Falling (AU, M/L Teen) Complete

[greywolf]

Mrs. Hotstetter got there just as Max asked the question...what on Earth had gotten past his shyness to make him confront a complete stranger? Liz Parker and Maria DeLuca seemed as amazed as Mrs. Hotstetter herself when Max asked the Guerin boy his name. The only one who seemed to take it in stride was Michael himself.

"Guerin," said the boy, "Michael Guerin..."

"Max..." said Mrs. Hotstetter, "Michael is new here at school...," not quite sure what to make of this breakthrough. Max Evans was actually out at recess socializing. The Guerin boy hadn't threatened Liz that she could see, and before this that...or vengeance after someone had hurt Liz...for all the official denials, Mrs. Hotstetter was convinced that the broken arm in the fight on the jungle gym had been no accident. 'So what IS Max doing out here?' She decided to try the direct approach.

"Max, why DID you come out here to see Michael?"

She regretted the question the moment it was uttered, as the look of defensiveness came over Max's face immediately.

"I...uh...thought the new kid could use someone to show him around," said Max.

Hotstetter was unable to fight back the smile, but at least kept from laughing outright. 'All I need is for my number one social basket case to be introduced around by my number two social basket case,' she thought. Now if Max had volunteered to help the kid academically, that might have been different. But even so, Hotstetter wasn't sure Max had the social skills to even pull that off, bright as he was.

"Actually," said Mrs. Hotstetter, "..that's going to be Miss DeLuca's job," said Mrs. Hotstetter.

Liz looked at Maria, and had the sudden impression that the girl would have rather been deep fat fried, like the Rings of Saturn onion rings at the Crash. Maria, it appeared, had indeed stepped in it this time. But as she looked back at Max, Liz was still puzzled. There was a mystery here...she wondered if she would ever really get to the bottom of it.

It was almost forty-minutes after school had let out, and Max and Isabel were sitting on the merry-go-round in the schoolyard, watching the boy they would now call Michael walk away.

"He just wants to go back..." said Max.

"Max, there IS NO BACK, you know that." Max nodded his head, his face far too grim for a fifth grader. He and Isabel had split up the research...long years ago. They never went to the public library or even the school library without adding another piece to the puzzle of who and what they were, and what might become of them. That they...and Michael...had been stored in those pods in the 1947 saucer, they had little doubt. Between the flashes and the memories....they had even bicycled out to where their parents had found them once, and managed to reopen the entrance to the podchamber. But they'd also been doing a lot of academic research...Max taking the science....Isabel the other subjects. It was the combination of the two that told the tale.

Max had learned the physics. Whatever planet they had come from, it was deep within a gravity well. Earth too was deep within a gravity well. Whatever reason there had been for the saucer to come here, it had taken enormous energy. Isabel had learned the economics, and Max understood now why economics was called 'the dismal science.'

It took almost a half billion dollars to refurbish the Space Shuttle after each mission..and the damn thing barely went three hundred miles above the surface of the Earth, while the gravity well went well past the Earth's moon. What must it have cost to to take the saucer far enough above it's native planet to allow it to start interstellar flight? What must it cost to have brought it down? What was the cost of the destruction of the saucer? How long had it taken? Had evenryone been kept in stasis pods for millenia...because faster-than-light travel according to Einstein was an impossibility. Was it just the three of them....children in stasis chambers, that had slept through that trip and for forty years after the crash? Had the fourth pod had another child? Or did it belong to whoever had somehow created the chamber, and moved the pods there? There were a lot of unanswered questions, but there were two things they were sure of.

The first was that there would be no rescue mission. It might be a thousand years before anyone even knew the ship was overdue, if it had no faster-than-light drive, and even if it did, would it be worth it to again send a ship? And if so, would it even care about survivors from the first one...survivors that knew nothing about the world of their origin, and would likely fit in there no better than they fit in here.

The second thing they were sure of, was that they could never really fit in here. You could see it throughout Roswell...the xenophobia. Even the Crashdown was simply a kinder, gentler expression of that xenophobia, with cartoon aliens, rather than the horrid ones they had seen in the Sigourney Weaver and Will Smith films. They had decided long ago, that they would never find a place here. There were times that Isabel was tempted to tell their parents, but Max thought that was foolish. Even if they didn't tell anyone else, that would just put them at danger. And if they knew, they might make a mistake. They were better off not knowing...Max at least was sure of that.

No, all there really was here was their current life of hiding...and perhaps a few friendships they made along the way. They both wished it could be more....every time Max saw Liz he certainly wished it could be more, but he knew it couldn't. They were....different.

Michael was different too, but he had scared them. Michael was anxious to somehow get back...find his 'roots,' and both Isabel and Max knew that wasn't going to happen. They were marooned here...they'd live lonely lives and die here. They had accepted that...not easily...but with a certain finality that let them enjoy their casual friendships along the way. But Michael was threatening that now. He was ignorant, and impatient. Now that he was getting schooling, he would eventually catch up academically...someday understand for himself that his obsession would never be a reality. But they had nothing else to offer him...it wasn't like their own lives were that great, except that they had parents. But Michael didn't have even that....

"When he really figures it out...understands there is going to be no rescue...no hope of ever going back...he's going to freak out and do something stupid," Max said. Isabel nodded sadly. "I'll dreamwalk him....see if I ccan get some hint from him before it actually happens..."
Max nodded, "But we'll need to leave before he does...otherwise they'll catch us too...."

Isabel hugged her brother, knowing what he was thinking. She'd dreamwalked him too....realized that his friendship with Liz somehow seemed to him like the only thing that made his life worthwhile. She wondered if he'd really be able to walk away when that time came.

"Come on, Max." she said, getting on her bicycle. "We need to get home...Mom'll worry."

[greywolf]

"Honor your partner," said Mrs. Cavendish

"Honor your corner."

"Now half-sashay and do-se-do..."

It was four weeks in to the new school year, and an Eastern New Mexico Fall thunderstorm was keeping anyone from going outside in the fifth grade class exercise period. Elementary School's didn't have a gymnasium, but the tables had been folded and pushed back to the side of the cafeteria, and Mrs. Cavendish's fifth grade class was learning how to square dance. Twenty-eight fifth graders were out on that dance floor, and both Mrs. Cavendish and Mrs Hotstetter were sure that all twenty-eight fifth graders would have sweaty hands and serious anxiety about actually having to socialize with the opposite sex, and that none would have been more nervous and freaked out by this than little Max Evans. They would, however, have been wrong on two counts. Only twenty-six of the youngsters out on the floor were managing to barely hold off the embarassment at this forced effort at bridging the gender gap, and Max Evans was one of the other two.

Max knew he should have been frightened, actually having to make physical contact with so many other people, even in the stylized setting of the square dance. He hadn't actually believed he'd be able to do it, and it probably wouldn't have helped matters for him to know that Mrs. Cavendish and Mrs. Hotstetter had already decided they'd send him off to the library to read books when he refused to participate...but the first time he'd taken her hand in his and placed his other hand softly around her waist....it was like magic.

As he went around the circle he touched hands with over a dozen girls, without seeing one of them, without really thinking about the fact that he was touching them. Max had only one thought, at the end of the circle she was there. A part of his mind tried to be dispassionate...it was hardly like he'd never touched the girl. He'd actually gotten much closer when he'd picked her up and half-carried half-dragged her out from in front of the oncoming car...but this was different. He didn't know why...but it was much different.

Max was only a fifth grader, but his actual life experience was much less. He wasn't aware...not really...not ...viscerally... that coed dances were the start of the courtship ritual. Or perhaps that's wrong. Perhaps he DID know viscerally...just not intellectually. All he knew was that every time his partner came back to him...every time her hand was in his and his hand was around her waist....when that happened, the Earth was a truly wonderful place.


Liz would have bet a Martian Blast Sundae that Max wouldn't have been able to do this, but she'd been wrong. That really had surprised her. But strangely enough, the thoughts she was having as she circled away from him...waiting to come back to him once more, were the most surprising of all.

The Roswell Independent School System was like many when it came to teaching sex education...caught in a vice between zealots on both sides of the issue and dealing with that dilemma with compromises that really pleased neither extreme. The real lecture, that included talk about pregnancy, birth control, and sexually transmitted disease, actually wasn't given until late in the sixth grade, but even the school board recognized the necessity of doing some things sooner.

The Parker's had read the books about how to raise a child, and had taught Liz early the difference between good and bad touching. And that little lesson had certainly been reinforced by the man that had tried to kidnap her...the man little Max had somehow managed to save her from. her parents had given her other information as she'd indicated an interest...like babies come from out of mothers' bellies, and they get there because the daddies put them there. Because of an unfortunate experience when she'd become the first girl in her class to start a period, late in her own fourth grade year, Nancy had talked about menstruation to Liz almost nine months ago, and there had been a menstrual pad (size junior) sitting unused in Liz's purse for the last six months.

But two weeks ago, aware that not all parents were so enlightened, the school nurse had assembled all of the fifth grade girls in this very same cafeteria to give the Roswell Independent School System talk on such things, causing Liz to have yet another talk with her mother to lament that it was unfair that boys weren't plagued by a similar problem. This had started an open and frank dialogue with her mother that had gradually morphed into 'the talk,' not the bits and pieces of the talk suitable for second, third, and fourth graders, but the WHOLE talk.

Liz had listened with widening eyes...extrapolating from her own existence to the inexorable fact that her own parents must have actually done THAT at least the once. After several days of staring daggers at her father, Nancy had finally had ANOTHER talk in which she'd told Liz with an indulgent smile, that not everything that Liz had initially believed to be bad touching was necessarily all that bad, and that under certain conditions, it could be very pleasant indeed. It just had to be someone who was kind, loving, and who you could trust without question...and then only after you were married of course.

Initially Liz had recoiled from the prospect in horror. She didn't want to do THAT...not with anyone. But in the subsequent week, her analytical mind had slowly intervened. There were, she figured, about 6 billion people in the world, and even if the success rate of doing THAT was 100% (and her mother had strongly implied it was nothing like that), Liz had figured out that there must have been a lot of THAT-doing going on.

Liz had mulled it over for almost the whole week, and resigned herself to the fact that she would probably have to do THAT at some time in her own life...and certainly if she ever wanted a child of her own. It wasn't that the eleven year old actually wanted to do THAT...it all seemed somewhat repulsive. But she realized, as she felt his hand take hers...felt his arm around her waist as they did an allemande left to a do-si-do, that there was someone that she trusted implicitly...someone who was kind....and had already shown his willingness to give his life to protect her.

As she twirled around before him, and she took his arm again, Liz smiled up at Max. She still really couldn't envision either of them wanting to do ...THAT. But if somehow the both of them were somehow overcome by insanity sometime in the future...she figured she'd probably survive it. When the dance was done, she put the thoughts out of her mind and went on with her schoolwork.

But late that night, alone in her bed, she'd bring her hand up to pendant that swung on a chain between the breasts that were only starting to bud, and she'd fall asleep with a smile, remembering his hand holding hers, and his arm around her waist.

[greywolf]

The yellow-faced pocket gopher would take a dozen steps…then freeze, listening and watching. It was 3AM and cold in the high desert of New Mexico, and the pocket gopher wanted very much to go down to forage for food in the middle of the arroyo….where the seasonal stream that had dried up months ago had still left enough moisture for the plants that were blooming in early June…plants that could provide a good meal for the gopher. The previous night the gopher had a close encounter with a young great horned owl, and only the inexperience of the new fledgling predator had permitted the gopher to survive at all, so it was perhaps not surprising that the gopher was paying particular attention to the sky as it made its trip down to the center of the arroyo. Not surprising, perhaps, but unfortunate. For the real risk to the gopher tonight was not from the sky…but from behind the rock only feet away…the rock toward which the path of the gopher would take him on the way to his meal.

The predator behind the rock was a crotalus atrox, more commonly called a western diamondback rattlesnake. It actually did not like the cold night air, and had it been well fed, would have been coiled in its nest in the rocks. But it was hungry and its usual food was small mammals. A pit viper…it could sense their body heat better in the cool night air.
The snake was a large male…nearly two meters in length…almost 15 years in age. It’s tongue flicked out in the night air…picking up the smell of the nearby pocket gopher. Even in the darkness, as the gopher walked carefully over the floor of the arroyo, the snake could feel the vibrations in the soil caused by its movements..and as the rodent came past the rock the snake struck swiftly.
The strike of the snake would have been enough….even without the venom, to kill the gopher. With the venom, it was certainly a case of overkill. But it wasn’t just about killing. Most of the toxin released was proteolytic like that of all other American pit vipers. Proteolytic venoms are, in fact, advanced and concentrated fluids that destroy tissues and other cells through intramolecular digestion. The snake itself was cold blooded, and it would take it some time to digest the gopher. For tonight it would content itself with just swallowing it whole and going back to its nest. In the morning, it would find some warm rock shelf where it could come out…bask in the warm rays of the son…nap…and finish digesting its meal.


“Liz…you are going to burn. You need to put on some sunscreen.”

It was 11 AM when the two almost-sixth graders got to the deeper part of the arroyo, and they had been moving steadily for almost an hour since they’d last seen their classmates. It was the last day of school, and the fifth grade picnic was traditional…held the day the sixth graders were getting their first day sample of the junior high school, while the ninth graders were getting an orientation at West Roswell High.
Liz looked back at Max. He was already digging in his small daypack for a tube of sunscreen. ‘Funny,’ she thought, ‘I’ve never seen HIM use it. I wonder if he carries it just for me..’ She smiled a gentle smile. So much in her life was changing…but not Max. And in a way that was comforting to her…but in another it was profoundly disturbing.

It must have been 95 degrees in the arroyo. It had only been in the low 60s back at the picnic area, with a ten mile an hour wind that made it seem far cooler. But the sides of the arroyo kept out the wind, and with the New Mexico sun beating down on them from almost overhead, the arroyo was starting to resemble a furnace.

[greywolf]

Eight months ago, Liz knew, she’d would have quickly stripped off her sweatshirt and been down to a t-shirt as soon as she’d entered the arroyo, but things were a little different now.

She’d wanted to take time to go on a fossil hunting expedition with Max as soon as she heard that the picnic would be at the park..adjacent to the arroyo, but up until two days ago she hadn’t been at all sure she was even going to leave the picnic area. The porta-potties weren’t much, but they would have sure beat trying to deal with her period in the arroyo. ‘Period…,’ Liz thought, ‘…that would imply that it repeats regularly in a fixed period of time..’ and of course it did neither. It was irregularly irregular at best...both in timing and in flow….a real irritation…and despite the fact that her mother had assured her it would get more regular and less erratic after a year or so, it was something she would have gladly done without. And even though THAT wasn’t a problem today…another of the consequences of puberty was.


It wasn’t really that her chest was THAT developed…because it wasn’t…but her mother had nonetheless gotten her what at one time would have been called a training bra…but was now called a sports bra. It wasn’t like it was really uncomfortable or anything normally..but it had added a layer of spandex-like stretchy stuff that didn’t breathe particularly well to what six months ago might have been a simple t-shirt…and in the 95 degree heat and still air of the arroyo, she had become extremely hot and sweaty. That was partially offset by the hiking shorts she was wearing…they were probably cooler than the levis she would have had on six months ago…even if they didn’t provide quite the same protection to her knees. The shorts….and the camp shirt and camisole …had been Maria’s idea. She thought since they were now becoming young women, they ought to dress like them. Of course, neither of them had much experience in that regard.

The camisole was another filmy synthetic…that didn’t breathe, but stuck to her like glue when she sweated. Between that and the sports bra, she had become miserably hot…sweating even more. She’d quickly taken off the light jacket she’d worn this morning…and now the camp shirt was damp with her sweat as well. She would have taken the camp shirt off as well, but some crude comments by a ninth grade boy when she’d worn the clingy camisole to school several weeks previously still caused her to flush with anger and embarrassment. His comments had filled her with the same fear she’d felt in those minutes that she’d been kidnapped.

But then she looked at Max….Max wasn’t like that boy….he’d been the one to stop…to kill…the kidnapper, and he’d put his own life on the line to do it. She had nothing to fear from Max. He’d never hurt her…he wasn’t like the others. Besides, her mother had told her that boys matured slower than girls…Max probably wouldn’t even notice….and she reluctantly admitted to herself with a shy smile that she was not altogether sure she’d mind even if he did.

Liz took off the camp shirt and rolled it up, putting it into her small pack.

"Well great," said Max. "Now you're REALLY going to burn."

"Not if you'll get my back where I can't reach," said Liz, taking the sunscreen from him and rubbing it over her face, arms, neck and upper chest. She handed it back to him and turned around, holding her hair to the side. The feel of his hands spreading the warm cream over her upper back sent a flutter deep into her abdomen.

'Maybe puberty isn't all that bad after all,' she thought....

[greywolf]

Max lived for days like this. Sure, Isabel would be sitting somewhere worrying herself sick that he might be doing something … accidentally saying something….that would give them away, but Max didn’t care. For these few hours, he would be with Liz.

Max understood his sister’s concern. Even he doubted that Liz would really accept what he was if she ever knew…but she was his best friend, and perhaps, his only reason to continue living.

For almost a year Max had listened to Michael talk about going ‘home’ while he had struggled to learn the academic tools that Diane Evans had taught her children. But Max knew that Michael was still years behind the Evans children when it came to using those tools. If he really understood...not just the physics, but the economics behind the physics...wherever they came from was so far away..the energy costs were so high...there just couldn't be much traffic between the two worlds. No sort of commerce could ever really justify interstellar travel and what ever HAD justified that first mission to whoever sent it, no one was going to send a rescue mission...after nearly a half century..for three immature aliens who had only been fetuses at the time the ship had departed.

Most likely the only reason there had ever been a ship, Max decided, was because of scientific curiousity. He smiled as he looked at Liz scanning the walls of the arroyo for fossils. Scientific curiousity was something Liz Parker had in abundance. She was also his friend....his best friend in the whole world. But that wasn't the only reason he enjoyed her company so much.

The Earth girl was beautiful, there was no denying it. She had been beautiful the first time he'd seen her, and yet her beauty seemed to grow every day. She had grown taller this year...she had told him she felt clumsy...gawky...but she didn't look that way to him. Her legs were becoming longer... her hips more curved...her chest...he looked away, feigning interest in a passing hawk to keep from staring rudely. In all these years she had never been more beautiful than she was today as they walked under the blue sky along the floor of the arroyo.

Max scanned the distant horizon where the ground rose to the north, looking for any signs of rain clouds...happy that the skies were as blue there as overhead. Flash floods in arroyos in the desert southwest killed a number of people every year...usually by crushing as a massive wall of water came shooting down the path of the arroyo, sweeping all before it. Liz was a bright girl....brilliant in fact, as far as Max was concerned, and she knew that, but sometimes in her enthusiasm for things Liz would overlook the obvious...like she was doing today with those shorts. If Liz didn't get a skinned knee or leg from the rocks or the cactus spines...she would almost certainly get a sunburn. Fortunately, Max had a tube of sunscreen in his pack, and would suggest it to her when her quest for scientific discovery had abated a little bit. He didn't need it personally. He'd discovered how to take the outermost layer of his skin...the part of the stratum corneum that was already dead, and modify its molecules to absorb the ultraviolet rays that showered down on them this bright sunny day.

He looked back at Liz and smiled. She had taken off her light jacket and he understood why...it must be 95 degrees down here on the floor of the arroyo, protected from the winds that blew twelve or fourteen feet above their heads, but with the late morning son pouring unrelentingly down upon them. With that additional exposed skin, she really was going to burn if he didn't remind her.

“Liz…you are going to burn. You need to put on some sunscreen.”

He dug the tube of sunscreen out of his pack and turned to face her. She was already hot and sweaty, the salt encrusted perspiration apparent on her camp shirt. She probably should have taken the light jacket off even earlier...and had more water...he had a couple of half-liter bottles in his pack he could share with her if she'd forgotten her own. He turned back to his pack to get one for her but when he turned back he froze as she stripped off her camp shirt as well.

On an intellectual level, he was thinking that really wasn't a good thing to be wearing out here...the camisole appeared to be some filmy synthetic that was not letting her perspiration evaporate. It clung to her body like it was painted on...outlining clearly the bra underneath it...as well as her budding breasts. But he found it difficult to think intellectually. The sight was beautiful...but somehow very disconcerting. He struggled to pull his eyes away...to find something to say to break the spell she had cast on him.

"Well great," said Max. "Now you're REALLY going to burn," said Max, looking away to pick up the tube, his eyes coming back to her of their own volition as soon as he had it.

"Not if you'll get my back where I can't reach," said Liz, taking the sunscreen from him and rubbing it over her face, arms, neck and upper chest. She handed it back to him and turned around, holding her hair to the side.

He spread the sunscreen slowly over the exposed skin above the camisole at the top of her back. It wasn't the first time he'd touched her...he knew that. He'd touched her to pull her out from under cars...to keep her safe...but before there had always been a reason...a threat. But today...well, the sun was a threat...but hardly a lethal one...and the areas where his hands moved softly against her skin were areas she could certainly have reached herself. He was, Max knew, touching her because she wanted to be touched...wanted him to touch her...and until that moment he had never really realized how much he had wanted to touch her. There was a fluttering in his chest as she moved her neck sinuously to expose more skin for his ministrations and he felt a twinge of regret when his job was done and he had no reason to continue to have his hands on her upper back. The warmth that travelled through him as he saw the chain around her neck....the one holding up a pendant that had once been just a number of coins...the one that said in third grade cursive, 'My friend Liz,'....that warmth...had nothing to do with the southwest sun beating down on them.

As he capped the sunscreen and returned it to the backpack he grabbed one of the water bottles and offered it to her. "Here, we can't afford to get dehydrated..."

Liz felt flushed and dizzy...perhaps, she decided...she was getting dehydrated...but Max looked a little flushed himself. "You first," she said, picking up her pack. She watched as Max took a long drink from the bottle and handed it to her.

The water tasted sweet as she swallowed it...or was it the water? Perhaps it was only because her lips were now where his had been only seconds ago. She put the cap back on the bottle and handed it back to him. As he turned around to put it back in his backpack, Liz smiled. It was going to be a lovely day...it had already gotten off to a wonderful start.

A half mile north on the floor of the arroyo the diamondback pulled itself from its nest with difficulty, the pocket gopher still a visible bulge in its midsection. It nestled in its favorite protected niche on the side of the arroyo, and the sun beat down on it...warming it and assisting in the digestion of its food. It too thought it was a lovely day...as much as the serpent's mind could think.

[greywolf]

Nancy Parker walked to the edge of the arroyo, her mind a whirlwind of mixed emotions. Irritation was there...as well as concern. It had been well over 90 minutes since Liz had said she was going to go down to the arroyo and looke for fossils with Max. Nancy knew Liz loved science...but it would have been so much easier if they'd just stayed with the other children at the park...played on the playground equipment...taken part in the softball or volleyball. She should, she supposed, be as upset with Max as with Liz...but that was hard to do. Diane was right, away from Liz, Max was withdrawn and painfully shy. Once Liz decided to go somewhere, Max would follow her like a puppy...and given what had happened to Liz over the last few years...and how often that puppy had somehow saved her, she had little choice but to be grateful that at least Max was with her, although even in that Nancy felt a vague worry.

She remembered the talk that she'd had with Deputy Valenti that night...only a month or so after that man had tried to abduct Liz. He was on the night shift and had come in for coffee and some pie, and he was just sort of musing, but it had always stuck in her mind.

• "I don't understand that boy...I really don't,"said Jim Valenti, taking another sip of his coffee. "I've tried to interview him twice...once after the dog incident...once after he stopped....he killed...the man trying to abduct Liz. He is one of the shyest kids I've ever seen, ...hiding behind his mother...his sister...even Liz. But I saw him with the dog and he wasn't shy...he was fearless...and the dog knew that too. Wild as it was, it was afraid to take Max on. And when Max stopped...killed...that man abducting Liz....
  
  Do you realize how hard it is to get a human being to kill another human being? Not a sociopath...but a nice kid like Max. When I was in the Marine Reserve I went through boot camp and we spent almost 16 hours on bayonet drill...stabbing at some dummy. I didn't understand why until later. It's hard to get normal people to actually do violence to someone...especially lethal violence. They were doing their best to decondition us to that...to actually let us harm someone if we had to do so.
  
  When Max was riding down that hill he had to go through that process...to decide that he would kill that guy if he needed to to save Liz. I'll never understand how a little boy could go through that process so quickly...let alone decide to give up his own life to do it.....

And that wasn't all, either. Nancy knew more than Jim Valenti did about the other things...the time Max broke the boy's arm...in precisely the way Liz's had been broken because of him. He was a little boy...but then he wasn't. He could be the most vulnerable of people...but when Liz was threatened, he could do whatever he needed to to help her...or to protect her. That boy had never bothered Liz again. Somehow shy little Max would sometimes change...do things with an intensity that was just not normal, and that was a little frightening.

Nancy shook her head. This was just silly. No way would she believe that Max would ever purposely harm Liz...but she did have other fears.

In another year the two would be teenagers, and their long bike rides and hikes together would soon entail a special risk. Neither were bad kids, but they had shared a closeness ever since they had met...a closeness that had been sweet as little kids...but could tempt them astray as their hormones kicked up.

Nancy remembered a few years ago when Liz and Maria had been playing with her old cosmetics. They'd found a bunch of old lipsticks and...the gaudier the better...same for the eye shadow. They were only playing, but they'd looked like ten year old hookers.

A few weeks ago she and Amy had sat down with the girls and talked to them about cosmetics, since they had asked if they could start wearing them in sixth grade. She and Amy had been reluctant but they also realized that many of the other sixth grade girls would be wearing cosmetics, so they'd explained to the girls that at their ages, less was really more. They'd bought them some light blushers and lip glosses, showed them how to use them, ...it had seemed to satisfy them. They were growing up, but they just didn't have the experience to do adult things....of course, getting the experience without going too far was always the issue with teenagers...and always had been.

No, it was difficult enough being a teenager, without the additional risks of the sorts of closeness that Liz and Max shared...and worse..the burden of indebtedness that Liz...and the entire Parker family..had to young Max Evans. It wasn't, Nancy told herself, that Max was a bad kid...he was anything but. But as he hit his teenage years his hormones too would flow and he'd want...well, what every teenage boy wants....and the fact that he had saved Liz's life...actually been willing to give his own to protect her from that monster that kidnapped her.....well, it would only be human for a teenage boy to think that gave him some special claim on the young lady he'd rescued....and in all fairness, Nancy couldn't really blame her daughter for responding to such an argument if Max made it, she did indeed owe her very existence to Max. And to tell the truth, Nancy really didn't object to little Max being that special someone for Liz....someday. Just not in their teens.

As she reached the edge of the arroyo Nancy took out the binoculars and scanned up and down it. She spotted them quickly....almost a mile north of her....too far away to shout at them. She started the slow march north...at least they were moving even slower looking for fossils. As her daughter took off the campshirt Nancy put the binoculars back to her eyes, watching Max put sunscreen on the places Liz couldn't reach...and a few she could. Superficially it seemed harmless enough, unless you saw Liz's face through the binoculars.

'Liz is enjoying that way too much,' thought Nancy. Her fears were confirmed when Liz shared the water bottle Max had started without wiping off the top....or any apparent fear of boy cooties whatsoever. No...even if Max was a good boy...and he was, these excursions they took together were going to have to be curtailed....or at least closely chaperoned. The kids were growing up now...

Nancy hurried her footsteps as she walked along the rim of the arroyo, watching the two youngsters from time to time with the binoculars...just to see what they were doing. Liz seemed to have found a fossil she wanted high on the side of the arroyo. With any luck she would be caught up to the two within fifteen minutes or so. She wondered if she should tell them immediately that these little two person excursions were over...'or just tell Liz, and have Diane break the news to little Max?'

She continued to watch as she moved north along the rim of the arroyo.

[greywolf]

"I agree, Liz," said Max. "It's a beautiful fossil...but it's eight or nine feet up there. We'd need a ladder, and we don't have one."

"But we can't just leave it there, Max. Look, the rock around it is fractured and loose. The next rainstorm it's going to come down...the water will bounce it along the arroyo floor, and ruin it. We need to get it now."

"Well then you need to be seven foot tall, Liz, because you can't reach it."

It was a great day and Max enjoyed nothing better than his times like this with Liz...even if he had experienced that scary fluttery feeling in his abdomen a couple of times. Even that was quite pleasant in its own way.

There was little Max would have ever wanted to change about Liz...well, maybe just one thing. She could be real....intense...like in dodge ball. Max knew that his reactions were somewhat faster than those of normal people and that somehow...well, he couldn't exactly read their minds, but he could anticipate their actions. He could almost always dodge the ball without using his quick reaction time, just because he could kind of feel when they were going to throw it. Liz was a maniac at dodgeball, and would sling the ball sidearm without warning. He was starting to go out to recess now, and she seemed to take a particular delight in showing him she was faster than he was and it was all he could do to remember not to use his abnormally fast reaction time to dodge when she'd peg the ball at him.

She was similarly tenacious when it came to science projects. Liz wanted that fossil, and somehow Max knew she wasn't going to stop until she had it. She'd brought a hand trowel in her pack, and if she had been seven foot tall, Max had little doubt she'd be working on the fossil right now. But she was closer to four foot tall. He was interested in seeing how she would do this.....

It took her a few minutes to figure it out, but figure it out she did. The arroyo walls slanted slightly outwards and Max soon found himself with his back to the wall underneath the fossil. He bent over and intertwined his fingers to make a stirrup for her left foot. As she placed her foot in it she placed her hands on his shoulders and he leaned back against the wall, boosting her up as she scrambled with her hands on small cracks in the wall to eventually get both her feet onto his shoulders. He heard the trowel start carving into the sedimentary rock..soft sandstone really, and fshortly elt the sand and rock chips start to tumble down on his head. Liz, he had no doubt, was going to get that fossil.

If it was 95 degrees on the floor of the arroyo it was at least that leaning against the wall, standing on Max's shoulders, and the small hand trowel was finding tough going on the sandstone. Within minutes. Liz was covered with sweat..wishing for the hundredth time that the camisole top were cotton rather than whatever Spandex like stuff it was made of, and Liz thought she could have probably done without the sports bra as well. Sweat was running off her, and the sun was baking her neck.

"Are you done yet?" came the voice from below her.

"No...this is really hard...but I'm getting there," she replied.

Liz finally figured she'd done as much as she needed with the trowel. She dropped it to the arroyo floor near her backpack and began rocking the piece of sandstone, trying to get it free from the wall of the arroyo.

Max had been patiently looking out at the center of the arroyo as the sand and rock chips fell down over his head and face, but as he saw the trowel fall and felt Liz shift her feet on his shoulders as she struggled to free the rock with the fossil in it, he looked up to see how she was doing. It was only then that he realized the perspective you have when a young lady wearing shorts is standing on your shoulders facing in the opposite direction....

Her ankles were at the level of his ears, and her sun-bronzed legs went all the way up to her cargo shorts, the inner surfaces of her thighs noticeably paler than her lower legs as they disappeared into the shorts. As he watched her struggles with the fossil caused one leg to move forward, the gap in her shorts revealing a quick peek at a panty-covered buttock. Suddenly the fluttery feeling in his abdomen went in to overdrive, and Max's knees seemed to go weak. He quickly brought his head down to resume gazing out at the arroyo...hoping that the strange feelings he was experiencing were simply the heat and perhaps the abnormal head position he had briefly assumed. He sure wasn't going to take any chance of lifting his head like that again....

A half mile away, Nancy Parker put the binoculars down with a shake of her head, unsuccessfully attempting to suppress a grin. It really hadn't been THAT funny, although she supposed that twenty years from now when Liz was safely married...and who knows, maybe to little Max...., it might make for an amusing mother-daughter chat.

It had been obvious that Max had had his reservations about Liz going after the fossil, but he'd followed her orders dutifully and stood there against the arroyo wall stoically as the sand and small rocks had rained down on his head. When he'd finally looked up, his doubletake and wide eyes....eyes that quickly found their way back to the safe view of the arroyo in front of him....had made it obvious that Max, while also becoming aware that girls were different from boys in a very fundamental way, was doing his very best to be a gentleman about the situation that he had been maneuvered in to. But it reinforced the obvious...the kids were growing up, and these excursions where it was just the two of them would certainly have to stop.

[greywolf]

Max felt Liz's weight shift from one shoulder to the other and even without looking up...which he had no intention of doing...he could pretty well guess what was going on. Even though many of the girls in the fifth grade had hit their 'growth spurts' and some were even taller than the boys, few of them had anything like the upper body strength that the boys had. And growth spurt or not, Liz really wasn't a very big person. But she tended to make up for whatever weaknesses she had with her bulldog determination and persistence. She was really putting her all into trying to get that stone free from the side of the arroyo.

"Be careful up there," he said.

It wasn't that Liz resented Max telling her to be careful it was just that....well, she was so darn close to getting the rock fragment with the fossil in it free. That's why she gave it one last big effort pulling it as hard as she could to her left....

Max felt the force through his shoulders as Liz leaned to her left...his right...and pushed and pulled...and as he felt the sudden release, he knew she'd made a serious mistake.

As the rock suddenly broke free of the wall, Liz knew she was in real trouble. The sudden release of the rock had caught her with her center of gravity way to the left...farther to the left than Max's shoulder. The fall was as inevitable now as it would be painful...

Max knew at once what had happened, and knew there was no way Liz could recover from it by herself. Her right foot had already started to lift off her left shoulder as she started to topple to his right...but he'd been half expecting it, and he was ready.

Liz felt the strong hand first gripping her right ankle firmly and clamping it to his left shoulder followed in microseconds by his right hand shooting up her leg to her left hip...stabilizing it and forcing her center of gravity back over his shoulders as he quickly took several steps to the side to center himself underneath her. Max had always had cat-quick reflexes...she strongly suspected that even when she hit him with the ball in dodgeball, it was only because he let her do it, but this was impressive even for him.

"Thanks, Max..." she said automatically...and only then did she notice the fluttery feeling in her abdomen had returned...due no doubt to fright from the near-fall she tried to tell herself....although the warmth of the firm grip that his right hand had on her left thigh might have a little bit to do with it she conceded as she caught her breath.

She'd talked to her mother about good touching and bad touching...even before the man had tried to abduct her...and certainly afterwards. And she'd felt the badness about the man...recoiled even when he'd touched places that were far less intimate than her thighs...but it wasn't like that with Max. Max would never hurt her...never take advantage of her...she knew that to her very core. So it was unsurprising that his touch didn't make her feel uncomfortable, but still...this went far beyond that. When his hands touched her......the hand gripping her thigh now...his hands when he had been putting the sunscreen on her...there had been ...not just a warmth...but a ...a rightness to it...as if they belonged there...as if when Max touched her...wherever he touched her...it could only be a good touch.

"Are you OK,Liz?"

"Yes," she said, smiling down at him, still holding the fossil in her left hand,."...I'm better than OK, Max...I feel wonderful."

"Why don't you toss the fossil down, then get down from there..?"

"Toss it down?...It'll break."

"Just toss it down on the sandy area to my right....it should be okay."

"No way, Max...I worked too hard to get this to let it get cracked now. Make a stirrup and I'll get down the same way I got up."

Max had his doubts. She'd had two free hands getting up, and the area of the wall he'd moved to to keep her from falling was a good deal more vertical than the area only a few feet away where he'd helped her climb up...but he'd watch carefully...he wouldn't let anything happen to her.

Liz knew she'd made a mistake even before her left shoe was in Max's intertwined palms. Bending her knee had taken her center of gravity too far away from the wall, and all at once she was falling backwards.

Max felt Liz start to tip backwards and instantly let her foot slip through his hands. He wasn't sure if he could stop her fall and if he couldn't stop her, it was better she land on her feet...not her back and head...and as she started to fall he encircled her legs with his hands pulling her against him even as he slid his own feet forward to push him more securely against the wall and to get his own feet forward of their mutual center of gravity. He checked the fall of her body against his own...it was the only way to keep her from getting hurt.

For Liz, there was one brief moment of terror...and then fifteen seconds of incredible pleasure...fifteen seconds that seemed to last a lifetime. Before she could topple backwards Max released her...but then pulled her forward with his arms encircling her upper thighs and lower buttocks...her momentum slowed by her chest sliding across his and finally arrested by her buttocks resting in the circle of his interlocked hands...her pelvis and chest pressing heavily against him as her toes dangled an inch from the floor of the arroyo. She felt his chest muscles push against his t-shirt through the thin material of the camisole and her breasts felt the movement of his pectoral muscles as he clung to her...protecting her from falling Her legs dangled an inch from the ground..straddling his.

Their lips brushed and she hesitated for long moments...wanting to feel his lips against hers. He seemed paralyzed with fright. Liz let the fossil fall into the sand...Max was right, it didn't break, although it would be awhile before either of them would notice that one way or another.

"Thank you again, Max..," she said, and she pressed her lips against his the fluttering in her abdomen now threatening to explode.

The lips touched for only a few seconds but it was several more before Max realized that he could safely put Liz down. Once the embrace was broken they just looked at each other for several seconds...not really sure what to say...neither had ever felt like this before. It was almost like neither wanted to break the mood...or perhaps both just wanted to burn the memory of what had just happened indelibly in to their brains. Eventually both flushed and Max picked up the fossil and stuffed it in to his back pack.

"We'd better get back to the others," he said. "It's almost time for lunch."

As they started up the arroyo, Max was in the lead, heading north to an area the walls were low enough they could climb out of the arroyo. Liz followed him, a strange smile on her face and lunch was definitely NOT what was on her mind.


Nancy sat on the rock, still somewhat shaken. She'd seen Liz start to topple and was amazed Max had been able to stop her from getting hurt. And the gratitude she felt that he had stopped her from serious injury probably kept her from being as upset as she might otherwise be with the exact manner that he broke her fall...not that she still wasn't upset. But honestly, she didn't know how else he would have done it and despite the rather...intimate.... position they'd found themselves in, it was hard to blame Max for what happened...Liz either this time, although the girl might have given a thought to just what kind of view she was giving Max by standing on his shoulders.

She shook her head as she got to her feet. She'd been warned about the teenage years...she'd been dreading them...but Liz was only twelve. This just wasn't fair.

'Those two are SO busted,' she thought. 'When I catch up with them they are both going to be told that they are not to EVER be a twosome. They are not going to be a twosome until Liz is at least eighteen...and even then they may be double-dating.'

She knew that wasn't entirely fair, but ...Liz was her only child and Max had.....well, Max hadn't done anything really...but it sure seemed like he'd come close. Actually, Liz was probably the most culpable....what culpability there was. And there wasn't much, Nancy tried to tell herself...they were good kids...she just wasn't ready to think of her twelve year old as someone with any sexuality. 'No....those two are going to have to be broken up....today.'

[greywolf]

The courtship process is not easy on teenagers...and Max and Liz were still a year away from even being teenagers. It generally goes something like this. Both individuals are trememendously fearful of rejection. The male's body prods him to accept his fear of rejection and attempt to get close to the female. The female's body prods her to overcome her fear of rejection, but she has other fears as well. One of these is that, while the male won't exactly reject her, he'll just use her physically without really having any sort of emotional commitment to her. He won't really value her. The other is that, since the male is stronger, he'll use his physical strength to force her into physical commitment before he has emotionally committed to her, setting her up for future abandonment.

For Liz and Max, the situation was even stranger. Contrary to Nancy's fears, neither of these two were in any imminent danger of doing...'it.' Liz was only twelve years old, and physiologically Max was about the same. Their bodies were certainly starting to give them a few gentle prods that they ought to start looking seriously at those of the other sex, but neither of them was exactly feeling their biological clock start to run out here. But the strangeness...perhaps the uniqueness of their circumstances was very real.

Although Max felt his body's gentle urgings to get closer to Liz...he really never expected that he'd be anything but rejected, not just romantically by Liz, but totally rejected by the whole human world, if he revealed that he was an alien. And although he cared for her...cared for her deeply, he was certain they'd never be a a real twosome. He felt guilty...knowing she'd certainly have nothing to do with him if she knew how different he was, but his fear of rejection was even greater than his guilt about not telling her. So even though he had loved her since they met, he never really figured on a romantic future with Liz or anyone else.

The situation for Liz was also a little bizarre. She really didn't have much of a fear of rejection other than the fact that Max was so shy.., and no fear whatever that Max didn't value her...or that he might physically hurt her. Max had risked his life to keep her safe the very first time they'd met...and frequently since then. The thought that he might decide to push her to go farther physically than she was willing to go had never even occurred to her. Had anyone else...Kyle Valenti for instance...been putting lotion on her she might have worried about him trying to steal a base, but there had been a rightness and pleasantness about Max touching her that was undeniable.....besides, she wasn't altogether sure how far she WAS willing to go if Max felt he needed to go there with her.

Somewhere over the last three years, she had come to love him...to decide he really was the one...her lifemate. In the end Max would never reject her...he'd already demonstrated just how much he cared for her. No, her main problem was that Max was shy...too shy to take the first step, even too shy to respond to the kiss she'd just given him.

The silence bothered Liz as they walked northward in the arroyo. She knew Max was shy and introspective, and at times seemed to get depressed when he turned inward, and she didn't like it when he got like this. She seldom saw it from him personally...although she saw it often when he interacted with others. Somehow he was beating up on himself internally....she could tell. Whenever he did this, he was having doubts about himself....himself and his ability to interact with other people. She wasn't sure, but she wondered if he was somehow worried that she might have misinterpreted what had happened....how they had gotten in that position that....well, he would have been mortified if anyone had seen them like that....so would she....pleasant as it was. Fifth graders just didn't do stuff like that. And if their folks had seen it...they'd have definitely freaked. But it had just sort of happened and...she wasn't ashamed of it...in fact, ...it had been beautiful.

As they walked along, Max was lost in silence. Liz had kissed him. Oh, he'd been kissed before...his parents had kissed on him a lot when he was younger, his mom still did every day. But this hadn't been a kiss like those kisses. This had been a kiss like mommy kissed daddy. He'd always known their kisses were diffferent, and he'd thought at first that it was just that they were from this planet but he was from another. It took him awhile to understand that those kisses were not just affection...they were boy-girl kisses. Liz had given him a boy-girl kiss...and he'd never even considered the possibility...as much as he cared for her. That was because he was...different, and had been sure that she wouldn't want to even be his friend if she'd known how different he was....and he still thought that. But he hadn't been truthful to Liz...because he'd been afraid to lose her, and now she thought that he was something he wasn't...something that she might want to be more than just a friend to. It was a scary thought, because he couldn't tell her or he'd lose her, but it was hard to keep lying to her as well...

After a few more minutes of walking, Liz had had enough. Max needed to know that he'd done nothing wrong...that she wasn't upset by them winding up in what amounted to a passionate clinch...that she had no fear of her private space being violated...at least not by Max Evans. Besides, she'd really enjoyed the first time he'd put sunscreen on her. Maybe a second application would convince him she wasn't upset about what had happened when he'd caught her, even if the kiss hadn't.

"This top is definitely the wrong material for this heat," she said as she sat the pack down on the rock and sat next to it, pulling out her camp shirt, "I'd be a lot better off in the camp shirt...it's cotton."

"Probably..." said an inexperienced Max, who had not a clue where this conversation was heading.

Liz was an intelligent and rational young lady, if totally inexperienced in this boy-girl stuff. But in the absence of that experience that really meant that she was smart enough to quickly rationalize what she was about to do...what her heart was telling her to do..., even if she knew her parents wouldn't have approved. Maybe this would convince him she was comfortable with him. Max had, after all, seen her in her two-piece swimsuit on numerous occasions...as she took her camisole top off, she rationalized that her sports bra covered her at least as much as her swimsuit top had.

That turned out to not be quite the case...the swimsuit top was opaque blue with ruffles on it that sort of distorted the image of what was underneath, and the sports bra...white before she'd sweated through it, hadnot only become semi transparent but was also plastered to her like a coat of paint, emphasizing what little she had as much as it concealed. As Liz noticed that she felt a little uncomfortable...before remembering that this was Max after all, he'd seen her chest before...in fact, touched it when he'd pulled venomous arachnids off her. With this rationalization, her comfort level increased dramatically. Max had already seen everything she had once anyway...

"I probably ought to have more sunscreen.....," Liz said, taking it from the pack. "Would you get my back please, Max?"

Max could feel the tension in the muscles on her back...the trapezius and rhomboids that had pulled mightily to get that fossil out of the wall of the arroyo. He didn't want to use his powers...Liz would know...but he could massage them...working the warm sunscreen over her upper back...working the knots out...

Liz was taken aback by how pleasurable this was...the warmth of his hands softly kneading her muscles...the fluttery feeling in her abdomen had returned with a vengeance and her neck twisted luxuriously, the upper trapezius muscles of her back and neck and the pectoral muscles of her upper chest seeming to cry out for their own share of this wondrous treatment.

"Could you get the front too, Max," she asked...the words slipping out before she even realized what she said. 'Good Lord, Liz, you're sitting on a rock in front of him...his eyes are looking right down your chest...' Liz bit her lip in embarassment, but as his hands reached up to the top of her shoulders she bit her lower lip gently...unwilling to retract a word. He'd touched her before..and if she was about to get the first breast fondling of her life...well, it was Max...she couldn't think of anyone else she'd want to do it, and she had every intention of having him do it someday anyway.....

As he brought his hands to her upper shoulders and found himself peering down past her neck the fluttery feeling started in Max again. Liz didn't have a great deal of cleavage...although it had noticeably increased since he'd pulled the scorpions off her...but what she did have was eye-opening to Max. He gulped twice....she didn't really want him to sunscreen THERE did she? His hands worked their way slowly down her front..but in the end stopped at the chain that held a friendship pendant...a good four inches from second base.

"I think maybe you need to get it from here, Liz..."

"Thank you Max...I'm sure that will do," she said with a smile. She pulled the camp shirt on and buttoned it, then scooted over, knocking the daypack to the floor of the arroyo. "Have a seat for a minute, will you?"

He sat beside her and as she turned to look at him, and he noticed she was blushing as she bit her lower lip nervously.
"I only meant the front of my shoulders," she said nervously, "...it just kind of came out wrong."

"I knew that," Max lied...

"You aren't a very good liar, Max. I wanted you to know I really was gratefulful that you caught me back there...when I fell. I wasn't embarrassed about how you caught me....and I'm sorry if I embarrassed you with the kiss."

"I wasn't embarrassed.." Max protested.

"Well, that's good, because Max...well...you are important to me. Ever since we met you've been there for me...whenever I needed you. I wanted you to know I'd always be there for you too."

His eyes met hers, wishing so much that things had been diffferent....that he had been born a human being.
"You're very special to me too, Liz. You always have been. I'm more comfortable with you than I am with any other human being...and I know you are trying to make my life better. Thank you for that..."

She smiled back at him, and reached over to touch his cheek...to kiss him softly one more. "No, Max....thank YOU."

After the kiss, Liz felt her cheeks flush, and the fluttering seemed to almost make her dizzy. Quickly she turned away from Max, rolling up the camisole top and reaching to the fallen pack to put it away. That's when the snake struck.


The rattlesnake wasn't evil...it was only a rattlesnake. The only desire it had this morning in what little passed for a mind in a rattlesnake was to lay out in the sun and let it's recent meal digest. In particular, it had no malice toward Liz Parker. Had the snake not been asleep, it would have likely heard the two coming...or at least felt the vibration of their footsteps in the ground. But it WAS asleep, and the first warning the snake had of their presence was when Liz's pack fell to the floor of the arroyo, four feet from it. The rattlesnake's brain wasn't much, but it did recognize an inanimate object...the temperature of the pack was no different than the surroundings, and it had ceased to move before the snake was fully awake. Had it seen Max or Liz...outside of its strike range, it would have rattled a warning, attempting to keep them away, sice it's small niche in the rock left it no real opportunity to retreat. But it hadn't seen Max or Liz, so it had stayed silent, hoping it would be undetected. But when Liz reached to unzip the pack, she was suddenly revealed only three feet away...dangerously close...considering she was an animal well over ten times the weight of the snake. It lashed out instantly in a defensive bite, and had it not been so surprised, it might even have been a venomless bite, just in warning. But Liz was too close...too much of a threat...and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution had programmed it for all out defense if it was attacked at that range, and it's humble little brain was simply too stupid to realize that Liz wasn't attacking it.

Rattlesnakes are pit vipers, and its natural target was the warmest and closest part of the threat...in this case, Liz's neck, where if it hit the carotid arteries or jugular veins, it would kill her quickly.

[greywolf]

Nancy Parker had been closing the gap between her and the two children, but as she watched her daughter appear to decide to go topless in front of Max Evans, she staggered to a stop and pulled out the binoculars. Seeing the sports bra mollified her a little…but not much. She hadn’t actually had the conversation with Liz YET about a bra not being an outer garment…no matter what Madonna thought….but only because she hadn’t really thought such a conversation would be necessary. She obviously had been wrong. And as she watched her daughter hand the tube of sunscreen to the boy, she could only shake her head.

‘Well, that’s TWO things the counselor was wrong about…’

The counselor had been sent by a victims advocacy group after Liz’s short-lived abduction by the sex predator. Thankfully the bastard had not had time to sexually molest Liz …

‘because Max stopped him,’ the thought leaped in to her mind unbidden.

…but it was routine to send a counselor to the family of any child who had been abducted by anyone…especially by a sex predator…to help them deal with the stress and potential mental health consequences. The woman had counseled them about mainly two things…..

One was that Liz would likely get post traumatic stress disorder…terrible nightmares about her abduction…struggling in the grasp of her attacker. It hadn’t exactly happened like that. Liz HAD experienced terrible nightmares that awakened her as she relived the event, but it wasn’t about being helpless in the control of the predator…it was about the moment she’d been freed from him…when she’d seen Max take the man off the embankment,,,when she’d lain there not knowing if Max were alive or dead. They had in fact had to call the Evanses in the middle of the night twice to get Max on the phone to talk her down…to reassure her that he was alright, when she’d awakened with those nightmares, but once Liz had built new memories of her and Max playing together after her abduction, the nightmares had gradually faded.

The other thing the counselor had said was that Liz might well have difficulty allowing people to get close to her…especially as an adolescent, and particularly members of the opposite sex. It was obvious looking through the binoculars that the counselor had missed the call on that one as well….and Max wasn’t just spreading the sunscreen gingerly on her back, but apparently giving her a fairly vigorous massage as well, and was the girl freaking out as the counselor had suggested?

‘Hell, Liz is almost drooling…and does she have any idea of the VIEW Max is getting from where he’s standing?’

As Max’s hands came over the top of Liz’s shoulders and started down around her neck Nancy took a deep breath…letting it out when his ministrations stopped somewhat north of the pendant around her neck. She was pretty sure Max was looking, but at least he had the decency to not touch…at least for the minute.

Nancy relaxed a little as Liz put her camp shirt back on, and motioned for Max to sit next to her. They appeared to be talking with no touchy-feely stuff going on…at least for the moment.

Nancy gradually relaxed a little as they continued to talk…certainly nothing was going to happen immediately and once she got done talking with the two of them, there would be no real opportunities for anything to happen at anytime until they were off to college at least….and Nancy was already dreading telling somebody that…no, not the two kids, but Diane.

Nancy and Diane had become good friends and Diane gushed constantly about how good for Max having Liz for a friend was. Only last week she had been talking about the social improvement…Max now went out to recess and played dodgeball with Liz and the other kids for example….and Diane largely attributed Max’s improvement to Liz’s influence. Diane would understand no doubt, but even so she wouldn’t be particularly happy that Liz wouldn’t be there for Max anymore…but darn it, Liz was just a kid…it wasn’t her job to socialize Max.

Nancy looked again in the binoculars as she walked along and saw Liz kiss Max, and it took her aback somehow. It wasn’t a passionate kiss but it had an undemanding intimacy…like a quick goodbye kiss between a long married couple. Like love that knew it had nothing to prove….

It’s hard to walk looking through binoculars and she stumbled over the uneven ground, sending the field of vision of the binoculars about 4 feet north of her daughter. That’s when she saw the snake, coiling itself in alarm…

‘Omigawd…’

It was too far to shout…all she could do was watch as Liz bent forward to put the camisole top in her pack…watch the snake strike at her only child.

Max’s eyes widened as he sensed a life force in fear of its life next to Liz..and sensed it attacking. He didn’t worry about exposing himself…didn’t worry about sacred vows to Izzie, didn’t worry about anything…except Liz.

Time seemed to stand still for Nancy Parker. A rattlesnake strike is always completed in a half-second or less, but her agony seemed to last for minutes as she saw the snake lash at her daughter…and perhaps that’s why she really didn’t notice the unearthly speed of Max’s reaction time as his hand grabbed the snake a foot short of Liz and he pulled it over her head, tossing it back down the arroyo to the south...the way they had come.

Liz heard the movement more than felt it, and as she turned back toward Max, he was looking back the way they’d come.

“What’s going on?”

“Uh…nothing…just going to get a bottle of water out of my pack.”

Liz smiled gently. “I’ve got one…we can share.”

It was five minutes before Nancy’s body would stop shaking and she could think coherently. Once she could, there was more than a little remorse in her thoughts.

No, maybe it wasn’t Liz’s job to socialize Max…any more than it was Max’s job to keep Liz alive and unhurt. But somehow Max had decided it WAS his job to keep Liz alive, and Liz had decided it was HER job to help Max get over whatever trauma he had experienced before the Evanses had adopted him. And clearly the overwhelming benefit so far had been to Liz. Nancy knew she’d have to talk about what had happened with Diane, and both mothers would have to talk with their children…and especially she’d have to talk to Liz about appropriate conduct and attire for young ladies…but given what she’d seen, Max again saving Liz ….and not even telling her he did it….clearly Max wasn’t going to try to push Liz any farther than she was willing to go. The important thing would be to make sure that neither of the kids got into a situation where their hormones pushed them to go somewhere they really shouldn’t go. But that could likely be accomplished with a long heart-to-heart mother-child talk, rather than dogmatic restrictions.

It was another fifteen minutes before Nancy could cut the corner and catch the kids halfway back to the picnic area.

“Liz, ..Max..”

“Oh, hi Mom…”

“Uh…hello, Mrs. Parker.”

“You two probably should be getting back to the picnic…it’s almost lunch time.”

“We were already on our way there, Mom.”

“And afterwards…it might be nice if you’d stay around and play with the other kids…”

“We were already going to do that, Mom. We’re going to get up a game of dodgeball. Max is going to be on my side…for once. The other side doesn’t stand a chance.”

As she watched them go, Nancy knew she’d need to talk to Diane, but somehow this would all work out….she’d see to it that it did. The two kids were too good for each other to separate them.