Roswell Fanatics

It was the last dance of the night, a slow dance, and both Isabel and Maria were getting more and more concerned.

Max had been acting like he’d had a lobotomy since that first dance, paying practically no attention whatever to Liz, at times barely acknowledging her existence.

They had gotten away from their dates by the time-honored method used by women for decades, “I have to powder my nose,” for a quick conference.

Both compared observations and jointly worried about the outcome with Liz and Max. Individually, they’d had great evenings, and both Alex and Michael had already suggested future opportunities to get together. But that wasn’t what it was all about, that was just a side benefit. Liz was still the key, and it was looking more and more like she was striking out.

Back at the punch bowl, Alex had refilled his own paper cup, and was now filling one for Michael. “Have you ever understood that, Michael?”

“What’s that?”

“They always go to the restroom in a convoy. Have you ever once seen a group where a guy said to another guy, ‘Say, I’m going to the restroom, would you like to come along?’
Have you ever?”

“No, and if I did I’d get out of that group real quick.”

“But girls do it all the time….”

“They aren’t like you and me, Alex. They’re a different breed, a whole different species.”

“But that does have its compensations….,” said Alex.

“It does indeed,” said Michael Guerin with a sigh, as Maria came out the door of the restroom. “It does indeed.”

As they went with their dates out onto the dance floor to finish the final dance, neither Isabel nor Maria really had their minds on their partners.

Oh, they were polite and smiled, but they lost no opportunity to peek at the couple holding each other loosely over at the dimly lit end of the gymnasium. They were too far to hear when Max moved closer and said a few words to Liz. Liz had seemed unsure, puzzled. And then just like that Max had leaned forward and given her a gentle kiss on her lips.

This time it had been Liz who jumped back like she’d been bit by a rattlesnake. They watched her as she stood there unmoving, as tears started to fill her eyes. Isabel and Maria looked at each other with panicky faces, their fears the same. Had he told her goodbye? Was he breaking it off, after one date, a date she’d trapped him into going on?

What exactly had he said to her? They needed to get together with her, to figure out what went wrong. They needed a plan B…… or …..C…… or whatever it took. They couldn’t leave it like this, not for Liz, and not for either of them.

Diane Evans looked at the group in the rear view mirror and shook her head.

There was something fundamentally wrong with thirteen year old boys. She was sure of that. Alex and Michael had obviously had a good time and she reasoned that Isabel and Maria probably had too.

The two boys were happy, good natured, and appeared very satisfied with their time at the dance. They also appeared totally oblivious to the little drama going on in the back seat, a drama both of their dates were looking at in sympathy.

The cute little girl who had invited Max was just sitting in back, looking stunned, with tears slowly flowing down her cheeks that she was trying to surreptitiously wipe away.

And Alex and Michael were oblivious to that. Thirteen year old boys lacked any social skills whatever, she decided. Isabel and Maria were looking at the girl in obvious concern. They understood. But the boys? Right over their heads.

Speaking of boys, where was that dark haired brooding little beast? She looked again in the mirror. Sitting right next to the girl, an inscrutable expression on his face. Diane had already been irritated with him for two weeks.

She wondered what mister ‘brooding and insensitive’ had said or done to that nice little girl to get her this upset. Yes, it was a Sadie Hawkins dance, but he didn’t HAVE to accept the invitation, and since he did he could be a gentleman. And if he couldn’t BE a gentleman, he could at least damn well act like one. She had almost been regretting what she’d done after she’d gotten home from the dance. Now she wished she’d done worse.

Izzie was spending the night with Liz again. Hopefully she could pry the story out of the girl and Izzie would tell her. Wait till Philip gets home from his court case in Santa Fe, she thought. By the time they’d gotten done tag-teaming Max, he’d think twice before being unkind to some other sweet little girl.

She'd be surprised if this one ever spoke to him again.

As Diane Evans let the girls out in front of the Crashdown, Jeff and Nancy Parker were watching from the window.

They saw the three girls thank her for the transportation, and then come in to the building. All three were a little quiet as they climbed the stairs and Lizzy was a little bit tearful. But it appeared that she’d survived the experience and was on her way to recovery. The first baby step appeared to be a little bit of a rocky one, but she’d come through it OK.

They were proud of their daughter, and really happy to have her back home safely.

Maria had never really understood the expression, ‘Gentlemen never kiss and tell.’ Girls did it all the time, it was in fact the primary reason for the post dance sleepover.

Normally all three would have been telling about their dates, getting advice from the others on what they should have done, what they should do next, and just comparing notes with one another.

But the looks shooting back and forth between Maria and Isabel were looks of caution. Both had stories they normally would have been anxious to spend the night telling, but neither could rub salt in Liz’s wounds that way.
But clearly, they were going to have to say….something. The Liz-Max situation was the proverbial ‘elephant in the room' as they climbed the stairs to Liz’s bedroom.

To Maria’s surprise, Liz was actually the one who broke the silence. She turned to Izzie and said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Alex so happy, Isabel. I know you were just asking him as part of the plan, but I sure hope you can let him down gently when you go back to your own crowd.”

And Maria being Maria, had to put her two cents worth in then too.
“Yeah, Izzie. Alex is just totally sweet. He’s kind of the brother that I never had, the brother that Liz never had. When I went out with him two weeks ago I knew I’d never feel anything but sisterly toward him, but I really do care for him. Don’t hurt his feelings,………..please”

“Honestly, you two, I don’t think he was any happier than I was tonight. I’ve never had so much fun. I think I like my new crowd better than my old crowd. I doubt that I’ll be going back to those snobs. And you are right, he is a very special person,” she replied with a slight blush.

Then Isabel sort of looked thoughtful and turned to Maria.

“You know Maria, that was as much closeness, as much intimacy from Michael tonight as I’ve ever seen from him. I was really amazed at how he seemed to enjoy being close to you. That’s never happened with Michael. I’ve never seen anything like it with him. If you aren’t interested in him, be real careful when you tell him. God alone knows how fragile he might be, this has never happened to him at all before. He’s like a brother to me too, and there’s only so much Counting Crows I can take, and I think I’m already past my limit.”

And unfortunately the oblique reference to Max made the elephant in the room all that much bigger. Two pairs of eyes turned to Liz, and Maria somehow engaged her mouth while her brain was still in neutral.

“You know, it didn’t look like you were being real successful in our effort to get Max comfortable with trusting us before we tell him we know about the Czechoslovakian thing. Any idea what we should do next about that?”

Liz looked up a little wide-eyed and blurted out. “Max knows. He found out during our first dance.”

“You told him during the dance?,” asked Isabel incredulously. “What happened to the plan to let the boys get to know you a little bit before we dropped the bomb on them?”

“I didn’t tell him, Isabel” When we kissed we …..connected.”

“My brother who is scared spitless about people knowing about him CONNECTED with you during a public dance? Not knowing you knew? Have two weeks of Counting Crows driven him totally insane? If you hadn’t known already, you’d have probably gone ballistic right there, and told the whole world.”

“It’s more complicated than that, Izzie. He was as surprised as I was when we connected. I could tell. It wasn’t like when I connected with you exactly, it was stronger….a whole lot stronger. Like…instead of sipping from a fountain I was drinking from a fire hose all of a sudden.”

“But how would he make a connection without knowing it?” asked Maria. “Izzie, has that ever happened with him before? Has that ever happened with you?”

“It may have happened to me once when I was real young. Mom was trying to teach me how to read and I really didn’t understand the meaning of a word in the book. I think I kind of pulled it out of her head. But that was just for a second or two. She seemed kind of puzzled when I did it, so I was careful to never do it again. But it was just a single thought, just one vocabulary word.”

“Well this was a lot more than that. We were arguing sort of and then……I kind of decided he was maybe right…”

Maria watched her best friend start to blush. ‘There’s a whole lot more to that statement than she’s telling…’

“..anyway, when I decided he might be right, I just kind of got carried away and kissed him. The connection formed then. But it wasn’t like my connection with you, Izzie. It was like I was inside both minds. I remember being surprised that the connection formed, but at the same time I remember him being surprised that the connection formed. And as I saw that I remember him seeing that I was surprised at the connection and could feel him wondering how I even knew what a connection was. All at once I was seeing flashes from his memory of whatever I wanted to know that he knew, and he was seeing flashes from my mind about everything he wanted to know from me. For him it kind of started when you knocked at my window a week ago, and he saw that I knew, that Maria knew, he saw everything we had planned, everything we had done, right up until I kissed him. And it was like this big old broadband connection that only took about three or four seconds. And what I saw in him just scared me to death. He absolutely didn’t believe that he could ever be accepted by humans, that he could ever trust them, that he could ever be a part of human society, even just real family with your Mom and Dad. He believed he was alien in every sense of the word. I think he really loved me, all of these years, but he could never really open his heart to that love, because he thought he was just too different. And maybe thinking that way....maybe he really was too different. Finally, his mind just kind of went in shock and I could feel him close off the connection, just blank himself out so he couldn’t see anything from me and I couldn’t see anything from him. But I could still feel it in the background, I could still feel him keeping up some sort of a shield to keep me out, but even then I could feel the fear and uncertainty in his mind.

All the time we danced it was like we were on the same frequency and could communicate if we wanted to, but he wouldn’t talk and he wouldn’t listen. Not until the last dance.”

“I can’t believe Max would be that immature,” said Maria. “How could he feel like that? I mean, even about his own parents?”

“Because he is immature, Maria,” said Liz, looking at Isabel. “All three of them are. They’re only seven years old.”

“What? What are you talking about, Liz? That doesn’t make a bit of sense,” said Maria, but as she said it she saw Isabel’s eyes water suddenly.

Liz hugged Isabel quickly and said, “I’m not trying to be mean, Izzie. You’ll always be my friend, but she has to understand.”

Maria watched open-mouthed while Isabel hugged her back and looked at Liz and said, “OK.”

“They only came out of their pods seven years ago, Maria. They were alive for almost 50 years before that, at least, but they were just growing. They never interacted with anyone, they never were cuddled, they never were rocked, they never were sung to by their mom, they never even interacted with each other until they…hatched. They came into this world with no clothes, no language, no toilet training, and no social skills. They’ve been catching up ever since. I realized that when I saw into Max’s mind. He was smart, but he was hatched with few social skills, and has been too paranoid to develop any. I think Michael’s the same way, not so much socially retarded as just socially undeveloped. A diamond-in the rough because nobody has ever picked him up and buffed and polished him. Izzie is better off, because she bonded with her parents, and because she dreamwalks a lot of people, so she’s almost caught up, maybe she is caught up now. But that’s why she was hanging with all the superficial ice princess posse-types, she really wasn’t prepared for serious friendships, serious relationships either. Look how much she’s changed just in the last week, since we three have been hanging together. But Max and Michael were more paranoid. Max kept his distance even from his own parents. Somehow he kind of bonded to me in third grade, but other than that it has been Izzie and Michael, and they weren’t in much better shape than he was. Michael is probably worse. He didn’t have any parents, and he wasn’t even seeing Max and Izzie for a few years.”

Maria watched Liz hugging Isabel. “It’s not their fault, Maria, it’s not anyone’s fault. They have just been trying to catch up to being thirteen years old. It’s hard enough being thirteen if you have thirteen years to get there. They’ve only had seven.”

Maria looked at the distress in Isabel’s face and joined in the hug. “It all makes sense, I guess. But I never really thought of it. I kind of thought it was being aloof, you know? Superior..”

“No Maria….Mostly it’s about being alone and scared…..”said Isabel. “Liz is right. We missed being babies, being toddlers, being pre-schoolers, being in kindergarten. We didn’t just not go to kindergarten, we weren’t even conscious. We learned to walk between the pod chamber and the road where my Mom and Dad picked us up, we have caught up academically, but we’ll never have the part of our childhood where most kids get cuddled and hugged and really start to bond with people……where they become …..human.”

“You’re human, Izzie,” said Maria. With a big hug. “At least as human as anyone who can turn toilet paper 24 colors….”

“So what happened to my brother when he found all this out, Liz?”

“Well, he had to deal with it all in just two hours, I mean everything you went through in a week, and he….kind of freaked I think. He kept looking dazed, like he was trying to get his mind to work, to get his mind around all the stuff he saw when we connected. I mean, he knew everything about how we set this up, how you made Michael go….how I felt about him….everything”

Maria noticed Liz blush when she said the “…how I felt about him…” and then saw the tears come to her eyes again. ‘She spilled her heart to him, and he dumped her. I don’t care what kind of deprived childhood he had, I’m still going to pound him.’

In frustration Maria asked ,“Liz, do you think there’s any likelihood of you and Max ever dating again?”

Liz said “I don’t think I’ll have any option about that anymore, Maria..,”
Maria’s heart was breaking, as Liz looked up at her with those amber eyes again filled with tears, the big dopey grin…… ‘Big dopey grin???? Big dopey grin????? Wait a second here......’

And Liz continued, “since Max and I are sort of engaged.”

“You’re WHAT??” screamed Isabel and Maria in unison, looking back and forth at each other for some kind of confirmation that the other had heard what they had heard.
“Well,” said Liz, now blushing fiercely, “It was kind of an accident, but….well, yeah, …we are engaged.”

Three Martian Blast Sundaes slowly melted over their bowls and overflowed onto the carpet of Liz Parker’s bedroom as Liz Parker established a new Olympic record for blushing as she explained to her two closest girlfriends what had happened.

“Max did the zombie thing for like two hours, and I wasn’t sure if he’d blown a fuse mentally or what until the final dance when he looked at me with his eyes focused all of a sudden and said, “I accept. And I thought, “Accept what?” He didn’t tell me, he just kissed me and dropped whatever barrier he had that kept us from connecting. I was so surprised and amazed and taken aback I forgot to even kiss him back,” Liz said turning a light crimson.

“What did he mean?” said Maria and Izzie simultaneously.

Liz blushed even deeper. “I’d been kind of wrong about what he’d been thinking for most of that time. It was true that when he found out that Maria and I knew, it really shook him up, but when he got to the flash on what I was thinking just before the first connection happened, that’s when he kind of went into overload and freaked for most of the dance.”

“Well come on, Liz, what were you thinking?” begged an impatient Maria.

“Well, when we went up to see my parents my dad gave Max this father speech about how Max was responsible to make sure that I was safe and cared for and everything while I was out with him, and I knew it was making him feel even more guilty about what happened two weeks ago…….,” Liz said, hesitating as her blush deepened.

“Come on, Chica, out with it,” said Maria, enjoying Liz’s embarrassment almost as much as the story.

“Well we had our first fight sort of. I told him that my Dad shouldn’t have said those things, he told me that…….If he ever had a daughter like me he’d do the same thing, standing there with his wife, telling his daughter’s date the very same thing……….and I just knew, knew that I wanted to be the one standing there beside him while he said that to ...our daughter……That’s when the connection happened, and that’s the last flash he got before he freaked”

“My prude brother got a flash that you wanted to bear his child? After he already knew you knew the secret? No wonder he had a meltdown,” said Isabel.

“When we kissed the second time I could see that he had actually handled the thing about Maria and I knowing the secret fairly well. He had always believed four things:
I am different
I can never truly trust them
I will never really belong
I can never be truly accepted by them

Yeah, he was different, but he could see we didn’t care about that. He saw way down into my soul that he could trust me with the secret, trust Maria. When he knew I wanted to marry him, he knew that I wanted him always to belong to me. And when he saw my flash about us having a daughter……..,well he knew that he couldn’t be any more accepted than that…” Liz said, warming the room with the blush from her cheeks.

“But how did you get engaged?” asked Isabel.

“Well, like I said, he took the first part pretty well. Once he had the right facts, he was able to change how he looked at the world really quickly. It’s like academics and stuff, once he knew the basics he could catch up pretty quick. I think he’s even going to be ready to tell your Mom and Dad about the secret now,Izzie”

“Chica, you are avoiding the subject. We need input here. You’re starting to just babble now. How did you get engaged!” demanded Maria.

“That was the hard part for him. He was so upset after he’d seen……that flash from me, remembering that the flashes I’d gotten had shown him doubting everyone……doubting me for all those years,…he couldn’t think of what to say to let me know that he was sorry, let me know he understood. He worried for almost two hours because he still didn’t think he had the social skills to handle….making me understand how much he cared, making me understand how much different he felt now. And then it came to him…..It was a Sadie Hawkins dance, and I’d essentially proposed to him. So he’d just accept. So I’d know he was just as commited as I was. And you know, he really was. In the connection, you can’t lie to each other. I saw to the bottom of his soul. He really does want to marry me, have children with me, if we can,,,.” The blush now encompassing her whole body, “and so he just said ‘I accept’ to treat my thought about him like a Sadie Hawkins marriage proposal. And I was so surprised I didn’t even kiss back…..”

Maria saw Isabel crying then, not sad tears, but tears of happiness for Liz. She felt tears on her cheeks too. They gathered together for a group hug with Liz. After long seconds they finally broke, and Maria waited until Liz’s tears dried and she finally took a teaspoonful of her melted sundae in her mouth to ask the question.

“Say Liz, you are the science wiz….., how many times will you have to try that experiment, I mean, what’s the “n” on that sample, before you’ll know if you and Max can really have kids? That sounds like that might be a long hard experiment, might require an awful lot of....testing.”

As Martian blast sundae dribbled down her chin Liz said, “Maria……..!!!!” and commenced to beat on her friend with a pillow, and the ex-ice princess rolled on the floor laughing, oblivious to the ice cream dishes she was knocking over.


It was two hours later and Max Evans had just gotten off the phone after talking to his girl. ‘His girl,’ he thought again. ‘How great is that!’
He’d told her that he knew they were both underage, and that nothing was legally binding, but that he’d really meant it, from the bottom of his heart. She’d kidded him, accusing him of trying to get out of the engagement. She’d threatened to sue him for breach of promise………… and hire his own father to represent her.

He could hear Izzie and Maria laughing in the background.

They had already set up another triple date, with a follow-up sleepover for the girls at Liz’s and the guys at the Evans’. Another of the “little steps” to get Liz’s parents comfortable with Liz dating, and a chance for Max and Michael to start to get to know Alex a little better, who suddenly seemed to be real important to Izzie. Something about exterminating dragons, he’d been too busy thinking about Liz to really understand.

He’d told Michael that Izzie had told Liz about an hour ago. Michael had gone raving lunatic for about 5 minutes but when he finally stopped to take a breath Max had said “and Maria too.”
Michael was strangely calm for about 15 minutes and then asked, “Before or after she asked me to the dance?”

“Before.”

Michael had been just sitting in the chair with a funny grin on his face for about 30 minutes now. Max had some sympathy for him, but not much. ‘Try dealing with that, a marriage proposal, and an offer to bear your child, while trying to avoid stepping on your date’s feet or run into anyone else on the dance floor for two hours. Then I’ll have sympathy for you, Michael.’

But even so, they were best friends, so he was getting him some “comfort food” , in this case, nachos. ‘Layer of tortilla chips, layer of jalapeno slices, layer of shredded pepperjack, sprinkling of habanero sauce, layer of jalapeno slices, layer of shredded pepperjack, sprinkling of tabasco sauce, layer of jalapeno slices. Microwave on high for 55 seconds…………’

As he opened the microwave he saw the small area of silvery melted plastic sitting on the glass tray. It appeared to be charred on one end. He took it out and read the partially burned label. ‘That would explain what Mom did with my missing Counting Crows CD. Oh well, I was tired of it anyway. I feel like a little Ash.’

Innocent Smile
by Ash

Tripping round the town
As the sun comes down
Flying with your friends
With the stars alive
Tripping round the town
As the sun comes down
Flying with your friends
With the stars alive
Running on a high from the spirit inside
Taking on the world with an innocent smile
Running on a high from the spirit inside
Taking on the world with an innocent smile
Something knocked me down
And I fell far to the ground
I lost it all in one night
Just wandering around
Vandalism's fun when there's nothing to do
Break a few things say it wasn't you
Vandalism's fun when there's nothing to do
Break a few things say it wasn't you
Let it all kick in, take you for a ride
Strapped to a rocket heading for the sky
Let it all kick in, take you for a ride
Strapped to a rocket heading for the sky
Something knocked me down
And I fell far to the ground
I lost it all in one night
Just wandering around
That's when I got the shiver
That reawoke my mind
Swinging from a chandelier
Hanging from the sky
You turned it all around
It only took your smile
Swinging from a chandelier
Hanging from the sky
Hanging from the sky
Running on a high from the spirit inside
Taking on the world with an innocent smile
Running on a high from the spirit inside
Taking on the world with an innocent smile

Diane Evans looked out at the beauty of the desert as she walked with her husband down the narrow trail back toward their parked car. This was a family tradition. They had made this trek on this date each year for the past 20 years, on the anniversary of the first time they had been shown this path.

Max and Isabel had begged them to take them and their friends on a picnic, back to the place that where she and Philip had found them walking along the road. The kids had just turned fourteen, and it had seemed like a reasonable enough request. The three pair of kids had been inseparable that whole summer, and she and Philip had loaded them all up in the minivan with a picnic lunch and set out for the desert. The kids had lead them to this trail in a narrow cleft climbing up to the base of the cliff. Michael and Maria had gone on ahead, and when they passed the next turn in the trail they were standing beside a round opening in the cliff face. Liz and Max had ducked inside first, followed by Isabel and Alex. When she and Phil had come to the opening they’d motioned for Michael and Maria to go first, but Maria had said, “Not this time, Mr. and Mrs. E., this time is family only.” Both of them had been puzzled by the statement, but they’d gone inside.

They’d been amazed to find the pod-like machines, and more amazed yet when the door in the rock had disappeared behind them.

Both of the kids had been tearful, Max leaning on little Liz for support, Isabel on Alex, as they explained what the machines were, and begged forgiveness for not trusting them for so many years….. They’d been so silly, thinking that their parents might be mad at them, or disappointed in them. While it had explained a lot, a bird with a busted wing flying away, the kids learning words so quickly, and particularly why Max had been so….distant, for all those years, it really hadn’t made any difference. They loved their kids, they always had, and they always would.

The second part was actually more disturbing, to hear kids who were barely fourteen explain that they had “bonded,” and that Liz and Alex were their future mates. Neither had ever really dated any other, and they were so young….They’d talked to them for a long time, but all four kids seemed adamant. Eventually they just agreed to disagree, with the parents figuring in a few months the kids would have gone their separate ways. She and Philip had been wrong, though. Granted, there was the one minor dust-up between Max and Liz when the missing pod person, Tess, had showed up and mindwarped Max. But the boys somehow convinced her sociopathic foster-father to leave, and Tess eventually moved in with Maria and Amy. When Amy and Jim Valenti eventually got together, Tess and Kyle had eventually gotten together too. It was four pairs then. Max and Liz, Isabel and Alex, both got married the day after high-school graduation. In one respect, they were much too young, but they had been dating since that Sadie Hawkins dance Liz had invited Max to, for what was the first date for both…..almost five years. Maria and Michael followed suit a month later, she’d started working on Michael as soon as Liz had gotten home from the honeymoon and told her about life and love as an alien-hybrid bride. Tess and Kyle married a year later.

Observing the beauty of the desert, Diane Evans failed to observe the 3 inch stone on the trail, and as it turned under the sole of her foot, she felt the pain as the ligament on the side of her right ankle tore as she was falling to the ground. She lay there stunned for a second, before hearing the voice say, “Grandma, you need to be more careful.” She saw her oldest grandchild. Debbie rush to kneel beside her and quickly reach for her rapidly swelling ankle. As the golden light from Debbie’s hand bathed her ankle, the pain quickly faded. As she looked up, Debbie reached down to help her back to her feet. “Thank you, dear. I was spending too much time watching the beauty of the desert and thinking about twenty years ago, and too little watching where I walked.”

Debbie was thirteen, the first child born of the four couples, the daughter of Max and Liz. Both sets of grandparents doted on Debbie, she was a nearly perfect child with her dad’s big brown eyes and her mother’s raven hair. She had been born thirteen years ago. Liz had been pregnant almost her whole sophomore year at UNM.

Diane smiled, then, remembering the story she had finally gotten out of Maria. If you kept her talking, you could eventually get anything out of Maria Guerin.

During the last three years Max and Liz had been at UNM, before they went to Harvard, him to Medical School, her to the graduate school in Molecular Biology, Liz had called him something like “enowun Evans”, and he’d blush. To this day she sometimes would say that and he’d still blush. She’d weasled the story out of Maria only a few months ago.

When they’d been married, neither Liz nor Max had known if it would actually be possible for them to have children together. It seemed like Liz had actually taken Maria’s joking suggestion that she see how many……unsuccessful attempts ….it would take to actually establish with statistical certainty that they couldn’t have children together. There were actually formulas for such things, and scientist Liz had found the right one. The “n” to establish with statistical certainty that alien-human hybrid to human matches were infertile had been rather large. That is, they would have to have a rather large number of …unsuccessful attempts…to establish that they were not capable of having kids. But she’d never really worked the numbers the other way, because any single pregnancy would establish that such kids were possible.

Neither Liz nor Max had planned on having kids until after they graduated from college, but they had been returning back to UNM married student housing for their sophomore years after spending the summer back in Roswell, when they had stopped very near here to look at the beauty of the desert under a full moon. There had been a blanket in the back of the car, the moon was full, they’d only been married for a year…..and nobody had remembered certain essential supplies. They’d eventually said, what the hell. Let’s use up one of those many ‘n’s. The result had been Debbie, and Max’s enduring nickname of “n” of one-Evans.

Although she was unplanned, she certainly hadn’t been unwanted or unloved, and it had really worked out pretty well. Albuquerque wasn’t all that far away, both sets of grandparents got to see their grandchild, and Liz and Max had babysitters when they needed some time for themselves, babysitters who didn’t get upset when Debbie finger painted on walls and tables without paint, and weren’t upset to see toys come to Debbie rather than Debbie going to the toys.

She had been the first of their grandchildren, and the first of the next generation of the pod squad, but certainly not the last. They were fertile matches indeed. Debbie had a brother, and according to the ultrasound yesterday, twin sisters on the way. Isabel and Maria both had children, and Isabel also was pregnant with a third, while Maria had just given birth to her and Michael’s second child. In fact, that was why she and Phillip and Debbie were alone on the trail today, everybody else was either pregnant, nursing a new baby, or pampering their wives and playing with the younger kids back at the picnic.

“Grandma…..could you help me with something?”

“What’s that, Debbie?”

“I’m going to a school dance next week, and Dad says that when Jimmy picks me up he and Mom want to talk with him first. I know they are going to say something that will embarrass me and Jimmy to tears, …can you make him agree to not talk to Jimmy? I’ve tried and tried, and he won’t budge, not even with puppy-dog-eyes”

“Darling, You know I’d do anything for you if I could, but I think this time you are just going to have to stand there and take it…..”