and it wasn't hard to adapt the second fiddles' line to my guitar. (Yes, it sounds a little weird, but the "second fiddle" plays first... at least I think it's appropriate to call it the second fiddle, because the other part is toguher.) There was a long intro for me to play through, with Maria just keeping a fairly traditional drum beat, and Ava not joining in yet... I smiled, trying to do more than just play the right notes and chords, but project the spirit and essence of the song, conveying the setting... the desert, just like the New Mexico plains lying not far from this wooded vale. The still of desert night, the beauty of desert morning, the beauty of desert morning... calm and still, peaceful.

As his first passage came to an end, Ava took up the 'first fiddle's line on her whistle with flawless timing, and more than a little natural musical flair that I hadn't realized she had. That was the way this entire song worked, the melody shifting from one fiddler to the other, or in our case between the guitar and the whistle, each taking our turns, with the drums supporting both.

This section, the desert mid-morning, was where the horses part began, a group setting out to ride, and Maria began to syncopate her drum beat as I faded back into the supporting, harmonic role. Ava's fingers flew over the whistle stops as she tried to keep up with the dizzyingly fast high melody, of fast galloping and dusty ground falling far behind. I took a turn with the low melody next, and it wasn't static any more, though not quite as dyanmic as Ava's passage had been perhaps... desert late morning, a slow, a brisk walk to recover breath. Perhaps some talking and joking between the riders as they walked alongside their horses, to match the lighthearted melody. And just at the end of the walk, spotting what they were hunting... clouds on the horizon.

We switched back and forth again, several more times... dashing hard through the heat of the day, on Ava's high melody, the horses running so hard and fast that it wasn't even quite a gallop any more, another break for a rest, though not as much of a rest as it had been, still going at a fairly brisk canter, as I took my turn with the low melody again. Galloping hard for a stretch again, as the desert day moved into afternoon, with Ava playing the high melody again, and then she let that fade away, but I didn't start the low melody again, and for a little bit we just played our harmonic lines at the same time. Something new had happened. What was it? I figured that they had come - to the top of a canyon.

Maria kept the beat going, and I started to step out of the harmony, but only a little bit, here and there. Slowly, ever so slowly moving down some kind of trail or narrow path down into the canyon. Walking through the unexpected oasis... letting the horses drink from a river that wounds its way through the valley. This was where the piano line came to the fore, although we didn't have a piano, so-- well, I was taking the piano melody, to start. Walking slowly through the valley, enjoying the beauty of some woods that had grown up there, maybe. After several measures there was a good opening to let Ava take over the piano line, where her whistle could better handle the dizzying climb into higher octaves, just as the horseback party came to the mouth of the valley and saw -- rain, falling only a few miles away!

Back into the low melody again, as the party rode through the desert afternoon towards the storm, and the high melody of victory and celebration, riding right into the downpour itself. Everybody's faces, including those of the three of us who were playing, seemed to be taken by surprise, lost in the wonder of the music. Ava stopped her whistling suddenly, and I was able to remember just in time that this was the way the song ended to not run over the end, but Maria played an extra measure and a half on the drums before clueing in.

"I... I'll see you in a few days, dear," Amy said to Maria, breaking the hushed silence that rolled in over the campsite for a long moment. She got up from her seat and smiled at the assembled company.

"Mom, you, um..." Maria didn't seem to be sure what to say.

"It - it's better this way," Mrs DeLuca said softly, and melted back into the night, towards the parking lot.

"Let me grab a flash and walk you to your wheels," Michael insisted.

"Umm, alright," Amy's voice agreed, and Michael hurried off to his tent to get a light.

"Yeah, I think that was a good 'note' to say goodbye on," Liz punned. "Anything else would be anticlimatic. Urm, anticlimaCtic, I mean, with three c's."

"Wait a second, what's the difference?" Kyle asked, as Max got up to get the fire bucket.

"Anticlimatic," Isabel informed him, "would be 'having to do with the opposite of large-scale weather conditions'... or something like that. Maybe 'not having to do with any weather conditions at all.'"

"Well, singing more songs *wouldn't* have to do with any weather conditions," I put in cheekily, "so maybe it's that too."

"Naw," Ava joked. "If a thunderstorm started, you'd stop singing and dash for cover, right? That makes it slightly climatic."

Liz groaned. "Goodnight, everybody."

As I crawled into the tent, Isabel tackled me with a passionate kiss, then started to change for bed.

----------

(Michael:)

I woke up in the middle of the night, curled tight again Maria's exquisitely smooth body... the July night was hot, and neither of us were wearing much of anything. And in the stillness of the woods, I felt a sudden wave of frustrated passion crash over me.

Not sure if I made a groan or moan that was loud enough to be heard, or shook her without meaning to, or maybe whatever it was that woke me up had the same effect on her too. "Hey, my darlin' betrothed," she whispered. "How's it going?"

I'm not sure if I'll ever get used to the 'making small talk at odd moments' thing. "Umm... not too bad, and you?"

"Eh... pretty good," she admitted. "Glad that my mom sounds like she's starting to come around. Enjoying camping more than I thought I would, and not that upset that I've been out in the boonies for more than a day at this point." I laughed at that. "And... I'm feeling a little hot, in a way that has *nothing* to do with the air temperature." Just to make the point a little more strongly, as if I could have missed it, she rubbed her soft behind playfully against my crotch. I tried to stifle, or at least quiet, a groan.

There was a short, silent moment after that, during which Maria caught ahold of my chest and tried to maneuver it underneath her top, towards her chest. (Of course, I didn't exactly object, and I might have helped her out a bit.) "Okay, you're hot, and I'm, um, excited too," I whispered to her softly. "What do you want to do about it? If we just start going at it right here, full-tilt, I kinda think it's going to be awkward for everyone else. All of our tents are pretty close together - sound will carry well."

"Hmmm..." Maria twisted her neck, and her upper body a bit, so that she could kiss me, and then returned to her earlier position, facing away. "Well... let's see what our options are, in that case. We could try to sneak away somewhere more secluded... but that would involve dressing, and people might wonder why we were leaving the camp if they heard us..."

"I kind of think they'd probably guess why, and let us go," I said.

"But then... well, we'd have to figure out where's a good spot, and then get there, and there are plenty of families camping in the woods this weekend," she pointed out. "Or, well... we could both just roll over and try to get back to sleep."

"Hmm... I have to admit, that one doesn't sound very appealing."

"Hehehe." Maria giggled softly. "The other option... is to see if we can do it here and just be very quiet. Whatcha think?"

"Hmm!" I thought about that, and let my hand drift down towards her hip. "Well, I'm up for it if you are!!" Somehow being with Maria always seemed to charge my sexual batteries up for some kinda kinky stuff that I'd never thought I'd be terribly interested in, before we actually started messing around with the heavy stuff.

"Well... I don't go 'up' the same way that you do, my rocket-man," she murmured, fondling my... rocket through my boxers. "But I'm definitely interested!"

It was a weird experience, having sex there in the tent while trying not to wake anyone else... we didn't reach the insane heights of overwhelming pleasure that often hit when we can really concentrate on each other. But it was a pleasant enough experience, and kinduv novel, and we cuddled together and talked about our hopes for the future a bit while drifting back off to sleep. Just as the darkness overtook me I had an odd moment when I realized that I'd forgotten something - something that could be important.

----------

Sunday morning was a little more relaxed at camp... nobody went out for a swim first thing, at least if they did, they were back and dry by the time I got up. Max and Kyle were starting the main campfire up again, and discussing brekfast ideas. Everybody kinduv wanted to try things a little more unusual this time, and Kyle remembered most of a recipe for 'omeletes in a bag' - you beat the eggs and mix in the other stuff inside a ziploc bag, suck the air out with a straw, and dump the bag into a pot of water boiling over the fire. After it cooks for long enough, you can just slide your omelet out of the bag and onto a plate. Alex cooked up a big skillet of corned beef and potatoes and onions and a little green pepper, and Ava fixed up these makeshift pita-in-foil things, and so we had a great hot breakfast using only the campfire.

"So... anybody have big plans for today?" Tess asked softly.

"Nah, not I," Maria put in. "But maybe I should get some, Kinda laid around and didn't accomplish much yesterday afternoon... well, not that accomplishing stuff is really the point, when I'm out camping with my friends, but..."

"Well..." I said. "I think I caught sight of someone rafting down the river yesterday. We could make our own raft and see where we end up... though it might be a bit of a long walk back."

"Well, I think I brought along some homing trackers," Alex pointed out. "Whoever goes along with the raft can take one, and someone else can follow it later in one of the cars."

"That works I suppose," Maria said. "Who wants to go rafting?"

"I dunno," a new voice said from the path. "Who else is going, and where?"

Just about everybody looked up in surprise, including me. Took me a few seconds to recognize the face, and then Max was asking, "What... what are you doing h--"

"Oh, Max, I forgot to mention," I told him. "Laurie might be coming down to join us for part of the weekend. I didn't really think that anybody would mind her crashing."

The unimpressed look that Max shot over to me in response to that deadpan comment was pretty funny. "Laurie!!" Maria exclaimed. "How... when did you get into town? How the heck did you find us here so early, I mean right here in this particular campsite??"

"Well... well..." Laurie seemed a bit overwhelmed by the reaction to her arrival, and I put my omelet down and hurried over to take her hand reassuringly. After a moment, I started to lead her towards the campfire, and she followed. "Umm... first of all, it's not THAT early, it's almost nine thirty. Secondly, umm... Michael told me that you guys would be in Frazier woods, so as soon as I got the rental car I found that on the map and drove over. I was just driving on that road through the forest, trying to figure out who to ask how I could find you guys, when I recognized your car Maria. It kinduv sticks out in my memory."

"I... I'm not too surprised at that," Maria whispered, and I could tell that she was thinking of the cross country trip the three of us took in the Jetta, from Roswell to Tucson. "Well, we've still got plenty of breakfast, if you're hungry, and... as far as rafting, we were just talking about heading down the river and seeing where we'd end up. Michael, me... anyone else interesting in coming?"

"Umm, yeah, sure, sounds like fun," Kyle said. "We'll... we should make sure to be careful for swimmers or something... the river isn't terribly wide, and there might be a lot of little kids playing in the water."

"Yeah," I replied. "But I think we can handle it. Wouldn't want to cause any trouble for the families."

Kyle was shooting a look at Ava, but all of a sudden Tess piped up 'me too', and suddenly there was one of those frozen, silent moments. I still think Tess and Ava didn't get along terribly well, and Maria mentioned that they seemed to have developed an oddly angsty triangle with Kyle... Kyle liked Ava and had a crush on her, Ava liked Kyle too, Tess liked Kyle, wasn't sure if she liked him as a brother/friend or something more, and was a little jealous and pissed off that Kyle saw her as a sister but fell in lust with her identical clone.

For a moment, I think Ava was considering chiming in too, but then she made a little shrug at Kyle and said nothing more. Isabel nodded over at Tess, encouraging her to do something, though I wasn't really sure what.

"Well, I'd love to come too," Laurie said. "if there's room. Can we come up with or make a boat that'll hold five?"

"I... I think so," I said... certainly didn't want to leave Laurie behind if she wanted to spend the day with me. "Not really sure how to... we'll need some wood..."

"Actually, I think my dad has a big inflatable rubber raft in the basement, so maybe I should go into town and get it," Kyle suggested. "Might work better in the shallow water than one made of wood anyway."

"That... that sounds like a really good idea, I admit," Maria said. "Do you really think it'll be big enough for all five of us?"

"The one I'm thinking about, yeah," Kyle assured her. "One on the very bow, then two on each side. I remember when I was nine, Dad and I went on a trip with Tommy Brunkhorst and his parents..." he broke off and sighed. "Well, yeah, it'll be fine." He turned to Tess with a smile. "Want to come with me into town?"

Tess smiled too. "Sure I guess."

"Ohh!" Liz exclaimed. "I know that you guys want to get rafting soon, but if you're going into town anyway, can you pick up just a few quick supplies if you see anywhere open?"

Tess chuckled softly. "Yeah, ac- actually, that doesn't sound like a problem. Got a grocery list for us??"

Liz ran back into the tent for a scrap of paper and a pen, and quickly scribbled out eight items onto the list.

"Oh!" Max exclaimed, a light bulb practically going off over his head. "Kyle... not to put you on the spot, but do you think your dad might have a spare tent in the basement too? I'm... well, just thinking about Laurie - of course, we're glad to have you here, but you're going to have to sleep somewhere, and we're kinduv already at capacity."

"And the weather people said it might rain a little tonight," Isabel put in, "so I don't think anybody wants to try sleeping out under the stars."

"Umm... well sorry, but no," Kyle replied. "That tent was our good one," he pointed at the one that he was sharing with Max, "and the only other one in the house is hardly better than nothing. Big holes in the sides."

"We could probably fix it up," Tess put in, "but you may be right that even that isn't worth the effort."

"I... I can pay for an extra tent," Laurie stuttered. "Only seems fair, but... but I'm not sure how long that'll take, and I really did like the idea of..."

"Well, we can mount an expedition in the afternoon, while you guys are out rafting," Ava suggested. "That's no problem I think."

"It doesnt' seem right, you sleeping in a tent all by yourself, Laurie," Tess said teasingly, grabbing the grocery list out of Liz's fingers, as Kyle tried to hurry her along. "Maybe I can move out of the big top and bunk with you -- that way, Liz and Ava can stay up all night gossiping if they like and I can get some sleep."

"Um, sure, if you'd like that, I definitely wouldn't mind," Laurie replied. By the time she'd finished, we could hardly even see Tess anymore through the trees.

We finished breakfast, and did a little more stocking of firewood while waiting for Kyle and Tess to make it back. "Um, Michael," Maria whispered to me at one point when the two of us were alone on a very narrow path through the trees. "I... I'm as happy to see Laurie as you are, probably, but didn't we agree that she probably shouldn't come to Roswell? That it would be too dangerous for her?"

I blinked in surprise a little. "We did talk about that... but I thought that was just as far as coming to Roswell for good -- to live here full time, I mean. Don't think it carries quite as much weight as an argument that she should never come to visit... especially since we're about as free and clear from the prospect of alien danger, this weekend, as we can ever hope to be. Not that I'm saying that's a very firm guarantee, of course... but if something happens, I'll protect her, you know I will. And I refuse to live as if she's not part of my life, just because that might keep her in a slightly safer bubble or something."

Maria grinned. "Actually... I agree with all of that."

I blinked a little. "Then, umm..."

"Well, it's just... as far as I could tell, except for that one time you invited some of your friends up to Tucson, you *had* been living as if she wasn't part of your life. And the safety thing was the biggest reason I could figure out as to why."

Thought about that. "Well, maybe. Also, a lot of things have been crazy in my life... *our* lives lately, and I kinda wanted to give her a chance to get her own life in order in Arizona without crowding her."

"It's not crowding for her just to know that you're thinking about her, that you want to see her," Maria mentioned. "But I'm not going to nag you anymore about it, especially since you did at least one thing right without me knowing about it until now."

"Cool." I kissed her on the corner of her mouth.

"Just one question, though... does Laurie know - know about us, I mean? That... that we're going to have a baby together, that you asked me to marry you?"

"Umm... no, actually," I sighed. "Was hoping that I'd find the right words to explain sometime soon."

----------

Well, Kyle and Tess showed up pretty soon with a little bundle of deflated rubber, an air pump, and two bags full of vegetables and other groceries. Noboy else seemed to have any particularly interesting plans for the day aside from the five of us who had signed on for the rafting trip.

"Oh, I remembered something else," Kyle said. "They're back in the car... four life jackets - and we are NOT leaving unless we can find a fifth. Boat safety is no joke."

"Come on, Kyle," Maria argued. "The river is like three feet deep, tops... who could get in trouble there?"

"No, it's still a good idea," I pointed out. "First off, if someone got thrown off the raft it might not be easy to stand up quickly before swallowing water - the life jacket would pay off there. Secondly, it's more than three feet at the deepest part even right here near our camp. And thirdly, it would probably get deeper going further downstream."

"Okay, okay," Maria sighed. "I give. But where are we going to find another one??"

"Anybody have one in their car?" Laurie asked. Nobody did.

"Maybe we could try some other camps, other groups," Tess suggested. "See if anybody has one that we could borrow."

"Yeah, worth a shot," Kyle agreed. They went off together, and came back with a different kind of life jacket, bulkier and neon-orange, but usable. "So who gets that one?" Maria asked.

"I'll take it, if nobody else wants to," I said. "Nothing looks good on me anyway, so it's a small loss." Pause for thought. "Umm... and I guess we should change into swimsuits, so nobody gets their street clothes wet, or something like that?" The raft was already starting to take shape now, with a bunch of us taking turns working the pump.

"Wouldn't suck as a plan," Kyle agreed.

"Did you pack a swimsuit, Laurie?" Maria asked, and my sister nodded. "Oh, and you can use our tent to get changed if you want, I think..."

"Or ours," Isabel pointed out. "Nobody else will need to use it."

"Thanks," Laurie looked up at her and smiled.

Soon everybody was changed and wearing the vests, and the people who weren't coming saw us off at the beach, and we steered our way past a few swimming kids from the other side of the beach, and headed off into unexplored territory. There had been three paddles that came with the raft, and Kyle had found a big branch of wood that he could use as a rafting pole.

"So... what's been going on here in Roswell lately?" Laurie asked. "And, um... what's the deal with Ava? I didn't want to ask in front of her, because it seemed rude, but I didn't think I'd heard anything about her."

"It's... it's a bit of a long story," Tess said. "I take it that you noticed she looks a lot like me?" Laurie nodded. "Well... um, there were another bunch of alien hybrids..." She broke off suddenly, looking at me, and I realized a problem suddenly. Rath had been Laurie's brother, or surrogate grandfather or whatever, every bit as much as I had been... he had been made from DNA harvested from grandpa Dupree, as well as from General Rath on Antar... and Ava had killed Rath. How would Laurie react to finding out about that, that she had had another relative, that he'd been killed while trying to hurt Maria and me, and on and on and on..."

"Why... why don't we start with a bit of happier news, and some small talk, and then deal with the part about Ava and the rest of them later?" I asked softly, and Laurie turned back, (she was further forward in the boat than I was,) and nodded agreeably. "Umm... well, probably the happiest of all, as far as I'm concerned... I, I asked Maria to marry me. We're going to have a baby."

"Ohmygawd, congratulations!!"

"Thanks," Maria said. "Now, I guess that we're probably going to call the kid your neice or nephew, though really you'll be the neice and he or she will be your uncle or aunt."

Laurie laughed, and Kyle grumped "Don't confuse the issue anymore. Aunt Laurie sounds just fine to me."

"And when Maria's mom and your dad get married," Tess teased Kyle, "then that'll make you Uncle Kyle." There was a slightly horrified look on Kyle's face for a second.

"Wait a second," Laurie said, still trying to keep track. "Your mom, Maria... and his dad?"

"Yeah, actually... they started dating, ooh, a long time before you came to Roswell," I said. "Did... do you remember Kyle's dad, Laurie? He was the sheriff, and you came to him for help when you broke out of the hospital in Roswell, because you knew that the bad aliens were coming after you."

"Yeah... yes, I remember," she agreed. "And I remember hearing that he lost his job as the sheriff -- because of what he did to help save me."

"Yeah," Maria agreed. "Well, he's doing good now, gettig his life back together. And actually, I think it was losing his job that got him and my mom really serious. Him being so busy and never letting her in was always getting in the way, before, when they tried to move it to the next level, but she tried to cheer him up when he got depressed about losing a bit of his self-identity, and things kinduv proceeded from there. They're really happy together, Laurie."

"Well, I'm glad of that, I guess."

"On the other hand," Maria continued, "once they move in together, I'm probably going to have to be sharing a room with HER," and she pointed up at Tess, "so I'm still not so happy about the whole deal." Broke out into giggles. "But I certainly don't blame you for that."

"Hey, it's not like it'll be a picnic for me either," Tess continued.

"And, um, let's see what else has been going on," I continued. "Did I tell you that Alex and Isabel have been down in Las Cruces for most of the summer? They're only back here in Roswell for a few days, which is kinduv why we're doing the whole camping thing... a chance to spend as much time as possible together, without getting distracted by jobs or families or television or what have you." I sighed a bit. "Though a little television wouldn't suck..."

----------

(Isabel):

"Okay, so what do we do now?" I asked out loud once five of our number had paddled out of sight.

"We could play a party game or something to pass the time," Ava suggested. "Hate to even say the words, but truth or dare?"

"Eh, don't feel like that right now," Liz said. "And actually, we're all already in a party game... the haggling thing, or have people forgotten?"

"Oh, no... or at least, I haven't," Max said. "Though, actually, I did forget last night... when Mrs DeLuca was at the campfire, I should have asked her to judge a skills contest or something, give away a few special prize cards."

"Well, Laurie isn't playing the haggle I guess," Alex put in, "since she missed the first day and a half. She can take the part of a judge." Max nodded.

"The game seems to be a little stalled," Ava pointed out. "Nobody really trusts anybody enough to make any interesting trades."

"Well, we've got some time here, just the five of us," I said. "And, well... we've probably got an opportunity to get ahead of the others. Maybe that'll be an inducement."

"They can still make deals among themselves," Liz said. "On the raft."

"But I don't think any of them took their cards or slips," Alex countered. "Nowhere to put them in a bathing suit, and too much danger of losing them. So yes, they can make deals in principle, and honor them when they get back, but not actually learn new things and adjust their strategy accordingly."

"They could whisper rules to each other, or announce them out loud, subject to verification by the slip later, I guess," Max thought, turning back towards the campfire. "Assuming that they remember well enough. And aside from the rule slips, there's nothing in other trades that would adjust strategy decisions really."

"But they still probably won't be able to make too many trades and remember everything that's been agreed to," I finished. "Also, there's always the possibility of somebody trying to go back on a deal, which would tend to inhibit further trades. I wouldn't make quite the same game decisions based on Michael agreeing to give me the ace of hearts, as if I actually had it in my hand."

"Good point I guess," Alex replied. "Okay... anybody got a black king or an ace up for sale?" I tried to hide my smile... we were still pushing hard for the straight flush in spades, now having the ten-jack-queen, thanks to Tess, who had traded the ten to me. If we could put that together, I was convinced it would put us a long way towards winning the game - well, one of us, anyway.

"Hmmm...." Max grinned. "Okay, yeah, as it happens, I have both black aces. How much are they worth to you?"

"Hmm... I'm not sure I can afford both," Alex muttered. "Let's see... for the spade - can I interest you in any hearts?? Jack, nine, or four??"

Max's eyes narrowed. "Why the spade? I'll give you the club ace for the four of hearts..."

"Okay," Alex sighed. "I'll take that trade if you want, but I'll admit - it's the spade I really need."

"Hrmmm..." Max's grin became predatory at this point. "Okay, then... jack of hearts, the four, and a look at a rule slip that says something about spades."

My breath caught silently in my throat. If Alex agreed to that... then Max would know why we were pushing so hard on the spades, how many points we stood to gain from it, and so on. But it still seemed like a decent deal - as long as we could still manage to acquire the king. "Why the four? You don't want the nine instead?" Alex asked evenly."

"I have my reasons for wanting a four," Max put in. Hmm... interesting. Did Max have rule slip saying something specific about fours? Or maybe he just knew about collecting groups of a particular rank, and already had some fours.

"Deal, then." The boys collected their packets and headed off to seal the deal.

I think I caught a glance between Liz and Ava the next moment, but I wasn't sure if I did or what it meant. Were the two of them in a secret alliance or something? "Have any browns, Isabel??"

I tried to remember the contents of my package. "Yes, actually." The browns were possibly very valuable, and there was the three-of-a-kind rule that allowed them to double in value. "What do you have to trade me for them?"

"Umm... the six-seven-eight of diamonds?" she offered. With a small smile on my face, I considered that and several other offers, but didn't accept anything. Liz just sat back, watching, and soon Max and Alex were back.

"By the way," Max announced, "if anybody here happens to have the king of spades, you might have a bidding war on your hands, because I think I'm willing to pay just to keep it out of Alex's hands." Liz's eyebrows went up at that.

Apparently nobody here had it. (If Tess did, she was purposefully holding out on me... which left Michael, Maria, and Kyle... or maybe it was a card that wasn't in any of the original packets, but was meant to be awarded as one of the special prizes mid-game that Max had spoken about.) I wondered if Max and Alex would get into an argument about who would go down and pick up the rafters at the end of today... well, actually, probably two drivers would need to go, since none of our cars could really fit six people and all the rafting gear. The race for that king of spades could decide the entire game now, just maybe.

Max and Liz started to bargain over black index cards, red threes, and middle-rank clubs, when suddenly there was a THWUMPing sound, a bit of a quivering hum in the air through our clearing, and a second later, the clumsy pace of someone trying to hurry away through the trees. We hesitated for only an instant, and then Max suddenly took off in pursuit. I followed, and noticed Ava hesitating before deciding to stay behind for whatever reason.

Max has never been on the track team at school or anything organized like that but man, that boy can sprint like the dickens when he feels a need to. I was also covering quite a lot of ground... all the jogging that I've been doing since last fall might have started partially as a way to avoid things that I didn't want to be spending a lot of time thinking about... but it was also a decision I made because enemy alien attacks seem to avoid a lot of strenuous physical activity, and I was tired of expending my reserves of energy in the first few minutes. It seemed to be paying off in terms of running for its own sake - despite the trees and the undergrowth, Max caught up with the intruder in under a minute, and I was about ten seconds behind him. It turned out to be a slightly short teenager - shorter than me, at any rate, with short dark blond hair, bright green eyes... and an archery bow under his arm, which had probably slowed him down. "What's the deal??" Max asked him. "Did... did you shoot an arrow at us?"

"Not... not at any of you personally, I mean, I wasn't trying to hurt anybody - and I didn't, right??" he insisted. "Just, umm, I thought it would be a cool way to send a message - go back to your camp if you wanna find out what it is - your friends have probably found the note. I tied it around my arrow and shot the arrow into a tree. I... I guess I really didn't expect that you guys would chase me like that, man!!"

Max shot me an odd look, trying to read my expression. I wasn't sure what to make of things. This guy didn't seem like an alien threat or a government operative, obviously, and I was starting to doubt that it was even a mean-spirited high school prank. But there was something that didn't quite add up here, and I didn't want to let him go yet. Something about his face seemed familiar, so I asked. "What's your name?"

"Umm... Norman," he blurted out. "Norman Sidford."

That partially confirmed my suspicion. "Are you an old friend of Alex's??"

"Err... well, I'm not quite sure I'd say friend," Norman decided. "I hang out with him sometimes, going back a few years, we get along pretty well, but not that close, you know?"

"Alright." I took a deep breath. "Let him go, Max, and we'll head back and find out what his message was." I was starting to get an idea what the whole thing might be about, and was sure now that there was no real danger.

"You s..." Max didn't even finish the question, but backed away, allowing Norman enough personal space to start forging a rough path further on through the brush, and the two of us cut through the forest at right angles, heading for a nearby good path rather than trying to retrace our steps back. Sure enough, by the time we got there, the other three had pulled an arrow out of wherever it had struck and found a little note tied around it. "What does it say?" Max asked Alex.

"It's a challenge," Alex explained with a slightly fierce smile. "For tomorrow... a team we put together of up to eleven people, versus some of the rest of the computer gaming club. Capture the flag, tomorrow morning." He looked around. "What do we think??"

"Well, we have to defend our honor," I said, grinning too. "Am I right??"

"I'm up for it," Max said. "Sounds like fun - and that's the whole point of this weekend."

"Well, umm... can't say that I've ever played capture the flag," Ava asked. "Isn't it one of those sleepaway summer camp things... running around playing army in the woods, that kind of thing?"

"Pretty much," Liz agreed. "I remember playing it with Maria up at Camp Pakkehootai."

"Yeah, but these guys play it just a little differently," Alex mentioned. "There's almost no running around - at least, not for us."

"Heh?" Liz asked, and I smiled slightly, remembering what he meant. "How do you play without running around?"

"It's all on horseback, right?" I asked, and Alex nodded.

"Horses??" Ava asked, a shocked look on her face.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part 33

(Tess):

"Hey there!" I turned around to see who had spoken, and it was a tall dark-haired guy, maybe in his very late twenties, on the edge of a much larger camping group. We'd stopped off after a little more than two hours down the river, to rest our arms and stretch our legs a little.

"Err, umm, hello." I looked at him, wondering what the deal was.

"Saw you and your friends coming in on the inflatable boat," he continued conversationally. "It looked like fun, eh?"

"Doesn't suck," I answered.

"Are you hungry?" he asked. "There's plenty of lunch here, and I don't think anybody's going to miss a little."

I narrowed my eyes at that. "Umm... yeah, the idea of hot food sounds good actually. But, um, who are you anyway?"

"Me, personally?" He shrugged. "Well, my name's Andrew King, and I'm a junior Account rep with Plainsrancher food products. Who are you?"

I couldn't help giggling. "My name's Tess, I just finished my junior year at West Roswell High."

"Cool. I was *not* trying to hit on you, for the record... just you seemed slightly interesting to talk to and I was trying to be nice."

"Okay, okay." I had definitely been wondering about the guy's intentions, but he seemed harmless enough. "So, is this some kind of company picnic deal?"

"Kind of - overnight retreat."

"Cool. We're camping with some friends of ours who stayed upstream."

"Alright." He waved towards the cooking fires - much more elaborate affairs than our campfire back in the deeper woods, which made sense considering how many people they had here for this 'retreat' thing, (and the fact that there was probably more money per person available.) "There's leftover rotisserie chicken and baked potatoes - you want some?"

"Well... I'd feel funny eating if my friends didn't get to come along."

"That was kinduv what I was meaning to suggest, actually." So I called over to Michael, and all five of us came over and had some lunch courtesy of Plainsrancher, and chatted with Andrew and two other twentysomething employees. Didn't talk about anything important... this girl Paula told a very funny story about some friends of hers from Santa Fe who were always about six days late when they said they were going to come down to Roswell for a visit.

After eating, we decided to wait a while before setting off again - we'd already pretty much left the woods proper, and didn't want to go too far before calling Alex for a pickup. I finally got a good opening to head out for a walk alone with Kyle then.

"Is... is there something on your mind?" he asked once we'd left the others behind. I guess it wasn't too hard to tell that I'd had an ulterior motive in arranging to have a little privacy with him.

"It's... it's about Ava, and us," I blurted out. "Something... jeez, I don't want to get into the middle of a relationship that I can't stop from progressing, yet again, but I felt like I had to say something."

"Ava??" Kyle repeated blankly.

"Yeah. You like her, don't you?? And I'm pretty sure that she likes you too."

"Uhh, alright," Kyle muttered. "And you're... do you not think that she's good enough for me, or are you jealous in more of a personal way?" As the two of us walked side by side, he reached out to pick a small narrow leaf from a desert shrub of some sort. It looked like the leaves were very thick and maybe a little sharp on the edges... they were strong. They'd had to become strong and tough to survive... a little like me, come to think of it.

"Def... definitely personal," I replied. "Umm... at least, well, I think so. It's not really easy for me to sort out what's what here, but... I see you and Ava flirting and I... I wish that she was me. Heck, I can REMEMBER when it was me!!"

"Alright." Kyle nodded. "So you miss the flirting. I admit that I did too, right after the prom." He sighed. "Would... would you want to take it beyond flirting??"

"Umm... I think I would." I groaned softly. "It's... it's a little bit hard to tell, while you're still out of bounds for me. But..." I trailed off at that point, not sure what else to say.

Kyle stopped walking and looked me right in the eyes... which was a little awkward, because he's taller than me, but workable. "You... you didn't seem that upset when I, umm, when I... well, when I dumped you at prom."

"This... this is true," I admitted, blushing a bit. "Which... which probably has a lot to do with the fact that I was more excited at that point by my dreams about Max, than the sweet, gorgeous straightforward guy... who lived just down the hall. I know... I'm a complete idiot, and I probably don't deserve a great guy like you anyway."

"Well, that is simply not true, of course," Kyle said, doing the 'lifting my chin gently up with a single finger' thing, and I had to fight hard to try to keep tears from brimming in my eyes. "You might have been confused, still stuck in whatever you were feeling for Evans, going back long before I knew you, but that doesn't make you an idiot or change what you deserve. You're a great chick, and you deserve a guy who'll make all your dreams come true." He sighed. "But... as much as it kills me to say this, I still don't think I'm 'that guy.'"

"Right... I, um, I guess I was pretty much expecting that." Sigh. "I mean, if you worked out that I felt like a sister to you, that's not terribly likely to change, 'beverly hills 90210' notwithstanding. You don't feel about me 'that way', and can't force yourself too." Then suddenly, I nearly yelled at him, "But come on, I mean, why am I the sister and Ava is... is not? Just because she didn't live with you for, well, for going nearly on a year now?"

"Not for a few months yet," Kyle reminded me. "As far as Ava... um, well, I don't really know. It's nothing... I, I don't even know what I feel for her yet. I haven't known her long, and... come on, we were flirting a lot when you first moved in. Need I remind you of the Calvin Klein remark?" I blushed fiercely. "Maybe... maybe the sister thing will pop up with Ava as well once I get to know her a little bit better, especially being that she's a lot closer to being your biological sibling than I am. Or maybe not. Right now... I like her, I find her a bit intriguing... and obviously, you're both very attractive in physical terms." He waited for a moment, thinking. "Would... would it be easier on you if I tried to cut out the flirting, until I knew it was more than just a casual thing?"

I thought about that. "Do you... do you think it might become more? Is there a chance that she might be 'that girl' for you, the one who would make YOUR dreams come true?"

"Umm... I have to admit I'm not quite sure," Kyle admitted. "It's possible."

"Well... yeah, as long as it's not important to you, I think I'd appreciate if you could keep things on ice a bit," I admitted. "Obviously, you're going to be hanging out with her, getting to know each other pretty well, anyway." He raised an eyebrow, and I tried to meet his expression with my best 'sister knows all' look, which was tough because I'm still getting used to the notion of being anybody's sister. "And I think you're smooth enough to get to know her as friends without getting stuck in 'the friend zone' and having that be a problem if and when you decide you need to make a move?"

"Alright," he said, nodding. "And I feel a sudden need to revisit an earlier declaration of mine and add that you are also an incredibly cool chick... and a great sister."

"I'm learning that last part as I go along," I admitted, "but so far it doesn't suck. Especially having a brother like you." Slightly awkward pause. "Okay, let's go find the others. I've got a strong impulse to go and hit the river again."

"Sounds great," Kyle agreed.

Michael, Maria, and Laurie were waiting near the raft when we got back, already suited up into their life jackets. (We'd left them in the car and been wandering around just in swimming suits, which might have something to do with how I'd caught Andrew King's attention.) "Whatcha think," Maria said, "maybe another hour and then we head back?"

"Let's see," Michael suggested, "what the river and the terrain are like over the next little bit before we decide, huh?" Laurie and Kyle nodded, and they started to push the raft out into the water.

----------

(Max:)

"Okay, try that." Liz moved a rook forward three spaces. We were playing on a little travel-chess set that Alex had brought with him, with the pieces (and pawns) all being round discs, maybe the same size as dimes and several times as thick -- the folding board laid out between us on the flattest of the logs around the campfire. I'd been playing hard, and I usually thought of myself as being good at chess, but Liz had definitely got be on the ropes and was managing to keep me there. I made a halfhearted attempt to threaten her queen with a black-square bishop, and she responded by attacking with a knight, pincer-ing my king and a strategically important rook. The only way I could get out of check was by forfeiting the castle, and Liz snickered a bit as she captured it. I set about grimly attempting to capture the knight as payback.

"Where are Isabel and Ava?" Liz asked as she pondered her next move.

"Umm... I think I saw them going into Alex and Isabel's tent," I muttered. "Not sure what that's about..." All of a sudden a loud beeping ran out from across the clearing... coming from near where Alex was stretched out on the grass, lying in the shade of some trees. "Is that..."

"Yeah, the homing signal," Alex said with a smile. "I guess Michael is calling the mothership for a pickup, and the mothership is us." He got up and walked over towards the campfire... or the campfire spot, at any rate, since we didn't exactly have a fire burning in the pit at the moment. "Just thought of this - which car do we take? We've got the Jetta, Tess' SUV, Laurie's rental... of of whose proper drivers are out on the rafts, and..."

"I'll go," I said.

"You just want to get out of me whupping your butt at chess," Liz teased. "Well, that's not gonna happen," and she reached out to draw the board posessively close to her, "because if you drive off, I'm going to take the board and keep it safe in my tent until the proper time has come for you to accept defeat."

"Actually, finishing it up later sounds great," I said with as much bravado as I could manage... I really didn't want to get out of it, though I've never been that good at losing. "So, erm... how many people go and who stays? I guess we should probably grab Tess' keys and someone else can drive her car in convoy."

"Yeah," Liz agreed. "Umm... let's see, Alex needs to go, because he's the one who can navigate and read the tracker... and Isabel's probably your best bet for drivy-ness. And... as much as I'd like to tag along, I think that Ava and I should probably both stay here to keep an eye on camp, just in case."

"I guess I can't argue with that," I said, a bit regretfully. "You wanna pop your head in and let Isabel know?" Liz smiled and got up from the log. "Alex... can I assume you'll want to go with Isabel, and I'll follow along behind?"

"Umm." He thought about that. "Actually, if Izzy's okay with it, I'll go lead the way with you. A few things I've been wanting to mention, and this seems like a good opportunity." I blinked a bit in surprise, but muttered,. "Um, well, okay."

Isabel had a cat-post-canary smile on her face as she got out of the tent, and I wondered what indeed had been going on inside there. Some more wheeling and dealing on the haggle game? A juicy New York secret shared? I shrugged and took the chess game over to Liz's tent while Alex asked Isabel if she would feel alright about following in the SUV alone, and though my sister seemed about as surprised on the arrangement as I had been, she wasted little time on agreeing. We said our goodbyes, (I hugged Liz pretty tightly, for no other reason than I liked holding her that close,) and headed out to the cars. It took a little while to sort out whether driving the apparently best way down that little forest track would lead us into a dead end or not.

"So... why here with me, man?" I asked Alex once we turned out onto a slightly better road through the woods. "I mean... I certainly don't mind the company, but it's obvious you could have had more fun with Isabel... not that any of us need to go into detail about that sort of thing... " especially not since the girl in question is my sister! "Umm, err, that is --"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Alex said. "Isabel... well, I think she knows about some of it, but the rest of... umm, that's not exactly the point I guess." He mumbled, and looked down at the tracking device. "Do you think it's worth trying that side road??"

"Umm... no, better stay on here I think," I told him. "If it comes out of the woods where I think it does, then it'll be curving that way anyway." Alex nodded.

"Okay, here's the thing," Alex said. "Things are going alright vis-a-vis the translation. Probably not going to get the information anytime especially soon, but maybe not that long either... around this time in August, if you want my guess." I whistled slightly and nodded. "There's no real basis for knowing exactly WHAT is inside that book, but Isabel and Tess both seem to have the notion that there'll be some way for... for you guys to get back home."

I paused. "Yeah... yeah, I've wondered about that myself."

"Isabel..." Alex sighed. "Maybe she should be talking to you herself about this at some point, but I get the feeling that..." He sighed. "I think Izzy is deeply torn. I think she has a lot of personal reasons for not wanting to go, but also feels like she has obligations to come along under certain circumstances... obligations to her family back home, if she still has any -- and to you."

My hands were starting to shake a little, and I considered pulling off to the side. I probably would have if it weren't for the little fact that Isabel was following us and would ask what had gone wrong. Once I'd had a second to steady myself, it seemed unlikely that I'd actually lose control of the car. "So... so what do want me to do about that?"

"I... I'm not sure," Alex admitted. "Maybe try and find some way to ask her about this stuff before we head back to Las Cruces? I... I realize everything's theoretical until I actually finish with the Book, but maybe she'd feel better just from having talked to you about it." Pause. "Though I suppose that might depend on what you have to say."

"Oh great, way to put me on the spot," I grumbled good-naturedly. "When... when Nicholas was talking about taking us home, at the Summit, I called Isabel up to see what she thought of the idea of going back. I... I couldn't make my mind up about the bigger issues, so I decided, a bit unfairly, to let her be my guidepost... If she wanted to go, then I would do whatever it took to make sure that all four of us went together. If she wanted to stay, I'd stay too. You didn't know that, did you??"

"Umm, no," Alex admitted. "What did she say?"

"Well, she couldn't decide either." I laughed softly. "And the two of us got into a bit of a weird argument over the phone and I hung up, but that was actually a good thing, because I said enough beforehand to let Isabel realize that Rath and Lonnie had tricked me into going to New York, and that indirectly led to Isabel, Liz, and Ava saving my life." I sighed. "But that's straying from the point."

"And what's the point??"

I stayed quiet for a moment. "Back then... I couldn't imagine being so incredibly far away from my sister. I'm not wild about the idea even now... but I think I can bear it if there's a need. Isabel has her reasons for wanting to stay... and I might have my reasons for needing to go. If that's the way it goes, then that's that. I'd miss her, but I certainly would never want to guilt-trip her into going for my sake. Maybe I'd be a little inclined to let it go the other way... that if she stays, that would be a reason for me to stay as well... but I hope that she wouldn't let that influence her decision in the direction of leaving our parents and our home behind."

Alex smiled. "And you'll tell her so?"

"If I can find a decent way of bringing it up in conversation, yeah." I chuckled. "This... this might be a bad idea to even mention, but did Isabel ever talk to you about Vilandra??"

Alex blinked. "Umm... just that Lonnie said that was their name back home, why??"

"I... I'm not going to tell you the whole deal," I said. "That's up to Izzy. But she knows a lot more than that about who she used to be back then... or she knows stories, at any rate. The thing is, Vilandra probably has a lot to do with why Isabel doesn't want to go home, and I think it might be good for her if she opens up to you about that stuff."

"Alright," Alex mumbled, and I realized that I'd managed to mire the conversation hip-deep in awkwardness. "Wait a second - didn't the terrible trio say that the Book had instructions for using the Granilith??"

"Yeah, actually, I think Lonnie said that. And that they'd need the crystal key... which we've located, by the way." I didn't say any more about that part right now... Kyle had passed along the message quietly in our tent, just before I drifted off to sleep - Ava's shapeshifter had left the key with Zan for safekeeping, and he'd told her where he hid it before Rath and Lonnie killed him.

"Oh, cool," Alex muttered. "Did they say anything about what they were going to do with the Granilith? I know that Lonnie was obsessed with going back home, so maybe that was what they were after??"

"Hmmm..." I tried to cast my mind back on that fateful night as well as I could manage to. "Rath... when he was dying, and trying to persuade Lonnie to swear truce with us and stay away from Roswell, he said 'I know it's not as good as going home...' or something like that. So that much fits. I don't think they said anything else about what their plans were."

"Okay." Alex shrugged. "Ohh, I think that we're getting a little closer."

"Keep going on this way?" I asked.

"Yeah, I think so, for a little while." We had started to come out of the woods, and sure enough, the river was visible ahead, cutting through the desert dunes. The road took a twist to avoid plowing straight into the water.

"So," Alex continued, "and thoughts about the horseback thing??"

"Umm... I'm not sure, really." I gave the matter a moment's more thought. "I'm fine with it myself... I had some riding lessons when I was younger, and even though it's been a while, and I didn't take to horses like Izzy did, I feel like I haven't forgotten too much. But I'm not sure how everybody else will feel... Ava isn't wild about the notion, that's clear, and I suspect Michael, Tess, and Kyle might join her."

"I think Kyle might be okay," Alex put in. "He had a huge wannabe cowboy phase in his past... I remember that because he seemed to have the idea that the coolest cowboys were bullies... but from the way he was bragging, I think he did actually have some horse skills. This was before I learned much riding myself." I made a hmm-ing sound, considering that. "As far as Michael, Tess, and Ava... do you think you could teach them how to connect to a horse's mind, in a very simple way? I think it wouldn't be hard to figure the rest out after that."

"Hey now!" I exclaimed, excited "Yeah, that's worth a try. I think Izzy and I might have done that sort of thing automatically, without even knowing what we were doing, the first time we tried to ride."

"I guessed as much," Alex quipped. "And Liz and Maria should do okay I think. None of the guys we're going up against are really practiced riders, and the horses are pretty easy-going and calm, as long as nobody does anything stupid."

"Kay. Oooh, we've got a fork coming up. Bear left or bear right??"

"Umm... right I think... I hope," Alex muttered. "If it looks like we're leaving them behind, we can turn around and go the other way, right?"

"Shouldn't be a problem."

-----------

It was only about five minute's drive more before we found the five rafters, shared the news, and figured out who was riding with whom. Luckily there were plenty of towels in Tess' car, something that none of us had thought of taking along when we were meeting people who'd been participating in a very wet activity and not able to take along any supplies that they would be sure of keeping dry. Alex moved over to the SUV, along with Tess and Kyle, and Michael, Maria, Laurie piled into the Jeep.

"Horseback capture the flag?" Michael repeated. "Are you sure that this is a good idea?"

"I'm not completely sure, but I do think so," I told him. "Think of it as field maneuvers, general. It's not a dangerous situation, but something like this COULD be. We have no way of knowing what kind of crisis we're going to encounter next... admittedly, it's not likely to involve horses, but compared with what we know of the strangeness of Roswell, horses don't seem that outrageous. An opportunity to test ourselves in an unexpected situation, with minimal danger, has dropped into our laps, and I say we should take it."

"Hmm." Michael muttered, and I quickly filled him in on Alex's idea about using connection with a horse as a way to deal with an absence of riding experience.

"That's possible," Maria filled in. "I know a bit about riding, but I don't think I want to get up on a horse right now just as a cautionary measure. If you can use somebody on foot to guard the flag or something, that sounds alright." She sighed and turned to Laurie. "What about you?? Any horsie sympathies?"

Laurie broke out laughing. "I was an arizona country club princess, Maria -- of COURSE I have horsie sympathies!!"

"Huh," I muttered, seeing a possible opening to change the subject back away from capture the flag while the idea was sinking in. "I... I guess none of us really know that much about what your life was like before your aunt and uncle, um..."

"...Locked you up in the looney bin," Maria finished, with a warm smile that I caught in the rear view mirror, and Laurie giggled slightly, obviously not taking offense at the way she had phrased it or getting noticeably scared at the oblique mention of what must have been a traumatic experience."

"Ehh, not that much to tell you I guess," Laurie replied. "Rich girl, B- student, got a spot on the cheerleading squad more as a vote of popularity than recognition of any natural athletic talent. I never really felt like I belonged in the crowd, no matter how many people acted like they liked me... maybe because the only guy who I knew as a role model of independent thinking and individuality... everyone else said was crazy. Guess I figured that if I let anybody see the real me, that's what they'd say again. So I did everything I could to blend in and not get noticed much."

"Wow," I muttered, struck immediately by the parallels. The actual circumstances that Laurie had been hiding from in high school had been different from the ones that me, Michael, and Isabel had been through, and still struggled with, but the fear, the determination to conceal ourselves in plain sight seemed to be a common element.

"And... and then," Laurie blurted out, "bit by bit, little things started to happen that made me think that I really WAS going crazy. Friends -- well, other kids in the popular group, who were the closest I had to friends -- telling me about conversations that I completely didn't remember having, just days or hours ago. Bizarre nightmares that I couldn't shake. Seeing... seeing Grandpa, even talking with him, when I knew very well that he was dead."

"This would have started when, maybe a few months after your seventeenth birthday?" Maria asked, and Laurie nodded, tears brimming in her eyes. Maria reached out to hold the other girls' hand. "That's about when I'd think that Bobby and Meredith realized they needed a plan. When you got to be eighteen, you'd inherit in your own right, and the trust funds that they were using for their own personal piggy banks would revert back to you. Unless... unless they could demonstrate that you weren't mentally competent to handle your own affairs."

"Yeah... yeah, I'd figured that part out too," Laurie agreed. "Something in the food that I ate when I was home, or that kind of thing. There are a bunch of very interesting chemicals that can be used to induce psychopathic symptoms." And she shuddered.

"We don't really need to talk about this anymore," Michael said. "Unless... unless you want to, I mean, if it's helping to get it out in the open."

"Yeah, yeah I think it is, a little," Laurie agreed. "Umm... except that I'm not quite sure what else I want to say."

"That's okay," Maria told her. "So, to return to the subject, you're up for horse riding?"

"Yeah," Laurie agreed. "And... and if you can connect to animal's minds, how about each other's minds, or normal people's?"

"Ummm... yeah, we've done that kind of thing, sometimes," I said cautiously. "Never without the other person's permission... well, not on purpose I think. Why do you ask?"

"Just figured... since we've got a few good riders in the group, how about trying to use a mind-to-mind touch to share that expertise?" Laurie asked. "Skills, even so physical a skill as riding, are mostly a pattern of thoughts in the brain... learned responses. Can you share your skills with someone else directly by connecting to their brain... or by having them connect to you??"

"Wow," Michael muttered, and Maria whistled. "I'm not sure if this is gonna work, but if it does, the possibilities are incredible."

"Yeah, you can say that again," I agreed. Would it be possible for Michael to pick up Alex's expertise with electronics, or Isabel to learn Liz's familiarity with nearly all branches of science?? "Let's give it a try when we get back to camp."

----------

(Maria):

"Home sweet hole in the woods," I joked once the stretch of forest track was familiar. We couldn't see the clearing, or our camp, yet... but Laurie and Max laughed anyway. We parked, and Tess parked next to the Jeep, and we headed in and said hi to Liz and Ava. In point of fact, I said hi to Liz and Ava a bit early, because they weren't where I had expected them to be, hanging out by their tent or next to the campfire pit. At first we were a little worried, especially Max, but it turned out that the girls had decided that they were going to spend the sunny afternoon sunbathing out on the beach. Michael grumped that someone could have snuck into camp and stolen something, but no-one had, and Ava insisted that they'd have heard anyway. In my mind, it was a non-issue.

"Okay, umm... if anybody's going to go into town and buy a new tent, they'd probably better go now," Tess pointed out then.

"Well, I'll come of course, with money," Laurie replied. "Umm... if I can borrow somebody's tent to get dressed in again." All of us who had been rafting were still, obviously, in our bathing suits, with the life jackets backed in Tess and Max's trunks. "And... well, if you're going to be sleeping in my tent, Tess, then I guess you should probably come along, for suggestions and so on. To tell me if you think there's enough room for both of us."

"Well, alright," Tess agreed. "But there should probably be someone else along, who knows a little bit more about camping supplies and such." She let her eyes sweep over the group, appearing to purposefully avoid Kyle.

Hmm... what was that about? Kyle seemed a little surprised that she was apparently spurning him, then caught himself and looked over at Ava. Tess nodded, ever so slightly, and I was suddenly very curious about exactly what they'd talked about before we left the Beef Brothers retreat campsite area, or whatever. Maybe I should have tried using the ring to eavesdrop on them... no, probably better not to even start thinking about it. Michael was nervous about me using the thing even if there was some real need, and I really shouldn't be invoking alien powers just to satisfy my idle curiosity. Probably will find out who said what to who soon anyway.

"I... I guess I could come along," Liz volunteered after a moment. "Know most of the basics, even though I've never been directly involved in buying one." Nobody else spoke up... we weren't really that big of a camping group, which had made planning the trip in the first place interesting, and Kyle was really the only one with a lot of experience. (As you could have told if you'd been a fly on a tree at the Father and child campout last winter... me grumbling about my ice bra, Alex and his father showing up without any tents at all... Max and Isabel out camping for the first time because they weren't 'joiners.')

Anyway, Tess nodded her approval, and the three of them headed out to drive into Roswell. Kyle asked Ava to help him start the fire again and get something on to cook for dinner, and the rest of us kinda just hung out on the beach for a while, chatting about the Capture the flag game, and agreeing on a few more trades and deals for the Haggle game. Isabel and Alex were very keen on getting a particular card, umm -- what was it again?? Oh, right - the king of spades... and NOBODY was admitting to having it.

Isabel was starting to get a little pissed, grumbling about somebody holding out on her, and Max pointed out that the entire deck hadn't been included in the eight packages that we'd been given on Friday night, because it wouldn't have come out even. There were a few playing cards that were yet to be won in special side contests, which Laurie would probably be judging, and the King of Spades might be among them. It certainly looked like Isabel and Alex would be playing to win in those side contests, just in case.

Michael had come around by this point on the subject of the Capture the Flag game, though I could tell that he was still unsure about horse riding. Max shared Laurie's idea about directly transferring riding skill on a mind to mind basis, and Isabel offered to try transferring her own reflexes on the subject to Michael. Michael hemmed a bit, wondering about trying to connect to Laurie and learn from her, but decided that since he wasn't as trained on using his powers mentally as Isabel was, it would probably be a better idea for him to try a passive role, rather than active.

"Okay, then, umm... sit down on that rock," Isabel suggested, "and I'll connect to you."

"What, right now?"

Izzie giggled softly. "Yeah, why not? Do you have a really good reason for waiting?" Of coruse, Michael couldn't really come up with one, and so with a bit of a sulky air he sat down. I went and sat crosslegged in the sand at his feet... (still in my suit, and a bit of the sand slipped in around my butt, but I tried to avoid thinking about that. Hmm... butt-but.)

Anyway, the point was, I just wanted to be near him and reassure him. There was a tiny little part of me that was still nervous about Michael and Isabel's old connection in 'destiny', but I firmly pushed that little voice away... it was the ancient past, in two different respects, and Michael had made his choice... Isabel had too. They weren't going to suddenly fall in love just because of a little horse-riding trick she was trying to do.

Isabel seemed to not be sure how to start whatever she was about to do. She squatted down slightly so that she could reach down to touch Michael's head comfortably... she was wearing a loose and summery blouse today, and simple blue jeans... not really tight like her usual designer ones, but they started to tighten up when she was bending her knees and waist partway like that. So she touched the side of his head, closed her eyes, and looked like she was trying to concentrate. For a long time, maybe a minute and a half, it was hard to tell if something was happening or not.

Then something definitely happened. Isabel staggered and lost her balance... and before I had even realized that she was about to fall, Alex had caught her in his arms. (I hadn't even realized he was close by, though obviously he wasn't going to be far.) Michael seemed to have been struck by something similar, though since he had been sitting, it had been easier for him to keep equilibrium, though his body shook more than a bit all over, and when his eyes opened there was a very dizzy and disoriented look in them. I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could, touching him, and wrapping my arms around him from the side, (which was awkward, but I didn't really care.) "What went wrong?"

"I... I'm not sure that anything did," Michael said, and when he looked up at Isabel, who was hugging and being hugged by Alex now, she nodded slightly. "Neither of us were prepared for what it would be like when it worked... I think that that's all it was."

I wondered about that for a second... what an experience would be like to provoke that kind of reaction... and that was a success?? "You mean, you think you know how to ride?"

"I mean, I think I have Isabel's memories of riding and of learning to ride... some of them, at any rate," Michael muttered. "I guess I thought that we'd be able to transfer the information without context... without anything personal coming too. If that's possible... then we don't have enough control to do it."

So... so Michael had got a bunch of Isabel's memories... I guess I can see how that would be a shock. And had Isabel gotten something back from Michael... or lost something, or was it just surprise at how much of her deeper memories had been copied for him to understand??

Alex seemed to be thinking along some of the same lines. "You... you haven't forgotten anything, baby?" he asked her. "It wasn't a zero-sum transfer?"

"No... no, I don't think so," Isabel muttered. "I remember it all." But she swept an 'I don't want to talk about it any more' expression over Alex and me, and even Max. (She apparently didn't feel the need to send the message to Michael.)

"Umm... okay," Max muttered. "But... well, it seems like we should be cautious before trying this again." I guessed that he would have nothing to do with a repeat until he heard more details... specifically from his sister, maybe from Michael as well. But he wasn't pressing them for immediate information, which I guess was a pretty good compromise.

"Let's see how dinner's coming," Alex suggested, and we were all silent for a bit. I don't think that I'd been the only one who'd caught the silent signals between Kyle and Tess about Ava, and had wanted to make a point of giving Kyle some time alone with Ava, to talk about whatever they had to talk about. But none of us really wanted to stay away from the clearing any longer, so we headed back up the path, making enough noise that they couldn't possibly miss the fact that we were coming back.

It didn't look like we were interrupting much, though. Kyle was stirring a giant cast-iron skillet over the flames, resting it on a kind of metal stand that Max had rigged up earlier. I peered in a little closer, (making sure not to get steam or smoke in my face,) and could see little white chunky things in a furiously bubbling liquid whose color I couldn't tell against the dark iron. "Is that the boneless chicken breast I bought frozen yesterday?"

"Yeah," Kyle agreed. "It wouldn't have kept overnight too well."

"Probably true," I admitted. It looked like Ava was cleaning a chopping board with her powers, which made sense. We had some coolers and sub-zero ice packs to keep cold stuff cold, but still they didn't work as well as real freezers. "Whatcha gonna make with it?"

"I've got something with rice and corn and peas and garlic salt in mind," he said, "but first the chicken has to simmer in the canned broth for at least half an hour." I nodded.

"So, I assume that Isabel and Alex told you about the capture the flag challenge, Kyle?" Max asked, and Kyle half-nodded, his attention more on the food. "What d'you think??"

"I'm up for it," Kyle agreed. "Sounds like a fun way to spend some of our last day out here. And yes... I think I still remember most of my cowboy tricks, though it's been a while."

"Hmm." For a second, I wondered if Max was going to say anything about the mental skills transfer thingee to Kyle or Ava, but apparently he thought better of it. (Or maybe he hadn't considered it at all.) We chatted some more, waiting for Kyle's chicken to cook, and the topic of conversation turned to Max's UFO hunting project with Brody Davis. Apparently they'd be heading out to Utah soon to investigate a lead, which was somehow an idea I wasn't wild about... but I guess the rest of us had to trust Max to be careful, and to keep Brody in line if he could.

The rest of us were just finishing our first helpings of Kyle's skillet surprise when Laurie, Tess, and Liz came back, and the boys made a big deal of working together to bring the tent out of Laurie's car while the three of them fell to dinner. There was second helpings for everyone who wanted them... (if not quite as much as some people wanted for their seconds,) and Isabel produced cookies for dessert, and by this time the sun was low towards its setting.

"I'm... I'm not sure if anybody told you about this game that we're all playing, Laurie," Max said to her as we all sat around the campfire. "With cards and rule slips and, umm..."

"Yeah, yah I got a little of the gist of it," Laurie answered. "A little disappointed that I can't take part... I'd have made a point of letting you know that I'd be coming, and been here on Friday afternoon, if I'd known."

Max looked a little regretful about the misunderstanding, but Laurie just kind of bobbed her head cheerfully as if to say 'that's the way things go.' "Well, anyway... there's a few minor contests that Jim Valenti set up... he's the one who organized the full details of the game, since none of us who are playing can know the whole dirt or it isn't fair. We need an impartial judge to run the contests, and at the moment it looks like that's you. Umm... if you're interested, that is."

"Sure, okay," Laurie agreed. "What... what do I do?"

"I've got the sealed challenge minipacks in my tent," Max explained, and went to fetch them... three little envelopes, all noticeably smaller than the packages we'd got when we first started the game. "'Challenge minipack number one,' Laurie read from one of them, and tore it open.

"Okay, come on, what does it say?" Ava asked.

Laurie reached in, found a paper, and pulled it out. "Liar's contest," she read with surprise. "Each player must tell a completely fictitious story."

There was a moment of silence. "On what basis do we get judged?" I asked.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part thirty-four

(Alex):

"Alright, okay," Liz said, and the fire seemed to sink lower, as if it was responsive to her wish that the mood get even creepier and more appropriate to a scary story. "The two of us crept down into the basement, across the laundry room, and pressed the big black door open a crack. It didn't have any kind of a doorknob on that side, and it was a bit stiff, but we could get it open."

"There was some kind of light inside, not a light shining directly towards the door, but away from the door, so that things inside and on the far wall stood out immediately. The only thing I remember, though, was some kind of a huge fish, maybe three and a half feet high, two feet wide, and nine feet long. Gigantic teeth, like a piranha's... except that the teeth were bigger, to scale with the mouth, so that they were almost as big as butcher knife blades. And the fish was *floating* in mid-air - two or three feet off the ground!!"

"I... I turned and ran away. At first there was another pair of little footsteps right behind me, but then Annabelle screamed and... and I just kept running. Wasn't really aware of where I went, just that I was running until I got over to the other side of the street. And... and I never heard anything about what happened to Annabelle... nobody asked me about her or so much as mentioned her name in front of me... and I never asked anybody. Her parents moved away from Roswell about a month later."

Liz sighed, looked around, and shrugged a little. "And that's... that's the story."

"Not bad," Michael said to her with a broad grin.

"But was it good enough?" Maria asked, and turned to Laurie.

"Umm..." Laurie frowned and tossed something that I couldn't make out onto the fire... all of a sudden there was a little flare deep in the heart of the firepit, and several big fat sparks zoomed out into the air, and the flames started to burn a little higher and more brightly. I wondered what she had put in. "I... I can't decide yet." There was a long silence. "Some... somebody talk about something else while I try to make up my mind," Laurie asked.

"Okay," Kyle put in. "Michael... what's the deal with that horse riding thing that you and Isabel tried to do, anyway? Is it a technique that we can use on other people before tomorrow?"

"Yeah, and why didn't either of you want to talk about what happened right after it happened?" Tess added. "Don't tell me that it worked on the wrong memories, and you have Vilandra memories of riding a Kentath beast or something."

Isabel laughed awkwardly, shared a glance with Michael, and shook her head. "No, no Antarian riding animals."

"I... I just got a slightly deeper and more personal memory transfer than I had planned on," Michael admitted. "Not just riding skills, but memories of when she'd been riding, and emotional overtones she associated with riding." He looked around. "Recent and otherwide. It was just a little much to deal with at one time."

Ohh!! Had Michael got some of the, uh, the feelings Isabel had on our riding date, however many weeks ago it was now, at the beginning of the summer before I left for Las Cruces?? I can certainly see how that might be awkward.

"I think I can probably cut down on that effect for anybody else who wants horsie memories, now that I've learned from the mistake," Isabel put in. "But I'm not sure if I can enable it myself."

"Well... I think I can take a booster," Liz suggested. "Should be alright."

"Yeah, maybe I'll go for that too," Ava agreed.

"If someone wants to give me a dose from Whitman," Kyle put in, "I think that might help. Not sure I want girl memories any more than Michael did, and Alex is probably the only guy with more riding skills than I have."

"Okay, I've made my judgement," Laurie suddenly announced, and everybody turned to face her expectantly. "It.... it was a tough call, but yeah, the best story was Alex's." I let out a spontaneous whooping cheer at the news. Isabel and I had agreed that these contests could spell the difference between victory and defeat, especially if the King of spades really was up for grabs, so we'd both played hard. My forte was funny, so I'd done my best to make Laurie laugh as many times as possible while telling my tale, and Isabel had done a pretty good job of cornering the market on pleasant sweetness, it looked like. I guess my hard work had paid off. (And no, you're *not* gonna get to hear the story, or anybody else's right now... I only started this scene in time to hear a bit of Liz's so that you could get a hint of what the rest of ours were like.)

I walked around the fire to collect the prize envelope from Laurie, and checked its contents as soon as I could without anybody else seeing them too. I had to restrain myself from letting go with an even louder cheer... there it was... the male monarch of the shevelly things... the last card that Isabel and I needed to complete our special royal flush. There was also a five of hearts, a white index card, and a rule slip.

'23. Having four or more yellow will double the value of one flush bonus or straight flush, but only the lowest-value one that is earned.'

Oh, wow. A secret (well, semi-secret) way to double up on our royal flush? And maybe someone else would be using it against us! We didn't really know, yet, how much a straight flush in diamonds to the queen, say, was worth. I tried to think of how mayn yellow cards we had available to us.

"Okay, time for the second contest I guess," Laurie said, derailing my train of thought mildly. She took out another little envelope, opened it up and found the instructions. "'This is not so much a contest as a game. First every player should pull a tiny numbered slip of paper out of a hat or other container, to establish the playing order... 1 plays first, then 2, up to 9.'" There was some delay while Laurie gathered up the numbered slips and Maria sent Michael off to fetch a clean pot to pick out of.

I wasn't sure whether playing first or playing last would have the advantage, but decided to hope that I'd pick a low number. As I took my place around the fire again, I squeezed Isabel's shoulder slightly and smiled when she looked up. I wanted to tell her about the rule slip and trying to collect four yellows, but couldn't think of a way that was sufficiently subtle in the middle of campfire excitement. It could be very bad news if anybody actually saw us working together... or had that ship already sailed? I couldn't remember.

Then the pot was passed around, and I picked number two. Now Laurie continued reading the rules of this game. "'The first player will pick a selection of counters from those available. If anybody else thinks that the selection is too big to be a fair share, they can take it over by removing one counter from it. Whoever touches the subgroup last gets it, and is out of the game. If the person who picked first gets his picks taken away, then his or her number slip is rewritten to put them at the end of the line. If there are any counters left over when only two players are left in the game, then the one with a higher number must divide them into two groups and the lower number gets to pick groups.'"

"It's nine-player cake," I realized, remembering that pattern of rules. "Except that since we're playing for playing cards and color cards and so on, they aren't infinitely divisible. The fair division rules will break down."

"That just makes it more interesting," Max pointed out. "Okay, what's up for grabs, and who's got number one?"

There turned out to be about eight color cards, mostly whites and blacks, five playing cards, and three rolled-up rule slips - we could see what number rule they were, but not the content of the rule. Only the person who got to take them away permanently would be able to unroll them, which made sense. Tess had first pick, and she considered the selection carefully. She took a long time to make up her mind, and then probably did the very smartest thing that she could... she picked a rule slip and nothing else.Nobody would ever want to challenge a group that had only a single thing in it, because that just sent the challenger out of the game with nothing at all. (And sent the chalengee back to the end of the line, which meant that they wouldn't get to pick again for a while, but there might be some good booty still left when their turn came up, especially if a lot of people were leaving the game with only one thing or nothing at all.)

So, of course nobody challenged Tess, and she went off to read her slip. I decided to follow her lead... there was a single yellow up for grabs, and of course I wanted it. If I took a white along with it, that might distract attention from the yellows, but somebody else who wanted the yellow could steal it just by throwing away the white. So I picked just the yellow, and got it.

Okay, let's try to cover the action pretty quickly now, as far as that's possible. Maria was up next, went for the jack-four of diamonds, and I think she was wondering what would happen. (Those were the only two playing cards up for grabs that were in suit.) Kyle put the four back, and took the jack away from her, looking quite pleased with himself for it. Nobody else challenged, of course, so Laurie went over to scratch a '10' on Maria's slip - since she'd been stolen from, she went to the tail of the line.

Liz picked the two blacks, and nobody fought her for them. Michael hesistated a moment, then decided to snag a rule slip. Isabel did the same, probably thinking of the fact that there was now only one left. Then it was Max's turn.

We were all crowding as close as we could now, to watch the action. There were four playing cards left, with a nine the highest ranked of them. Three white playing cards, a blue, and a red. Max finally took the blue and red color cards, looking at Ava and Maria to see if either of them would steal. Both of them looked tempted, but also were aware of how much was still in the pot. Neither of them objected to Max taking his loot.

"Alright, now Maria divides into two, and Ava picks," Laurie pointed out.

"Isn't that backwards?" Isabel asked.

Laurie rechecked the instructions. "Nope. It's a bit of a reversal, because normally it's someone with a lower count who's making a division, but this time it's the higher count."

"No, it's not a reversal, it's the same as ever," Kyle pointed out with a grin. "It's always the person with a lower count who's choosing."

Nobody commented on that, and finally Maria made her split - the nine going with the lowest playing card and one white index, the two mid-ranking cards and two more whites. Ava didn't hesitate long before snapping up the batch with the nine.

"Let's let the final challenge wait for tomorrow," Michael said at this point. "It's getting late."

Everybody pretty much agreed with this sentiment, so after a few final toasted marshmallows and an off-key rendition of 'taps' from the throats of Kyle and Tess, the fire was put out and we all headed off to our tents - Laurie and Tess getting settled in the new one that had been bought. Once Isabel and I were alone, I of course wasted no time in letting her know of our good fortune - the completion of the spade royal flush - and the four yellows rule.

"Oh, wow, that'd be so cool if we can do it," she agreed softly. "We... we had two yellows already, don't we? And you took one more in the potluck game, so..."

"Do we?" I said. "I wasn't sure... yeah, that's right, we each had a yellow in our packs when we started." Sigh of relief. "You... you didn't trade one of them away by any chance? I haven't really been keeping track of all your wheeling and dealing."

"Umm... no, I'm pretty sure that it's safe," she assured me. "We only need to get one more yellow, then."

"And at this point, we don't really need to worry much about unloading other assets - information, other tangibles - whatever. We hope." I breathed deeply. "What about the rule slip you got? What does it say?"

"Oh, you know, I never even checked!" Isabel exclaimed. She brought out the tiny little roll of paper, and we opened it up together. '2. Paired playing cards are worth double their values, plus 5.' "Well, that's not very exciting, but worth keeping in mind I guess," she sighed.

"Yeah... we expected something kinduv like that," I pointed out. "Okay, enough game talk I think... better get ready for bed."

"Yeah." We changed quickly by the light of the electric lantern, set to a dim setting. "Do you think that Michael and Maria will go at it again?"

I chuckled a bit. The two lovers probably thought they had been quiet when they, erm, coupled in the wee wee wee hours of the morning last night... and I suppose in a relative sense, they probably were. But it hadn't been silent enough to keep both of us from waking up, (we were in the tent next to them, the only ones right next to them the way camp had been set up,) or from figuring out what was going on quite quickly.

"Well... we could always just mess around ourselves," Isabel said with a twinkle in her eye, "and see what *they* think of... well, I suppose they might not let us know what they think of it, any more than we told them we knew what they were doing in the middle of the night." She sighed. "Still... the notion appeals to my wild side. Whatd'ya say??"

I blinked. "Don't really think I have as much of a wild side as you do, my dear, and publicly visible or audible sex-play has never been a notion that really excited me. Still... I find it hard to entirely pass up the notion of 'messing around' with you anywhere, any time. Are you serious?" Isabel paused, then nodded. "How far?"

"Well... not as far as Michael and Maria have gone," she said regretfully. "I might like to, but... well, she doesn't have to worry about getting pregnant anymore, in the same way I do... and I don't want to end up in the same boat at the moment." I nodded seriously. "But, well... there's something that I've been wanting to try to pleasure you."

My eyes bugged out. "Okay, second question... just how loud are you okay with being? Michael and Maria getting payback is one thing, but Liz and Ava are on our other side... and Max and Kyle are just beyond THEM. Do you really want your brother to be able to hear either of us cry out in passion?"

Isabel thought about that... sitting closer to me and reaching a few fingers between the buttons of my pajama shirt. "Umm... nothing completely loud and uninhibited if we can help it... but not trying to keep ourselves under wraps as much as they did." She undid a button to slide the palm of her hand further, stroking it against my chest. "Basically, it's fine with me if Max hears something, as long as he isn't quite sure what it is he's listening to."

And without speaking any more, Isabel moved down my body and wasted no time slipping my jammie bottoms down past my knees, then down to my ankles, and finally, (with a little help from me,) maneuvered them completely off. Then the boxer shorts came off too, bit by bit. I still wasn't quite sure what Isabel had in mind, but no matter what it was, I certainly wasn't going to stop her. Then again, considering what preparations she was making, and the fact that she had stressed it was *new*, as in something basically different from what we'd done together so far... there was a pretty obvious possibility. Just the thought of it made my bare pecker stiffen and twitch towards her, as if it couldn't wait to get started.

Isabel laughed softly, ringingly even in that tiny, muffled space. "Okay, umm, let's see." Working efficiently and keeping me out of her way with little gestures, Isabel rearranged the sleeping bags so that they were not side by side, but arranged to cross at right angles, diagonally through the small area of the tent. "Lie down there," she said, pointing at the pillow and head of my bag, and I did. My head was nearly in one corner, giving Isabel room to kneel over my feet without being cramped, and Isabel's sleeping bag passed underneath mine in just such a way as to push my butt, hips, and upper thighs slightly further into the air, thus over-emphasising my genitals almost comically. But Izzie didn't seem to think it a laughing matter.

"Perfect," she declared, and started to lick at the sensitive, slightly hairy skin on my thighs as a way of getting things started slowly. Yes, that was pretty much what I'd expected... not my legs so much as the fact that her lips and mouth would be important parts of the proceedings.

I have quite a long list of sexual fantasies... well, probably no longer than any other teenage guy my age, but... well, most of them I'm not going to tell you readers - not ever, EVER. But Isabel wrapping her soft, supple lips around the head of my cock and starting to suck on it is pretty much -- well, in the top three if not the very top of the list. (standings can change quite quickly, at a moment's notice according to my mood.) And it looked like that one was finally going to come true tonight. I'd probably have to be very disciplined to keep from shouting out so loudly that the kids across the river couldn't tell what was going on - never mind Max.

She didn't tease me and keep me waiting for long... well, not really. Thngs didn't proceed quite as I'd pictured them... Isabel moved at a moderate pace up my legs, trying to keep her hair out of her way. (Even though that was obviously a problem for her, I always love the feeling of her golden tresses against my skin, and tried to encourage it to fall from the sides of her head instead of the top, since that way we'd both be happy.) She spent a few minutes paying carefully delicate attention to my balls, and then began to slowly lick and kiss her way up my shaft. Even before she got to the top of it, I felt like I was ready to explode any second.

But she pressed softly with a finger near the middle underside of my dick... (well, what's usually the underside - with me being on my back and so stiff, things had somewhat turned upside down from the usual positions, at least with respect to gravity.) Things became slightly less urgent inside my equipment - for about a second at least, and then when the urgency returned, it was because Isabel had nearly jumped on me, wrapping her mouth around the end of my organ, sucking hard, her tongue vibrating softly, and her hair cascading down in soft waves all around my lap. I couldn't resist letting out a fairly loud wordless groan. "Umm, sorry."

She looked up at me, (which involved brushing some hair back from her forehead in order to clear a path from those intensely brown eyes to my own,) and somehow managed to convey without words, 'No, that was good, just not any louder.' And then, of course, she started to apply even more sucking pressure, (negative pressure?) on me, and slid her entire mouth up and down my pole as if she were... well, as if her mouth wasn't a mouth but a you-know-what. The sensations, physical psychological and emotional, were all intense and pleasant almost beyond my ability to preserve them... and there was a little voice that asked, 'if she didn't want me to get any louder, shouldn't she do something a little less likely to provoke loud exclamations?'

I didn't really mean that sentiment, though... as much as I wanted to scream out to the mountains and the wide open spaces, I *could* keep a lid on my exuberance -- and what Isabel was doing to me was sensual beyond anything I could have imagined a few minutes before, and driving me steadily towards a motherlode of sexual ecstasy. After a few seconds I realized that I wasn't trying to be completely silent, just not loud. Trying to hit the right range of volume without allowing it to run away on me was harder than it might have seemed. "Oh, baby. Man, WOW! Come on - come on!!"

She came... or, well, I guess the point was she made *me* cum. Incredible currents and tides of primal pleasure and satisfaction ripped through my muscles and veins, and I just managed, through burred eyes, to notice a slightly amused and wild expression cross over the face of the girl I love, when she realized that a thick clot, or maybe two, of something unfamiliar in taste and texture had emerged into her mouth. Tentatively, she swallowed, then again with more of a smile on her face. "Ahhh..." The sigh of satisfaction that she let out seemed certain to reach even to Tess and Laurie's tent.

"That... that was great," I told her, not in a whisper but not too loudly either, no longer really caring who might hear. "Do... do you want me to repay the favor to you?"

"Hmm..." Isabel thought about that. "Sure, but nothing below the waist tonight."

"Are... are you sure? That doesn't exactly seem fair... not that I'm insisting or anything, just..."

"It - it's not the right time," she said, kissing me - which was a weird moment, since I couldn't shake the thought that my cock had just been in her mouth, and thus I might be sucking on some of my own boys. Still, it didn't seem like a point worth getting seriously bent out of shape over. "You can give me turnaround another time - once we're back in Las Cruces, maybe. But come on - I know you love playing with the girls for their own sake."

Something about the way she put that made me laugh out loud, but it was true... fondling and sucking on Isabel's boobs was another of my favorite things to do. She pulled her t-shirt off, (no bra underneath - she'd taken it off earlier,) and lay back down on my sleeping bag the same way that I had earlier. I had a lot of fun... and not just with her breasts - kissing and licking her neck, her shoulders, fondling her stomach and her sides. (Not going to give you a detailed play by play, because the scene is already getting really long.) And finally we fell asleep, arms around each other, and very satisfied.

----------

(Liz):

I felt the tap on the side of the tent and immediately reached up to tap back, to let whoever it was know that I was still awake. Ava was snoring very softly next to me - a snore so soft that I wondered if she had somehow 'done it on purpose' just so that I'd know she was really asleep, after that miscue the first night when we'd thought that TESS was sleeping, and she turned out to have just been lying there trying to nod off, and told us off for talking on and on. Anyway, it wasn't a loud enough snore to disturb me... or at least, I wouldn't generally think so.

Part of me was surprised that Ava could be sleeping, and I even wondered if she could be faking the snore, but couldn't really see a point to it. Maybe growing up in Manhattan, with the other dupes, had given her practice in sleeping through mild annoyances... and possibly, also, in waking up instantly when true danger manifested. Well, I couldn't spare any more thought on Ava - scrambled up out of the sleeping bag, checked to make sure that what I was wearing was decent enough, and quietly made my way out through the tent door.

Max was waiting outside, and I pulled him away from the tent, keeping my finger over his lips until we had covered about fifteen feet. "Hey," he said then. "I. um, I couldn't really sleep. You?"

"Nah. Michael and Maria last night, now Alex and Isabel, even louder." I sighed.

"So it really was coming from Isabel's tent?" Max asked, his face falling. Ooops - I guess I should have been a little more delicate about that news... well, I guess I assumed he'd already been able to tell. "Ehh, well..."

"Max... your sister hasn't been a little girl for a while," I informed him gently. "She's growing up to be quite a woman... just like you're turning into an impressive young man. She loves Alex, and the two of them are always going to treat each other right. Doesn't that give you any consolation in this situation?"

"Not that much," he admitted with a little grin. "I... I realize all the things that you're saying mentally, but getting too close to the direct reality of my sister growing into her sexuality... I'm not sure if you can understand." We were starting to walk away from the clearing by mutual agreement. Max had a small flashlight in his hand. "Then again, I suppose that Maria is nearly as close to you as if she were a trueborn sister. How *do* you feel about, you know, her and Michael??"

I blinked in surprise. "Umm... I'm not sure. Maybe it's a bit different because we're both girls. There's a point where hearing her exploits with Michael becomes too much information, definitely, but I guess I don't get that 'didn't want to know' sensation as strongly as you do." Sighed. "Sorry, and I'll try to be more careful around the subject in the future, if that helps."

"Umm... alright I guess," Max agreed, and draped his free arm around me. "Are... are we going anywhere in particular?"

"Well, I dunno - didn't you watch which path you were leading us down, flashlight man?"

"Umm... guess not." It was hard to tell whether Max was blushing, or at least to 'see' any true blush from the lighting that fell back onto his face. Somehow from the tone of his voice, though, I didn't have any doubts. I knew Max Evans pretty well by now, after all.

"And... did we head out on this walk for any particular *reason*?" I asked him in turn. "I mean, since you obviously didn't plan to talk about, err, Alex and his girlfriend." Max's arm shook my shoulders - just a little, a friendly gesture.

"Actually, I kind of wanted to talk about... about us," Max said, his voice having an odd element to it that I couldn't immediately place. "I... I know that we aren't in the same place that Michael and Maria are now, or even... Alex/Izzie. But... but I love you very much, and we're out here, well, in a somewhat crowded neck of the woods on a long bank holiday weekend. Still..."

I laughed softly. "Are you feeling a bit left out on the hot passion, Max? Want us to mark the fourth of July and make some fireworks of our own??" I smiled, but Max's reaction was anything but happy. He stopped still, nearly dropping the light, and as I took it I realized that his face had gone pale, and slightly... horrified. "What, what did I say?"

"Umm... just an unfortunate mental connection," Max mumbled. "Did... did I tell you Everett Hubble's story, about the night that his wife died?"

"Yeah." For a second I still didn't see the connection - and then it hit me. "Celebrating the fourth of July - setting off fireworks. Oh god." Mister Hubble had bought some fireworks from an indian with all the money he could spare from his paycheque. That night, Sheila, his wife, was going to tell him that she was having a baby. But Hubble had stopped at a small cafe to buy matches to light the fireworks with, and while he was inside, swallowing his pride because he'd forgotten to grab the dime that he'd need to pay for the matches, an alien shapeshifter had killed his wife, trying to steal the car, and Hubble had come out just in time to see the dead body, and to frighten off the 'drifter' before he could drive away. "I... obviously I didn't mean..."

"Yeah, I know," Max replied. Some of his usual color and expression seemed to be coming back. "Those alien ghosts just seem to jump out at me when I least expect them, huh??" I nodded unhappily. "Okay, well, to get back to your question, yeah, I'd love to do something special, for no particular reason other than that I love you and because we're here together. Got any good ideas for what... and where??" He held me tight and kissed me.

"Hmm... well, not back at camp, for reasons of simple courtesy and privacy," I commented. "And it'll probably be hard to find a quiet, isolated spot out in the woods on this weekend of all weekends. As far as what we could do..." thought hard a moment. "Ahh, let's leave that until we have a place sorted out... no sense working ourselves up even more and then not being able to follow through."

"I... I think I have a notion," Max whispered, "but we'll need to use wheels. Hmmm." He seemed to be considering the forest for a while, and then took a side branching path that eventually let us out at the road, just within sight of the parking area where the Jeep and the rest of the cars for our party sat. Quickly we took our usual spots aboard the Jeep and Max started the engine, pulling out towards the north.

I rolled my window down right away, sucking as much of the cool night air into my lungs as once as I could. "This camping out has been so incredible. It's going to be a little disappointing to head back into town once the long weekend is done, really, and face the drudgery of working in the cafe day after day." Sigh. "And... and you're going to be spending a lot of time away, aren't you? Off to Utah or wherever, searching for flying saucers."

I must have sounded more forlorn about the prospect than I meant to, because Max sighed awkwardly. "If... if you really don't want me to go through with this..."

"No, Max -- you're not going to give up on my account," I said firmly. "Partly because you gave your word to Brody and you should follow through on that... and partly because you really do want to find out about this stuff. I... I'm a little disappointed that you're going to be away, but I'm not going to make you give up what you're doing to stay around Roswell and keep me company. You're going to be able to do enough of that even with the UFO hunting, right??" Big smile.

"Okay, I get the message," Max agreed, grinning too. "I can balance both - and not get so wrapped up in the alien chase that I forget you - *definitely*." Well, duh... I would have hoped that I wouldn't be that easy to forget.

I can't really remember all the other stuff we talked about, as Max drove out of the forest and into the desert. It had gotten to the time of night when everything is very quiet and still, before Max finally pulled up at something that looked like a long geometrical metal girder stuck on one end into the desert floor. I recognized it immediately. "Max... umm, uh..." It was the radio tower that we'd come to looking for an alien orb, more than a year ago.

"Is... is this too weird?" he asked. "I figured that it worked out for us pretty well that time. And there shouldn't be any beeping or strange lights to distract us this time." He reached into the back and pulled out a blanket."

"It's perfect," I said, and somehow it really was. We lay down on the blanket, and kissed, and things started to progress pretty quickly. Some of the old passion that had possessed us on that February night more than a year ago seemed to haunt this space, even after so long... or maybe it was just tied in with my memories of it. I didn't get any flashes from Max - those seemed to be rarer in our relationship now, but I wasn't complaining, as a sense of love and ardor wrapped around the two of us like a blanket. The sand underneath me, with just an old blanket that had seen better days in between, should have been jarring and faintly uncomfortable, but it felt as soft and comfy as my bed back home or even the mattress in the fancy hotel we stayed in for a night when my Aunt took me and a friend's daughter to Seaworld in Orlando. And, well, for a second I remembered the sensation of a dark room with a floor that was ALL comfortable mattress, but couldn't remember from when, because I don't think I'd ever been to a room like that.

"May I take your shirt off?" Max whispered teasingly in my ear. The thought was like a spray of water into my face - distracting, but not overwhelmingly so. "Umm..." I was wearing a black tank top to sleep in... well, I had word it to sleep in back when I thought I was going to get much sleep tonight. Hesitated for a moment, then decided that we didn't head all the way out here to draw the line with a shirt. "Be my guest!" I lifted my shoulders up off the blanket a little to make it easier for Max to slip the fabric up and off my back, and away from my arms. In an impressive display of willpower for a teenaged guy, he *didnt'* go straight for the boobies once they were bare and pointed at him. He kissed me on the lips, and ran one hand through my hair while he held my arm gently with the other. I moaned a little bit as his tongue slid between my lips, and impulsively pulled Max's own shirt up as far as I could. He chuckled a little bit, and I held his chest softly by either side, kissing his neck, (which was a little bit scratchy and odd -- maybe he hasn't shaved since we've been out in the woods, but somehow just this once that seemed exciting.) At the same time I pulled his body tight against mine, so that the tips of my nipples brushed against the skin of his lower chest.

After letting me 'drive from underneath' for maybe a minute and a half, Max gently propped himself up again over me. "You're... you're so incredible," he whispered, and then reached out one hand so that it was flat against my stomach. I pretty much expected what was coming at this point, and was actually looking forward to it, so I smiled an encouragement. His fingers crept across the sensitive skin of my chest, making me shiver and tremble more and more with every fraction of an inch they covered. Max's touch always seems so... well, so sensitive, even though that word is kind of a cliche. Strong and gentle at the same time, in exactly the right proportions, no matter what he's doing or what part of my body his fingers are in contact with. I let out another big moan. Max grinned and bent over, sticking out his tongue and using the very tip of it to trace a line all the way down my cleavage, starting up at my collar and ending down nearly at my belly button, and then he swooped back up and did something with his lips to massage the outer sides of my breasts, and the very tops of them, the skin that would have been accessible even when I was wearing the tank top... well, maybe not that particular top I had on tonight, but certain outfits in my closet at least.

All of this messing around was incredible enough, but I was starting to wonder what the special surprise for tonight was going to be, and if we were ever going to get to it. Well, Max has told me enough times that he likes it when I took the initiative, so I told him "your turn. Get your butt planted on the blanket, mister." (Well, okay, maybe it was more of a gasp than a... ehh, that's still telling, isn't it??)

Max didn't waste any time in changing positions according to the nonverbal signals I sent him, and I lay on my side next to him, smiled about as sexily as I could think of, and reached my hand down into his shorts. Wow, is that a glowing green probe, Maxxie boy, or are you just REALLY happy to see me like this? (Okay, okay, I know, but I had to say that just once, and I count myself lucky for not blurting out loud at the time.) Little Max was not so little, very stiff and thick and kind of, well, comfortable and good to feel against my hand. Does it sound slutty just to say that? I really hope not, because then I must be quite a horny... well, really, never mind. Nice... um, nice package on him. That was, well, that was all I really meant to say.

"Are... are you gonna pull it out?" Max gasped out.

"Umm... I haven't decided yet," I told him. "Probably not as in getting you all the way out of your shorts... I think I can take care of business pretty well just like this, actually, with a little help. Good thing you have lotsa stretch in this fabric, though. Is... is that okay??"

"F-ffine with me, I think," Max insisted. "Just, umm... there's a sensitive spot near the top, just a little bit downards in the direction of, umm, of my nuts."

"Right." Since I wasn't touching right there, then obviously he was mentioning it because he wanted me too... but probably not too hard. Remembering something that I'd read when I found a, umm, a collection of old erotica that my parents had saved from a while ago, I tried spitting into the palm of one of my hands and using that as lubricant, though there was some natural slipperyness already in the area.

I'm not going to describe in any more detail what it was like to jerk Max off... you can probably find that kind of stuff somewhere else on the net. Let's just say it took a few minutes, Max yelled out without any words when he came and collapsed, err... relaxed all his major muscle groups, lying there panting. I lay down a bit further myself, feeling quite pleased with the whole operation.

"Okay... that... that was great," Max said when he had recovered enough to form intelligent words that I could understand. "Great for me... now how about you?"

I giggled a bit nervously. "You... you know me, Max, I'm a giver. If you're happy, then I'm happy." That was true enough, but also. "And... and as much as I love you, I'm.... okay, I'm still not sure about letting your fingers or tongue down into my pants. Or... or having you go completely to town on my breasts, for that matter, even if I'm sensitive enough and you're talented enough to make that a deal-closer."

"Hmm." Max weighed that for a long moment. "Okay, then how about this." He turned on his side and kissed me, which was incredible as always, and then backed away long enough to whisper into my ear. "Just this. Nothing below the neck, or at least, I won't concentrate my attention on anything lower down. I get, umm, up to twenty minutes to have my way with you like that."

My eyes grew wide as I considered him in the pale starlight. "Al-- alright." Just for the heck of it, or maybe to make sure he didn't try to bend the rules, I reached out to grab my tank again, shook a little sand off of it, and slipped it back on. "Deal. Do you want me to assume the position again?"

"En... entirely up to you." I thought about it, and decided that I felt about as comfortable on my back as any other way. Max smiled, looked deep down into my eyes, brushed my hair back on both sides so that it didn't cover either of my ears, and kissed me on the lips again.

It wasn't like any other kiss I'd ever felt from him before. Bigger, romantic storybook kisses we have had, but that wasn't... wasn't even the same kind of thing. This was a physical kiss, a clinch of purely physical lust and desire, and it took my breath away how this guy could make me so hot in a split second. Between my legs, inside my shorts, I felt me insides flush hot instantly, my warm depths starting to ooze and cream with sticky moisture - and I don't generally tend to notice leaking very much when I get turned on in more usual circumstances. Max laughed softly to himself as if he could tell what I was experiencing, and let his lips mark a wet trail across the smooth skin of my neck. I gasped out loud with the sensation.

It probably took only two minutes or less for Max to drive me completely crazy like this... and then he pushed me over the edge and just kept going. There was something very strange about it, it was like every place he touched was completely linked with the entire rest of my erogenous system, or actually... once I'd climaxed twice, or maybe three times, I was starting to realize that there was a definite pattern -- a mapping. When he touched my mouth, I felt it most strongly in my... in my crotch. Left ear was... there was an odd kind of a reversal, because left ear corresponded with my right breast, and right ear with my left breast. My neck was... was less specifically focused... depending on exactly where Max licked or stroked me there, I might feel it on my butt cheeks or my thighs, either one side or both sides of my body at once. And when he made contact with my tongue with his own... that seemed to specifically trigger an especially sensitive portion of me... not my clitoris. Maybe... yeah, it was probably the g-spot...

Finally, after I had trembled beneath his patient tongue eight or nine times, Max backed away. "That... I think that's about twenty minutes... how did I do?"

"Took me further than I expected to go," I admitted, reaching up and putting my arms around him. "And... and I think I love you for it." Grinned and put my lips near his ear. "Two questions... did you do something to my nervous responses or my brain to remap the physical sensations of what you were doing?"

"Umm... yeah, I kind of tried," he admitted. "I guess it worked?"

"Well, it certainly had quite a remarkable effect," I admitted. "And two -- did you make sure to put everything back the way you found it?"

Max laughed loudly. "Umm... yeah. It... it wasn't a change that would 'stick' - it was only while I was... was very near to you." Ahh, yeah, he hadn't gotten more than about two inches away from me the whole time, then deliberately backed off a bit when he was 'done' I remembered. "You're the same as ever... though I guess we can kiss just to make sure."

I giggled, and kissed him on the cheek - yeah, just relatively ordinary sensations from my lips, which was just great. "Okay, head back to camp now??"

"We... maybe we should wait here for a little bit before I try to drive," Max suggested. "Watch the stars a bit. And, erm, somehow I suspect I'd better find little towels for each of us to sit on on the way back."

Ooooh. "Yeah, wouldn't be a bad idea." So we sat up, Max's arm around my back, and tried identifying some constellations, and argued over whether a particular spot of reddish light was Mars or not. Then back into Frazier woods. The clock on Max's car radio was saying 3:15 am when we finally pulled back up to our camping site. "We're might regret all of this during the capture the flag game." I pointed out.

"Ehh, it's not until eleven, so we can sleep in," Max said. We walked into the campsite... and someone was sitting up at the picnic table. "Tess??" he asked.

"Huh? Ohh... so it's you."

"Umm, yeah," I replied. "What's keeping you up?"

"Nothing in particular. Guess I'd better get back to sleep." Tess got up and headed back towards her own tent. After opening the door, she turned back to deliver one half-serious complaint. "Am I really the only one here who isn't getting any?"

Ooooh. I didn't argue, partly because I wasn't exactly sure whether what Max and I had been doing counted as getting any... but it would be hard to convincingly argue that it didn't. "Well, I don't think that Ava and Kyle are at the making out stage yet," another girl's voice said, and Laurie's face appeared in the opening into the tent. "As far as me, well, Tess dahling, I don't have any other partner myself. If you want to get all experimental with me, I just might be open to the possibility - though some alcohol might be necessary. Otherwise..."

Tess cut her off with a laugh. "No, no, I don't think that's gonna happen."

"Then get your butt in here and let's go back to sleep," Laurie suggested. Max raised an eyebrow at me, and I waved goodbye at him and went over to my own tent. He shrugged and headed off to join Kyle.

----------

I wasn't able to sleep that late on Monday morning. I tried, but between the sunlight coming early, and other people chatting around the breakfast campfire, I just wasn't getting any rest, and I finally came out to join the rest of the world at eight thirty. There was more trading for the haggle game... I was picking up some really confident vibes that I didn't much like from Isabel and Alex, it seemed like a good time to be taking risks. If I could just get my four nines, a double-red-white-blue combo, and as many diamonds as I could scrape up, I should be in fairly good shape. But would that be enough to beat whatever the Las Cruces crew had already amassed??

MAX didn't show up until nearly an hour later, and I had to wonder if he'd been able to sleep through the chatter, and if I should feel kinduv jealous if he had.

Soon we were starting to get organized for the capture the flag game, both the more practical, logistical details, (like who drove with whom,) and the tactics and strategy, which Michael took great pleasure in dragging us all through. "Now, I've never done war maneuvers on a horse before, for obvious reasons. But since they're faster than running people, that suggests that the action is going to be quick and probably a little harder to keep track of than usual. Now... any capture the flag game is naturally divided between offensive and defensive tactics... though they usually get a little muddled in the middle."

"Right," Alex joined in. "A lot of the time there's more than one offensive stroke per teams... a subtle sneak attack and a more obvious feint, for instance."

"Which means," Kyle continued... all of the guys seemed to be having a lot of fun with this... though max wasn't contributing as much as the others... "that they might be expecting something complicated and tricky, and that we'd be better off concentrating our resources on one simple attack? Or relatively simple?"

"Hmm..." Max said. and just sat there for a long time as if he was weighing what everybody had said. "Could go either way. I think the details of exactly who we have available for all of our tactics will probably make the decisions come out more easily."


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part 35

(Isabel):

"Okay, fearless leader," I said, riding my horse at a trot. "What's the plan for us?"

We had arrived at the riding ranch a little bit early... it was pretty busy, being the holiday and all, but Alex's friends had made the reservation and the ranch employees were treating us a little bit like VIPs. I'd asked for Thunder, the same stallion I rode when Alex took me out here on a date, but they said that he wasn't available. Oh well. Max had decided that he, Tess, and I were the logical picks for the 'unexpected strike force' because we were the three strongest riders who also had alien powers. Max turned out to still remember a lot of what he'd learned about horses from long ago - he'd gone through a stage around the same time as my own horse-crazy period, only his had been based around the idea of being a vet when he grew up. And Tess had ridden a bunch out on the East coast before she'd come to Roswell apparently - it had been 'protective coloration' out there, trying to look like everybody else.

"Well... I'm not quite sure what's going to happen, so it's not an incredibly detailed plan with stages or anything," Max replied. "We ride off to one side and try to come at their flag from the side, or maybe looping around slightly from the opposite direction as our camp, on the grounds that they'll be less likely to expect that. Aside from that, it's just a question of reacting to the tactical exigencies."

"Great," I sighed. There was a sudden splatting sound, and I caught a small spot of color appearing on a tree maybe seventy feet away. Soon we rode past it, and I could see that the spot was a dab of light blue paint.

"What??" Tess asked. Max was glaring at her sidelong a bit. "I'm not wasting ammo just for the heck of it - we kinduv need to practice with shooting from horseback though, right, so that we've got the knack when it's actually important."

After a second, Max made a kind of a vague 'mm-hmm' sound to tentatively agree, and he brought out his own paintball gun and shot at a small stone nearly a hundred feet away. It went wide by over two feet. Tess snickered. It did seem likely that Max had been trying to show off, and been shown up - if he'd been trying to hit a person at that range, he'd have missed even if they were standing still.

We practice-shot for a little as we rode, trying to be careful about ammunition, and also talked softly about ways that our powers might help out with this mission without being too obvious. One good trick that Max suggested was deflection... using kinesis to alter the course of an incoming paintball just enough so that it would miss.

"But you'd have to be really careful with that," Tess pointed out. "It'd be a high-pressure situation, if you or someone else on the team is getting targeted by enemy shooters, and a paintball is really light and tiny. Pushing it is no problem, but the trick would be pushing it softly enough that the other guys don't notice anything weird. You could accidentally divert a shot by nearly ninety degrees, and that would set off a lot of alarm bells."

"Yeah, good point," Max agreed. "The feather touch is called for here - well, nearly. Maybe a little bit more effort than the feather touch."

They tried it together - Max shooting and Tess trying to deflect his shot, and then the other way. I didn't participate for a little while, just watching them. I wouldn't have expected, a little while ago, to see Max and Tess working this well together -- and something deep down in my gut was concerned about it. No, that had to be ridiculous. Max was with Liz, and he didn't want anyone else, and Tess had stopped throwing herself at him and trying to snatch Max away. They had become friends now, and were working together as members of the team. That was all good stuff. Seeing anything sinister in it would be rampant paranoia.

"Come on, girl, give it a try!!" Tess said, breaking me out of my thoughts. I shook slightly, (which confused my horse for a second,) and when Tess fired off a shot, I concentrated. The paintball made a fairly minute course correction in midair. Max whistled.

"Damn, that was impressive for a first try," he muttered. I smiled.

After a few minutes, Max gestured for quiet - we stopped talking and instructed the horses to slow to a sedate walk. We went along like that for a little while more, probably not more than fifty seconds, before Max stopped entirely. He carefully pointed, and I realized that someone was sitting in a high tree branch, overlooking the patch of sparsely forested land that we had been about to ride through. There was no enemy horse visible - maybe this guy had declined to take one, just like Maria had, guarding our own flag. Or maybe the horse was tied up a little ways away. That didn't matter so much. We needed to either circle around far enough that the guard wouldn't be able to see us, or to stop us -- or we'd need to take him out. Any moment now he might spot us, and shout out an alarm or something. But if we got within range and started to trade fire with him... he'd have the advantage of maybe twenty-five feet of elevation. How much would that count compared to aim and our deflector defenses??

Tess sketched out a plan in ghostly pictures floating in the air between us, and Max nodded. I hefted my gun and started to walk into position. The three of us moved towards the tree from different directions, trying to take him off guard from an approach that he wouldn't expect. He spotted me first, and immediately fired. It was a good shot - wouldn't hit me, but it'd hit Betsy if I didn't do anything. (Yes, the horse's name is Betsy, and I don't hold it against her -- neither should any of you.) Deflection? Yes, but to distract attention, I guided the paintball to the right while riding forward and to the left.

"Ow!!" It looked like Max had managed to score while I distracted the sniper. Not too bad at all. Now, according to the rules, he wasn't out of the action permaently, just temporarily 'out', but if the plan went off the way it should, we should have the flag soon, and head back to our own camp in a more straightforward way, instead of coming back this way. One good thing was that he couldn't even yell more once he had been 'hit', though he probably really wanted to sound a warning.

Tess led the way now, riding comfortably. There was some shouting very far ahead, and I was wondering what was going on - was it our 'diversionary attack team' getting counter-attacked? Or an enemy assault pressing forward into our territory? Liz, Kyle, and Laurie were all on the diversionary force... all human, and without any good reason to stay behind on defense like Alex and Maria had... they were basically considered to be our most - well, 'expendable' isn't at all the right term, but the important thing was to send a few bodies on the mission - not whether they did anything directly useful as opposed to getting 'shot' and taken out.

Where and how had the other team disposed of their manpower? That was the most critical question. Were defenses widely ranged or tightly grouped around the flag? How many people did they have on home territory and how many pressing home an attack?? There was no way for me to be sure about that kind of thing.

WHEMP! I looked at Max in surprise, and he stared back at me, chagrined - a huge blob of paint smacked dab in the middle of his forehead. Tess fired off a burst through the trees, and was rewarded by a groan of distress. Was... had the shooter been taken out, or was he just upset at how close Tess had gotten to him? There was no way to tell from here - we'd have to investigate more closely. If the enemy was tagged out, he'd be unable to take action against us, but if not - he'd probably be very dangerous as we got closer. The suddenness with which Max had been 'killed' still shocked me. That bad a 'head wound' meant that he was out of the game for good. Tess and I were now alone on these maneuvers.

We rode ahead carefully, and then there was another whizz of paintball fire. How was this person able to target us so well when we couldn't see them? But the aim wasn't that especially good this time, as I could see the shot whizzing through Tess' hair. And then all of a sudden I caught a glimpse of him and fired! WHAMM! He stopped stock still on his horse, or as nearly as he could, with a big glob of paint right in the center of his chest. "Awww, hey!" he exclaimed, and I realized that it was Markos, who was the drummer in Alex's band. I hadn't expected him to be here, though it kind of made sense. "Out for the rest of the gang. How cruel you are, Miss Evans."

"That one was for my brother," I told him with a soft laugh. "Tess, come on, you're alright, and we've got to press on."

"You... are you sure?" she asked. "I - I felt something touch your head."

"No, it's just hair, that doesn't count," I insisted. "You're free and clear."

"Alright." And she waved slightly at Markos as we rode by.

"Where to now??"

"I... I'm not quite sure," Tess mumbled. "I... I looked at the map, but... but Max didn't have the plan all set then, and... dammit, why'd he have to be the one to go and get himself shot straight through the heart?"

"Just to make it tough on us," I said. "Well, umm, I think we left the main path about a mile back, and south is... thataway. Is the enemy flag dead ahead, bearing left, or bearing right?"

She smiled at the way I phrased that. "I think it's a bit to the right."

"Then giddy-up!!" And I spurred Betsy into a spirited canter, while looking carefully all around for any sign of more enemy traps. Tess followed afterward - she was riding a very pretty light gray gelding, and the ranch had had said that his name was Specter. Tess surprised a guard and shot him like four times, including once on the side of the face, the left side of his chest (puncturing his lung?) and once down low very near to his crotch. "Kinda hard on him, weren't you??"

"Just wanted to make sure he was dead," Tess mumbled a little nervously. She slowed us to a trot, and in about a minute we spotted the flag clearing.

And a few seconds after that, we rode into crossfire. I - I can't remember or describe exactly what happened - I don't have clear memories of that moment so much as vague impressions... soft voices, hoofbeats, and paint flying everywhere. I'm sure that I fired around half a dozen times or more - not really clear on if I hit anybody. But when things start to get more clear... well, Betsy was 'dead', several splats of paint on her head and sleek body, and it looked like Tess and her horse had both been well taken care of too. I was under cover, peeking out of a thick upgrowth of shrubbery, and as far as I could tell, the only tag was a glancing shot on my left forearm... probably bad enough that I couldn't use the hand. Still... it could easily have been worse. However... I still wasn't sure where there were enemies, and it didn't seem likely that I'd be able to continue on and capture the enemy flag all by myself. So much for our daring attack from the rear.

Still... how many people had the other team tied up on defense back here?? It had to be quite a lot. Which meant that if they'd launched any attack of their own, our guys had probably been able to repulse it too. Did that mean that the game was going to be a long slugfest between those few left standing? Maybe if some of the people who had attacked us left to go on a second attack run, or just gave away their position, I'd have a chance. I hunkered down to wait, and then remembered something. We were supposed to be practicing our powers, when we wouldn't give ourselves away so doing. And my abilities to extend a mental awareness to some distance seemed to be devloping recently... well, I'd known that something was wrong when everybody got attacked by the evil trio. That wasn't saying particularly much, perhaps. But still... what did I have to lose by giving it a try??

I tried Alex first, of course. Thought about him, pictured his face as clearly as I could in my mind - as if I were trying to dreamwalk him without a physical picture available, and concentrated hard, for long enough that I was starting to feel silly about the idea. And then... wham, a rush of sensory impressions and subconscious feelings hitting me so quickly that it made me dizzy. (Good thing I was already sitting flat on my butt, or I'd probably have lost my balance and/or given myself away to the other team.) More trees, sunlight shining through the green branches. Nervousness and excitement. And... well, that's about as much as I could identify right then.

I nerved myself, and tried again, this time with some intent to 'filter' the impressions somewhat so that they weren't so overwhelming. And suddenly, I was looking through Alex's eyes as if it were a faint double image over my real surroundings. *Can - can you hear me baby?* I sent. Nothing. No, wait - a bit of an impression - a fond daydream or something. He hadn't recognized my thought as a specific telepathic contact, any more than Max had when I was trying to warn him at Thanksgiving. He was just reminded of me, and cherishing that as an idle moment.

Well, even if I couldn't communicate directly, I could learn something from this contact. I could recognize where Alex was now - it was a spot near our flag that I'd scouted out... towards the enemy line and in the direction of the thicker bunch of trees in this area - which the bad guys might conceivably try to run a sneak attack force through on foot. No way would horses make it through that kind of vegetation without being heard, but the horses didn't HAVE to be used by any particular player - they were a method of transportation and a tool that were up to the individual teams to use, or not, as they pleased.

So Alex was on guard, well mostly, except for me unintentionally distracting him a little bit, and there hadn't been any big emergency back at our flag that he had to respond to. Maybe they had already repulsed some attackers and were still on guard for more - maybe nobody had come yet. It was hard to tell. Next I tried to concentrate on Liz and get a mental awareness of her too. It was harder this time - Liz is great and I count myself lucky to know her, but I'm still not as close to her as I feel to Alex, Max, or Michael. (Does that make me a boys' girl?)

But I kept trying, and after two or three minutes maybe I was getting some results - no clear picture, unfortunately, but impressions and feelings that were starting to come together and tell me something, at least. She... she was still with Kyle - but not Laurie, as far as I could tell. Maybe Laurie had been hit. If so, I hoped that she was dealing with it okay. (Laurie still seemed fragile to me, maybe that was because I'd seen her at her craziest.) And... and they were --

A shudder ran through me, and I realized that I was hearing a sound double-echoing - like when you can hear someone in the next room both over the telephone and directly, but different. I guessed that I was hearing a sound directly through the imperfect link with Liz, and also through my normal senses...

...Because Liz and Kyle weren't that far away, and getting closer. Which suggested... that I was very close to the enemy flag, closer than I thought, and Liz and Kyle were approaching it. Close enough to run into trouble with the defenders, maybe.

I never weighed the pros and cons carefully. It seemed like the idea just slipped into the 'decided stuff' bucket of my brain - partly because of the circularity of it - the sneak attacker and the decoys, switching places because of the circumstances of battle. It was definitely long enough for my 'flesh wound' to have healed, too. I leapt out of cover, making about as much noise as I could, shooting towards most things that moved, and doing anything else I could to serve as a diversion.

I got paintballed several times, of course, and only just about made it far enough to see the enemy flag where it was being guarded. But a few seconds later Liz and Kyle charged in, picking off most of the other team's snipers now that I had drawn them out, and Kyle was able to cover Liz from the others, long enough for her to grab the flag and dash back to her black horse. Kyle was nearly shot as he withdrew, but I managed to divert the paint bullet - after all, nobody's suspect a corpse of having alien powers, right??

That was as much of the game as I could participate in directly, of course, and I didn't feel up to using my powers to eavesdrop on much of the rest, but it wasn't a clean win for our side. The other guys' last ditch attack managed to get pinned down right in our flag clearing - with Maria, Alex, and Ava covering the two of them but not able to get a clear shot. (Michael had gotten taken out when they got in.) So when Liz and Kyle got back with the enemy flag, our side had a definite advantage, but nobody was sure how to play the endgame and guard against a sudden reversal - we hadn't won until our own flag was out of enemy hands and we brought the enemy flag to touch it.

In the end, Kyle lost his patience, charging the other guy's cover from the side, getting shot himself, but buying a chance for Alex to take out one of them. About five minutes later, Ava decided to try the same kind of suicide run tactic, and that won the game for us. Everybody who had been 'killed' was rounded up, the horses were returned to the ranch stables, (some of them had been getitng very bored and skittish near the end,) and the leader of the other team, who turned out to be Tess' movie friend Martin, invited us all out to lunch to celebrate our victory. I hadn't realized, but Alex and Martin knew each other pretty well from the games club at school - I'll have to ask him later if he knew it was *that* Martin when I'd told him about Tess getting involved with the film shoot as a way of getting to know Martin a little better and figure him out.

Lunch turned out to be a fourth of july bonfire thing, in a park near the north edge of town, with apparently most of the students of every high school and community college in town, plus more people come from further afield.

After getting some food, I pulled Max aside to let him know, in whispers, of how I'd used my powers to see what was happening to other people in the game.

(Kyle):

"I'm just saying, I don't think I'm getting my due props," I insisted, taking a bit of my hot dog. (No foot-long jokes, please.) "I mean... I covered Liz when she went in to get the target. I was the first one to give myself up to wipe out that last nest of the enemy." Took a swig of coke from a nice cool bottle. "In a way, I'm kinduv the unsung hero of that campaign."

"You and a lot of other people, Kyle," Ava insisted. She was eating a burger and drinking some kind of canned energy drink. "Max and Tess gave themselves up on a diversion from the rear, that in a way, helped you and Liz get to the target by a straight path. Isabel did that much and more, from what I hear... she even saved you from a bullet, Kyle." That last was muttered in a low whisper, and my spine shivered a little. "And the rest of us were fighting as hard as anything to make sure that there'd be something for you guys to come back to."

"Okay, fair enough," I agreed. "You did really well too, by the way."

"Thanks." We ate together in silence for a little while. "Well, much as I hate to say it, the long weekend is almost over. Once we head back into the real Roswell, what do you figure is next??"

"Umm... not sure," I admitted. We'd been hanging out in the woods together for so long that I had nearly forgotten what my real summer life was like. "Hopefully going to get a chance to work at the UFO Museum with you." Ava smiled at that. "And... well, sheez, my dad's wedding is going to be coming up soon. Probably that craziness is going to keep me busy for some of the time. What about you?"

"Working," Ava said quickly. "Probably trying to find someplace of my own instead of crashing on Michael's couch... I know that he's been trying to cut me as much slack as possible, but I'm cramping his style and Maria's... especially considering that they need to deal with the idea of having a kid, and being engaged themselves. They need more time alone, and the place isn't big enough for three." She looked up and caught my eye. "Now, it suddenly occurs to me that I'm not the only one who's been crashing out on a couch, and therefore might want to find new digs."

I laughed at the thought. "You and me moving in together... probably not the best of ideas." Thought about that. "My dad would probably be happier, slightly, with the idea of me reclaiming room and Tess moving in with her sister... but that's probably not a very good idea for other reasons." Ava nodded, blushing slightly. "As a question... is the problem with the Michael situation that you really think he should be all alone, or alone with Maria when she's over there -- or that you just think you need more room? Because maybe he'd be up for moving into a bigger place."

"Hmm." Ava mulled over that one. "I'm not really sure, I guess. Have to think about that one." She sighed. "Though, the way I heard it, you're not going to need to worry about crashing on the couch for much longer... the big Roswell house swap is going to be happening soon."

"Is it?" I'd lost track of the planning for Dad and Ms DeLuca moving in together... and the rest of us going too, of course. But if it happened soon... well, in general I didn't have a problem with that, though moving always had the potential to be a pain in the ass when you were doing the lifting and carrying yourself, which I expected to a certain extent I would be. (And the packing boxes and unpacking.) But I'd get my room once we were there, and Maria and Tess would be rooming together. Somehow that thought made me smile.

"Hey... wild notion here, but what if you and Michael rent out our house once we leave it, instead of selling it?" I thought about that. "Might be harder to swing a fair rental for that than an apartment... but it's a nice place."

Ava blinked. "Doesn't your dad have to sell it, for the big plan to work?"

"Umm... not really, I think. He needs some money coming in, to help pay the mortgage on the new house, but rental will do that, in a way. He doesn't need to worry about fixing up the home to attract a buyer, or putting it on the market, or anything else." Sighed. "Of course, there are a lot of details that would need to be worked out with him, if both of you are interested. I just thought it'd be kinda fun."

"Yeah, there's an odd appeal to the notion," Ava admitted. "Though I haven't ever gotten that good a look at your house, I think."

"Well... we'll have to find a way to change THAT," I said, and felt an odd twinge of guilt. What was going on between Ava and I... was this friendship, flirting, or somewhere in between? And... was I really going to stay away from flirting with Ava, because Tess didn't like it? Umm... probably. For a while anyways. No matter how tempting Ava could be when she smiled at me just like she was doing right now...

"I can't wait to see your couch," she breathed, and got up. Now *that* was flirting... but I couldn't stop Ava from flirting with me, right? If Tess wanted to put a stop to that - she'd have to take it up with her dupe.

We didn't stay at the bonfire for too much longer before heading back to our own campsite. There was more firewood to be collected for the big night... the end of the haggle game and everything. Liz and Isabel went over the supplies and decided that we were doing okay... in fact, because we'd planned on having lunch out of our own groceries, and hadn't, there was some extra to go into dinner.

"Okay," Tess announced once we'd settled back in, "I'm going to go down to the beach again - because if time is running short, I want to get a bit more swimming in." She shot me a look, just for an instant, and I realized that I shouldn't say I was joining her right away, so I sat in the campfire circle and made half-helpful, half-sarcastic suggestions as Max and Michael tried to get another fire lit. This time, Michael actually did point at the wood and make it burst into very enthusiastic flames after a minute. I was going to say something witty and a little mean, but decided that that was a cool enough trick that I just couldn't mock it.

Tess came out of her tent, wearing... oh boy, she was wearing a fairly skimpy purple bikini, and carrying a towel slung over one forearm, and just strutted off down to the beach like that. I turned away from the campfire, went to grab a small barbell that I'd left outside the tent, and did arm curls for a few minutes. Finally Maria announced that she was going down to lie in the sand, and so that gave me a little cover to change into my own suit and head down myself without being suspected. Maria was already way out into the stream, about as far as she could get without losing the line of sight to our beach, and without getting too close to the beach on the other side. I hurried up to her and smiled. "So, how are we doing?"

Tess grinned. "Not bad. Max traded me the fourth eight for a blue color card, when we were just about to start capture the flag. I think he'll regret not teaming up with anyone - even Michael would be better than nobody."

"Hmm." I thought about that, and splashed idly in the water. "Are we sure that they're NOT playing a deep alliance?"

"I'm pretty sure," Tess agreed. "Now, the Liz/Ava/Maria situation is a lot harder to read correctly... and of course, it's completely obvious that Alex and Isabel are working together, but I think they've managed to come up with something good. Isabel wasn't completely able to hide a smug look while I was bargaining with her brother. And I definitely think that Alex won something he could really use in the lying contest last night."

"Okay." I pondered that. "Any idea what their rockcrusher might be based on? Colors or playing cards - a flush or sequence maybe?"

"Well... I traded Alex the ten of spades on the day before yesterday... maybe that's part of it. Got a pretty good price for it at least."

"...you hope," I finished. Tess looked at me for a long moment.

"Even if it turns out to be more valuable than I thought... information is nothing to sneeze at. We needed some idea of the rules to make our own plans, right?" And I nodded. "So - any ideas for anything we can do to try and improve your portfolio before you turn it in?"

"Umm... wait a second, that threw me," I admitted, "Thought we were going to flip a coin or something for who gets to present."

"Nah... I trust you, you'll give me my fair share, whatever the prize is," she said. "Better this way, I think."

"Okay, well... maybe try to trade odd playing cards for valuable colors. I think that's our best bet for picking up a few extra points quickly."

"Kay," Tess said, and suddenly dived down to the bottom of the stream, apparently just for the heck of it. I watched her smooth, sleek legs poke up above the surface for a moment, and thought a very un-brotherly thought. But it didn't last for long.

------------

(Michael):

"Michael!" Isabel exclaimed. "Your roast is dripping, and it's making the fire snap and crackle."

I looked at her... I'd been sitting on one of the logs a few feet away and keeping the spit turning with my powers... because it's easy to cook yourself by accident while cooking meat on a spit and turning the spit by hand. "Umm, yeah. That's what normally happens when cooking meat on a spit."

"But they're crackling right *at* me," she insisted, "while I'm trying to get the stew set, and the fire's too hot anyway." She sighed. "Maybe you should build a second firepit for your spit."

"Maybe *I* should?" I asked, getting up. "Umm... a second fire makes sense, but - a) I was the one who started cooking my stuff first. b) It took a while to get the spit set up here, and I'm not moving it. c) I went to a lot of trouble to build the fire up this high, and d) I can't go and start building a firepit right now, because I have to keep the spit turning. You go build one."

"What??"

"Okay, c'mon guys, let's not get into a war here," Liz said, stepping up. "Isabel... we'll all help you make a second campfire for the stuff you're cooking."

"Nah, I'm sure Izzie will appreciate your help, Liz," I started. "But as I said..."

"Oh, I can take over for you at the spit, Michael," Ava said sweetly from just behind my shoulder. Ohh... had Liz and Ava planned this little ambush? "You go help make Isabel's fire for her."

Well, there wasn't really anything I could say to that, so after checking to make sure that Ava could keep the roast turning at the right speed, I hurried over to the other edge of the clearing and dug out a little ground to make a campfire bit as quickly as I could, and it didn't take too long to arrange some kindling and firewood into a fire that fit Isabel's requirements.

I went back to the spit once Isabel's flame was started, and Maria came out of the tent to sit next to me, and we chatted with Ava, who mentioned some stuff about moving out or, just possibly, getting a bigger place together. That was a conversation that I hadn't expected to get into, but it makes sense that Ava would be feeling a little cramped, and it would be kinduv cool to find a place where Ava could have her own bedroom, and really be roommates with her, instead of just letting her crash on my couch. The idea of moving into Valenti's house when he, Kyle, and Tess moved into Ed's house was something that I was more than a little doubtful of, though. From there, somehow we got started on a story of Ava's about the four of them taking over a house in the Hamptons and pretending to be the rightful owners, because they knew that the actual guys had bought the house without ever having been to see it. Maria wondered out loud when the big move would be happening, and what it'd be like for her to be sharing a room with Tess.

Pretty soon afterwards, it seemed, we were starting to eat, quite a magnificent banquet. The roast beef off the spit was great, (it was a bottom round cut that Maria and I had paid enough for,) and there was another batch of campfire stew, and potatoes and other veggies that Isabel had cooked, and a kind of pizza that Kyle and Tess made on the barbecue. We swapped stories and jokes for a long time, and then Max got up and tapped a knife against his coke can to call for attention, which didn't work very well, so Liz yelled 'listen up!' at all of us.

"Thanks," Max said, smiling at her. "Well, since we're all on our third helpings, I thought I'd take the opportunity to let you know about the big prize for the haggle game... a state of the art, kick-ass home theater system! I realize that not all of us would just be able to bring it home without attracting awkward questions from parental units, but, well... we'll work that out once we find out who wins. Oh, and I'd like to thank Rath and Lonnie, for donating the prize to us as part of the spoils of war." I laughed at that.

"Where did you find it?" I asked. "I mean, the only place that we ran into them was the school, the park, Maria's mom's office, and that bunker out in the desert, and they couldn't really keep a big-screen TV any of those places."

"I knew where they'd been living here in Roswell, remember?" Ava pointed out. "Following them as well as I could without getting spotted myself. Fancy seventh-floor apartment on the north side."

"Okay," Max continued. "Game submissions must all be in by quarter to nine tonight; anybody who hasn't put his or her envelope on the picnic table by then will be automatically disqualified. That gives us all nearly two hours... at which point Laurie will take charge of scoring the submissions, and announce the winner." Laurie nearly choked on a bit of pizza.

"Umm, thanks Max," she muttered, and I realize why you named me, since I'm the only one here who isn't really playing... but from what I've seen of the rules, they're very complicated, and a lot of math involved... and I'm not sure that I'll be able to..."

"You, you don't have to do it all yourself," Liz pointed out, and Laurie smiled. "There are lots of us who are bright and pretty good with the math, [cough]Alex[cough], but all the rest of us aren't as impartial as you, so you oversee everything to make sure that there's no funny business. You just tell us what to do."

"Alright," Laurie agreed. There was a second, and then Tess called out that she really wanted to buy purple color cards, and there was a huge explosion of dickering, shilling, and general attempts to attract favorable trades, none of which really seemed to come to much. Everybody was pretty distrustful of giving other players what they wanted, so close to the end... I know that Maria gave a brown to Kyle in exchange for two low and mismatched red playing cards, and Isabel got a look at a rule slip from Liz by giving her a white index. But I don't think that there was much more last-minute trading... Liz and Max made everybody ice cream sundaes in little styrofoam cups for desert, and then everybody kind of broke up into teams and off by themselves to put their packs together. Max, Maria, and I were the only ones who were by themselves... and from the look Maria shot Liz, she had expected to be going with Liz instead of Liz going with Ava... that broke my heart just enough that I decided to play some kind of mean prank on Liz to pay her back if she had been deliberately cultivating my girl while staying in a secret alliance with someone else. Isabel and Alex were together of course, as well as Kyle and Tess, which didn't really surprise me though they'd been keeping it pretty quiet.

Everybody had their packages in pretty quickly, but Laurie, Ava, Alex, and several others insisted that noboy should start opening and scoring them yet, so we just sat around the big campire as the sun set and twilight started to draw in. "So, Alex, how early are you guys heading back to Las Cruces tomorrow morning?" I asked.

"Umm... pretty early," Alex admitted. "Max is driving us all the way back, and Liz keeping him company. Hoping to make campus by quarter to noon. I have a project meeting at twelve thirty."

"Alright," Tess replied. "What about you, Isabel? Any classes on a tuesday??"

"Not normally," she answered. "But most of my philosophy tutorial group are going to be having a makeup session tomorrow, I think, because we usually meet on Mondays. Not mandatory for anybody who can't make it, but I'll be there I think, because I definitely can."

"Alright," Tess replied. "And I've got a busy week coming up at the diner. So do you guys, right Liz? Michael??"

"Umm, yep." There had been some horse trading going on... the fourth of july was generally a busy time at the Crashdown cafe, especially since the associations it held with the original '47 crash, even though nobody was quite sure when the crash had happened... (except for Hal Carver and some of the other people who had been there at the time,) but it had definitely in that part of the year, and the fourth was the most notable point to associate with early July. Liz had made a really big deal about all four of us getting the time off, since it was the only chance Alex and Isabel had had to come back to Roswell in a long time, (well, except for that brief trip when she'd been worried about the alien attack.) And Jeff Parker had eventually agreed, but said that we'd have to make up extra shifts at his discretion, since he'd have to get other staff to give up their holidays and was offering them other time off in exchange. Liz and I were kind of quietly protecting Maria from having to work too hard, 'on account of her delicate condition,' (hee heh,) so the two of us, along with Tess, were carrying the brunt of the load.

"And the rest of you," Laurie said quietly, "are going to be working at the UFO center, yes?"

"Umm, Ava definitely," Kyle filled in. "Max to a certain extent, though his stuff is more chasing around looking for flying saucers than actually working at the museum, this summer. I haven't heard for sure yet, but I'll probably be able to pick up some time, yeah. And of course, Maria is still waiting tables at the diner too."

"Right, I knew that," Laurie quickly said.

We started trading some scary jokes, which quickly turned into swapping disgustingly gross jokes, until Liz was driven to demand that Laurie start opening up and scoring packages. I kept with the obscene jokes, especially since nobody could pretend that I'd be much help with the scoring, and eventually it was only Maria, (who joined into the filthy stuff with surprising gusto,) myself, Kyle, and Ava sitting around the fire. After a little while, Laurie came up holding a big sheet of notes, and the other five resumed their places. "Okay... how should I do this?" Laurie asked nervously.

"Drag it out," Maria called. "Start with the second from the bottom and work your way up." I grinned, yeah, that could be fun. Of course, by the time the winner was announced, it would be between him (or her) and the biggest loser, so that might be pretty easy to guess, but that was still, I thought, more dramatic than working up from the very bottom, which meant that the winner and the first runner-up were essentially named at once.

"And say how everybody got all of their points," Ava added.

"Alright, let's see. In eighth place, well, tied for eighth place, is Isabel, who didn't turn in anything at all." Right... Isabel must have thrown all of her support behind Alex... and someone from one of the other teams, at least, must have done the same. "Zero points. In seventh place, Liz, with a single green card. Fifteen points." Hmm... I wonder why she'd turned that in herself instead of letting Ava have it... was there some reaon that it would be counterproductive for their team effort??

"In sixth place," my sister continued, "with ninety-four points for a club royal flush, and 36 for four black cards, valued at a 50% premium because he had three or more -- Michael. Total of 130 points." I waved slightly. Okay, sixth place. Pretty much sucked, but then I hadn't been trying hard. "Next up, Maria, with ninety-four points for HER royal flush, in diamonds, 44 for four twos, 29 for a pair of sixes, five for a lone five, and eight points for two whites, totalling one-hundred eighty. Max is in fourth place, with 66 points for triple sevens, 42 points for triple fours, 17 for a pair of threes, and 68 for color cards, totalling 193."

A hush fell over the camp. It came down to this - each of the teams had one player in contention, presumably. "In third place... fifteen points for the four five six of diamonds..." Liz groaned in frustration, so it wasn't hard to tell who this was about. "Ninety-four for a royal flush in hearts, 45 for three greens, 50 for two purples, and 20 for a single brown. Ava." Ava nodded as graciously as she could. "Now, the final two were very close. Both did AMAZINGLY well, with each over twice the points of the next nearest competitor."

"Enough with the dragging it out," Kyle called. "Did I win, or what?"

Laurie froze for a second. "Sorry, Kyle, no." Now everything was pretty clear, but we stayed quiet to let the tolls get read. "Kyle, you got one-hundred sixteen for four eights, including the crazy eights, which added in a bonus of 30 and doubled the value of your quad nines, so they scored two-hundred and fifty six. With your american flag bonus and your color cards, including the browns, that brings you up to four hundred eighty-seven." Liz whistled in surprise. "But Alex submitted the spade royal flush, which had a special value of a hundred fifty, doubled through quadruple yellow cards, 30 for a rainbow set bonus, one-hundred fifty total in color cards, 25 for a pair of fives... and nine for singles. Total value, five hundred and fourteen. A very close race... but you got it, Alex."

"And now, we need to figure out if we're taking the home theater to Las Cruces," Isabel laughed.

"Well, we're not taking it there tomorrow," Max shot in. "Well, congratulations to Alex and Isabel... incredibly well haggled. And to Kyle and Tess, who gave them a heck of a run for it. Everybody else... we had fun, didn't we?"

"Yeah, I'd say so," Maria admitted. There was a general murmur of assent to this. "Can I have a look at the full rules sometime?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "Just what the heck was the American flag bonus anyway?"

"For handing in two whites, two reds, and two blues," Tess supplied.

"Yeah, anyone who wants can see the full rules," Max agreed.

We chatted more as the stars came out, and Alex and Isabel said that they were going skywatching for just a little while. "Remember that you both have to be up early tomorrow," Liz reminded.

"Yeah," Isabel giggled. "But I can catch up on sleep in the car, right?"

Maria and I headed off to our tent pretty soon after that. "So, we go back to Roswell proper tomorrow," I told her. "Any idea what you'll be up to, aside from work at the cafe?"

"No, not really," she admitted. "Aside from plenty of this."

And she kissed me, hot and passionately.

------------

(Alex):

"Mmmm, mmm." I mumbled around Isabel's lips, our arms wrapped tightly around each other. "As much as it seems completely strange and, rrrrr, and foreign to say this," I managed to whisper while licking the side of her jaw that appreached her ear, "we can kiss nearly anytime. I'd actually like to get a little star watching in."

Isabel backed away and stared deeply into my eyes. "How could you DARE to say a thing like that to me!!" But the tone of her voice, and the giggles that ensued right afterwards, made it pretty clear that she was entirely joking, and soon the two of us got ourselves arranged into a comfy position, sitting in a concave rock formation that seemed more than a little like a reclined loveseat in shape, a warm blanket covering both the 'seat' and the 'backrest.' I reached out to hold Isabel's hand, but she didn't content herself with that, taking her fingers and running them over my sweater, up and down the side of my chest, as we took turns pointing out stars. I let my hand fall and rest next to the curve of her hip, the back of my knuckles touching her jeans.

"It's been a great weekend, hasn't it?" I asked casually. "I don't think I realized quite how much I missed our friends until I got this chance to spend some time with them all together. And to get to know Laurie and Ava a little bit better."

"Yeah, definitely cool," Isabel agreed. "And I hope that we managed to make Maria's mom feel a little bit more comfortable about Maria being with Michael." She sighed, and I noticed a smile crossing her face. "Yah."

"Hmm... what's the smile for? I doubt it's entirely about Missus DeLuca," I pointed out.

"Ohh... just that song that you and Ava played together that night," she said. "I... I didn't realize that you could do instrumentals like that."

I had to smile. "I'm really nothing special, musically. Maybe I should put some more time into it... when I don't have to focus so intently on this computer stuff."

"I think that might be a good idea," she admitted, though there was something small in Isabel's voice that hinted she didn't really agree with the judgement of 'nothing special.' "Though training to become an amazing musician would really make me happy, I suppose that concentrating on the computer stuff might be better for your future career prospects, and make your parents happier." She started to rub against my shirt just a little bit harder.

"Well, I can probably do both," I said with a smile. "Oooh, is that Elnath? The bright horn of Taurus the bull?" I pointed up into the sky.

"Yeah, I think so." Isabel laughed. "I think I read a science fiction story with aliens coming from Elnath, among other places. The Nathians were like intelligent carpets that crawled along the ground, and could manipulate tiny things very well with opposable fibers. Very paranoid about people of other races sitting or standing on them."

"Yeah, I think I might have read that book too," I admitted. "Seemed a little weird, but then... well, who knows how alien life might develop, really? Antarians seem pretty close to human beings, all things considered... but they made the Gandarium, and boy are the Gandarium strange."

"Definitely," Isabel said. "But I think that's enough talking about aliens now. Do you really want to look at more stars?"

I grinned, anticipating what was coming next from the sound of her voice. "Not especially. What else do you have to suggest?"

She split my shirt and sweater right down the front using her powers and started running her hands over my skin.

When the two of us finally got back to camp, nobody else was up or around, the fire was doused, and when I activated the glowing backlight on my digital watch, it said 1:20 am. "Oh, boy, I'm gonna be cranky when we wake up in the morning."

"Then I'll just have to kiss you until you aren't cranky any more," Isabel said with a grin.

"Is that a promise? You'll probably be too cranky to make out with me," I teased. "Plus, we might both have morning breath."

"Well, if we both have it, is it such a problem?" Isabel asked. "As far as whether I'll be too cranky to go through with it... just you wait."

I changed into pajamas, crawled into the sleeping bag, and drifted off waiting for the morning.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Thirty-six

(Alex, still):

"Okay, come on guys. Alex, you have to get up now if you're gonna make your meeting. Rise and shiner!"

I guess I woke up just as Liz started speaking - I don't really remember anything before that, other that a sensation of waking up in the coolest part of the dark still night with Isabel breathing softly in my arms -- and a series of odd dream images with people from the future tossing purple jellybeans at each other and flying mushrooms with whips for tails.

"Isn't it bad enough just getting up after this little sleep, without you wishing us black eyes as well?" Isabel muttered. For a second the reference to black eyes confused me, and then I got it - another meaning for the word 'shiner.' And then, the things that Isabel and I had been talking about last night before going to bed came back to me.

I'd predicted crankiness, and Isabel had promised to kiss it away. But I didn't FEEL cranky... I felt like I hadn't gotten enough sleep, and that little itchy feeling just above the back of my neck that might turn into a headache later on. Headache might well lead to crankiness... but itchiness wasn't enough to make me feel cranky, especially being out here with the morning sun shining on the side of our tent, and the girl I loved lying in my arms. Hmm... but Izzy had sounded a little cranky, a moment before. Maybe I should kiss *her* crankiness away...

I was too late. It seemed that Isabel moved very quickly to turn around in my arms and bend her neck to press her lips against mine. "I said I'd do it, and I'm doing it. Do you need more?"

I laughed. "Actually, I was just thinking that I don't feel cranky yet... though that might change when the pre-headache stops incubating and emerges fully grown. How about yourself? You sound a bit cranky."

"Umm.. yeah, not horribly, but yeah. Maybe a seven point one out of ten crankiness scales."

"Anything I can do to make you feel better?"

Isabel smiled... I think that was the first moment that I could really see her face clearly since waking up. "Shower me in kisses... massage my back, my shoulders, and my feet. Sing to me, softly and sweetly." She sighed. "Time permitting."

We squeezed in a small shower of kisses and a short backrub (with a bit of singing at the same time,) before we finally had to emerge from the tent for breakfast. I was surprised that the morning was well getting on and still very little of the camp seemed to be getting packed up. Isabel asked Max about that over her pancakes and scrambled eggs.

"Yeah, it looks like camping was such a hit that everyone who can wants to stay out longer," Max replied with a grin. "That would be Michael and Laurie, Kyle Tess and Ava. Maria's already gone to work off her shift at the Crash."

"Oh, right," I replied. "Umm... I'd better make sure to ask Michael to pass on my goodbyes to her before we leave. Since I didn't catch her directly."

"Sure," Liz agreed. "But we'd probably better get on the road as soon. I'm not sure how crowded the roads are going to be, but the day after a long weekend..."

"Yeah, maybe," Isabel agreed. "But things weren't bad on the bus, and that was the friday afternoon before a long weekend." Liz acknowledged this point with a nod.

So we finished breakfast, packed up a few things that Isabel and I needed to have back at the University, and said our goodbyes. Once we were on our way, Liz started chatting about the wedding planning meeting that she'd have to go to.

"Aw, stop complaining," Isabel said with a friendly smile. "I'm kind of regretting that I won't be able to join in. Kinduv always wanted to be a bridesmaid."

"Really?" Liz asked. "I dunno, somehow I guess I've been expecting the worst. Not that I really expect Missus DeLuca to act like a stereotypical Bridezilla, or make us all wear atrocious paisley nylon dresses or whatever, it's just..." she sighed. "I feel honored that she chose me, but why didn't she pick at least one friend her own age?"

"Hard to say," I put in. "Maybe, as much as she likes them, she doesn't think they'll approve of the kind of wedding she and Jim want to have. Or maybe, once they decided that they wanted their kids in the wedding party, it kind of made sense to have a bunch of other kids the same age as attendants too."

"Except for Mister Blackwood," Max put in. He was Jim Valenti's oldest friend, his senior deputy when he had been the sheriff, and he was going to be the best man, walking with Maria up and down the aisle. (Assuming that they went with the usual processional stuff.) I always wondered why the city council made young, enthusiastic Hanson the new sheriff and not Blackwood, but I guess they'd had their reasons.

After we'd been driving for about twenty minutes, Isabel and I were nodding off in the back seat, and Max and Liz didn't seem to mind very much. They woke us up several hours later to ask if we wanted to get some lunch - Max pulled off to a combination hot dog stand / pizza on the go place. He and Isabel had big eastern european sausages in hot dog buns, drizzled with horseradish and tabasco, and Liz and I shared a little pepperoni mushroom pie.

"So, any ideas yet how long before you can get to the actual translation stuff?" Max asked me once we were back on the road. "Not looking to bug, just wondered."

"It's a fair question." I sighed. "Maybe a month or five weeks yet. We're still finishing up the source language and compiler rewrites, and then there's a lot of the translation system that'll need to be converted to the new language. Assuming that that works, the project bigwigs will have the quantum core busy for several days to a week running more and more involved unknown passages through it." I sighed. "And there's still no guarantee that it'll work for something as unknown as your book. My algorithm - and several other pieces - might have human preconceptions about what 'language' and 'meaning' are."

"Well, you'll try as hard as you can, if I know you," Liz predicted, "until it's time to come back to Roswell for senior year. And even that won't be a complete failure - you might be able to go back later, since you helped out so much over the summer, yeah?"

"Yep, that would probably work," I agreed. But somehow the idea of being stuck inside all summer working hard on programming code didn't really appeal... no matter how much it might help Isabel. And Isabel - her classes would only continue for three more weeks, more or less. Once that was done... she'd have to go back to Roswell. Sure, she'd be coming up to visit me as often as she could, but that wouldn't be the same. I sighed softly.

Isabel reached out to take my hand firmly in hers, and I looked up into her eyes. She understood the sacrifices that I was willing to make, I realized, and would do everything that she could to make things all right. That actually made me feel a lot better.

And we drove on, south and west through the desert.

----------

(Max):

"Yes, Ryan, I'm not going to say it again," Brody insisted. "The information that Max brought back can be trusted... it doesn't look like anything that he could have faked in the time available, and what reason would he have to deceive us? What reason would the people in Jackson's unit have for keeping faked information about this sort of thing?"

"Alright, alright Davs," Ryan Elson, a tall man with light-to-middling brown skin and an intelligent face, replied. "Forgive me if I've gotten used to questioning everything in this field, especially everything that looks as stunning as this." He smiled slightly. "Well, I suppose the first step is to try and identify any government storage facilities in Utah that would match up with this information. Large enough to hold... our objective, and convenient to whatever routes might have been used for secure transport."

"Yes. We've already done a preliminary research query on it," Brody shot back, passing a sheet back to Ryan. "Only found two, though if you can identify any other candidates, I'd be grateful." He sighed. "Once that's done... the three of us need to go do a field trip to research them."

Ryan turned to look at me. "You sure you want to come along for this, Max?"

I tried not to let my nervousness show. "Yeah, if you'll have me. I'll need to mention it to my parents, of course, since we're probably talking a several trip to get to Utah, visiting a couple of different addresses that won't be particularly close to each other... and maybe consolidating notes before we leave in case we need to make a followup visit to one after seeing another. But I don't think that they'll be any problems there."

"Of course you're welcome to come along, Max," Brody said with a small smile on his face. "As far as I'm considered, this is a two way street. You promised to cut me in on everything, and I'll treat you the same way. You came up with this lead, so you're going to be with me every step of the way in chasing it down - as long as you want to be, that is." I smiled back.

"What's the deal, here, Davis?" Ryan asked. "I mean, forgive me for being blunt. But... but you've never been one for trusting new people easily... especially brash young kids."

I stayed quiet, curious what Brody's reaction to this would be. (I was pretty certain that he wasn't going to throw me off the case on Ryan's say-so.) "When I first came here to Roswell, and bought this place from Milton Ross, well, I was a little uncertain about Max here, since he'd been hired by Ross. Kept him out of what I was doing to move into the place, but I caught him sneaking into my office, looking at my computer files, and handling some of -- the pieces in my collection. Of course, I let him know then that his services would no longer be required or retained."

"Umm, alright," Ryan said softly.

"Two nights later, he shows up into my office again, and, well... I won't go into all the details. At first I thought he was -- what's the expression you Americans have? 'Going postal on me.' But... well, I think I realized that day that he was a young man who had as many unanswered questions about aliens as any of us, and an unusual knack for stepping into unexpected revelations about them."

"By the way, I've been meaning to say something about that night, Brody," I mentioned. "There was a kind of misunderstanding, that... well, it was an awkward situation, and I never really got a chance to correct you about..."

"You're not an actual alien abductee," Brody filled in, "and you didn't realize that I was one either when you came. Yeah, Max, I've figured out that much since then. Unimportant detail, as far as I'm concerned... except that I'd love to know what you had in mind when you demanded to know if I was 'one of you.'" I probably made a face - I couldn't exactly tell Brody *that* without opening a jumbo sized barrel of worms. "Didn't really think that you'd go for that today," he added with a smile.

"Alright, so... you think that Max has a knack for finding alien stuff. Guess I can't argue with that," Ryan said. "Guess we'll be working together for a while, Evans." He reached out his hand to mine, and I shook it. "As far as government installations in Utah, yeah, I might have a database that's worth checking in."

"Alright," I said, indicating a computer... not Brody's personal one, but the general museum employee computer. "Do you need a special network VPN or anything like that?"

Ryan turned a frosty grin on me. "No, it's not networked. Just a flash card reader." He withdrew a small black rectangle from his jacket. I drew in a breath and took a look in the drawer to see if there was a compatible adapter there.

"Check in my desk, Evans," Brody told me. "Back of the bottom left drawer." He tossed his office keys to me, and I hurried off. "How much cap do you have on that think, Elson, anyway??"

"It's rated at two gigs, though I'm only really using one point seven."

"I thought that they hadn't released compact flash cards above one gig, yet."

"Not for the general public." I just heard the laughter that followed that remark before getting out of range - I didn't waste any time, just dashed into Brody's office, opened the right drawer all the way, and found something that looked about right - a larger black block with a hole in it about the right shape, and a USB connector cord trailing out of its other end. By the time I brought it back, Ryan was already sitting at the computer - I tossed the card drive adapter to him, and he plugged it into the available slot on the front of the windows tower and immediately got to work.

It was interesting stuff to watch - the 'flash card' that Ryan had brought evidently had its own database query software loaded as well as several different databases - some kind of format I'd never seen before, which didn't really say much. He worked away for a little while - less time that Brody and I had taken on the problem, checked off both of the addresses that we'd already got and added one more with a question mark after it.

"Alright. This definitely is going to take a little time - maybe three days. How soon do we want to move?"

"Not until the end of the week at least," Brody decided. "I'm as anxious as anybody to keep things rolling, but there's no big hurry really. What do you think, Evans?"

"Yeah, I should be available anytime," I said, not adding that Liz would probably be bummed about me taking off for so long. But that really was something more private. I also wondered about mentioning Ava - but right now wasn't the time, especially with Ryan already nervous about me being on the team. Once we'd done our initial factfinding and were brainstorming on a plan to actually get into the heart of one of these Utah warehouses, then I could make a case for Ava's unique talents - the two of us had talked about that over the camping weekend and had a few good ideas about how to camoflage what she could do so that it seemed useful, but not as obviously alien.

"Okay, then I'll probably be jetting back to Phoenix and back whenever you boys are ready," Ryan said with a smile. "Or maybe just meet you in Salt Lake City."

"Come on," Brody joked. "You've got a private plane - don't you want to let a couple working joes like Max and me on?" I blinked. Was Ryan rich? (Then again, Brody was pretty bleeding rich himself, though he didn't make a big deal out of it. He could probably afford his own private plane - the phrase 'working joe' didn't really apply.)

"Well, don't leave yet," I said. "Not until you've tasted Roswell's famous men-in-blackberry pie." Brody smiled, though Ryan couldn't see from the way he was facing. He knew what I was up to.

"Oh, you don't have to tell me," Ryan said. "I was having men in blackberry pie back when you were a toddler!" That surprised me. Ryan had been to the Crashdown before?? Of course, I'd never really been a toddler in the sense that he expected, but... based on how old I looked, that would have been back in 'eighty-six or so. That was long before the movie 'Men in Black', or even the comic books, but of course, the term had originated a a conspiracy theorist term back in the fifties... not long after the 'fourty-seven crash. (That was something that I'd learned by working here.) "Wouldn't have left town without paying my respects to Jeff and Nancy anyway." He must have caught me jumping slightly with the names. "Do you, umm..."

Brody couldn't resist jumping in any longer, apparently. "Max here is dating Liz Parker. Jeff and Nancy Parker's daughter."

Ryan's eyes widened. "Liz? I... I vaguely remember a little girl running through the dining room... but yeah, I guess she'd be about your age, huh Max?" I nodded. "Did she grow up as pretty as her mom?"

Okay, this turn that the conversation had taken was really weird. "Umm... she's beautiful," I admitted honestly.

Trevor grinned slightly. "A little heartbreaker?"

I thought about that, reminded of the rant Kyle had aimed at me the week of the blind date contest last year, about Liz being a heartbreaker. Definitely she had broken my heart at least once... and been the focus of my deliberately breaking it myself as well. But that wasn't in her nature, just something about the craziness of our situation. "Let's just go and get some pie."

------------

(Maria):

"So, how was your shift?" Michael asked me as we climbed into the car.

"Ehh, okay." I sighed. "Max, Brody, and this other guy came in for pie and coffee, and stayed over two and a half hours. Liz's father was sitting with them for some of the time." I shrugged. "Aside from that, nothing really sticks out... it was just busy."

Michael nodded. "Do you have to go back home right away?"

"Yep. Time to face the music."

"Alright, then I'm coming with you," he replied instantly.

"No." I sighed. "No, love, you're not. I know my mother. She appreciates that you were by my side when we first told her... and I do too. And obviously you were there when she came out to the campfire. But this is a conversation that we have to have by ourselves - woman to woman." I leaned over to softly kiss him on the cheek. "Don't worry darling - everything will be okay."

Michael didn't look terribly pleased as he dropped me off, but I waited until he put Bronto in gear and drove away. Mom was waiting exactly where I'd somehow expected her, sitting on her bed propped up with her pillow covering the headboard and her knees lifted slightly, a mug half full of hot chocolate sitting on the end table beside her. I climbed up onto the foot of her bed and crossed my legs into a half-lotus. "So."

She smiled slightly at me. "Do... do you remember the morning that I caught Michael in your bed??"

"Not terribly likely to ever forget anything about that day," I pointed out, and she smiled weakly. "After he left, you told me that you knew your history with men had been a train wreck, and you'd be damned oif you let me make the same mistakes."

"Yeah." Mom sighed. "I... I still don't want that. But I think lately I've come to terms with the idea that as much as I want to protect you, I can't make your decisions for you out of fear. And as much as what's going on between you and Michael worries me... there's no particular reason that it can't all work out, and make you very happy and fufilled for the rest of your life." I blinked in surprise.

"Was... was that you saying that you don't particularly disapprove of our plans?" I asked with an odd cock of my head.

"Wouldn't go quite that far," she grumped. "But... you're really pregnant?" I nodded. "You really mean to have the baby and raise him or her yourselves?" Second's pause, and then I nodded again. "You're engaged, and you both mean to go through with the wedding, for keeps? Death do you part??"

"Umm... yeah, at least, I feel that strongly about it, and though I usually don't like to speak on Michael's behalf, I'm pretty sure that he does too."

"Then what does my approval or disapproval matter?"

"Well..." I took a deep breath. "To pick three things off the top of my head, I want you to be there for my wedding... either to walk me up the aisle or stand by my side as a bride's maid - I haven't quite made up my mind about which, or both." Mom chuckled. "I... I want you to be there when my child is born, and for him or her to never be far from Gabba DeLuca through the years. If... if your disapproval would..."

"No," Mom interrupted. "Never think that. I may be nervous about your choices, but NOTHING will ever make me step away from your life or your family, darling girl." She leaned forwards, her body nearly turning over as she hurried to embrace me. "I still want to do all of that and more." She took a deep breath. "Though... I admit I'm worried that you're going to go far enough away that I won't be able to."

"What... what do you mean?" I asked nervously.

"Well... Michael's heritage," she said ominously. "Come a day, he might have to... to leave, to travel to another planet or something, right? And you... if you really meant what you said about making a marriage work, then you'll be going with him. But... but even if I get the invite, even if it's for your sake, there's no way that I could..."

"Right, I get it. And I think you can relax - none of us are going to be leaving the planet anytime soon." But why did that scene seem so oddly familiar: Michael and I arriving on an alien world together... even making wedding plans there? Was it just because of the stuff that Alex was doing up in Las Cruces, and Max's search for flying saucers, that had me thinking of interstellar journeys.

"By the way, Mom," I said, wanting to change the subject. "Last year, when you were telling me how bad your decisions about men had been... did you ever think that you and Mister Valenti would be getting married??" She looked at me - and started to laugh.

"No, I have to admit that I didn't... and that steps on my point just a little. You can never tell when things are going to work out for the best after all... at least, I really think that they're working out for the best now."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Which is probably why you're not getting any madder at me than this?" She considered, and nodded in agreement. "So... have you had dinner yet?"

"Not really... been nibbling on stuff since the late afternoon."

"Mom!" I sighed. "If you want to still fit into that dress, you need to remember to eat smart. Come on - there are those skim-cheese frozen pizzas in the freezer, and we can chop our own fresh toppings."

"Alright," she agreed, standing up. "I guess you've got to eat smart, too, with the little one to think about." I nodded. "And maybe I'll crumble just a little bacon onto one of the pizzas. As a special treat."

I smiled and followed her towards the kitchen.

----------

(Tess:)

"Oh, boy."

I turned the televison on, flipped up a few channels, then changed my mind entirely and flipped it back off. This was an especially boring summer afternoon - I didn't have a shift at the diner today, Kyle was off at the UFO center, and Mrs DeLuca had taken Mister Valenti to talk to a printer about something to do with his woodworking gig... a trade flyer or something like that. I sighed, turned around, and noticed the computer - Mister V's desktop, which he'd brought out of his office about a week ago, so that he could use his desk as a measuring table. I'm allowed to use it when he doesn't need it, as long as I don't try to get into somebody else's files, so I sat in the chair for a moment and logged into my hotmail.

Let's see - spam, spam, scam, spam. Some reminder that I'd signed up for about a film costuming workshop, before the movie folded. Didn't really care about it anymore. Yet more scams, and last of all - 'just saying hi' from ice_queen_of_Roswell@yahoo.com. I clicked quickly on that one, wondering what Isabel had to say.

"Hi there Tess. Don't really have terribly much to share here, just wanted to send you a friendly hello. Alex had to take off really early this morning for the Quantum stuff, and I don't have classes or a study group to go to, or really any homework left, so it sounds like a kinda boring, slightly lonely day. I'm pretty much enjoying my classes, though it seems a little weird that I'm mostly breezing through material that the real college students are struggling with.

"Alex took me into town for dinner last night, a little cantina with no sign, off a dark alley, that served authentic Peruvian cuisine. You'd love Peru food I think Tess, maybe we all would - fairly spicy and REALLY sweet. I wonder if Antarians landed in the mountains of Peru thousands of years ago, and exchanged recipes or something.

"Okay, that's about all I can think of to say right now. Write me back and put a little smile into my day if you can... especially if you actually read this on Saturday. Ciao. Isabel."

I smiled, thought about picking up the phone and calling Las Cruces, but long distance wasn't cheap and email replies were free. I hit the button to respond and thought for a moment about what I should write.

"Hello there Isabel. You're not really missing much by not being here in Roswell... well, not as far as I can tell. Everybody's really working a lot here... it kinduv seems strange that out of all the kids in the gang who stuck around, we've all ended up working either at the Cafe or the Museum... well, at least Kyle will hopefully be working at the museum... he hasn't really gotten anything official yet, though hopefully he will by the end of today.

"The weather's been hot and a little more humid than usual for the desert. Is it the same over where you are? Maria's mom and Kyle's dad are spending a lot of time on his carpentry gig... and apparently the results are okay... he's delivered on a few commissions already and taken some others, and he made a few things on the side to take to a trade show in a week and a half and see if he could sell them there. They're not spending that much time on the wedding - looks like it's going to be a very small ceremony, near the end of the summer - maybe the weekend before Labour day. You and Alex are invited, of course, and maybe your parents if they really want to come. They're talking about having an outdoor ceremony out on Lyon's field and then a reception at the Crashdown. Oh, and though nobody's dress is settled on yet, the ones that Amy showed us as possible bridesmaid's dresses are really very pretty... the sort of thing that I might even be able to get away with wearing to senior prom too. You hear so much talk about ridiculous and ugly bridesmaid dresses that I was getting a little worried despite myself.

"You probably want to hear a lot about your brother, but I don't have that much to say. There's been some more planning about Utah - maybe he's going to be actually going there sometime soon. I think that Liz is bummed that he doesn't have too much time to spend with her. Ohh, Liz interviewed me two nights ago about all kinds of alien stuff -- apparently, it was a project that she had decided to tackle, erm, well, before the Terrible Trio came to town anyway. I don't really remember everything that we went over, but she was pretty thorough. Said that she wants to come up with a big reference of all of our alien knowledge, in case it comes in handy when the next crisis hits, whatever that is. I made a few jokes about making sure that nobody who isn't in on the secret gets ahold of her notes, but she kinda shot back that she's gotten good at keeping incriminating evidence out of sight, ever since one early slipup. Do you know what she meant by that??

"Michael and Maria... are still about as sweet as anything you might want to gag at... I keep wondering whether that's going to last until it's time for her to give birth or not. Mrs Deluca seems to be adjusting to the revelations pretty well, by the way, though I still feel like she wishes her daughter hadn't had to get mixed up with us. Same thing for her husband-to-be I suppose. Kyle is alright, except that he still seems a little odd when it comes to the subject of me and Ava. (Ava and I?) Not sure if you heard this, but I asked him to stop flirting with her, on the camping weekend... if they decide that they want to really start dating or whatever, I'll deal with it, but until then, I'd rather if they could get to know each other without making puppy dog eyes... at least, not when I'm around. At least I'm not spending that much time with Ava lately... it's just a little weird, looking into that face. I guess you know how that feels a little bit, on account of Lonnie, though I'll admit that Lonnie had some issues we don't need to worry about with Ava.

"Okay, umm, that's about all I can think of to ramble on about right now. Talk to ya soon. Tess H."

I sent the message, pulled Isabel's letter back up, laughed about the fact that we'd started our last paragraphs in very similar ways, and pulled up a little bug program that would let me know if I got new hotmail that didn't get eaten by the spam program. Waited for about fifteen minutes, not sure why I expected that Isabel would write back right away, and then went off to fix myself some lunch and clean up the kitchen a little, just because it was getting cluttered. (Things do tend to get messy around the house... I try to do my fair bit of keeping things tidy, but not much more, because it's important not to let the boys think that I'm their frickin' maid or anything.) There was one mail bell when I was just sitting down with my first hot dog and slice of bread, which turned out to be pretty much a false alarm - some ebay newsletter thing that I really don't want to read, but can't figure out how to get out of without giving up my auction account. The second bell, ten minutes later, (which works out to a hot dog and a half,) was the real deal. I finished my lunch in front of the computer, reading.

"Hi, girl, great to hear from you!! Sounds like everybody's really busy there, earning extra money and so on. Makes sense, except... this is the summer before your senior year - you should be SPENDING some of that money going somewhere nice, not just working like dogs. Ehh well. Maybe we can arrange some sort of group trip for August.

"Thanks for all of the news about the DeLuca-Valentis and so on. In answer to your questions, yes, it's been warm here in Las Cruces too, though I'm not sure if I'd say it's really humid... less dry than usual maybe. Did Liz mention if she was hoping to interview me too? She could come up to Las Cruces for the day maybe, hehe. Michael's already planning to come next weekend, and I have to say I'm really looking forward to it. Most of the girls in my dorm I just feel like I don't have much in common with, and everybody else who's here on campus during the summer seems very preoccupied with their studies or whatever. I try to get out and meet new people, make some friends, but it's not as easy as it was to get to know people back home in Roswell. Maybe that's just because I feel out of my element, being so far away from home for the first time. I did mention this to Marcie, she's the first girl I met here in the suite, and she said that it really is easier to socialize during the fall and winter terms. For one thing, if you start in September, there's all kinds of parties and mixers during new student orientation week - it really sounds like a lot of fun.

"Let's see, what else? Alex is supposed to get Wednesday off this coming week, and we've planned a bus trip down into El Paso for the day, which I hope will be fun. He tries to show me some of the computer stuff he's been working on, and explain it as well as he can, but I really only get five percent of it at most. Oh well.

"Hope Max is careful in Utah - if you get a chance, tell him that for me, okay? I'll try to reach him by phone, but my parents say they're not sure when I should call that it'll be a good time for him to chat, so I guess I know how Liz feels. Oh, and yes, I know what Liz is talking about as far as losing important info... at least, I think I do - the occasion on which she misplaced her diary. Tell you about that some other time, though.

"As far as Kyle and Ava... I realize that it must be very weird for you, but be careful not to alienate Kyle just because you're scared of losing him or whatever. If he and Ava really have that special connection, you won't really be able to make any progress by trying to stop them. I've figured out enough about love, slowly and painfully, to be sure of that. But Kyle loves you too, and that's something worth holding on to.

"Tag, you're it now. Iz."

I laughed, thought about all of the stuff that I wanted to tell her, and then got another idea. I started up a program that Kyle had told me about, and when I emailed Isabel back, I just sent some fairly terse instructions. About seven minutes later, a slightly crackly voice came over the computer speakers. "Hello, hello Tess? Are you reading me?"

"Yeah, girl, you're coming through loud and clear. Everything okay? Did it take you a while to set everything up?" I said, speaking into the microphone.

"Umm, actually, Alex already had all of this stuff installed on his laptop." Isabel laughed. "I was just walking over from the arts library to his dorm and letting myself in. It seemed easiest - you're not supposed to install chat programs on the library computers."

"Oh, of course, I hadn't realized that you were at the library," I said. Then again, I'm not sure what else I'd thought of. I knew that Isabel didn't have a computer of her own in her dorm room, and I hadn't really been expecting that she was hanging out at Alex's the whole time. "So, umm... sorry, I had a bunch of stuff that I was wanting to talk to you about, but I can't remember any of it now. Maybe I should pull your email back up again..."

"Nah," Isabel's voice cut in. "Talk about... Kyle. You said that he might be officially working for the Museum, starting today?"

I laughed. "Yeah... he went in with Ava, for an orientation session or something."

"Sounds pretty official already."

I shrugged. "It's a little hard to be sure sometimes, with Brody. But I wish him well... though it feels a little weird to think of him working with Max and Ava." I sighed. "And we still manage to have some fun together... he talked me into going with him and a football team buddy of his and the buddy's girlfriend for rock climbing. We scaled down a canyon out a few miles east of town. It was scary but kinduv fun." I smiled sadly. It had been so easy, for a few moments there, that I wasn't there as Kyle's sister, but on a double date... and it had actually been fun to think of it that way. Sigh. Too bad Kyle didn't think the same ways.

"Alright," Isabel agreed. "Hmm... you know that reminds me, I've been thinking of taking a look at the student gymnasium facilities here. Might as well stay in shape, as long as I've got the time, huh?"

"Wouldn't be a bad idea," I agreed. "Oh... do you know which day Michael was planning to go up next weekend? Was it one week from today?"

"Uhh, yeah, I think so - why?"

"Because I want to go with him... if that's okay."

"Sure! The more the better," Isabel insisted. "I live for familiar faces these days."

"Cool." Sigh. "So, do you think your courses are going to get any tougher as they wrap up? End of term assignments? Studying for final exams?"

"Maybe, yeah," she agreed. "There's going to be a history assignment that gets handed out on Monday, actually, that I'm expecting to be pretty tough. Not too worried though."

"Are... are you really upset that Alex is so busy?" I suddenly blurted out. "Because... because I feel in a weird way like it's my fault. If I hadn't been the first one to start the ball rolling on this Quantum Computer stuff - then he'd have nothing but time for you. That much is obvious."

I could almost hear Isabel's wide, wise smile. "Don't act like it's something to assign blame for, Tess." She sighed. "I'm a little bummed about not getting to spend time with him, yeah, but it's something worthwhile that he's doing, and he thinks of it as a labor of love for me. That means a lot." I smiled too.

"Okay, so, well... tell me more about Peruvian cuisine," I insisted with a smile. Isabel laughed.

----------

I was playing pyramid solitare on the bedspread when Kyle knocked on my open door, later that night. I looked up and smiled. "How did it go??"

"Eight and five," he mumbled.

"What... you have to work from eight to five?" I asked.

"No. Eight of diamonds, over there, and the five of spades in your hand. Make the play or you'll forget about it." I groaned, but put the two cards together and then moved them off to my discards or Kyle just would not freakin' let up about it.

"Okay, I made the play," I said, as if he couldn't have seen that for himself. I didn't turn over a new card and put the deck down beside my left leg, just as a hint. "Did you get the job?"

"Umm... I thought you knew I had," he mumbled. "That's why I was going in for orientation today." I blushed... okay, maybe I'd misunderstood the situation a bit. "Looks like it'll be - a bit of fun, at least compared to fixing cars."

"Cool," I said. "Do you want to talk any more about it?"

"Ehh... I dunno, somehow saying anything to you about aliens seems wrong," he joked, and I shook my head as I climbed carefully up out of my bed without disturbing any of the cards.

"Alright," I agreed. "How about we do something to celebrate your first day, though?"

"Hmm!" Kyle considered that. "We didn't do anything when you started at the Crashdown."

"Yeah," I agreed. "And don't think that I didn't notice that you didn't offer to take me out." He groaned a little bit at that, so I winked to let him know that I wasn't really very upset. "Come on. Anywhere you want to go - my treat."

He thought about that. "I think Dad's out in the garage. Can we invite him along?"

I considered for a moment. I'd really been looking forward to spending time all alone with Kyle... but if the pretext was a celebration of his new job, it didn't seem like I'd be able to get away with not letting him invite along anyone he wanted... and making it a family thing did seem alright. "Okay, sure."

We ended up going to an inexpensive little buffet place on the south side of town... not an all-you-can-eat, but each of the three of us managed to load up our plates well enough on our permitted trips to the tables to end up quite well satisfied. Jim Valenti got onto a roll talking about the glossy brochures that he and Amy had ordered for his carpentry business, and the trade show, and that sort of thing. Kyle and I were happy enough to listen and keep eating, pretty much. I mentioned some of the things that Isabel and I had talked about over dessert, and Kyle finally gave in and shared a few details about his new job... nothing particularly alien related, just all of the forms that he'd had to sign and the training sessions that he'd have to go through on his first few days.

Once dessert and coffee were done, I screwed up my courage and asked Kyle if he'd want to walk to the bus stop with me, instead of driving home with his dad. I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn't terribly wild about the idea, and I felt bad about asking. Probably he was tired - I remember what my first day at the diner had been like, with the four of us stuck in the diner during that huge rainstorm, and Liz taking more than a little pleasure in ordering me around. (Of course, with Max gone, Kyle didn't have anyone who's particularly want to torture him in that fashion, I supposed, and it wasn't really Max's style.)

But eventually curiosity about what I had to say won out, and we said goodbye to Mister V and set out for the bus stop, which wasn't far away. However, to actually get home, we'd need to switch to another bus downtown and then walk several blocks from the closest stop to Kyle's house. Hmm... maybe it'd be easier to go into the diner and see if anyone there could give us a lift - assuming that I didn't need to be alone with Kyle any longer by then.

But we were still in the 'relatively small talk' stage when the blue line bus showed up, and there were about two dozen riders already, so no chance to really talk alone there, or even until we got to the stop and started walking through the streets of our neighborhood, which were dark and quiet by this time of the late evening. "Come on, out with it," Kyle mumbled. "Why couldn't we just go home straight?"

I... I tried to put it into words, but they wouldn't come, and my body kind of sprang into action by himself. The 'me' voice in my head was about as surprised as Kyle felt as I stepped close to him, putting my arms around him so that my hands met at the small of his back, and our lips met in a slow and tender kiss. I was the one doing all of the kissing to start with - Kyle joined in for a second, and then seemed to catch himself and back away.

I sighed, disappointed at his reaction, but not too much, because it was natural that he be confused and a little taken off guard. I looked up to meet his face, and he groaned softly. I recognized that groan by now - it was a sound that he only made when he felt especially conflicted. Did that mean that he was tempted to... to kiss me again, but wasn't sure if it was the right thing to do? I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it. "Umm... would it sound completely crazy to ask why you did that?"

"Because I wanted to kiss you, and to see if you'd like being kissed by me?" I answered. Even though I hadn't deliberately planned things, it was the true answer. "I... I dunno, it's like this has been something growing in me for a while now... even before Nicholas and the others came back to town, though I didn't really realize it then." Sighed. "Going rock climbing with you and Ben and Julie was like the last straw. I realized that I was trying to psych myself into believing that it was a double date... but I knew that you didn't see it that way."

Kyle blinked a little. "So, umm... so you're saying you want to date?"

"Umm... yeah?" All of a sudden I realized just how crazy this situation must seem to him... but I was committed now, at least to follow it through to see where it led tonight. "It... it's my problem - I realize that. I... I shouldn't have." Started to turn away, but Kyle reached out to take both of my hands in his, which kind of stopped me. "Whah--"

"Sssh." He stepped a bit closer, not as close as I had pressed myself in, but nearly close enough that our bodies were touching. His eyes stared deeply into mine, and he brought one hand up from mine, to let his fingers gently brush against the cheek and the side of my face. His head shook ever so slightly, and an odd kind of smile developed there. "Okay. You want to date, I... I think I'm won over, at least that much. I'm still honestly not sure how it's going to work out - but if you want to give it a try, then I'm there."

"R... really? You - you..." I sighed. "What - what happened to treating me as a sister?" I honestly hadn't expected him to backpedal about that conviction.

"I'm not sure anymore," he admitted. "I... I know that you're someone who has a very important place in my heart, someone who I love very much. But... but maybe the specifics of that connection aren't so cut and dried as I thought. We're not siblings in any real sense, and I was experiencing a lot of erratic swings of emotion at prom when I came to that epiphany." He sighed. "Maybe sisterhood is a state of mind, and if there's anyone who can snap me out of it, that'd be you."

"But... but if we try this, really, and it doesn't take, won't things end up weird?" I asked. It seemed strange to me that the moment Kyle said he was convinced, I started to take the devil's advocate position.

"Come on," Kyle said, and brushed some hair away from the side of my forehead in an affectionate way that just melted me all the way through. "Things started OFF weird between us - you have to admit that much."

I burst out laughing, remembering my first few days at the Valenti house. "Yeah, there's just about no way of arguing with that." I sighed, and suddenly Kyle was leaning in to kiss me again, an even more gentle and chaste kiss than the one I'd laid on him, (which hadn't been a model of passion and fire by any means.) But it was very sweet, and somehow seemed right to seal the unusual deal that we had made.

"So," I asked as we started walking again. "Any idea where we should go for our first date?"

"Maybe go with one of the absolute classics," Kyle laughed. "I don't think we've ever actually gone to the movies together, have we?"

"Umm... no, you're right," I agreed. "Any idea what's showing??"

"Nah. But we can check online later."

I looked up at him, at Kyle's handsome, slightly funny face, showing in profile and lit by the bluey-white streetlamps, and somehow knew that everything would work out all right.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Thirty-seven

Angst warning for the second half of this chapter.

(Isabel):

"Okay." I tossed the dice, and smiled to myself. "Ten. Let's see." After considering a moment, I took my red token and moved it down the corridor and into the dining room.

"Pick up your card already," Alex told me with a grin. We were hanging out in his room late on Sunday evening, playing 'Clue: the mystery game' with a few house rules, mostly to make up for the fact that there was only the two of us. Yes, before you even ask, Alex was pretty much whipping my backside... what can I say, the boy is flat-out brilliant. I don't really mind by now... it's fun to try and stretch my limits by competing against him, and I *had* managed to win one game since we started playing this a few days after getting back from camping.

So I picked up the top card of the small stack next to the dining room. Revolver. Alright. I checked my mental notes, and smiled. "I'll keep this one."

"You know the drill," Alex replied, and so I slipped two of the cards from my hand underneath piled on the board - on in the dining room, and one in the family room. Then, reluctantly, I passed the dice back to Alex.

"So... did you hear about Tess and Kyle??"

"Ohh, yeah," Alex laughed. "In fact, if he hasn't gone to bed yet, you might be here when Kyle calls here for the third time to beg my advice on a suject that apparently I'm the world's only expert on - where to take a half-alien teenaged girl on a night out." I laughed too.

"I hope it works out... Tess wants things to go right for her this time so badly." I sighed. "Any idea what Kyle's mood about the whole thing is like?" I thought about that. "If he's bugging you about where to go and what to do, then it sounds like he's nervous... which is maybe a good sign. Better than if he was taking the whole thing laid-back and not getting into the spirit."

"Hmm... maybe," Alex allowed. "On the other hand, if something still feels weird and strange to him about the idea, maybe that would lead to nervousness as well." I had to nod in disappointed agreement to that possibility. "Well, there isn't much we can do other than wish them well... and give them good advice if we can think of any."

"Yeah," I agreed. "Does he have anything planned yet?"

"Was talking about movies... I warned him to steer clear of 'swordfish' and other shoot-em-ups with all kinds of explosions and blood in them."

"Probably good, though Tess doesn't strike me as especially squemish. Hmm... maybe a comedy. And what about after the movie?"

"Hmm... maybe that little portugese breaded-sausage-on-a-stick place on Eugenia," Alex volunteered. I smiled at the thought... that was someplace that Alex and I had discovered on a walk together, two days after he found out he'd be coming down to Las Cruces.

"Perfect. Now come on, roll those dice!"

"Umm, I already moved," Alex said, gesturing to his piece, which was in the corridor four spots away from the library, which was where he'd been last. "Your turn, sorry." He passed the little cubes back to me - and groaned when I rolled a nine.

"I... I wish sometimes that I hadn't been so stupid about dating you in the first place," I blurted out, several turns later, on my way to the kitchen and the secret passage from there to the parlour. "Even back on the father-and-child camping trip, when you were talking about how we missed the movies." I took a deep breath. "The... the way I reacted - it wasn't because I wasn't interested in you, or not attracted to you. In case you wondered."

"I... I'm not sure if the thought crossed my mind or not," Alex admitted simply, his voice soft. "So, what then? Afraid of getting that close to someone?"

"Um, pretty much. Pretty boys from school I could go out with and not have to worry about it getting serious... I could be in control, using them for protective camoflage. But... but not only did you know my secret, but you had this astonishing perceptiveness into my heart, that nobody but my brother had ever shown before. And... and I liked you so much, even that early, that I knew I wouldn't be in control. Of myself, I mean... if we started to make it a thing. And considering how much I was used to relying on willpower to protect myself... protect our secret - yes, that was a deeply scary idea."

"It... it wasn't that I didn't think I could trust you... to look out for me. But I wasn't sure that I wanted my life to change so much."

Alex just grinned and started organizing his clue cards. "That makes a lot of sense. I don't blame you for taking your time, Isabel... though I admit I hope every night that we have a lot of time together in the future."

The way he put that made me smile so wide I felt it might pop off my face. "And... and what about after we'd already been together, for a little while? The whole mess with my alien princess forebear and a suave geologist who shall not be named??"

"That was messier," Alex admitted. "I'd rather we hadn't been apart so long for stupid reasons, I'll agree to that. But... but still, I really prefer not to get hung up on what's past."

"Yeah, that's probably a really good idea," I said. "With any luck, we can have a long and happy future together." I reached out to touch his hand with mine. "Going to the same college, for real, maybe. After you graduate."

"That'd definitely be cool," he agreed. "Okay, come on, let me go."

"Suu..." I didn't get any further, because suddenly someone knocked loudly on the door. "Whitman? Sorry, but you've gotta come quick!"

"Hmm?" Confused, Alex got up, paused and looked down at himself and at me as if checking to make sure that we were decent for being seen by other people. Though it really was late - a little after eleven thirty, neither of us were in pajamas or anything - Alex was wearing cute looking sweat pants and a t-shirt, and I had a blue tank top, not a skimpy one or anything, and casual black jeans on. Alex headed over to the door and let the newcomer in. It was a very pretty girl, maybe a few years older than us, with rich, nutty brown hair falling straight past her shoulder. "Where have I gotta come and why??" Alex demanded of her.

"The inner lab, of course," she said. "Doctor Oostrep was fooling around with the quantum core I guess, using your algorithm with one of the older routines from this winter, and he got the level two crypto to solve in less than fifty-seven seconds!!"

Although that sounded vaguely impressive to me, I didn't really know what he meant. But Alex's mouth dropped open. "In the old source code language?"

"Partly... he rewrote some of it into the new source code and did the linkages by hand, or something. But Pryor is busting a nut!! He wants EVERYBODY there. Sorry, but all of us had better plans than this for tonight." She sighed. "Oh, umm... hi. You, uhh, you must be Isabel, right?"

"I must indeed," I said, getting up and going to join Alex and the mysterious girl, who was apparently part of the quantum programming team too. "And I guess you're Kristen?" Somehow I had pictured Kristen White as a blonde, though I suppose Alex never said so. Just her last name made me think of lighter colors I guess. And I had to fight a surge of bitter jealousy seeing her, and knowing that when Alex wasn't with me, when he was working long hours on the project, more often than not Kristen was probably right there beside him.

"Umm, yeah. Sorry, but we really don't have time to stay and chat," Kristen replied. Alex looked up at me, torn.

"Go, sweetie," I said, but at the same time, took the opportunity to kiss him goodbye very emphatically. Was that an impulse to 'mark my territory' in front of Kristen?? Probably a very foolish reaction... she knew my name, and if there was one thing that Alex would probably tell strangers about me, it would involve the word 'girlfriend.'

Alex smiled, leaned into my ear to whisper 'sorry', and then they were gone.

I sighed, looking around the room, which suddenly was most noticeable for having a lack of Alex, despite the fact that everything in it reminded me of him. (Or maybe because of that fact??) And yet, at the same time, I didn't really feel like going back to my own dorm and going to bed there. Would Alex mind if he came back and found me in his bed? No, not a chance of his being upset about that possibility. And the thought of having him crawl into bed next to me while I was still mostly asleep, and wrap his strong arms around me... yeah. I went over to my drawer in Alex's dresser... he had insisted on setting one aside for me after the first time I'd stayed here all night for him, and it was nice both as a practical convenience and as an emotionally intimate gesture... though it wasn't as if Alex had had time to get set in his ways in this room and feel possesive about it. Then again, Alex didn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd ever want to keep me out of any part of his life... and that definitely suited me fine.

Turning around with a red silk nightie in my hand, I spotted the Clue board, and all my breath came out in a rush. Well, there didn't seem to be much point in leaving it out in mid-game. I took a peek at the answer cards... darnit, I had nearly been at the solution of the mystery when Kristen knocked. Oh well... would have to start from scratch another day. All of the cards got neatly packed and put into the box, along with the board and the counters. Then I changed onto the nightgown, turned down the covers, and lay down on the bed. It was too warm to sleep under much in the way of blankets, though maybe I'd pull a sheet over me if the breeze out of that window kept blowi...

-----------

(Kyle):

I walked up the hall and knocked on the door of... well, my room or Tess' room, depending on how you look at it. Myself, I don't tend to worry about the definitions much anymore. "Miss Harding, the appointed hour is upon us!"

"Go back to the living room and wait," she replied assertively. "I"ll make my entrance there when I'm ready."

Hmm. "Okay... but considering how much you went through to get this date, I don't think it'd be smart to keep me waiting that long," I quipped and went off to sit on the couch. Turned on the television and watched some dinner-hour sports-center. Dad walked into the room, took a look at what I was wearing, (not a suit and tie or anything, but a little fancier than the stuff I usually lounge about in,) and smiled. "So - it's the big night, huh?"

"Yeah," I admitted. Wasn't quite sure how my father got wind of this me-Tess-dating thing, since I didn't tell him, and I didn't think that Tess was likely to have made a point out of mentioning it either, but he certainly did. Maybe Tess had told Maria, Maria had mentioned it to her mother, and Amy told Dad. "WIsh me luck."

"Luck... but not too much of it yet," he replied, sitting down on the couch next to me and watching the scores with half an eye. "I'm still not sure how long it'll take me to get used to the idea of the two of you as a couple... not to mention coming up with appropriate house rules to handle the idea." I groaned. "Well, come on, you have to admit it's an unusual situation for a parent, that might require some unusual attention... there are a lot of rules of thumb for how to deal with your teenaged son and his girlfriend, but not many of them account for the possibility that the girlfriend is a foster daughter who sleeps right down the hall."

"Well, it was your bright idea to take Tess in here in the first place," I pointed out. "'No good deed goes unpunished' would seem to be an appropriate explanation." Now it was Dad's turn to groan, though he did it pretty softly.

Just at that moment, there was a faint sound in the hall that made me look up, and Tess made her entrance. (And quite an impressive entrance it was.) Knowing Tess fairly well at this point, I still hadn't really had much of a guess what sort of outfit she'd put together for this occasion - scorchingly sexy, or more subdued? As I looked up, she seemed to have struck a VERY good balance... well, not that pulling out all the stops and trying to knock me dead wouldn't have been fun too... but - well, I'm not quite sure what I'm rambling, so maybe I'll just stop and describe what she was wearing.

All of it was black. Simple black shoes, with a bit of heel to them but not too high. Black skirt, long enough to cover most of her thighs, but with six-inch slits up both sides, and tight around her hips. (That last part meant, I realized, that it would probably show off her tight ass delightfully, assuming I got a chance to appreciate the rear view tonight.) And a kind of black sweater-shirt, short sleeved and fairly high neckline, but again, tight enough to show the general contour of her chest without being too obvious about it. I loved the way she looked in that outfit. Her hair seemed curlier and goldier than usual, cascading down behind her and around her shoulders, and her blue eyes seemed to focus on absolutely nothing but me.

I realized, in that moment, that something had already changed. I was *not* looking at that girl like a sister. That still didn't make me sure that we would hit it off right as a couple, but it hopefully indicated that the evening would not quickly descend into an embarassing torture session. I got up from the couch, smiling, and walked over to join her in the front hall. "Hi." I felt an impulse to hug her hello, or kiss her on the cheek, but somehow I wasn't sure enough of either possible response to actually go ahead. So the two of us just kind of stood there nervously, three or four feet away from each other... which was, in an odd way, a classic and time-tested way to start a first date.

"Bye, Mister Valenti," Tess said, waving, and we headed out to my car. "You look nice by the way."

"You look amazing, I have to admit," I said, and Tess just smiled in response.

We tried to chat about unimpotant stuff on the way to the movie theater, but I felt more than a little uncomfortable and it was hard to keep things up. Finally we got there, I found a parking spot, and we stood in line together for the box office. The line was longer than I'd expected, and it wasn't hard to tell why.

"Are we going to see 'Legally Blonde' too?" Tess asked, bouncing a little in excitement.

"Umm - well, we can if you really want to," I said carefully. Of course, I should have expected that that would appeal to her. "I was thinking of 'Scary movie 2.'"

"Hmmm." I could almost see the wheels working in Tess' brain. Spooky, but not too spooky, because it was really a comedy sendup of thriller movie cliches. Probably some really dumb and tasteless jokes. "Alright, sounds okay to me." She smiled.

So we got our tickets, and went up to the snack bar. I got a little popcorn and a coke - I'm a traditionalist when it comes to junk food, and Tess got a box of gummi worms and some fruit chews. And we went in and found some seats a little more than halfway to the front, right in the middle, as the stupid brain teasers were playing out on the screen.

I was actually disappointed by the movie... it didn't have nearly as many good funny moments as I was expecting and almost nothing in the way of genuine scares that would make Tess try and cling to me. Eh well. After we filed out of the theater, I asked if she had any preference for where to go to grab some food.

"Well, not the crash, definitely." She sighed. "If it wasn't 'the usual place' it'd be great, but - umm, well..."

Thought about that. "How about Yogi's basket?"

Tess blinked. "New one on me - that's as in Yogi the bear, stealing pic-a-nic baskets?"

"Pretty much, yeah." I sighed. "The cartoon theme gets corny pretty quick, but they've got theme junk food as tasty as the Crash's."

Tess considered that. "Alright. Umm... I'm trying to think of an appropriate Yogi catchphrase, but it's escaping me."

I laughed at that. "Well... It's an idea that's 'smarter than the average bear'??" Tess just stared at me. "Ehh, doesn't fit I know, but that's all I could get."

Put the car in gear and headed out. "Egthit, thadthe left!" Tess announced, and I looked at her. "Okay, so it's snaggletooth not yogi, but a little better I think."

"Huh? Ohh." Exit, stage left. "Snaggletooth didn't lisp quite that much, did he?"

"I thought he did." Tess shrugged.

So we went to yogi's and had plenty of fattening food, (though somehow I don't think that Tess could ever get fat - and I've got a pretty damn good metabolism too,) and joked around for most of the time, mocking some of the truly lame moments in the movie and comparing our memories of really old saturday morning cartoons. Tess was surprisingly conversant with the field. I guess that with Nasedo as her only parental figure, and a fairly distant one, she spent a lot of time in the tender care of the boob tube. So did I, I guess, especially after Mom left. Huh. Never really thought of that as something that we had in common, but it kinduv makes sense.

"Hey, you've got a little spot of gravy on your face," Tess said after I finished my donald duck impression. (I had been eating fries with gravy on them the whole time, so that didn't really surprise me.)

"What, here?" I asked, taking a napkin and dabbing it about half an inch away from the right corner of my mouth, which was more or less the spot that she'd indicated.

"No, you didn't get it. Just a sec." All of a sudden, Tess half stood up and leaned over the table, brushing against the skin just above my lips with her bare fingers, and the contact was suddenly startling. All of a sudden I was reminded that this was a date, and not just a friendly night that we were spending together, and a bunch of things immediately forced themselves on my awareness. How smooth and limber her fingers felt. The way her chest moved as she leaned out like that... I couldn't see 'down' her top as such, because the neck was so high, but I could see their outline very clearly, and that definitely excited my hormones. And still... at the same moment I couldn't help but remember the way I felt at prom - or feel it again, except not quite the same. Tess *wasn't* exactly like a sister to me, but was she close enough that getting involved would still be a mistake? I wasn't sure.

So I smiled at her and asked her what she thought of the road runner. Turns out that Tess can do a startlingly good 'Meep, meep!' herself.

As I led the way out into the parking lot, Tess turned to me and smiled. "Should we, umm, should we try having the goodnight kiss out here?" she asked. "Instead of back home, where your dad will probably be flashing the porch lights to remind us that it's time to come in??"

Thought about that. "Yeah, okay." She stood there, her butt pressing against the side of my car, and I put my hands on her hips, brought my face down to the same level as hers, and our lips met. Our first kiss. We never did, not even at prom. Her lips were soft and firm, sweet and spicy at the same time, of course. I could see her hair moving out of the corners of my eyes, which surprised me for a moment, until I figured it out - my eyes were open. Usually I was a close-eyes type kisser, and Tess' own peepers were definitely shut. But somehow it didn't feel right to close my eyes in the middle of this kiss.

She pushed herself against me, just a little, and parted her lips. No tongue made its exit, not yet, but I sensed that Tess was waiting for me to make a signal, to go open mouth myself, maybe - that she was hoping for it. Part of me desperately wanted to open up to that kind of passion, to go to that next step. But something else held me back. I moved one hand up her side, caressed her back and then started to run my fingers through her hair, and I might have even pressed a very little bit closer myself, but after a moment she closed the gap between those lovely lips again. It was a long time before the kiss was finally complete though.

"Okay, umm..." Tess looked at her wrist, which didn't have a watch on it, but she made no sign of noticing that. "Much as I hate to say, it's getting late."

"Yeah," I agreed, still feeling a little bit unsure about whether I wanted to stay out longer or if I felt relieved at the prospect of bringing this date to a close. We got in the car and I started to drive back home. "So, umm..."

"I think that this didn't go badly, or staggeringly well either," Tess admitted, and I nodded. "It's your turn to go first - what do you want to do about... about us now?"

I thought about that, and smiled. "I want to have another date with you. Maybe it'll take a few to get comfortable with the notion."

Tess smiled, the relief nearly shining from her face... or was it more like an audible note than a light? "I'd like that."

Dad was waiting up for us, and didn't say much as Tess and I got ready to go to sleep seperately.

-----------

(Liz):

It started early on Saturday afternoon. I had just gotten off a morning shift at the cafe, and was making myself some cheater's pizza for lunch when the phone rang. I left the piece of sandwich meat I was slicing on the table and picked up the cordless in the living room. "Hello?"

"Liz?" It was Maria's voice. "I, umm... I'm glad you were there."

Something in her voice sent chills through my bones. "What... what's wrong, Maria?"

"I... I'm not sure. Maybe it's nothing wrong." Her tone was completely unconvincing, and I just waited, knowing that she would say more. "But... but I'm bleeding 'down there', and not just a little." Her breath caught in a little squeak, and somehow it was that that told me just how worried she was. "What if I'm losing the baby?"

Oh, no. And suddenly, the immensely bad timing of this hit me. Out of everybody who even knew about the alien stuff... Max and Ava were up in Utah this weekend, investigating flying saucer hiding places again with Brody and his weird friend who knew my parents. Michael and Tess had gone down to visit Isabel today. Even Mister Valenti and Maria's mom had left town, going to a trade show thing in Albuquerque. Max had been a little nervous when he realized that they would be leaving us 'unprotected' here in Roswell, and I'd said that he was being silly, that there was nobody waiting to attack us when no friendly aliens were around. I *hadn't* expected a medical emergency like this.

"Okay, um, maybe you should... um, just stay put, and I'll be right over." Not sure what I could do if there was really a problem with the baby other than offer moral support, but that was the least I could do for her. "Did... were you able to leave a message on Max's cell at least? He might not have it on, but he'll be checking every so often."

"Yeah," Maria muttered, but I knew that she was thinking the same thing I was. Even if Max knew what was happening already, could he come back to Roswell in time to make any difference? Utah was so very far away... and Brody wouldn't be happy with aborting their mission in the middle... though he might be more sympathetic if he knew that Maria was in trouble - they'd always had soft spots for each other. "But I haven't been able to reach Michael at all... well, I left a message on Isabel's machine, but I'm not sure if they'll check that. Can't seem to find where I put Alex's number, and..."

"That's okay," I insisted. "I can try calling him now, or we can call together when I get over there, whichever you prefer. And I've got my own address book, right here." Grabbed it while talking, and stuffed it into my purse, then quickly headed back into the kitchen to quickly put away anything that would get really smelly if it was left out for hours (and, possibly, further hours.)

"Just get over here," Maria said, insistence and gratitude showing equally in her tone. I locked up, rushed downstairs, and borrowed my Dad's car.

Kyle was already at the DeLuca's when I got there, looking about as worried as I felt. Of course - he was the only other member of the gang who was available today... and I suspected that we'd appreciate his presence and support before the day was out. (Little surprised that he got there before I did though.) "Umm, where is she?"

"In the bathroom," Kyle muttered. Eww... I had a mental image of Maria sitting on the can, trying to clean up whatever bloody stuff was coming out of her.... "Giving a refund on her brunch, I think." Ohh. Suddenly my mental patterns tried to switch tracks. Was vomiting a symptom of the kinds of thing that could cause a miscarriage, or did it suggest that something different was going on? Did established health wisdom apply well enough to this case, considering that the baby's father was human? Hmm... probably 'not so much' if it really was a problem with the baby, but yes if it was some other kind of problem, though maybe not entirely... This was already giving me a headache.

I went up to the bathroom door and knocked. "Maria, baby, how are you doing??"

"Umm... not as good as I'd hope," the reply came.

"Do you mind if I come in?"

Pause. "No... actually I think I'd appreciate it. Think... think I might need some help in here." There was a sound in the middle there that might have been a sob or a gasp. I tried to brace myself and then went in. Maria was more or less on all fours, her head pointed towards the toilet, but not at a level where she could actually spew out into the bowl. A bunch of little details hit me... she was wearing light brown shorts that looked like they were getting spotted from inside (ewww) even though I thought I could also see the lines of some kind of extra padding she was wearing underneath. The other thing that occured to me was that something was wrong with Maria's right arm. I hurried over and realized that her forearm was pointed at an angle in the wrong place.

"How... how did that happen?" I asked, feeling like I wanted to cry myself, and might not be able to stop myself.

"I... I'm not really sure," Maria admitted. "Just kind of brushed my arm against the tub, and there was a nasty cracking sound." Okay, that was definitely not normal, which made it sound, according to my earlier logic, like there was definitely something wrong with the baby. "Could you help hold me up? I really need to barf again, and it hurts too much to stay propped up on my elbow..."

"Sure, of course." I took as firm a hold of Maria's shoulders as I could and held her in place while she vomited. "This... this might sound like a stupid question, but what about going to the emergency room."

"Not... not on your life, or mine," she muttered after wiping her mouth with her hand. "Between the baby being - you know, and my arm... there'd be way too much chance of awkward questions, and test results coming up off the charts, and suspicion falling on Michael and all the others again. I'm not... not going to start all of that up again. Not - not even if that means losing... losing my..." She couldn't quite bring herself to finish the phrase - I'm not sure if I could have said it either.

"And... what if it means *you* dying, Mar?" I asked softly. "It... it could come to that."

Maria took a deep breath, and started to turn around. I helped her sit up on the edge of the bathtub with me. "I... I dunno. I'm not gonna save my life at the cost of ruining four lives... or more. Just not gonna happen."

I sighed. "Okay. You alright for now, except for the arm?" She shrugged slightly. Yeah, it was stupid to put it like that. 'Alright' was nowhere within sight right now. But she didn't seem to need my direct support. I headed back out of the bathroom. "Okay, Kyle, you're on the phone. Need you to get in touch with as many people in the gang as you can - directly if possible, if not, leaving a message, just saying that Maria is in trouble and to call back here. Guess you should check for messages between calls after a bit. My address book is in my purse if it'll help."

"Umm... okay. What're you doing Liz?"

"Hitting the web for research." It was a good thing, I decided, that Maria's mom had gotten DSL a little while ago, so that I didn't have to keep Kyle off of the land phone line to get on the net. A lot of the websites I found talking about miscarriages didn't seem to have any terribly useful information for the moment, though I bookmarked a few of them about finding closure... just in case that was what Maria ended up needing.

The first time I left the computer to check in on Maria, Kyle held out the cordless phone for me. "It's Max, on Ava's cell," he explained. Ahh, okay. "Yeah, Liz here," I said into the mouthpiece. Somehow hello seemed badly out of place - not sure if I can explain that part.

"Kyle told me the basics," Max's voice said, trembling with worry. "Do... if we really hurry, and get Brody and Mister Elson suspicious... we can be back in Roswell in around four hours. Do you think it's worth it??"

I froze, and took a gut check. There... as much as I hated to say it, there didn't seem to be much chance that the baby would survive that long, unless it was going to be okay by itself. But there was a slim chance that Max's presence, even on that timeline, might make the difference, and an equal or better shot that he'd be able to save Maria from some kind of complications. Weighing even a fraction of those lives against a relatively low level of inconvenience and suspicion... "Yes. Get to Maria's house as soon as you can - unless we reach you en route and say we'll be somewhere else."

"Alright."

I headed into the bathroom. "Maria, how're you doing? Max... Max is on the line, and he'll be here in a few hours. All you need to do is hold on." I gasped. Maria didn't look like she was hanging on especially well... her face looked very pale and a little pasty. "Umm, I gotta keep the line free, Max - don't think we've reached Michael yet."

"Got it. See you girls soon," Max promised, and hung up.

I poked my head out of the bathroom long enough to toss the telephone back to Kyle, and faced Maria. "How... how are you feeling babe?"

"Umm... a little dizzy, and cold." She sighed. "And a little thirsty."

"Want me to get you some juice?"

"Yeah." So I rushed down to the kitchen, poured out some orange juice... and on a madly impulsive note, mixed about a quarter teaspoon full of tabasco into it. Maybe if whatever was going wrong was alien... it would help.

Maria didn't complain or even seem to notice the spicy taste in her juice, and drinking it did seem to improve her color. However, right around the time she finished it, she moaned in pain and shook again. "What... what is it," I asked, wondering if she could reply or even hear me.

"Cramp... bad cramp," the answer came softly. "Ewww... it's like my period but much more so. That... that's really bad, isn't it?"

"I... I think so, yes." The tears were falling down my face as I hugged maria tightly, but not too tight because I was worried about hurting her. A phrase from the web research was ringing through my mind: 'Expulsion of all pregnancy tissue from the uterus.' (Yeah, I know, I know.) And on a smaller scale, that was what a girls' period was about... getting rid of stuff that had been prepared earlier in the cycle, just in case we DID get pregnant. "Do... do you want to get on the can?" It - it just seemed like the easiest way of getting rid of all of that blood and... well, bloody 'tissue.'

"I... I'm not sure," Maria muttered. "What, what if... if it really happens, if the baby comes out, aren't we supposed to keep it? It sounds really undignified to think of my tiny little girl getting... getting drowned in the --"

"I - I think that's up to you," I told her. "For normal miscarriages, they advise to... to save the baby for testing, yeah. But we're obviously not going to give it to your doctor, and I don't think there's much that Max or I would be able to figure out. If... if you want to try and keep it and bury her - or him - somewhere else, then that's your call."

Maria nodded, looked up at me, but didn't really reply. She didn't get ready to sit on the toilet, though.

I... I'm not going to describe the nitty gritty of that afternoon to you. Kyle reached Michael a few minutes later, and we put him on with Maria of course... I hung around outside the bathroom door, near enough that I could hear if she called but far enough away to let her feel a little privacy... the parts of that conversation that I couldn't help hearing broke my heart, though. A little while after she finally hung up with him, it was absolutely clear that the baby was dead, and yes, she did keep the... the body? (Ouch.) After that, things seemed to quickly improve on a merely physical level, though all of us were obviously so emotionally wrecked that it was hard to even care. Maria's cramps and nasuea eased off, and the bleeding didn't last much longer. Even her arm seemed to fix itself - I noticed about half an hour later that the swelling seemed to have gone down inside the makeshift sling-splint Kyle and I had managed to put together. The arm had set itself in a matter of minutes, and perfectly straight too, though it still seemed very tender. Max would have to check it carefully when he got here, of course, but the news was encouraging.

Kyle and I put together some dinner, and we kinduv did our best to act like we had just gotten together for the day out of a lack of anything better to do, instead of what had really happened, because it was too awful to speak of or even dance around, though we weren't able to come up with a great simulation of being normal either. Kyle talked for a little while about his first date with Tess, which didn't seem like a great success, but he had better hopes for a second. Maria's mom finally returned the messages that she'd left with him and Mister Valenti, and that started Maria off crying again, as she broke the news to her mother. That had to be especially tough. I know that Mrs DeLuca hadn't been wild about Maria having a baby, but for her to *not* have the baby in this way, to know that her first grandchild had been stillborn so very young... that had to be a heartbreaker.

After the food was finished, and the three of us were sitting watching some 'Gilmore girls' that Maria's mom had on DVD... (Hmm... wisecracking mother and daughter combo... daughter somewhat wise beyond her years, mother a wild child free spirit who had had her baby when very young - now who did that remind me of?) Suddenly friends converged on us from both sides as it were - Max and Ava arrived, driving straight in from the hospital, at the same time as 'the Brontosaurus' came driving up the road straight from the Las Cruces Road...carrying not only Michael and Tess, but Isabel, who had decided that she would come to lend what emotional support she could. Alex wanted to be here for Maria, but couldn't afford to ditch the next few days at the project, Isabel had said, but she could either go back tomorrow afternoon or blow off her Sunday classes. It was a supportive lovefest to such an extent that Maria felt more than a little overwhelmed by the attention, I think, especially since she wasn't sure what to suggest for ways that most of them could help. I decided to step in.

"Okay, Doctor Max... I'm afraid it's down to you." He gulped. "Check her out totally, paying attention to the arm and everything, else, not just... you know, her plumbing down there. Biggest consideration... may be trying to make sure that she can go in for an exam at the hospital without anything giving away how unusual her pregnancy really was."

"Alright. Umm... use your bedroom Maria?" Max said awkwardly. She nodded, and the two of them went away. Michael came over and gave me a big hug, which somehow seemed perfectly appropriate. He was still worried about Maria and devastated about their loss, and I was still shaky from what I'd been through all day and would have appreciated Max's emotional support, except that he had special skills that were more in demand at the moment.

They watched a bit more TV, and Ava went off to pick up some pizzas quick from the place down the road, and Max called me in to consult with his examination, since I'd been spending so much of the day researching. "Basically... she's in fairly good condition... there's some of the amniotic fluid and stuff inside... inside her that should be cleaned out - but would the doctors be suspicious if that was done before she got there?"

I thought about it. "Umm... no, I don't think so. From what I've figured out... a D&C - that's basically what you're talking about doing, isn't necessary in all situations... so maybe they'd just think that Maria - umm, hadn't retained much, or whatever." Maria, lying on her bed, made a face at me, and I shrugged. "Try and leave a little, if you can without having it be stuff that would be a giveaway if it got tested."

"Yeah, well..." Max sighed. "In any event, I... I think that Maria's got some alien hormones in her blood at the moment. She can't go into the hospital until they clear - should be forty-eight hours."

"Oh, okay." I sighed. "I... I didn't realize that was happening - did you know about it before now?"

"Didn't think to look for it last time," he admitted. "But it makes sense... in terms of being able to feed and support a partially alien baby. Guess when she and Michael did the deed, it managed to cover the bases enough to handle this... or maybe the hormones were coming directly from the baby, coming back through the umbilical whatever."

"Okay. Umm... do I need to stay here?" I asked, a little uncomfortably.

"No," Max assured me.

"But, if you go back out there... can you ask the guys about something?" Maria asked.

"Yeah, sure. Of course."

"I... I want to bury my daughter tonight. Someplace... well, someplace that nobody's likely to discover anything unusual, but... maybe out in the desert near the pod chamber. Or in Frazier woods."

"Of course." I turned away, and then asked. "Are you sure it was a girl?"

"Yeah," Max said softly. Oh, boy. "Alright. I'm sure everyone will want to come."

And they did... though it was a somber kind of consensus, as you might imagine. Pizza was had... the three of us who'd already eaten weren't very hungry, but everybody else had been too busy racing home to eat in hours. Before we were all ready to head out, Amy and Jim showed up, and decided to come along.

Max, Kyle, and Jim dug the grave in the woods, near the edge of the Indian reservation. No marker, but Maria spoke a name while we all stood round, as she bent down to run her fingers over the packed earth. "Keva Jane DeLuca Guerin. You were a blessing to my heart and were taken back home too soon. Rest in peace and love."

And what else can I add to that??


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part thirty-eight

(Michael):

After the... after the funeral, Max pulled off at my apartment to let me out, and Maria got out of her seat too. Maria's mom was in the shotgun seat, and I think she was about to protest for a moment, before maybe deciding that the two of us really needed to be together after suffering a loss like this. The baby's death had hit Amy hard too - she hadn't been that wild about finding out that Maria would have a baby so young... or that the kid would be quarter alien and half me, but she was absolutely devastated to lose a granddaughter so early, I think, and knew that Maria would be feeling the grief even more. I hurried back around the Jeep, wanting to take the woman I loved in my arms as soon as I could - for both of our sakes. Max didn't drive away until we'd made it, walking slowly and together, through the door of my building.

We lay down, arms still around each other, as soon as we got into the apartment. After a few minutes, Maria started to cry, and rage and sob, and that kind of got me weeping too, though I'm not usually the weepy type. (Us tough guys get an exemption under circumstances like the death of a baby, right?? Well, it doesn't really matter if I get exempted or not - I'm not ashamed of the tears that I shed that night, or later, thinking about little Keva.) After a bit, I got up, feeling a little bit useless and hoping that by fetching stuff for Maria and doing other practical stuff I could make myself less awkward. First thing I did was draw her a glass of cold water from the filtration pitcher in the fridge - she thanked me for it, but didn't drink any right away. Offered to cook, but she said that she didn't feel hungry, and that made sense - we'd all eaten at her mom's place. So, after making sure that there were facial tissues and her makeup stuff nearby in the bedroom, and that all of the phones were turned off, I came back and sat beside her, feeling that that was where she needed me to be, no matter how uncomfortable it made me feel.

"I... I wish that I'd had a little more time with her," Maria blurted out suddenly. "However much I could have gotten... a few weeks, a few months. Long enough for her to be born, or whatever. Does that make any sense?" She thought about it for a moment. "Maybe... maybe if I'd had her for longer, I'd just have grown to love her more, and it would have been even harder to deal with her death."

"Yeah, that's possible," I admitted. "But I do understand how you feel." Took a deep breath. "Another possible way in which you could say that it's better this way is that it's less suspicious. No... nobody outside our group really even knows that you were ever pregnant, and that means that nobody will be asking question about how you lost the baby." Maria breathed. "I... I shouldn't have actually said that - it sounded way too callous."

"No, no it didn't." Maria reached up and kissed me on the cheek. "It's true, and you hoped that it might make me feel better, and I love you for saying it." Pause. "Even if it really doesn't seem to help that much." She considered. "Did I tell you that Liz was asking about possibly going to the hospital?"

"Yeah, you mentioned that," I assured her. "When I called from the university."

"Oh, right." Maria sighed. That had been a long, incredibly emotional conversation, and if you don't mind I don't really feel like revisiting it any more than I have to.

"Do... do you wish that you had gone, now?" She'd told me some of her reasons why not, and I couldn't argue with them... basically that if the doctors had found anything unusual or alien about her pregnancy or the baby, it would have been putting multiple lives at risk, in order to have a chance of saving one - or two, if Maria herself had been at risk. But it made sense that she might have changed her mind now that things had played out.

"Not... not really." She sighed. "Especially because, from what Liz told me about her research, and the way the timing worked out - well, it seems pretty likely that it was too late for anything they could have done at the hospital to help by the time I realized that anything really was wrong." Pause. "Might have even been too late for Max to save her, though that's a little less sure."

"Okay." I nodded.

"Do... do you know what Isabel's going to do? I... I'm kinda touched that she came back, but I'm not sure if there's anything she can really help with, and I'm worried about where she's going to sleep tonight. Like that other time, her parents would be very curious if they knew that she'd come back to Roswell so unexpectedly - and I don't think it's a good idea if the Evanses hear too much about what happened to me."

"I... I don't think that you need to worry about Isabel," I said. "She probably thinks it was worth the trip just to see for her own eyes that you're doing alright and report back to Alex... and to have been here for the funeral." Thought about that. "Maybe your mom will let her crash over there."

"Yeah, maybe I guess," she agreed. Talking about crashing must have suddenly reminded her about the obvious. "Ohh - what about Ava?"

I smiled slightly. "What... don't you want her to come back here?"

"Umm... no, I didn't say that," Maria protested. "Just... just that I hadn't thought about her... and I'm actually not sure why she hasn't shown up already. Wasn't she in Mister Valenti's car, right behind us when Max dropped us off??"

"Umm... actually, I kind of think that Ava might have gotten the notion that it was better to stay away and give us our space." I waited for Maria's reaction to that.

"Hmm... well, she didn't really need to do that, but I'm not sure that it's worth the trouble of tracking down where she ended up anyway." Maria looked over at me. "Actually, come to think of it... though I normally love being alone with you, I think that maybe tonight does call for a little more company and reassurance." I nodded approvingly, wondering if she would say something else. "Maybe... maybe we could call Liz over?"

I thought about that... in fact, it seemed a little surprising that I hadn't thought of it earlier. "Maybe, yeah. On the other hand... well, she was at your side all the way through it. She probably wouldn't say no to you - but maybe she needs some time to decompress and recover from the shock herself... some time alone with her own sweetie??"

Maria nodded. "Yeah, I hadn't thought of things that way. You're right. And I don't need anybody but you, fiancee." She crawled over, leaning her head down against my chest, and then stiffened slightly. "Are... are we okay, the two of us? I mean... well, this may sound weird, but when you gave me this ring..."

"When I gave you the ring, you were pregnant, but I didn't just do it BECAUSE you were pregnant," I pointed out. "I love you - I still want to marry you - though I'm not sure when and there might be a little bit less of a rush now." She giggled. "As far as the two of us being okay... I can't speak for the future, but I think the two of us, and our relationship, are as okay as we could be, the end of a day like this. Maybe going through this together will even make us tighter." I sighed. "Don't worry about it, my beautiful songbird. Love will see us through. I think the two of us will be side by side for a long time yet." Now, why did that ring a faint bell in my memory??

Almost as if she sensed some odd connection too, Maria sat up suddenly. "I... I realize that this might be jumping the gun in a bunch of ways, but I just wanted to blurt it out to give you a chance to get used to the idea." But she didn't blurt right away.

"Come in, if you're going to blurt then blurt," I teased her, tickling her chin softly, which made her nearly explode into giggles. Blurt is kinduv a funny word when you repeat it this many times, isn't it? Blurt blurt blurt blurt blurt... okay I'll stop now.

"Alright." Maria sighed and looked very intently and straight into my eyes, which I knew by now meant that she really had to psych herself up into what she was about to say. "I... I want to go to your home planet. Obviously not right now, because we've got things keeping us here on Earth, and don't even know *how* to travel to another world. But... but I want to have another baby, with you, at some point... and before we do that, we kinduv need to figure out what went wrong this time, and where you came from is the best place I can think of to figure out those answers. More than that... I want to learn more about your roots, spaceboy. We've found out some about your human side, through Laurie and her stories about her Grandpa, but you have an alien side too, and in a way that one is more critical, because if the aliens hadn't started the ball rolling you wouldn't have even had a human side. I want to know as much as I can about where you came from, so I want to actually go there."

I smiled. It had almost broken my heart to hear the passion in her words. "I... I think I'd love to go there with you too, darling." Reached out to cup my hand around the side of her face. "But... but I'm also scared - scared that my 'home' isn't a safe place for either of us to be, especially you. I couldn't bear it if I took you away with me and something happened to you... and yes, even before you say it, I know that there's nowhere that's completely safe. You can get in trouble just going to your mom's office to pick up some mail for her. But other worlds are a completely different kind of thing."

"Yeah, yeah they are," Maria admitted. "And I'm totally on board with avoiding danger. Just wanted to tell you that I wanted this."

"Then you're possibly the gutsiest one in the gang," I told her. "I'm not sure I've ever admitted that I wanted to leave out loud before this... though I've certainly thought about it. And nobody else has, either."

"Not even Tess?" Maria asked. I thought about it, and shrugged.

"Not to me, I think. Guess that doesn't cover everything." I stretched a little. The tension was starting to leave my body, leaving me incredibly tired. "And of course there was Rath and Lonnie, who made no secret of wanting to go back, but they definitely don't qualify as 'in the gang.'"

"I should think not," Maria said, cuddling up against me. She sighed, and then said, "I'm probably going to be a wreck. Do you think Mister and Missus Parker will give me a few days off without my having to tell them much about the reasons why?"

"Probably," I replied. "Especially since Liz and Tess will probably volunteer to help pick up the slack, if they know you need them."

"Yeah, that's a good poi--" she mumbled, and then, as far as I could tell, actually fell asleep without completing the word.

I lay there for a little while, holding her in my arm, and eventually drifted off into a murky dreamland myself.

----------

Somehow we both managed to wake up crying and sobbing, holding each other... the fact of what and who had been lost coming fresh with the departure of sleep. I called into the diner to see if I could get off work - Liz answered, and assured me that she'd find a replacement and that I shouldn't worry about coming in for a few days. So I stayed home, and when my own tears had run out again, I did everything that I could think of to comfort Maria... well, everything that seemed like a good anyway, and not, for instance, making light of what she was going through, which did occur to me, but well anyway.

Eventually she managed to find her own kind of shaky emotional equilibrium, and called in to her mother, just to reassure her that she was okay and was still over at my place. When she hung up... her side of the conversation after announcing those things hadn't had much to it, just long periods of listening and making those kinds of 'yeah', 'I see' noises that you do when somebody else is telling you something over the phone... well, she looked up at me, and I asked what her mom had been saying.

"She... she seems really fixed on the idea of getting us all moved into Tess' old house soon," she said softly.

I considered that a moment. "Well... we guessed that that was coming, right?? All of the work has been done, pretty much, and the sooner she and Mister Valenti can get their old houses on the market, kinduv the better." Once I had said it, I realized how that must sound. One of those 'old houses' was the place that Maria had grown up... the only place that she had memories of her Dad from, maybe. "Err, ummm..." Wasn't quite sure how to moderate that flub.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Maria said, not having seemed to even notice that. "But... but it's more than just a practical decision that she's brought it up *now*. With her, it couldn't be. I... I feel like she wants me to make this huge break to help put the past behind me... and I'm not sure I'm ready to put it behind me yet."

"Well, that's understandable," I said. There was a longish pause, in which I started staring at the phone, a very basic and second-hand cordless unit, that was still in Maria's hand. Suddenly something hit me. "I - I need to tell Laurie about this!"

"Hmm?" Maria took only an instant to catch up. "Ohmigawd, yes. She hasn't known that she was going to be an aunt, or get a new aunt, or a cousin or whatever, for very long --" I couldn't help but snicker at the usual ambiguity about my relationship to Laurie expressed in an unuusal way. "But she needs to know that it's not going to happen for a lot longer than we thought." She considered. "I wanna be on the line with her too. Just hearing Laurie's voice is always good for me."

"Okay, umm..." I considered that. "I'll dial from the rotary, and then you can come on with the cordless when she's picked up?" Maria nodded, and followed me partway as I went into the bedroom, got out the even more old-fashioned phone extension, and checked to make sure that it still had a dial tone. As I worked the rotary dial, it occured to me that this was perhaps the first time that I'd called Laurie without having to get the number from out of the address book - which book Maria had got me as a stocking stuffer for Christmas, since I would never have bought an address book for myself. Somehow I didn't have any problems remembering the number right now though.

"Umm, yeah, hello?" a familiar voice said, picking up after four and a half rings.

"Hi, Laurie, it's Michael. Maria's here too, she should be picking up in a moment."

"Oh, so two of my favorite people in the whole world!" Laurie gushed with a playful tone in her voice. "Hi Maria."

"Hey Laurie," Maria's voice came, both through the phone earpiece, and faintly through the door of my bedroom. That second component of the sound was receding - she was probably heading for the couch in front of the tv.

"How's it going?" Laurie continued brightly. Obviously she hadn't picked up on our subdued moods yet.

"Umm... not so good, Laurie," Maria replied. I think that she was about to start saying something else, but her breath caught and she didn't get any further.

So it looked like breaking the news was all up to me. "Laurie, yesterday... I have to tell you -- Umm, we lost the baby."

There was a long moment as Laur tried to come to terms with that. "Oh, my god. That... I, I'm so sorry guys. Maria - are *you* okay? I mean, obviously you're not okay about the fact that your baby... I mean, physically, is there any..."

"No, we think that I'll be fine," Maria told her. "I'm going to go for a checkout at the hospital probably tomorrow evening to make sure." She sighed. "And... and thanks for your sympathies, Laur. I know that they probably don't sound like much helpful, but just to know that somebody loves me and cares about our loss... every little bit helps."

"After... after your hospital trip, do you have any plans for the next few days?" Laurie asked.

"Umm... no, I don't think so really," I said, wondering what she was leading up to. "There's some talk of Maria's family and the Valentis moving in together, but..."

"Right - the nice Sheriff's getting married," Laurie said, and laughed softly. "Well... that sounds alright too, but I was going to suggest that you guys should come back to Tucson and visit with me again. After all, you guys played host last time, kind of... and I thought that maybe you could stand to get out of Roswell."

Wow. The notion of heading off to Arizona again was instantly and powerfully compelling to me... but I didn't want to say too much without getting Maria's reaction first. "Oh gosh, I'd love to!" Maria squealed slightly. "Michael, would you love to head up to Tucson??" Well, I guess that answered the question of Maria's reaction.

"That would rock," I said, and Maria and Laurie both giggled at my phrasing. Probably a classic Michael-ism, or something like that.

"But... well, I'll have to ask my Mom for permission this time I guess," Maria said, "and clear things with the Parkers at the cafe so that all of our shifts get covered."

"Alright, just let me know," Laurie said. "Umm... I can probably swing plane tickets if that'd be okay with you... and safe. I know that they warn about pregnant women not flying sometimes... not sore about women who are recently NOT pregnant."

Thought about that. Normally I wasn't wild about the idea of Laurie spending money wildly on my behalf... like it was a sugar mommy thing except that she was my age and possibly a generation or two further down... a sugar girl? Well, anyway... Laurie had countered that I had nearly as much claim on the inheritance as she did - that if her grandpa had known about me, he would have mentioned me in the will, which I wasn't so sure about, and in any event, for her to give me a huge lump of the estate would be impossible without her accountants finding out, and the government getting inquqisitive, and it basically just didn't sound like a good idea.

"Umm... yeah, that could work," Maria said. "The thing about pregnant women flying is mostly when you're a lot forther along..." and all of a sudden a very minor sob escaped her. "Further along than I got. I... I'll double-check, but I'm sure I'll be fine."

"Okay. Call you tomorrow, sis?" I said. Since Maria was obviously getting upset again, I definitely wanted to bring the conversation to a close and see if she needed another big hug, or something like that.

"I'll expect it," Laurie replied. "Sayonara." And just as I was about to ask why she was saying goodbye in Japanese, she must have hung up.

I went out into the living room, and it certainly didn't seem like a bad idea to give Maria a hug. Then we started to talk about what arrangements we'd need to make.

-----------

(Isabel):

I tossed and turned on the couch one last time, and then got up, stretched, and headed into the kitchen. To my surprise, Mrs DeLuca was sitting at the table, drinking a mug of something that smelled like strong coffee. I mean... I wasn't VERY surprised that she was there - it was her house after all, and she's entitled to be just about anywhere she likes. I was just a little startled that she'd been so close to where I had woken up and I hadn't realized that she was around until I saw her. "Umm, hi Mrs Deluca."

She smiled slightly. "Maybe, after all that we've been through, you kids should start to call me Amy," she said in a low voice. "Want a cup of coffee??"

"Uh, no thanks," I said. "Never touch the stuff. Umm... do you have any lemon juice in the fridge?"

"Hot lemon?" Amy guessed. "Umm... yeah, I think Maria keeps some around. Go have a look." So I did, and found the familiar green bottle with a yellow label and cap. Poured some cold tap water into a kettle and set it on the stove, turning the gas burner up high. "So I guess you'll be heading back to Las Cruces today?"

"Yeah, Alex'll be expecting me," I said. "Hope I can catch Maria again before I go, though... though if she doesn't want to see me, then obviously I won't force myself on her. Just... would like to be able to say something a little more reassuring to Alex." I'd called Alex's dorm room last night after the funeral, and we'd chatted some, but still... it kind of seemed like there wasn't much point in my having come just to attend the funeral of Maria's tiny little child. Though... well, I guess that was kind of worthwhile in itself.

"Well, you're welcome to hang around here as long as you want to." Amy sighed. "I think I'll be putting off anything on my calendar... getting on with life is all well and good, but sometimes it's a bit soon for that." She looked at me as I finished pouring the hot water into the lemon juice, and brought the mug, stirring all the while, to the table. "So - what has it been like, being away from home for nearly the whole summer, and taking college courses? Not to mention being off with Alex?"

"It... it's been nice," I admitted after a moment's pause. "The classes were interesting - not quite what I expected college courses to be like, but definitely worthwhile. Staying in residence and being out of my parent's house... well, I miss them, and Max, and my other friends here... but it's been a bit of an adventure anyway, and also a learning experience - getting along with my suitemates, adjusting to living in a different place with different people than I've known all of my life." Thought about it. "And... and spending time with Alex, when he hasn't been busy with his computers, has been amazing, of course." I sighed. "I do kind of feel at loose ends when he's busy and I don't have any school work. I know I know... I should be out exploring, making other friends and such..."

Amy chuckled over her coffee. "Well, I wasn't about to say that exactly, but it doesn't sound like a bad plan. Is there something stopping you?"

"Not really... just a little hard to put myself out there. And a lot of the people who are on campus during the summer act like they're not that interested in socializing." I shrugged. "Umm... weird question - did anybody tell you exactly what Alex is doing with those computers? I don't remember it coming up that time you came to our campfire... there was a lot of other material to get through that night."

She smiled. "No, not then, but I asked Jim and he told me a little... as much as I feel like I can understand, maybe. I'm not a very computer-friendly person... probably wouldn't touch them if I didn't need to look up addresses on the net and print out invoice and so on."

"Fair enough." We sat for a while in silence that started to seem fairly awkward, at least to me, and I struggled for a new topic of conversation. "So, umm... how was the - uh, the trade show yesterday? Anybody interested in Mister... uh, in Jim's dressers?"

It took a moment for Amy to figure out quite what I was talking about, it seemed. "Oh!! Well, there was only one finished dresser that we could take to the show, but yes - it sold, and we got commissions for two more... actually, I think we could have gotten commissions for a lot more work than that, but it didn't seem wise to commit ourselves to TOO much in advance. Keep the buzz going, but leave the options open, you know??"

I smiled. "That's great. I remember walking in on him and seeing him at work in the garage... though come to think of it, I'm not exactly sure when. A few days before Alex left for the university maybe?" Amy shrugged. "That furniture is so beautiful - I have to admit I wouldn't have thought he was capable of creating art like that." I sighed. "Is... is he still doing most of his stuff in the garage?"

Amy chuckled. "No, we've rented a real workshop for him. It's... um, it's near the corner of Poe street and Atkinson." I nodded, placing the general area.

"Doesn't that cut into the money he's making off sales?"

"Yeah, I guess, if you want to look at it that way... but he's more productive in a place with good lighting and plenty of space for his tools, and where he doesn't have to worry about distracting the neighbors. Plus - well, he wouldn't be able to use that garage for long anyway. And this way he doesn't have to run out of the car in the rain."

I laughed. Rain was a fairly infrequent worry in New Mexico. "I wish you guys all of the best. So, come on - is there more you can tell me about the trade show? The kind of people who bought his stuff? What was the convention center like??"

Amy chuckled and started into a fairly detailed recounting of the events. She was just in the middle of a play-by-play of an informal auction that she had started over a table that four different people had expressed interest in at the same time, when the door opened and a call of "Hey, mom?" sounded.

"Umm, in here sweetie," Amy replied, and soon Maria poked her head into the room. She nodded to herself when she saw me, as if something she'd been wondering about had been confirmed... (that I'd stayed the night in her house?)) and pulled up a third chair at the table.

"Okay, Mom... I know that this might sound like a surprise to you, but... the day after tomorrow, after I've been to the hospital and left - Michael and I are going to go back to Tucson."

Amy blinked in amazement for something like ten seconds straight. "Umm... okay, yes, that was a little unexpected. Is... does it have something to do with that girl who was at the campsite..."

"Laurie Dupree, mom, I told you her name five times, if you manged to miss it while she was on the news." Maria rolled her eyes. "She's Michael's sister, mom, and he doesn't get a chance to see her very often. Also... well, I haven't known her that long myself, I admit, but I like to think of Laurie as a friend."

"Now, she's not *quite* his sister, is she?" Amy countered. I shoved my chair back a little, not really wanting to get involved in a DeLuca family affair.

"Maybe not quite, but it's close enough. That's how he thinks of her, when he isn't joking about the weird generation gap." Maria focused on her. "I... I'd like to have your blessing with this trip, but..."

"But if I forbid it, you're not going to respect my wishes anyway?" Amy finished. Maria blushed and looked very awkward. "Well... no, maybe I shouldn't have brought that up. This clearly isn't the right time for a clash of wills, setting whatever parental authority I still have against your independence. If it means that much to you... then go, and say hello to Laurie for me." Amy sighed. "What... what about the move? Do you want us to wait until you're back for that??"

Maria thought about it. "Well, I've never been a huge fan of packing, lugging boxes and heavy furniture around, and unpacking." Amy rolled her eyes at her daughter. "I... I don't expect anyone else to do my stuff for me, but... but if you've got people ready and willing to help with the move while we're gone, don't feel that you have to wait on our account. We can probably get something sorted out soon after I get back."

Amy sighed uncertainly. Not quite sure why, I ventured cautiously into the conversation. "Maybe if you have time, you could get some of your stuff packed before you leave, Maria," I said. "Then... oh, never mind. I probably shouldn't be sticking my big nose into any of this, since I won't be around much to help myself."

"Umm... yeah, true," Maria agreed. "But that point is taken well, I think." She sighed. "Ohh, and - thanks for coming, Isabel. Really. I... I know that I haven't really talked to you much, but it does mean a lot to me that... that you made it down here, on my day of need, or... well, something like that."

"You're welcome," I said. "I know that Alex really wanted to come too."

"Yeah, I'm sure he did," Maria agreed. "Well... umm... when do you have to leave? Anything in particular you want to do while you're here in town?"

"Well... since I rode in with Michael and Tess yesterday, I'm probably taking the greyhound home again," I said after a moment. "Probably the one that leaves downtown at four-thirty pm... It'll be late when I get into campus, but hopefully I'll be able to snooze a little bit along the way." Considered. "There's a little shopping that I could probably do... nothing else especially. Why?"

"Just wondered," Maria replied, smiling at me. "I do kinda feel like spending some time with you while you're here... we haven't had a chance to really talk in a while. Even out in Frazier woods."

"Yeah, I guess that's right," I said. Or at least, when we had a chance to spend time together on the Fourth of July weekend we hadn't jumped at it.. but then, part of the time Maria had been sticking close to Laurie, and I'd had the entire gang to catch up with. We'd talked some around the campfire, and traded cards, but that had pretty much been it. "So you want to come shopping?"

"Try and stop me," Maria insisted. "And then maybe we can hang out in the park or something and just talk."

"Alright." I stretched a little. "Umm... well, thanks for the couch, and... for everything, Amy."

"You're very welcome, Isabel," Amy said, and impulsively, she reached out and caught Maria's hand. In just a few seconds they were hugging each other tight. "I... I know that you have to work through this in your own way and in your own time," she whispered to her daughter, not quite quietly enough that I couldn't make it out. "But... but please don't become a stranger to me, baby. No matter which house I'm living in, that can always be a home to you."

"Th-thanks Mom," Maria stuttered. Pulling slowly away from the hug, she cocked her head inquisitively. "Mom... have you ever been through something like this?"

"Not... not personally, I suppose." Amy sighed. "Only ever been pregnant once that I know of, and obviously that would be you." She sighed. "But... but when I was in my senior year, umm, my best friend tried to get an abortion, and - well, I guess she did, but it... I don't think it went smoothly, based on whatever standards there are for that kind of thing." Maria gasped, and maybe I did too. "She ended up in the hospital for nearly three weeks, and they told her that she'd probably have problems if she ever WANTED to have kids." Amy seemed a long way down memory lane. "I... I don't know if she ever did. This was 'Aunt Janey', Maria, do you remember her?"

"Umm... maybe a little," Maria admitted.

"Well, she moved to Alabama a month after your fifth birthday. Had started a pen pal thing with a guy from there, and decided that he was her Mister Right and off she went. I got a few letters, everything seemed to be fine... and I guess I never heard from her again." Amy seemed to be puzzled about that. "Of course, that was when your father and I were starting to really fight mean with each other, and... oh, listen to me! If you girls just sit around and listen as I tell rambling stories from when I was younger, you'll be here all day, and Isabel won't catch her bus."

"No, we've got plenty of time," Maria said, fiddling with her watch, and I realized that she was setting a countdown timer. "I... I want to listen to your stories for a bit longer." Amy seemed undecided for a bit. "Es- especially if you've got any stories that are about Dad, from when things were good between you guys." She sighed. "We never seem to talk about him."

Amy smiled sadly. "Maybe you should get your own cup of hot lemon, or something, Maria."

"Nah, I'll just grab a cold snapple," she joked. And Amy started to tell us about Ryan Galdamez asked her to marry him.

-----------

So, well, after about a half an hour's worth of stories, Maria and I did the shopping thing - just a few drugstores to pick up makeup and other supplies that I particularly liked and hadn't been able to find at the campus general store... and some supplies for making a special dinner for Alex sometime, and Maria took me to a thrift store and we each tried on a few things, and I found a skirt that I just couldn't manage to leave behind. Then we found a sidewalk bench on a dead-end street that nobody seemed to be walking up or down at that time of the summer afternoon, and had our girl talk there instead of heading for the park.

Maria caught me up on a lot of stuff... on finding out that there was a baby on the way - that was something that I'd heard a bit about, but not really what it had been like for her, and Michael asking her to marry him, and giving her the Antarian ring that he'd taken away from Lonnie and Rath. The full story about losing the baby nearly broke my heart, but I think that it was doing Maria some good to unload about it, so I tried my best to be a good listener. When she got the to the point where I and everybody else came in, there was an eerie silence. I just kind of sat there as Maria brushed the tears away from her cheeks.

"This... this may sound like an odd question," I put in. "But... but did you ever experiment much with the ring after Michael gave it to you??"

"Hmm?" Maria asked. "Umm... no, not really. Tried once, and it made me really light-headed and dizzy. And Michael found out about that, and made me promise that I wouldn't try it again, because he didn't want me to..." she trailed off and swallowed hard. "To hurt the baby. Hmm... well, I guess that isn't a reason to hold off any more."

"Not that that's much consolation, I know." I said, putting a hand on Maria's leg in a natural, friendly way. "I... I wasn't thinking of that connection when I asked you - I was just curious."

"No, it's okay," Maria insisted. "So - umm, well, enough about me. How's Alex doing on his big project? What are your classes like?"

"Ehh, not so much to tell there." Actually, I was just feeling tired of explaining... not only had I just had this conversation with Maria's mom, but Michael and Tess had asked similar questions yesterday, and even my suitemates seemed to be oddly curious about my college experiences, maybe just because I was relatively young. "By... by this point, I kind of wish that ... that it was all over by now, or that it had never started. That I could just stay here in Roswell, and that Alex could be here with me, and that we could enjoy our summer together without needing to worry about class schedules or computer algorithms... or anything except for parents, brothers, and boredom."

"Yeah, that sounds really good," Maria agreed. "Though other stuff always does seem to get into the way, no matter how hard you try." She sighed. "I guess that's part of why I'm so excited about going to visit Laurie again... I'm hoping that there'll be chances to spend time with Michael without getting distracted by having to work down at the cafe, or our friends acting weird because they know what we've lost... no offense, I feel a little weird myself." She sighed. "Michael and I need to take a little time to put our relationship back together without a baby in the middle of it, I think."

"Sounds like a plan I think," I said, and sighed. An unexpected mental picture hit me... Alex and I living together, possibly married, in a cozy little apartment somewhere, and me finding out that I was pregnant. Even in my imagination it was several years in the future, but my breath caught in my throat. What would it be like, having a baby together? Would I get really scared, remembering what had happened to Maria, worrying that I'd lose my own child? I was half alien, and Alex was human - it was a role reversal from Maria and Michael, in terms of fatherhood and motherhood. Would the fact that I was a hybrid mean my baby would be safer, or in even more danger than Maria's had been? There didn't seem to be any easy way to tell.

And then yet another thing hit me. "Maria, I think you mentioned that once you and Michael finally did it... even starting when you were getting close, there... that it was as if something inhuman was pulling at you to keep, umm, keep mating, until..."

"Until I was pregnant, yeah," Maria said soberly. "Like it was something alien deep inside Michael that was able to spread to me when I was close to him... a mating instict to perpetuate the species." She shrugged a little uncertainly.

"Leaving aside the part where Michael doesn't exactly have a species at all," I put in. Maria looked up at me in surprise. "Well, none of us do - we're crossbreeds between two species."

Maria blinked in confusion. "Doesn't that make you a species of your own?"

"No, at least not until we've bred true among our own kind for several generations, which doesn't look like it's likely to happen," I replied. "Since none of us are coupling with other hybrids, though Tess tried her best. But it's a misconception that every living thing has a species... hybrids don't, and I'm not sure about some mutants." I sighed. "Hypothetically we'd be designated 'Homo Sapiens X Homo Antaris', or something like that. That's just signifying which species we descend from, though."

"Antaris?" Maria asked.

"Umm... that's something that Ava mentioned, when we were camping," I said. "That Lonnie said it was the name of our alien home planet - Antar. She wasn't sure if Lonnie was right, but it helps to have a name."

Maria considered that. "Isn't there a bright star in the sky named Antaris, or something like that."

"Antares. I looked it up in that star book Alex gave me last year." Laughed for a moment at the memory of the two of us looking up at the stars, trying to ignore some of what I'd said to him. "Doesn't seem likely as a star system where people would actually live - it's a dying red supergiant that would have swallowed up all of its planets long ago." Shrugged.

"Okay." Maria considered. "Antar, crossbreeds and species - where were we before that?"

"Making love to an alien," I prompted. "And obsessive tendencies relating thereto."

"Oh, yeah," Maria said, seeming a little taken aback by the topic this time. "Umm... are you worried about you and Alex, getting pregnant if the two of you mess around too much?"

"Yeah, or something like that." I let out a long moan. "I mean, we've already done some pretty intense stuff, and while I've felt an impulse to go further, it's never been especially difficult to put a lid on it so far."

Maria blinked. "Do I qualify for any details on what 'pretty intense' means?"

"Didn't you get a hint up at the campgrounds?" I asked, blushing. "I know that Max and Tess, umm, heard us. Mostly heard Alex, actually."

Maria paused, evidently casting her memories back to the fourth of july weekend. "No, that doesn't ring a bell, as it were. Maybe I managed to sleep through whatever it was... though if Alex was moaning or otherwise making noise and you weren't... well, I can make a guess. Did you happen to have something filling your mouth at the time, Isabel Evans?"

"Erm, yeah, guilty as charged," I mumbled.

"It's not a crime, and if it were I'd be getting hauled away too," Maria joked.

"And, umm, he'd done kind of the same thing for me. Not with his mouth, though."

"Fingers, then? So Alex got to third base," Maria laughed, and I blushed a little. "Hmm... well, I guess that's reassuring. I was a little worried that we wouldn't even be able to make each other, um, cum without getting swept up in the craving for more. But then, we never really did that until after the first time we'd had sex."

"Really?" I asked her.

"Really. I know that some people say that you need to hit all the bases in order before crossing home plate, or you'll get tagged out of the game..."

"Umm... I don't think anybody really says that," I interrupted. "Err, unless they're actually talking about baseball." Maria just grinned, and belatedly it hit me that she'd been making a kind of joke. "Ehh well, whatever."

"Yeah." Maria stretched a little where she sat. "Do you want to start walking again??"

"Alright." I looked at my watch, trying to figure how much time before I had to get to the bus station. It would be a little while yet - especially if I could ask one of the DeLucas for a ride. (Hopefully not Sean.) "I feel like going to the park, actually, even though we've kinduv had all the big girl talk already."

"Okay, sure," Maria agreed. "Not sure I'm up for a lot of running around and frolicking, though."

I snickered and grinned back at her.

----------

(Tess):

"Hmm... moving in with the DeLucas," I repeated out loud, looking from Mister Valenti to Jim and back again. "Well, sure I guess. We all knew that this was coming soon, didn't we? Might as well be now instead of later in the summer or whatever."

"Don't go and bowl us over with your enthusiasm or anything," Jim teased. "Oh, wait - you didn't, not even close. I, um, I thought that you'd be happier about the notion of... of going home."

His words caught me by surprise. Home?? Whatever home meant to me, that big house that Ed bought when he decided that it was the right time for me to come to Roswell didn't fit the bill. My memories of it seemed to fall into three seperate categories. First - the 'new girl in town' memories... everything from my first week and a half in town, up until about the time when Max got captured by Pierce. Everything was so up in the air and confusing then... the things that I'd been expecting for Roswell, meeting kids who were like me, didn't turn out ANYTHING like I'd been thinking that they would. Finding out that Isabel and Michael suspected ME was an especially disappointing turn of events... and you remember that weird confrontation scene that played out in our house, right? With Liz showing up to have a talk with me about Max, accidentally breaking the Buddha, Ed inviting her to stay for dinner, she planted a miniature camera in our living room, then Max showed up, she left with him, and everybody saw me on the wireless-cam using my powers to fix Buddha. Umm... anyway, those weren't particularly happy memories.

Then, there was the summertime after Max was back and Liz had left for Florida - which was mostly pretty lonely. No Ed, since he'd become Pierce and was in the Special Unit. I hung out with Michael some, mostly at his place, and spent a bit of time with Isabel, but they never came to the house. When I was there, I was all alone. And, of course, that one freaky night of coming home with Max and finding out that a Skin had broken in. No, no happy memories there at all, though hopefully I'd have a chance to make some new ones.

Where *was* home to me? Was in this place, with the Valentis? Or did I still think of home as being some other planet, way out there? I wasn't sure. "Umm... I guess I never thought of that house as a home," I mumbled lamely. "But... but maybe that'll change once everybody else gets moved in." Didn't they say that home was where the heart was? (Yeah, I know, it's a corny line - but I can't help what runs through my brain sometimes - total cornball, as my mostly-identical twin might say.) "Err... but Liz and I will probably be really busy at the Diner, covering for Maria and everything."

"I understand that," Jim said, smiling. "It's a good thing that you're doing, taking on more so that she can have one less thing to worry about." He turned to Kyle. "How about you? Have you and Mister Davis got your work schedule sorted out at the Museum yet?"

"Not really," he admitted. "It hasn't been terribly busy, and Ava's like a little firecracker around there. I... I think that if I ask for some time off, Mister whats-his-name won't mind. Brody's general manager, I mean. And Brody doesn't seem to care about anything but his Utah flying saucers anyway."

"Is he going to want to drag Ava off to Utah again soon?" I asked.

"Umm... no, I don't think so, though I could be wrong." Kyle shrugged. "They had to tell Brody about Maria, to get back here so quickly. Max didn't want to lose any time that he could help, before healing Maria - or at least, making sure that she wasn't in any serious... before being her so that he could do anything he could to help, I guess I mean." I nodded. "And Brody's had a big soft spot for Maria just about since he's met her. Not anything sexual and creepy... but I think he took the news pretty hard - he asked how things went, and Max and Ava told him that she lost the baby. So, bottom line, he isn't going to be pushing either of them about much for a little while I think."

"That kind of works out for us I guess," Jim said. "Maybe we can start on the packing tonight."

"Umm... probably not Dad," Kyle said, getting up and taking my hand. I looked into his eyes and smiled. "We're heading out to Close Encounters."

Mister Valenti's eyebrows rose. "The dance club??" I nodded. "Be home by ten thirty."

"Oh, come on Dad," Kyle shot back. "It's summertime! You can't give me the same curfew I have on a school night."

"Hmm." He considered the two of us. "Tess, do you have work in the morning?"

"Just early lunch shift and on, eleven AM," I replied, smiling from him to Kyle.

"Then eleven PM curfew, take it or leave it." Kyle groaned, but I wasn't too upset. That would give us plenty of time.


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part 39

(Max):

"So, how are you doing?" I aked Liz as we tucked into our burgers. (Well not quite *as* we ate, as that would involve talking with my mouth full, which I try not to do, and I didn't do it this time.)

"Umm, pretty g... w-- better," she finally settled on. "I want to pay a visit to Maria today or tomorrow. I feel bad, like I was avoiding her today. It's just..."

"Yesterday was horrible for you too," I pointed out in a low voice. "And you needed to recover, to come to terms with your own reaction and some of your fgrief, the fear you felt for Maria's sake, before you could go to her as the consoler and 'comfortadore'. I think Maria would understand that."

Liz smiled back. "Yeah, that's a good point I guess. I was more scared for her than I let myself realize... but maybe we should talk about that later." She ate a few fries and cutely considered. "How far did things get in Utah." After a second, as I tried to think of a reply, Liz's face clearly registered that she had stepped from one secretive subject into an even worse one.

But what the heck - nobody was close enough to hear us if we talked in low voices, carefully. "We've figured out the facility location, pretty certainly. A convenience store out in the boonies, along a fairly nondescript stretch of county road."

"WHAT?" Liz asked, intently but keeping her volume still fairly low. "A convenience store?"

"Yep," Max agreed. "It makes some sense if you think about it. The government needs to set up a topsecret hangar storage facility. Underground is the best way of hiding the main bulk of the building, but they need an access point on the surface - one that won't seem too suspicious even if people are accidentally spotted going in and out."

"Okay," Liz said, spotting the point. "So they need a building with some sort of other function - a store."

"Feds build it, find a tenant going through a third party," Max agreed. "The store operator gets a location at a discount rate, and fairly good if infrequent business from travelers who need to stock up on anything before they get to the town, or the service centers on the main highway. And there'd be ways of encouraging the clerks to make sure to call the right authorities in case anything suspicious happens, wihout getting them asking too many questions."

"Have... have you actually been inside the store?" Liz asked. "Have you figured out where the hangar access would be?"

"There's a false wall with a rack of chips pushed up against it," I said, a kind of muted excitement growing. "They must not need to go down there very often anymore, if that's it." I sighed. "We haven't figured out how we're going to get past the security yet. Brody's friend was actually proposing an armed robbery at one point, but that idea didn't last long, especially when we found out that the County DA is up for re-election in November, and probably likely to go for the throats of any criminals that happen to fall in his lap."

"Good," Liz said. "That you didn't pursue the robbery idea, I mean. That sounds so dangerous, and there has to be some better way."

I smiled. "Fortunately, I don't think Brody is in the mood to push hard for an impulsive plan. We've got some time." I looked down at my plate and realized that I had to eat more and talk less. "So, umm... did you hear about..." I couldn't think of any way to finish that sentence, so I just stopped trying and took a big bite of burger.

"Michael said that he and Maria are going out to Arizona to see Laurie," Liz filled in, smiling. I jumped a little at the thought. "I think it'll be good for them. And Amy wants to move in with the Valentis... or for everybody to start moving into Tess' old place, really..."

----------

(Alex):

I looked up hurriedly from my book when I heard the sound of air brakes, or something like that - but it wasn't the occasion I was waiting for. A bus was pulling out of a parking spot across the way and pulling up to the platform that said 'DEPARTURES - ALBUQUERQUE.' It was getting late, and I admit that I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but I didn't want to fall asleep on this bench and be found like that when it happened. So I looked around, got up, and waited in line for a few minutes at the newsstand. When the five people ahead of me had all been dealt with one by one, the grizzled man behind the plastic barrier looked at me. He must have noticed that I didn't have any gum or magazines or newspapers in my hands. "What's yer brand?" he muttered, looking at the displays of cigarettes that were arranged behind him - presumably because they were more valuable, and more of a target for shoplifters than anything that was out on my side of the little kiosk.

"No, no," I muttered, somehow very confused and taken aback by the assumption - which was probably not that unreasonable from his perspective. "I, umm, err." For a long time, I couldn't say what I was really wanting, and tried tapping the sign that had been taped up against the plastic, obviously printed out in a simple home word processor. But this didn't seem to trigger any comprehension from the proprietor, and finally managed to stammer out, "C-c-cuppa joe?"

"Ohhh." With a bit of a scowl, he poured a measure of dark brown steaming liquid from the coffee maker next to his chair into a battered looking styrofoam cup, (at least it didn't obviously leak right away,) accepted Alex's dollar bill and quarter in his other hand, and then passed the cup awkwardly through the hole in the barrier, without offering creamer or sugar. Alex sighed for a moment, stepping aside so that the lady behind him could pay for her copy of 'people' and apparently some smokes. When he looked into the cup and swirled it around faintly, the coffee seemed faintly greasy, and didn't come within two inches of the rim. But when he forced himself to swallow some of the incredibly hot liquid, he definitely felt more awake. Maybe that was mostly because it was hard to be tired and sleepy when you were hating the taste of anything quite as much as Alex hated black coffee, especially *this* black coffee.

It wasn't too long before the bus pulled up to the arrivals platform he had been watching, and Alex hung back a little, not wanting to look foolish if the person that he was waiting for wasn't on it after all. But he tossed the cofee into a garbage can as the first passengers climbed down the stairs - one way or another, he wouldn't be needing it any more. It took him a while to recognize the drawn face of a girl who got out near the end of the procession... she was pale and looked about as tired as Alex felt, (not too surprising if she'd been trying to get any sleep on the bus,) her long golden hair was put up in a simple style that managed to completely hide its essential beauty, and she was wearing a baggy, shapeless jacket that Alex didn't recognize. But when those deep brown eyes locked on him in shock, her face, still a little sallow and exhausted, lit up in joy, and Alex rushed forward to hug Isabel. "What... what are you doing here?" she blurted out after kissing him a warm hello, and then seemed to feel that the answer to that was too obvious to wait for without adding a clarification. "I mean... I didn't even call to tell you that I'd be coming back by bus, never mind *which* bus."

"I figured that you wouldn't want to hit somebody up for long distance," Alex explained, sticking his hand into her back jeans pocket in a giddy sense of liberty. My hand was right on her butt, practically! In public. I tried to calm down slightly as we walked over towards the city bus that would take us back to campus. "And you guys were out of here so quickly that you left your purse in my room... including your cell phone and your wallet. So I wasn't really expecting a call, don't worry about that." Isabel stuck her own hand in my back pocket, which was thrilling in a slightly different way.

"And you... just figured that I'd take the last bus home today?"

"It was a possibility that seemed worth checking out," I answered carefully.

Something about the way I phrased that must have set off alarm bells. "Alex -- you didn't hang around the bus station ever since -- umm, since one o'clock this afternoon. Did you??"

Smiled. "No... that would have meant blowing off most of today's session with Luis and the guys -- and that would kind of defeat the point of staying in Las Cruces after all." The bus was already waiting, and we had to seperate to climb up into it and pay our fares. Ended up sitting side by side near the back... every tiny little bit of contact with Isabel seemed to put an unusually intense through me - like our thighs side by side, or the casual way she rested her hand on my leg, not far from the knee. "But I cannot tell a lie - I was here when the 7:25 came in, yeah. Went to the cinema across the street, even though they were nearly an hour into the show."

"Okay," Isabel said. "Well, it was very nice to see you when I did, so I guess I'm glad you came. How was the session today."

"Later," I blurted out, before thinking about it. Isabel's eyes widened slightly. "What's the deal with Maria?"

"Oh, my god, I guess I forgot that probably nobody called to tell you." Isabel sighed. "Maria is... she's gonna be alright. Nothing seriously wrong with her," she said quickly. "But..." She leaned forward, her lips coming close to my big awkward ears. "Alex, she lost the baby."

"R-right." I wasn't hit especially hard by the notion... that had been sounding increasingly likely when Michael, Tess, and Isabel left yesterday, and from the look on Isabel's face when she showed up I knew that it hadn't all turned out to be sunshine and fluffy kitty cats. "She... she must be devastated. I know that she loved that little kid so much... no matter how young he was. Err, I mean..."

"She," Isabel corrected calmly, and I blinked. "There... we had a kind of secret funeral service, and Maria named her then. Keva. I think there was a middle name, but I can't remember it. Keva DeLuca-Guerin."

I felt tears starting to come to my eyes, and realized that there was a thirteen-year old boy diagonally across the bus from Isabel, looking at us. Probably wondering what the heck we were whispering about so intently. I couldn't worry about him right now though, about being watched. "K-Kevin was the name of Maria's favorite uncle - who she hasn't seen in years and years. I think she might have chosen the name remembering him." Isabel nodded silently. "Tell me all about the service."

"What, here?" Isabel asked, and I nodded. So, a little uncomfortably, she told me about how they'd all driven out to Frazier woods, and how Max, Kyle, and Mister Valenti had worked together to dig the resting place. In an odd way, I wished that I had been there. It didn't sound like a very pleasant memory, of course... but Maria was one of my oldest friends, and it was the least I could have done to respect and honor her child. And I smiled when she told me about Maria going home with Michael openly afterwards, even Amy DeLuca unable to complain, and about the plans for a visit to Arizona.

"Oh-okay," she finally mumbled, drawing her speeches to a close. "Your turn now. Computers and translations."

"It... it's going pretty well... within certain limitations," I said with a smile. "We've been getting good results from the character-based encoding when the computer has been programmed with some historical data about what the characters usually indicate in terms of sounds. The english alphabet, for instance..."

"The Roman alphabet, you mean?" Isabel corrected. I looked over at her. "Umm, sorry. I know you were trying to simplify things for me, but you don't need to dumb them down quite THAT much. I know that the alphabet we use, and french and Germans use, was originated by the Italians of the Roman empire."

"Okay, yeah," I agreed. "So if we put in linguistic information about what an F or an L usually sound like in those languages that use the Roman alphabet, we can usually get some translation results - even without the computer drawing on any further information about typical latin roots and so on, like M-R words referring to mother. Mere in French and Mater in German, you know."

"Okay," Isabel prompted. "Where's the next challenge?"

"Well, coming up with our own encoding scheme for alphabets we don't have the historical linguistics on has pretty much bombed." Isabel looked a bit blank. "Character encoding basically means that you come up with a shorthand number inside the computer for each letter. If we have a sample in Pelopenisian or whatever, and just come up with numbers at random for the Pelopenisian alphabet, the computer can't figure out what's going on because it doesn't have a starting point."

"And... and that's the same situation we're in with the alien book," Isabel replied, seeing it. "We don't know what the individual alien letters mean either. Is... is there a plan for getting over that road block?"

"There's a start," I said with a smile. "One approach that Pryor is hot on is to start with a graphical representation of the input, instead of letter-encoded. You 'show' the computer the actual writing, how each character is printed, the curves and cros-strokes of the letters. He thinks that the increase in data will lead to some further breakthroughs in meaning."

I was about to explain further, but Isabel shhed me in that particular soft way that always meant whe wanted to think for a moment. "But... but even linguistic experts can't figure out how letters are pronounced from how they're marked, right??"

"Human experts can't do the kind of blind translations we've done so far, either," I said, excitement growing a bit inside me. "We don't even really know why the linguistic historicals matter... it's not like we've really taught the computer to understand patterns between how a word is said and what it means. I'm not sure if there ARE such patterns valid across all the language families we've been working with." Sighed. "But the computer doesn't work like a human thinker would, deductively or inductively, building up an answer from small pieces. Somehow - and none of us are really sure that we understand this part, it's able to go by elimination, cutting out possible relationships until it's left with a single transcription."

"Yeah, I remember that article," Isabel said distantly. "Where doctor Pryor was talking about all the infinite possible languages that had never been."

"Yeah," I said. "The trouble with the graphical element is that we'll need some sort of graphical algorithm that'll give the computer a basis for making eliminations when working with pictures of letters. The same way that mine worked with number encodings of letters."

"Okay," Isabel said. "I hope that you can work it out this summer. Would kinduv suck if we didn't have any real results by the time you had to go back for senior year."

"Yeah," I agreed with that. Unfortunately, it seemed quite likely that we WOULDN'T be able to translate the book on that kind of time limit - though it was hard for me to estimate the chances to well, I guess. Inspiration doesn't follow the law of probability.

Isabel gave a fairly long, drawn-out sigh. "Tired?" I asked, and she smiled slightly and nodded. "Well, we're almost home." Sure enough, the lights of the university could almost be seen, though none of the buildings were terribly high. It wasn't that far from campus to the bus station - I've walked it sometimes, but that hadn't seemed like a good idea today.

"I dunno." Isabel's voice was wistful. "University of New Mexico at Las Cruces is a nice place, especially with you around - but I'm not sure I'd want to live there."

That sentence startled me slightly. I thought we *were* living there... but maybe that was a kind of joke, or an important distinction that I hadn't grasped before. Did Isabel think of this as an extended getaway spot instead of as a semi-permanent thing? To an extent the difference in terms didn't really matter - I didn't really think of the residence at Las Cruces as 'home' in the same way that my parents' house in Roswell was - but maybe it indicated that Isabel was feeling even more homesick than I sometimes got. (Going back to Roswell yet again and not being able to see her parents probably contributed to that.)

And maybe that meant that she wasn't going to head off for University in the fall after all - which I had to say I liked the thought of, at least on one level, but then what was next for her? I didn't think that Izzie really knew - which was something her parents probably wouldn't be wild about.

"Do you wanna stay over at my place or go back to the girls tonight?" I asked her softly.

"I'm with you," she insisted, hugging my shoulders firmly with one hand. "Definitely."

----------

(Kyle):

"You move divinely, Miss Harding," I said as we left the club and headed back to my car. Tess giggled and put her hand lightly on my arm, halfway between the wrist and the elbow.

"Yeah, well I had to try and make up for that peculiar species of graceless flailing that you call dance," she remarked calmly. Suddenly startled, I peered into her face as we passed an electric light... and caught a bit of a friendly smirk, which was enough for me to file the whole thing into a mental 'just foolish teasing' bin.

"We probably should've left the dance floor earlier," Tess continued as we approached the parking spot that I'd taken. "We won't have long to kiss before going home."

"Yeah, I know," I agreed, getting the passenger door for her. "But we were both having fun out there, yeah?"

"Sure, but not as much fun as we could be." I was very quiet while pulling out of the lot, my mind dwelling on what I hadn't been able to tell her... that there was definitely a reason that I had kept dancing instead of pulling an early split after noticing that the hands of the clock were creeping past ten fifteen PM. Not that I was trying to avoid kissing Tess, or that I wasn't looking forward to it. Just... just wanted to get a little more dancing in first, just in case that helped. The fact that it meant our makeout session would be seriously limited in time... well, I guess there were good parts and bad parts to that. Less chance of a resounding, amazing succes, but the possibility of failure muted or blunted too.

Sorry, have I managed to completely confuse you yet? Bottom line - I've been finding it oddly hard to throw myself into my private displays of affection with Tess completely... with all my heart and soul, as it were, though I guess maybe a large part of my soul just doesn't care about dating at all. It's not really like anything I've ever felt before, and I really don't think it has anything directly to do with the 'sister thing.' I'm over thinking of Tess as close enough to being a sister that we couldn't date or fool around... or even get married, a long way down the line, for that matter. But still *something* was getting in the way. It annoyed me that I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and worse than that, I was really worried about it for Tess' sake. She put so much of herself out on the line when she asked me out, and I'd really hate to disappoint her yet again...

Pushing these kinds of mental ramblings to one side, I turned off onto a little-used county road and pulled the car off to one side. "Here good?"

Tess made a very brief show of looking around. "You know it, Buddha man," she said in a low mutter that I found very sexy, and nearly launched her face at mine. I could have sworn that she had her seat belt on all the way, but that pretty much couldn't have still been true from the way her petite form just about crawled into my lap, uncaring of the fact that the steering wheel was so close nearby. Didn't seem to bother her any. Her lips pressed close to mine with a skill and lusty feeling that I was starting to grow used to, and excitingly curvy flesh was pressing up against me in several places. I ran one hand up and down her bare arm as Tess' tongue probed delicately into my mouth, (if you'll let me get away with that pun,) and her fingers were running through my hair.

I was able to go a fair ways without getting that specifically weird feeling, which probably suggested that all the dancing (both close and fast, though seldom at the same time,) had done some good. But as I slipped my hand up the side of her leg, under the loose, semi-short skirt, to caress a particular spot on her hip, I suddenly felt deeply uncertain about this whole deal. It was very frustrating, I didn't *want* to be so reticent, and tried to power through the awkwardness. I'm not really sure if that worked or not, we had to disengage a minute and a half later, in order to come home in time for curfew.

Tess skipped a little and grinned at me on our way up the walk. Clinging to my side, she whispered, "I think I'm really falling, Kyle."

I... I don't know what the heck I'm going to do.

-----------

(Maria):

"Well, Miss DeLuca, umm..." the Emergency room guy said, as I held on to Liz's arm tightly. What if he said that he had found something unearthly? "I... I have to say that I can find no real trace of pregnancy in your system, which is a little unusual, but not remarkably so, if the, um, the miscarriage took place when you said it did. You... um, generally I'd say that you should have come in earlier, but there doesn't seem to have been any harm done... no sign of infection or any other complication or pre-complication." He smiled a little tightly. "Might be a good idea to pay attention to the time of your next menstruation, though it'll probably be in twenty-six days or so, subject to some individual variation.

"Wait a second," I blurted out. "No trace of pregnancy -- if it took place -- probably." I looked the doctor straight in the eye. He looked pretty young, maybe a medical school intern or something like that. "Are - are you going to put something in my chart or medical records about me maybe not having ever been pregnant in the first place??"

He stared right back. "No, Miss DeLuca, I'm not. However, I'm also not going to put anything in that I couldn't tell from your examination." He sighed. "Based on the fact that you haven't had a medical checkup since mid-June, your pregnancy officially does not exist in your medical records. If there were some reason that you needed to prove it, legally, say, that might be a difficulty." That gaze was more than a little disconcerting. "Do you *need* to prove that it happened, Maria?"

"Umm, no, I guess not," I mumbled. In fact, it was probably for the best that it had never officially existed - but I still felt very weird about that notion. "So I assume I shouldn't need to worry about avoiding flying or any particular foods at this point, then??"

"No more than usual," he said. "Sorry, but I do need to keep up with my rounds... you weren't formally registered as anything more than an ER visit, yes?" I nodded. "Then you should be able to just head out whenever you like." He almost turned and left the small room, then twisted his head backward. "By the way, Miss DeLuca, that's a lovely ring. Are you engaged??"

"Umm... yeah, it's not really a public thing, but yeah," I blurted out, not wanting to lie outright about it. "My fiancee had to work, or he'd have come along." That was definitely a fib - I'd kept Michael from coming along, just on the remote off chance that it might turn into a dangerous situation for him. Better to have no-one with full hybrid DNA around, it had seemed.

I felt quite stupid about wearing the ring. Normally I still make a point of not having it on in public - alien relic, not quite like any human gemstone at least. But - well, I hadn't been out in public much lately, and I guess that meant I'd forgotten to take it off. I braced myself for other questions from the intern, but he just went away. I turned to Liz. "Let's get out of here."

"Sure." Liz being Liz, she made a point of stopping at the ER check-in desk to make sure that we didn't need to check out, even though it was a bit of a wait to get the receptionists' attention. As we headed back to my car, she asked, "So, what's next?"

"Umm... finish packing of course," I said. "Since the flight isn't until tomorrow afternoon, I might even have time to pick up a shift at the Cafe if you need me."

Liz blinked at that. "Umm... it wouldn't suck, actually, if you're sure you're up to it?"

"Physically, you heard the doc, I'm fine." I sighed. "And emotionally, a bit of running around, taking orders and delivering food seems like a nice change of pace. Sitting around Michael's place or my house moping about what I've lost doesn't seem to help, after all."

"No, I guess it wouldn't," Liz said, and hugged me gently before getting behind the wheel. I pressed her tightly to me, wishing that she wouldn't treat me as if I was about to break, and we both started laughing in mid-embrace. I got into the shotgun seat, which still felt a little unusual for me when my Mom wasn't the one driving. "So, um, in the category of awkward questions??"

"Err, yeah?" I said. "Go ahead - after all, I don't have any secrets from you lately."

"Okay then." Liz took a deep breath as she pulled out of the parking space. "Did... did you realize that Brody still seems to care about you? Max was mentioning that he seemed really upset at the thought that something had happened to you. I, umm, I actually don't know how much Max had to tell him, if he knows that you were pregnant or what... what happened. But he was really excited about all of this Utah flying saucer business until Saturday, and now, he seems to want to take a break from it all of a sudden." Liz shrugged. "Just, umm, just seemed like something that you should probably know about."

"Maybe, yeah," I admitted. Wow, Brody. I hadn't thought about him like that for a long time. Sure, we'd flirted a lot last fall - especially when I was angry with Michael, and even when neither of us were putting out that kinduv vibe, he'd been a good and close friend. I still remembered what it was like when I first saw Sydney, and realized how sick she was... and was a little embarassed now about the wild fantasies that had occured to me about being Brody's girlfriend (or even more) and a mother figure to that really cute little girl. But... well, we'd hung out a few times in the Spring, but it wasn't really the same, and I realized that I was starting to avoid him after the Gandarium stuff went down, partly because going to Arizona and getting to know Laurie had brought Michael and I closer, and that just made me more embarassed about the crushy feelings I'd had for the charmingly eccentric stranger with the exotic accent. Also, I knew that Brody had seen and heard some weird stuff with my friends back then, and that Larek had put in another appearance, and I felt weird about all of that. Then there was the hostage incident...

"Maybe I should go say hi to Brody sometime," I decided. "I mean... we're probably never going to be close friends like we were before... things just don't seem right like that. But... but maybe I've been so weirded out about the situation that I've been practically shunning the guy, and that's not fair to him."

"Makes some sense to me," Liz said. "He always loved it when you brought him a good pepperjack sandwich." I laughed at that. "But I really didn't mean to lay a guilt trip on you when I brought it..."

"No, that's okay," I assured her. "Guilt trip totally courtesy of me - and sometimes I need to go on one." Breath. "So... so how are you feeling about Max and the whole Utah flying saucer thing lately?"

"Um... worried about him, but hopeful that he finds some good answers that way," Liz said quickly. "And... and sometimes I feel like he's almost too sensitive to my feelings, when it comes to stuff like this. If I said a word against the UFO hunt, I'd be worried that he'd give it up immediately... or at least try to extricate himself from the promises he's made to Brody... and I don't need him to do that. If... if I really wanted him to take drastic action like that, then I'd say so straight out. But... but it'd be nice to be able to bring my worries and fears to him without... without getting worried that he'd overreact about them, you know?"

"Umm... not from direct experience," I wisecracked. "Even though Spaceboy is more sensitive lately than he's been before, that has never been one of his failings so far." Liz nodded. "But... but it seems to me that you need to have *this* talk with Max... about the way he reacts to stuff in general, not about any one particular thing. He... he might be a little disappointed or embarrassed to start off, but it's better if he knows and has a chance to work on his reactions, instead of you having to walk on eggshells."

"Hmm, yeah," Liz admitted, and then looked over at me. "Apropos of nothing really, I feel like an ice cream sundae. You wanna go grab some ice cream?"

"I'm *always* up for ice cream... never mind if it's a good idea in terms of my diet," I laughed. "Fortunately, Michael... well, he's never complained about me gaining weight."

"Cool," Liz said. "Fred's?"

Fred's is an old-fashioned diner on the south side. Of course I'm usually loyal to the Crashdown, but sometimes... "Yeah, definitely."

-----------

Liz dropped herself off at the Crashdown after we finished our ice cream sharing session, and I headed back to my house. Mom was in some kind of a packing frenzy, and I really didn't feel like getting in her way, or filling any boxes myself, so I went up to my bedroom and worked on a little songwriting stuff. There was some stuff I'd been thinking about Keva that might make a good song... not one that I was ready to write yet, because everything was so fresh. But I wanted to write down everything I had for it now, in case it came together later.

And then I went and called Michael, who had been at work, and it turned out my timing was a little too good - I'd caught him first thing after he came in the door, so I let him have a little time to sort out a few other things before getting back to me. "So... do you want me to come over today?" I asked in a teasing voice.

"Umm... yeah, I'd like that, but maybe you should stick with your mom," he pointed out. "Seems like the least you can do, considering that we're about to skip town, yet again."

"I hate it when you're reasonable," I told him, without really meaning it. "Okay, so when do we meet tomorrow? Oh, I told Liz that I'd take a morning shift. The hospital thing went fine - in fact, he told me that he wasn't absolutely certain that I'd been pregnant."

"Umm... huh?" Michael muttered, and I realized that I'd managed to just slightly overwhelm him with information. "Should I just pick you up from the cafe?"

"Ehh, no, probably not," I said. "I'll need to come back here, just to make sure that I haven't forgotten to pack anything I guess."

"Okay, then I'll drive by around three?" I made a noise of agreement. "And the doctor said that?"

"Yeah, except I'm not sure... well, he's kind of a doctor. Interns are doctors, right?" Michael made his 'shrug sound' over the phone. "Figure that it's best for us that way. Nobody will really be wondering too much if my pregnancy was weird if they can't even tell that I was pregnant in the first place."

"Yeah, I guess so," Michael admitted. "Just seems... well, I dunno, at first, it seemed almost insulting to her memory. But now... it kinduv just reinforces how private and special a thing our daughter's life was, while it lasted."

"I think I agree with both responses," I told him. "Anything else we need to worry about for the Arizona trip??"

"Not really," Michael said. "Whatever we forget, Laurie can buy for us."

"Gnight, my love," I said, trying not to shake my head at myself too hard. Michael just loves making 'my-sister-is-loaded' jokes for some reason.

----------

"Hey guys!" Laurie called, waving as we got into the baggage claim area of the Tucson airport. (Yeah, I know that was a bit of a long time jump. Don't worry about it, nothing very important happened during that night and day.) We rushed over to say hi, and then I backed off to let Michael get first crack at catching up with his sister, instead of getting into girl talk and crowding him out, which I know that Laurie and I could probably do if we got started, and I didn't want to. So I went to the carousel and found Michael's suitcase, and a little later, managed to snag my big flat-bottomed bag. Michael camed over soon, probably not wanting me to hurt myself carrying the manly stuff (mild sheesh,) and he was the one who spotted my other little piece of luggage.

"Okay, are you guys tired?" Laurie said as we headed out into the airport concourse. "I'm parked a little ways away, but I can come right up to the terminal building if you want..."

"No, I think we're good for walking - slowly," I said. "We've been sitting for a long time, after all. Okay?" Michael nodded, and so we headed out into the evening and the parking lots surrounding the terminal. I checked my watch, curious... had we come far enough to futz with my time sense? No, surely not - both Arizona and New Mexico were on mountain time, after all - but I felt like the twilight would have been well over at this point, and it was clearly still hanging on. Oh well.

"So, what's been up with you lately, Laur?" Michael asked conversationally. Not sure if he realized that I wasn't up to a lot of questions from her right away about the pregnancy and miscarriage stuff, or if he was just curious.

"Not... not a whole lot," Laurie admitted. "Mostly, just kinduv getting used to being - being 'on the outside', as it were... and taking on as much of the business of keeping the mansion going as I can instead of paying someone else to do it. Paying the bills, even helping out with the cleaning and cooking and stuff." She giggled at that thought, and I guess it was really funny... until the train of thought about cleaning and cooking at the Dupris mansion led me to Carmen, and how the Grantarium queen had killed her. She was a really good person, patient and EXTREMELY well trained for her job... and I found out afterwards that she had a huge family - like five kids, and brothers and a sister and nephews and nieces, who all lived together in a block of apartments in the city. Met some of them, when.... well, around the time that her body was being picked up. Really not a happy memory. I resolved not to ask about who Laurie had gotten to help out since. I'd probably meet whoever it was, but putting the question so directly would probably remind Michael and Laurie of the same ugliness.

"But anyway... I know that I can't just keep myself busy around the mansion forever," Laurie continued. "Though... though trying to take things slow is probably the healthy thing to do. Ohh... I'm in therapy, by the way. Managed to find a pretty good counselor, just someone to help me work through everything that's been going on lately. Don't worry, I don't tell her about the, well, the stuff that should be kept quiet about."

"Cool," I agreed. "And yeah, getting some professional help does sound like it makes sense in the circumstances." Pause. "So, what would you like to do when you grow up??"

Laurie laughed. "I... I'm not sure, I admit. Whatever dreams I had before I got locked away, I guess I still haven't reconnected with them yet. It's still a little hard to remember myself as that carefree, popular high school socialite. I've been starting to study for getting my high school diploma, what I still need to get of it anyway. Not going back to a regular school, but not a GED either, it's one of these adult education deals. Seemed like the best way to go - since I'm a few years older than regular high school age, and even if I weren't... from what I remember of high school, I'm not sure if it's a place I can go and hold onto my sanity, you know?"

Michael grinned at that. "Yeah... I feel the same way most Mondays." Laurie giggled and swatted him. She was quite a high-sprited girl, I was starting to see... it felt good to hear her laughing, and not be a crazy panicked laugh or anything. "So, after you've got the high school thing finished... university, maybe? Seems like a good place to do the 'trying to find yourself' thing... there are a lot of nineteen year olds at college right now who aren't sure where they're going with their lives after all. Well, not so many right now, because it's summer, and most of the people who are taking classes in the summer are the driven type A kids. But... you know what I mean??"

"Yeah, I think I do," she agreed. "And yes, I've been thinking about going to U of A, maybe this fall... but probably starting in January if I'm trying to take things slow. Okay, here's my ride." She waved at a nice looking blue sedan... not obviously a luxury car, but definitely quality. (Don't ask me what make it was - I'm hopeless with that kind of stuff. Michael can probably tell you when it's his turn to narrate, if you remind him. He probably won't remember himself.) As we got inside, Laurie said, "How about it's your turn now, guys? You... you don't have to talk about anything in particular, just - tell me something." Michael got into the back passenger seat, letting me go in front.

"Umm... let's see," I started a little uncomfortably. "Well... we're moving - in fact, my mom and some of the others are probably going to be moved into the new house by the time we get back from here." She sighed. "You... we told you about the whole My-mom-kyle's-dad-getting-married thing, right??"

"Yeah," Laurie agreed. "And... and somebody mentioned the plan about moving into Tess' old house... that might have been Tess herself, late one night." Right - Tess and Laurie had shared a tent after Laurie arrived at our camp site. "And how you found out that you were pregnant the day that all of you were helping to fix up the house so he could show it to your mom - because you fell off a window and hurt your arm." There was a moment's pause. "Sorry... I shouldn't have said anything about that. I've probably made you sad, to think about it."

"No... no, actually, I'm glad that you said," I told Laurie, surprised that it was true. "Wouldn't want you to be walking on eggshells around me anyway, scared to say anything that might remind me about the miscarriage. Maybe it's better that I get reminded, so that I can work through my feelings about it, or start to, and go home healthier." Big breath. "So, yeah, that was the day that we found out. And you know, come to think of it, that fall..." I thought about this. "Laurie, did we tell you about the fact that we ran into a few other nasty aliens, about a week or so before the end of June?"

"Umm... no!" Laurie replied in nearly a yelp. "Were these... these new aliens, or connected to, umm, to the ones you told me about, Michael? From Copper Summit, and New York?"

I tried to look around at Michael, but only caught a tiny glimpse of his face, nodding at Laurie through the rearview. Huh - I never realized that he'd told Laurie anything about the Skins or the Dupes. "Yeah, some of each, come back to... well, it's kinduv a long story. Maria, why did you bring them up?"

"Just had something occur to me," I admitted. "Do you remember that when I fell and hurt my hand, I said it was almost as if someone had pushed me?"

"Yeah, I wondered about that too, after we knew that the evil trio had been around," Michael admitted. "That maybe they were testing us as a group, setting up a minor crisis and spying to see how we reacted, what we did in emergencies. Would explain a few things." He sighed.

"Hey, come on," Laurie insisted. We were driving out towards the airport exit now. "What happened with these nasty aliens?? Is everything okay?"

"It worked out, umm, pretty well in the end, I suppose, considering," Michael said somberly. "Two of them got killed in the fight that they set up. The last one... she agreed to stay away from us and not cause any trouble any more."

"And that little adventure brought Ava back to Roswell," I put in. "Which is definitely a good thing." I sighed. "Okay, who's got a new topic?"

There was a long awkward silence in the car.

----------

(Liz):

"Hey, cornball!!" It took me a moment to recognize the voice, especially as it had lot most of its thick New Yorker accent. I turned around and saw Ava walking up the street. "What's up, girl?" she continued. "I was going to grab a bite to eat at the cafe... but why are you walking away from it?"

"Oh, umm..." I was in a hurry and had to keep walking, so I gently grabbed the other girl's arm as we met and pulled her along, which meant that she had to turn around all of a sudden. (I was passing her on my right, and grabbed her far arm, her right, so that she wouldn't have to walk backwards.) "It, umm, it's kind of an emergency. Somebody mucked up during the inventory yesterday, possibly me, and as a result we're low on Saturn rings. However, as it happens, there's a corner store two blocks away that sells frozen onion rings that are almost impossible to distinguish from our usual supply, so I'm heading off to pick up four or five bags to tide us over."

"Wow," Ava breathed. "Imagine what the customers would think if they knew."

I shot her a sidelong look... and could tell that she was grinning teasingly at me. "Yeah, not really such a big deal as that. I'd imagine that most of them know that half of the stuff on the menu they could pick up in an ordinary grocery store, though hopefully the blue moon cheeseburger is still a fairly secret recipe. Our customers pay for the convenience of not having to shop and cook for themselves, for the fun and the ambience of the place."

"And sometimes, for a chance to see cute waitresses with fake alien antennae bobbing in their hair, and catch a glimpse of a hunky, brooding cook in the back," Ava added with a laugh. "So... how've you been doing, Liz? Did Maria get to Arizona okay?"

"Yeah, I got an email from her this morning before I clocked in," I said. "Apparently the DuPris mansion has a great home network - big surprise. It sounds like she's glad to be there." Sigh. "And I'm glad that she's doing okay, though I suppose it's a bit disappointing that I couldn't be the person to help her through this any more than I have."

"Well, you held her hand when she was in the hospital getting her you-know-what checked out," Ava pointed out. "That's worth big 'best friend forever' points as far as I'm concerned. And I think she really appreciated that ice cream gab session that you guys had, umm, night before last. I ran into her yesterday and she mentioned that."

"Cool," I decided. "Still feeling a little bit overwhelmed by things myself -- as you can tell, the cafe is a little bit short on hands without her and Michael around."

"Hmm... well, I could try putting on the blue outfit myself," Ava said, considering, "though it might be confusing to the customers. Waving at Tess and thinking that she's me, or vice versa."

"Wow." I took a deep breath. If Ava really meant this, then it obviously said a lot about how much she wanted to help us out at the Crashdown - she still isn't comfortable around Tess, and maybe the two of them never will be. "Well, if you're serious, I think that we could deal with the twin thing... maybe schedule the two of you for opposite shifts as much as possible. Just until Maria gets back, or until we can find someone else to help out. What about... well, do you not have much to do at the UFO center just at the moment?"

"Yeah, pretty much," Ava agreed. "I guess that you've heard about some of that from Max, yeah??"

"Yes actually." Waited just two seconds. "So, is, umm... can I have your final answer?"

Ava shook her head. "I... I said that I'd lend a hand if you wanted. That wasn't a joke or anything, so yes, it's my final answer. Case closed. Umm, when should I show up for orientation?"

"Just about as soon as you've finished whatever you have for lunch," I told her with a bit of a nudge. We were coming up to the store, really more of a mini-mart than a true convenience store, though I'm not sure how I make the distinction... a function of size and selection more than anything else I guess. It wasn't busy, so I was able to rush in, go to the freezer section, load up on the rings, cash out, and then I realized that Ava had brought a few extra bags up too, and paid for them herself. Well, that was probably a good idea - just in case the supplier was delayed tomorrow or there was a rush on these 'saturn rings.' "Hmm... I, umm, I guess you're probably around the same size as Maria. Tess... well, Tess was close enough that they could pretty much wear each other's uniforms, though it fits a little different, more because Maria's a bit taller than, umm, anything about the other measurements."

"Yeah, alright, that makes sense," Ava agreed. "Why don't I take one of your packages?" We each had a plastic bag in each hand... one of mine was overflowing with three onion ring packages, and one of Ava's had only one, and the others were of two each, so the proposal made some sense, even though speed was an issue. "So... how come you might have made a mistake on the inventory??"

"Umm, I'm not really sure," I said. "Ryan, the new cook, was going through the freezer and calling out quantities to me, and I was writing them down. I wrote down ten for rings, but there was only one. Either he called it out very wrong for no very good reason - or I was thinking of the previous line, which was also ten, and just went through the motions. Something like that maybe."

"Probably good to recheck the other things on that list just to be sure," Ava said, "though you're probably on top of that already. Okay."

"So, what's it like staying at Michael's place without him being there?" I asked with a smile. "Are you still on the couch?"

"I was last night, though I have to admit, I'm tempted to steal the bed for as long as they're not using it," Ava admitted. "No harm, no foul, right?"

"As far as I can see."

"And it's kinduv nice having some space to myself." Ava sighed. "Guess I need to get my own place."

"Could be good," I admitted. "Did anything come of the idea of having Michael and you move into one of Jim or Amy's houses, after they get moved?"

"Talked about it a little more, but it looks like it's not going to fly," she admitted. "They need to get at equity." She sighed, and then neither of us said much because we were approaching the cafe again. I slept in the back and got all eight packages of rings into the freezer, and then I needed to catch up on orders, while Ava found a seat and looked at the menu. There wasn't a seat open in my section, so she took a table over on the right side and Laura took her order.

"Yes," I told the older couple in the near booth. "Yes, we definitely do have those Saturn rings."


TO BE CONTINUED...

[Chrisken]

Part Forty

(Michael):

I woke up in the comfiest bed I'd ever felt in my life, (though the hotel outside Albuquerque gave it a run,) with Arizona sunshine filtering through the blue curtains, and Maria lying nestled in my embrace. This was the second morning of our trip to visit Laurie - the third day including a plane flight.

When we got to the mansion, Laurie insisted that we settle into the biggest master bedroom, which had been her parent's when she was growin up, then Aunt Meredith's, and much earlier it had been her granpa's. Laurie was in her old room, the same one that she had grown up in, which was across the hall and one door to the right.

"Remember to tell them about the car," Maria mumbled sleepily.

"Um, which car?" I asked, very confused. "And tell who?"

"Laurie's car, and all the people that we're telling this story to," she continued, still sounding like her voice might be coming from out of a dream. "Or who you'll tell about this later. I was in the last chapter, ummmm, and I said that you'd have to do it because I don't know anything about cars."

This probably sounds unlikely to you, but I swear that's what she said. Didn't make much sense at the time, but now... well, I'll tell you all about Laurie's car when there's a better opportunity, next scene. It just doesn't fit here, because we're nowhere near the car and it doesn't have anything to do with Maria and I lying in bed, or what I was thinking about before she blurted it out. Don't worry about it though.

"I'll tell them about it the next time I see 'em," I said to Maria, humoring her. "How're you feeling? Do you want breakfast in bed?"

Maria stretched out all over me, let out a loud yawn, and opened her eyes up wide. (I dunno how she manages to do that first thing in the morning.) "No, I want to help cook breakfast. With you and Laurie - a big rambling co-operative breakfast like we've done a few times over at the Evans house."

And that was what we did... after a few necessities like putting on dressing gowns, (Maria and I both tended to sleep in just our underwear lately,) and waking Laurie up. That took a little while, and it wasn't as easy as I'd expected to convince her to go downstairs with us and help out with breakfast. She was a little sour once we were down too - either my sister isn't a morning person, or something was bugging her today. Things improved noticeably, though, once Laurie had a steaming cup of french creme roast coffee in her hand.

It was a fun breakfast to make, and a tasty one to eat. The kitchen of the mansion was bigger and fancier than the Evans' or any of my other friends (which made sense,) and was well stocked with the makings for all kinds of stuff... Maria mixed up some french crepes, and I grilled bacon and diced potatoes, and Laurie chopped and tossed a fruit salad, and... well, I could go on for quite a long time like that, except that I'm not gonna.

The kitchen actually looked like it should have a pretentous professional chef included, and Laurie said that it used to. But every chef that she could find, (including the one who Meredith had hired, the one who had made us the tasty pigeons on the night that Grant Sorenson attacked the house - anyway, they were all SO pretentious that they didn't want anyone, (even someone who was signing their paychecks,) coming into the kitchen whenever they pleased and making themselves a quick snack. Laurie wasn't able to agree to an arrangement like that - I suppose I wouldn't be either, so she'd mostly been cooking for herself, and the general-service housekeeper that she had hired in June helped out with that a bit too.

"I thought that the cooks of rich families only got uppity like that in soap operas," Maria remarked over her plateful of bacon and taters.

"Well, soap operas are very big here in Tucson I think," Laurie remarked. "Maybe they got the idea from those that it was okay to behave like nutjobs." She shrugged.

"So, do you girls have any idea what you want to do today?" I asked them with a smile. Yesterday had been quite a quiet day - a lot of hanging around the house and exploring some of its less familiar extents. (Well, unfamiliar to Maria and I - Laurie seemed to know every nick and cranny from when she was little.) And much talking of course - Maria told Laurie all about the day she lost the baby - and a bunch of memories from the whole time that she'd known about Keva. Didn't take long for the girls to start weeping, and I admit that my eyes weren't always dry when I thought about my babygirl who never got the chance to even take her first breath out here in the cruel world. She'd never look up into my eyes and smile, or throw a hissy fit because I refused to raise her allowance, or...

"Yeah, I feel like I'd like to get out a bit," Maria said. "Any suggestions for somewhere fun and yet not too tiring to go, Laur?"

"Hmm..." She condisered that, reaching out to pile up some of the dishes that weren't being used anymore. "There's a nice park a little ways towards town, we could go and hang out there. Pack a picnic or something."

"How can you be thinking of more food at this point?" Maria teased her, but immediately relented. "Yeah, a park picnic sounds great. Very low-key." She looked down at her dressing gown. "I'll need to change into suitable loungewear, though."

"Yeah," I admitted. "Still, it's pretty early, and we've got time."

So, around an hour later, we were all changed, washed... (Maria invited me to shower with her, and we fooled around some - which was kinduv the first time that she's really been playful in a full-contact way since IT happened. I'm taking that as a good sign,) and had packed Laurie's car. Right, the car. Laurie had a dark blue Kia Magentis, a really sweet ride. I got a chance to drive it a little later, and it handled like... well, like nothing I can really describe without coming up with a simile that would probably sound corny. The upholstery was incredibly comfy too, in the same shade of rich blue as the outside. Satisfied??

When we first got to the park, it was nearly empty, which surprised me. Sure, it was a weekday, but it was also the middle of summer - and I'd have expected more kids around our age to be out in force. Still, it was hard to be upset about the sense of peace and entitlement that I got from having all that space for the three of us. The picnic was left back in the car, shaded from the sun, and we spread out a blanket to talk. Laurie went into some more details about what's been going on with her, pretty much ever since we left after throwing Bobby and Meredith out of her life. Some of it I'd already heard, from that time we and Alex and Isabel and Max drove all day to come to Laurie's place for dinner, and from the camping weekend, and a few phone conversations that we've had since then. But it was nice to hear the whole story in more detail, and in something a little bit closer to the proper order. I'm not sure exactly what the segue was, if any, but somehow Maria got talking about the prom, and about how she'd gotten suspicious and broken into my house, spied me through a window in the arms of my dancing teacher, and jumped to the conclusion that I was cheating on her. (At least she didn't try to put much of the blame on me in her version of the story... I'd have tried to take some of the heat for her, but - well, it wasn't her finest moment and I wasn't sure what I could really do. Save the effort for a better time, I decided.)

Then Laurie wanted to hear something from me, a funny story, so I tested a few events in my mind and settled on the original trip that Maria and I took to Marathon. This time, Maria stayed quiet and let me recount the episode from my own point of view, though I know from other occasions that she has her own perspective on things. Once that was done, Laurie and Maria agreed that it was time for a pre-lunch snack, and before we'd quite finished, Maria somehow got us started on a game of tag, just running back and forth, around and around the blanket, chasing each other like loonies. Laurie and Maria were both pretty well matched in terms of speed... sistah's got a few extra inches on the pixie girl, which translates into a slightly larger stride, but Maria had a bit more energy and had probably been getting slightly more exercise regularly over the past two years or so. I could generally outrun either of them if I really set my mind to it, but I wasn't trying that hard, because it was more fun to be in the thick of it, getting tagged every so often, and prolonging the chase instead of tagging back immediately.

Let's see, what was next, after we got tired of the game of tag? Nothing terribly exciting - right, we collapsed mostly on the blanket, and the girls started up again with a game that nobody needed to run around for - I think it was 'I spy.' Then I suggested that we break seriously into the picnic, now that we'd had a chance to work up an appetite, and Laurie agreed with that idea. Over the food, we started talking about what the rest of the summer might hold back in Roswell - Max's flying saucer hunt, the possible consequences if Alex managed to translate the book, and of course the big wedding.

Conversation kind of drifted off once lunch was over, and I realized that I didn't mind the silence being here with the girls. Getting comfortable with either one of them had taken a while, but I was there, and as far as Maria and Laurie themselves... they seemed to have taken to each other like long-lost sisters or something - which was a little awkward since I was kind of Laurie's long-lost brother, and Maria and I were a thing, but - well, I guess that didn't have to be that weird. Yes, if Maria *were* truly related to Laurie it would have been a problem... but for your significant other to inherit a brotherly or sisterly relationship with your sibling is just about the best way for them to relate together, right? Or at least to become really good friends...

"Hey, you three!" A voice suddenly called out from behind me. "Up for a little ball? We're a few players short."

I looked around, and saw a crowd of young people, probably college freshman to sophomores mostly, walking through the park on a course that would take them just past our blanket. They were wearing casual sports clothing in varied colors and designs, NOT team uniforms of any sort, but several had baseball bats or balls and nearly everybody had gloves. I turned back around and realized that yes, there was s somewhat rundown baseball diamond in the direction that they were heading. No benches or fencing around the home side of it, but it would be playable for a pick-up game.

"Umm..." I muttered, wondering if I should commit myself on behalf of the girls. Maria had no such compunctions.

"As long as we can all be on the same team!" she called out.

The same voice that had initially called out turned out to come from a friendly, tall guy, who actually looked just a very little bit like Max. "Sure, that's fine."

Okay, but there were still a few practical issues. "We don't have any gloves," I explained as they drew near enough to not require any shouting, and once I was standing back up. "Got any spares?"

"Yeah, just a few," a girl with reddish-brown hair chimed in.

"Actually, umm, I think there are two baseball gloves somewhere in the car, probably under the back seat," Laurie suddenly said. Maria turned to look at her. "Don't ask why, okay?"

"Later," I said with definite finality, and Laurie nodded in acceptance of that. I definitely wanted to know who my sister had been playing ball with. But that could wait. Laurie went off to find the gloves, and Maria and I followed at the edges of the crowd, as they headed over to the diamond - leaving our blanket still spread out and some of the dirty dishes still out. It turned out to be a mixed bag of local students from the U of A who weren't taking summer classes, and towny friends of theirs, and a few graduated seniors from local high schools who hadn't left for wherever they'd be going to school in the fall. One other park person, a jogger who was older than anyone else, maybe twenty-eight or so, was recruited to fill up the roster, and teams were roughly picked, Laurie showing up just around the time that process was finished. We ended up on the team that was to wear black baseball hats as a form of identification, and Maria looked very cute in her cap, I have to say. (Laurie wasn't bad either, I guess, though I don't tend to pay as much attention to her appearance. I must have seemed pretty ridiculous.)

Our team was up to bat first, and we were all near the end of the batting order - Laurie was sixth, I was seventh, the glove girl with the red hair was eigth, and Maria was ninth. As the first few people came up to bat, we chatted with Red, whose real name was Gail, and the guy who was up before Laurie, who was one of the high school few. Found out a few things about them, and they asked about us - we kept very quiet about a lot of Laurie's recent history, of course, or the alien stuff. Just that Laurie had grown up in a nice place outside of town, that she'd found out recently that I was an illegitimate uncle, and that my girlfriend and I had come up to visit. They started telling me a whole bunch more about Tucson, and then the guy next to Laurie had to head off and bat. Turned out that we'd had two outs so far, one run and one girl who was still on base. Number five got two strikes, then a ball, and then a grounder straight to first base, and he was tagged out. Inning was over, one point on the nonexistant scoreboard for us black hats... and the next time Laurie would have to be the lead-off batter. Well, we'd deal with that when it came.

Our team hadn't sorted out who was going to field what position before the game started, and there was a bit of a delay while it was discussed at this point. Maria didn't want anything that would likely be too strenuous, so she got put out in left field, with Laurie as the center fielder. I ended up at second base, which wasn't too bad. I made a pretty decent tag-out with Laurie getting to the ball just as it bounced to a halt and tossing it back in to me. However, there were a few juicy errors too, which nobody really seemed to mind much, and by the time we retired the inning, the bare-heads had scored twice.

"I'm nervous, Michael," Laurie admitted as we walked back in, shrugging awkwardly like she was trying to loosen up her shoulders.

"It's okay," I said. "Just do your best and swing for the trees."

"No, not that," Laurie whispered. "I... I'm actually a little scared of being hit by the ball."

"If you do, I'll take care of you," I assured her. "But don't crowd the plate and it's not likely to happen. That pitcher that the other team's got knows what he's doing." I thought about it. "But take your time and choose your pitch... I noticed a few of the others swinging at definite balls."

She smiled, got a bat, and headed up to the plate. Waited out two balls, then swung at one that was definitely in her strike zone, and must've just missed it by a millimeter. Ball three, and then she got off an odd kind of popper ball, that arced through the air high up and down - right towards the third baseman. I thought for sure that he was going to catch it and have her out immediately, but Laurie dashed off towards first anyway, and the ball just missed the third baseman's glove. He must not have had that much time to judge the arc and get in position - and the baseball actually hit HIM in the face. Not too hard, and he fumbled it out and threw to the first basewoman, but Laurie slid in just in time.

Okay, that meant it was my turn. One ball. One strike. Two strikes, and that was definitely a pitch that I should have passed on. Couldn't even follow my own advice. A swing, and the bat connected the ball, sending it off in an impressive arc a long way away. Woulda been a great thing if I hadn't sent it over the foul line. (Sorry, I really shouldn't do that kind of thing to you in these descriptions.)

One more ball, and then I got my hit. Line drive, caught out by the center fielder, but Laurie was able to get a second base on it, so I was going to call it a sacrifice fly. Then Gail went up, and managed to get a single out past the shortstop to right field, so Laurie was on third base, Gail was on first, and Maria went up to bat.

She struck out in three pitches, and I could tell that she was just about ready to cry when she left the plate. "Oh, come on, it wasn't really that bad," I whispered, holding her close, and looking down into her eyes. "The guy got lucky. Well, that, and you really shouldn't have swung that first time, but - well, that's something to remember for next time."

The lead-off hitter came up next, and he managed to get an impressive homer, so Laurie scored a run, at least. (It meant that my sacrifice probably didn't matter - she'd have gotten in without advancing that base - as long as she didn't get thrown out at second on Gail's hit.) But now we were up by four runs to two, and there was much cheering.

Things kind of settled down a bit over the course of the game, and I'm not going to give you a play by play. We didn't quite win - final score was eight for the bareheads, seven for the black hats. Maria managed to hit off a lovely triple in the eighth inning - and then get stranded on base when the next guy struck out. Sigh. Or maybe he got tagged out at first - I can't quite remember. But Maria was annoyed that she didn't have a chance to make it home. The aftermath of the game actually turned into a kind of impromptu party - there were boomboxes and coolers of soda that I somehow hadn't noticed before, and I danced with Maria on the grass next to the first base line, and chatted with a bunch of people who'd been on the other time. Finally things started to break up around four o'clock, and then the three of us were eager to get back home to the mansion.

"How about a swim?" Maria asked as we were pulling up the road, getting a brief glimpse of the Dupree estate, the same way we'd seen it the first time. (We could probably have made better time going for it along another road that time, heading from the New Mexico border in the Jetta, but Laurie had barely been able to give us any kinds of useful directions at all, and they had been from her school, which had also taken us a good deal of time to find.) I shot a somewhat doubtful look at Maria.

"Not an energetic swim," she ventured after a few seconds. "I mean, yeah, we've all had plenty of exercise for today, don't really need any more. But getting into a suit and lounging around doing nothing in the water sounds pretty good to me."

"Yeah," Laurie chimed in enthusiastically. "The water'll be good for sore muscles."

"Hmm..." I thought about that. "A jacuzzi would probably be better for that than the bigger pool." Considered again. "Do you *have* a jacuzzi or a hot tub, Laurie? I, umm... I can't clearly remember seeing one, but, err..."

"Oh, yeah," Laurie said. "Or at least, the mansion has one, which I guess means that I have it unless 'anybody' tries to make a fuss. Which they probably wouldn't, especially since it was bought with funds that are officially mine." She sighed.

"Bobby and Meredith had it put in while you were away at Pinewood?" Maria put in, and Laurie nodded silently. "Gotcha, don't mention them any further." She smiled. "I'm up for trying out the hot tub - how about you, Laur?"

"I... I dunno, it might be kinduv weird for all three of us," she said. "Or even me and... well, Michael and I. Kind of - meant for couples, or one person all alone. We could take turns, but..."

"Okay," I said. "We'll leave the hot tub for later in the evening, then." Maria shot me a pleased look, and I tried not to let my smile get any wider. It hadn't been hard to tell that this was one of those sensitivity situations, actually, or the right thing to say about it. Laurie didn't want to get left out just yet, or feel like she was a third wheel. "And yeah the pool sounds great." Thought about that. "How about... dinner? I mean, I'm not hungry yet, but we'll all want something more to eat before bed, I think, and I don't really feel like cooking again. We could find something that's easy to prepare, I guess, or..."

"Delivery," Laurie announced without any trace of hesitation. "You... you like spicy mexican stuff, right, guys?" Maria nodded, and I shrugged - the question didn't seem to need any more of an answer. "Okay, I know just the place. We can jump in the pool first, and not worry about making the call until we're starting to get hungry." By this time Laurie's car was parked in the attached garage, but nobody had gotten out yet. I opened up my door and unfastened my seat belt. (Maria gets on my case if I don't put the darn thing on, lately.)

Something occured to me. "Did you pack a swimsuit, Maria? I don't know if I remembered to."

"I've got guys swimsuits you can borrow," Laurie answered. "Girls', too, actually."

"From they-who-shall-not-be-named?" Maria asked.

"Them - and some spares that they kept around for pool parties. Don't ask." Laurie sighed.

"Well, to answer your question, yeah, I packed a suit," Maria agreed. "Remembered the pool. And... I think you'll be glad I did." She smiled a smile that I could easily understand.

Maria didn't let me see her swimsuit until she did a big entrance out of the back door of the house onto the pool deck. Laurie and I had already jumped into the water by then, but seeing Maria strutting out, even though I didn't have a good look at her, made me suddenly feel as if the cool-ish pool water was suddenly BOILING hot. (You can be I did my best to *get* a good look as soon as I had the not-so-good one.)

The suit was a pink bikini with a halter top, and actually, aside from the color, it really looked like one set of black underwear that she'd worn for me in her bedroom... and my bedroom, and in a bathroom stall in the big South side park... yeah, you didn't hear anything about that last one in particular, and you're probably not gonna. I stared, helpless to look away or assume any kind of composure, my eyes drinking in Maria's barely-clothed body as it moved - until she reached the short edge of the pool and expertly shallow-dived into the water. I rushed over to meet her when she came to a stop on the far side of the water and shook her head, spraying little droplets of water all around.

"Don't scare me like that," I blurted out, before I even realized that I'd been scared.

Maria stared at me in confusion for a second, before hanging her head a little. "I... I didn't think that you'd be startled," she admitted, and then seemed to apply a bit more of the familiar DeLuca chutzpah to the situation. "WHY were you startled??"

"It's not a good idea to dive into water this shallow, is it?" I asked. "I mean, I know that you can do it, if you know how, but it's possible to get in trouble if you misjudge everything. And plus, this pool is pretty short, so you could have slammed your head into the far wall because you were trying to hard to avoid the bottom."

"It's not that bad," Maria insisted, though she wasn't as chutzpah-ey now. "I didn't even *brush* the bottom, and I caught myself on the far side easily enough."

"That doesn't mean that something really bad couldn't have happened, just because it didn't come particularly close to actually happening," I argued, though I wasn't sure I was making much sense. "The margin between 'not even brushing' and hitting head on can be closer than it looks."

Maria looked silently at me for a long moment, and I was aware of Laurie watching the entire conversation quietly too. Then Maria sighed, leaned close and actually rubbed her nose against mine, and brushed my cheek with her hand. "Okay, darling sweet. I... I'm still not used to the idea of you wanting to keep me so safe - even more than you worry about keeping your own thick skull in one piece. I... I guess that hasn't changed even now that I'm not pregnant." She smiled a complicated smile. "So I suppose I'll just have to get used to it."

"Umm, thanks." I hadn't thought about the connection between our mating bond, our unborn child, and any protectiveness I felt towards Maria in that sense, but it kinduv fit my reactions, and I was glad that she wasn't putting up a howl about the whole thing. "Let's not worry about it any more."

"Yeah," Laurie agreed, very quickly and a little bit more loudly than is usual for her. I suddenly realized that she might have been uncomfortable at the thoght of Maria and I fighting in front of her - though for Maria and I that hardly qualified as a fight, but Laur would probably think differently.

"Okay, so what now?" Maria asked with a laugh. "Veg out completely, talk some more, or play a game??" She leant back, bringing her feet up and back-floating, which somehow made the soft curve of her thighs even more fascinating.

"Hmm... I'm good for vegging for now," I agreed. "We've already talked and played quite a bit for today." So we all just kind of hung out in the pool for a little while, just enjoying the cool of it and the prettiness of the fading afternoon. I started placing bets with myself which would happen first - that someone would announce that they were bored with vegging, or throw out an obvious conversation opener, or start some sort of a game. Also how long I'd have to wait for whichever of them happened.

It was about four minutes - Laurie swum to the edge of the pool and half hauled herself out to get a small rubber ball that was tucked underneath the deck chairs. (I'd caught a glimpse of that ball, which was why I'd made 'game' the favorite in my odds.) Passing it from hand to hand a bit, Laurie let out a soft wordless cry and tossed it past Maria towards me. "Hey!" Maria exclaimed, turning and swimming towards me.

A game of keepaway tag quickly developed - two players working as a team and the monkey in the middle - team members have to keep exchanging posession of the ball, say once every minute or so as an outside guideline, without letting the monkey get posession. If the monkey catches or takes the ball, then the team member who had it last becomes the new monkey. Like the game of tag we were playing in the park earlier, none of us were that competitive about it, and after maybe twenty minutes or so Maria just tossed the ball deliberately well away from the pool, and none of us felt like going out and getting it. Laurie ducked her head below the water, then when she surfaced, sprayed out a surprising quantity of water like a fountain, and both of us laughed in surprise at that little trick.

"Laurie," Maria said, leaning against the side a moment or so later, "I'm glad that you seem to be adjusting well, but - erm, what about friends? I... I know that it's probably hard and scary, feeling very alone around here, and not knowing how people are going to react to you. But I guess I have this idea of you spending most of your days shut up alone in this big... fabulously opulent, but kinduv lonely house, and I don't like it."

"Well, I'm not sure you need to worry," Laurie said with a smile. "It... it may take me a little while, but I'm getting there. There's a little restaurant a ways down the road. Not really in the rich neighborhood - it's not pretentious enough for the people who live around here. I used to like spending time there when I was younger, and I've been going back often enough to meet some of the new regulars and get accepted as one of them." She smiled. "It's baby steps for now - but I think that's enough. If I get to the university - well, hopefully it'll be easier to make friends in an environment like that."

"Yeah, having something in common with everyone around like struggling through classes does help," Maria agreed. "Well, that's cool."

"I think I'd like to go down the restaurant and meet some of your friends," I said, with a big smile.

"Umm, well, I guess we could," Laurie started, and I interrupted.

"What's the matter? Worried that your brother will freak them all out?"

"Heck, I'd be terrified, if I were in Laurie's place," Maria teased me. Laurie looked at her with a shocked look on her face, then broke out laughing.

"Okay, if we're going to hang around here in the pool longer before ordering food," I decided, "maybe we should talk now." I smiled and turned to Laurie. "Sorry for putting you on the spot, but I still feel like I want to know more about you. Tell me about the christmas the year you were... were twelve years old."

Laurie smiled a bit. "That... that was when Granpa was still alive, and my mom too. Let's see... I was saving up because a friend of mine wanted... oh, shoot, I can't even remember what it was. Something really expensive anyway, and Mom said that I couldn't buy it for her unless I saved it out of my own allowance..." She shook her head. "That's gonna bug me all night until I remember."

"What was the friend's name?" Maria asked.

"Oh, that I remember - it was Eva Wilson," Laurie said. "I... I tried to look her up a few months ago, but all I could find out was that she went off to school in... in the midwest or maybe Ontario. Let's see... my mom hung all these sprigs of mistletoe up with bells tied into them, in every doorway and in the middle of most of the rooms in the house..."

----------

(Isabel):

"Hey, sweetie," I said, picking up the phone. Only after the words were out of my mouth did it occur to me how awkward that could have been if, say, it was actually my father on the other end of the line, or something like that. Fortunately, no need to worry. Alex's soft chuckle came back over the line.

"Hi babe." He took a deep breath. "Sorry that I'm not going to make it tonight."

"That's okay," I told him definitely. "As long as you can get away on Saturday, I won't kill you - or anyone else at the project."

"Well, umm - that's good to know. Yeah, nothing seems to be getting in the way of our big day out."

"Cool. El Paso, here we come!" That had been Alex's idea - to do something really special, get off campus, and not just to the places in town that we sometimes went, as a way of making the most of our time together, since he's having to spend more and more energy with that computer stuff. "So, anything geekily interesting going on tonight?"

"Naw, even as big as a geek as I am, I'm getting pretty bored," he admitted. "Lot of slogging through really abtruse computer code, devising ever more tortuous troubleshooting tactics to try to figure out why things aren't going quite the way we expect them to in the quantum core. But then..." and he yawned a big, mighty yawn, "that's pretty much what I expected."

"Okay," I said. "Don't let them work you so hard that you end up sleep-deprived, baby."

"No, don't worry about that. I'm only gonna put in, erm, about an hour and a half more and then I'm back to my room." He sighed. "Drop by my dreams if you get a chance?"

"Count on it," I insisted, pleased with the notion. "Okay, you'd better go back."

"I suppose." He made a faint kissing sound over the phone, which I returned without even starting to wonder if we'd become saccharine until after hanging up. Hmm. Well, I didn't really care if we were. Hmm. Saccharine. And I had the phone in my hand already, so I dialed it.

"Hey?"

"Hi, Max. How're things back in Roswell??"

"Oh, Isabel. Umm... pretty quiet lately, especially since Michael and Maria left. How're you?"

"Umm... confused just at the moment. Where did my favorite roller coaster couple go??"

"Come on, I'm sure that... oh, never mind." Max made a soft sigh, and I wondered if he was sitting down. "Um, they've flown over to Tucson."

"Ahh - Laurie's place??"

"Pretty much, yeah. She said that she wanted to see him - to see both of them, actually, and Maria thought it'd be a good idea to get out of town for a little while. Spend some time with Michael, away from their usual cares and circumstances. It made sense to me."

"Yeah, I guess." I can't really think of what I'd have done if I'd had to go through whatever Maria had, so whatever she thought would make her feel better was just fine by me. "So, who's left in Roswell?" I laughed. "Guess that would be you, Liz, and our newest happ couple."

"Hmmm?" Max was silent a moment after that grunt. "Kyle and Tess? Yeah, as well as Ava, assorted parents, and nearly fifty thousand other people."

"Fair enough," I agreed. "What about Kyle and Tess though? You sounded surprised that I brought them up like that."

"Oh, it's just..." My brother sighed. "Was helping the Valentis pack some stuff yesterday and I dunno, there's some kinduv tension going on there. Tess is still acting all lovey-dove, but Kyle seems - well, he seems embarassed by it. Didn't seem like a good sign."

"Yeah, I'd unfortunately have to agree with that." I thought for a second. "And are you also embarassed by the thought of Tess' new love connection self-destructing? Considering that you rejected her yourself?"

"Hmm... well, maybe a little," Max admitted. "Not that I have second thoughts about Tess and me, or Liz and I. The way all of that played out was... was the way it had to be, in my opinion." He sighed. "But I feel bad for Tess, yeah. She wants to be somebody's sweetheart so bad, and it just never seems to work out for her."

"Yeah," I said uncomfortably. I'd never really cared about being somebody's sweetheart until Alex had made it abundantly clear that I already was, even if I hadn't given him the smallest piece of my own heart in exchange at that point. "Okay, how about you and Liz, what's up?" I got ready for a long ramble.

"Well, not too much, really. We went out to Stanley Hill today, and Liz kinduv got a little bit queasy the second time in a row we went on the big loop-de-loop coaster, and I wanted to..."

----------

(Laurie):

Umm, hi.


Sorry - Maria said that I should do one of these segments, but I'm feeling a little nervous about it, especially because apparently it's the first time anyone who wasn't in the original eight has done one. (I'm a little surprised that Ava hasn't had a segment yet, actually, but it's not like I'm going to boycott the whole thing until she get included.)

Hrm, okay, where am I supposed to start. Right, we were talking in the pool, and then talking sitting on the deck next to the pool, and finally decided to order dinner and watch something on the big screen TV. Michael immediately suggested Braveheart yet again, and Maria immediately voted him down. (He might have just said it to get a rise out of her, actually.)

I left them to settle the movie (or whatever,) for themselves and called out for our food. By the time I was back from that, I found the two of them in the multimedia room, wearing those big fluffy white pool robes, sitting side by side on the couch with their arms linked up to the elbows. "Hey, so did you decide yet??"

"Umm... is the star wars tape any good?" Michael asked, waving the box at me with his free hand.

"Err, yeah, I think so. Been a while since I saw it," I admitted. "In the sense of seeing it around, as well as actually in the sense of actually watching. Where was it, anyway?"

"On those shelves over there," Maria said, waving with her own free hand, which didn't work well as the shelves were on the other end of the couch, half behind it and Michael was almost exactly in her way. She then picked up a third robe and tossed it at me, and I smiled back at her and slipped it on over my dark blue-purple one-piece swimming suit. Michael, meanwhile, kissed Maria's hand before extricating himself to try slipping the tape into the VCR. Soon the opening text had crawled, and the Imperial Star Destroyers had zoomed past.

"The quality seems okay," I said.

"Yeah, guess nobody's watched it that much," Michael said. "This is the good version, before Lucas started to mess around with it for the ninety-seven 'special editions.'" He scoffed at that notion. "If I had this, it probably wouldn't have lasted long before getting so played out that it wasn't watchable."

"Maybe good that you didn't, then," Maria said to him. "Okay, shh now - I wanna really listen."

We paused the tape when the food arrived, because it was just getting to the good part where Luke and Obi-wan meet onscreen for the first time. Nobody talked much during the movie, except asking each other to pass some kind of food, and I felt a curious sense of the past and the future mixing. I remembered watching this when I was a really little girl, and obviously Michael and Maria had too. But... but it wasn't quite the same as back then, because the three of us were together now. Would... would they end up able to have a kid in a few years, or I'd meet somebody and get married, and show this tape to a new generation? (Yeah, kinduv weird idea I know, but I think about unlikely stuff like that.) Or maybe the original version would finally be out on DVD by then.

After the movie was finished, we played some trivial pursuit for a while, but the game kind of fell apart - it had been a long day, and all of us wanted to get to bed. Michael dried my hair out for me because I said that I hate trying to sleep on it when it's damp, and I changed into my pajamas, crawled into bed - and then realized that I'd need to turn on some music to avoid hearing (and mentally picturing) what was happening in the master bedroom. Mild eww.


Slept late the next morning, and none of us really did anything that exciting for a lot of the day. I kind of got the impression at breakfast, (a much more casual affair than last time - coffee, cereal, and a few bread and pastry products,) that Michael and Maria wanted to have some alone time to sort out more baggage about losing their baby and where their relationship was going to go from there, so I made myself busy - I signed some bills and made an appointment to talk to a guy at the bank about some of the investments that Bobby had made with Grampa's money, and then I went online to the University of Arizona website to find out about admission requirements. Made a mental note to ask at the adult education place about getting a letter stating that if my studies kept up, I'd have my secondary diploma by such-and-such a date, since that seemed to be a requirement for getting the wheels turning.

At lunch, Maria started asking me a bunch of questions about where I was going to school.


TO BE CONTINUED...