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Part Three: Once Again Into the Breach
I’d always thought of Max as a friend.
No, I guess I’d always thought of him as ‘Isabel’s brother’, because although we’d grown up together, we never hung out, just the two of us. It was always Me and Maria and Alex, and Max and Michael and Isabel. Or sometimes, it was Me and Maria and Isabel, and Max and Michael and Alex. Occasionally Tess Harding would join us and Kyle would hang out with the guys, but the only time I really spent with Max was when the six – or eight – of us went out as a group, and we were paired off because we were the odd ones out.
I never really wanted to get closer, although I did think of him sometimes. How could I not? He was quiet and mysterious and good-looking, and he was always conveniently single when I was looking for an escort somewhere. Even then, when I was so used to odd patterns in my life that I accepted them as almost normal, I think I knew there was something different about him.
But he never told me what, and I never asked.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if I just didn’t want to keep even one of my illusions intact. See, the Max I knew stood slightly apart from the crowd, like me, and I think I treasured that feeling of safety and comfort I always felt when I was with him.
Well, until what happened next.
You know … the end.
He gave up trying to talk to me after a minute or so.
I couldn’t help it; I was tired from two late nights in a row and feeling pretty damn sorry for myself. I’d been living an emotional roller coaster for some time and the fatigue I felt went far beyond the physical.
I didn’t even know I was crying until he handed me a paper napkin from an empty take-out bag. I guess I looked confused because he held it up to my face and sure enough, when he pulled it away, it was damp.
Something about the look on his face made it impossible for me to lie to him right then, so I didn’t say anything. I just lost myself in his eyes and felt my eyes leak hot tears.
Without a word he parked the car and gently started dabbing at my cheeks, and the gentler he was, the more I cried. Finally he just unbuckled his seatbelt and my seatbelt and pulled me over onto his lap.
I’d never realized how strong Max Evans was. He was one of those quiet types who didn’t show off, and as far as I knew he never participated in any extracurricular athletics. But he lifted me effortlessly and just held me to him, like a child. And like a child, I cried into his shoulder for a long, long time.
I don’t know when or how it happened, but at some point the way he held me felt more than comforting, it felt ... I don’t know, energizing. Electric. I lifted my head from his damp shoulder to ask – something – and before I could say a word I found myself lost again in the deepest, warmest pools of amber that ever existed.
I had time for one hitching breath and then his lips crashed down on mine and we kissed and it was ... amazing. Mind-blowing. Practically orgasmic, even, and I know he felt the same way because there was an undeniable twitching in his lap underneath me.
The kiss deepened and I realized that none of the boys I’d dated, not even Kyle, had affected me like this. Only Max.
It felt natural when his hand found my breast, like it belonged there, like they fit together, a perfect match. My body began responding in all sorts of interesting ways to his, my nipples hardening, my chest pushing into him, a strange warmth uncoiling in my belly. My arms went around his neck almost of their own volition and I found myself rocking against him as we kissed, trying to soothe the ache between my legs the same way his touch soothed the ache in my heart.
And then there was something even better – stars, I think they were, lights flashing bright against my eyes, my closed eyes, lights that made me ache for home, somehow –
Then he pulled back. “Liz?”
Like a bomb, that one breathless word shattered the fantasy. I looked at him in horror.
“I think I should take you home,” he said, softly, averting his eyes.
I scooted back to the passenger seat to huddle as far away from him as possible in my humiliation.
“Liz, I – Liz?”
I refused to look away from the window.
“Please don’t shut me out.”
That almost made me laugh. Me, shutting people out? I was the one in the dark here, right? They were the ones with all the secrets. And, I reminded myself bitterly, Max was one of Them.
I didn’t look at him or answer. After a minute he started the ignition and drove me the rest of the way home.
That night was a shock to my system. Not because it was so horrible to find myself in Max’s arms, wanting more than a friend should, but because it wasn’t.
It really wasn’t.
Was life here so bad, I asked myself? Max did seem genuinely interested in me; would a life spent with him, with my friends and family, be such a terrible prospect? In the aftermath of that incredible kiss I had to admit to myself that he’d done some serious damage to my resolve.
Hell, I thought, maybe if I apologized, he’d shrug off what happened and ask me out for a real date, and we could do it again and again ...
The next morning found me still pondering this latest development but also hungry, so I headed down to the CrashDown for breakfast. I just happened to get a seat next to a boisterous group of kids all wearing NMSU sweatshirts, and I had to grin because it sounded like they were just stopping in Roswell to indulge the more touristy impulses of some out-of-state friends. Whatever they were doing, they were obviously having a blast.
“Thought you’d never get up,” my dad teased as he slid into the booth across from me. “What can I get you?”
“I can get it –”
He shook his head, but he was smiling. “You’re off the clock, honey. Enjoy it.”
I nodded. “Pancakes would be great, thanks.”
“I’ll get you a big stack, and maybe some eggs and fruit,” he decided. “You look hungry.” With that he walked purposely into the kitchen to expedite the order. Hey, there were some perks to being the boss’s daughter.
I felt hungry, actually, although I wasn’t so sure it was for food. I found myself listening in to the conversations around me, especially that of the students, who looked so excited about whatever was next on their itinerary.
Wait.
I knew that itinerary.
I felt the blood drain from my face as it all came together. They were students in the program I’d been accepted to. The one I had to turn down.
It was like being shot in the gut. It hurt, and I had trouble catching my breath.
I listened to them talk about orientation and what they expected of the classes, and only a twinge of pain alerted me to the half-circles in my palms where my nails had dug in. I didn’t pull them out. The pain was the only thing keeping me focused.
Helplessly I looked down, then up, and then a whole lot of things happened at once.
First, Dad put down a plate of blueberry pancakes – my favorite – in front of me, but there was a whooshing noise going on between my ears so I didn’t know if he said anything while he did.
When he left, Max Evans sat down across from me and I know he tried to say something but I shushed him and he just sat there, silently watching me fall apart.
It didn’t take long. My life was flashing before my eyes ... and not just the parts that had already happened.
I’ll wake up every morning and come to the diner where I’ll spend my day serving greasy food. After closing, I’ll be tired but I’ll make the effort to be with someone my parents approve of, someone like Max. Maybe Max himself. And I’ll never leave because it’ll be my life and I’ll have responsibilities that supersede my dreams and the closest I’ll ever come to a laboratory or anywhere in the galaxy other than Roswell is the Observatory just outside town.
Some day, I might even forget that I even wanted anything else.
“Liz?”
Suddenly the world suddenly caught up to me.
It was Max’s voice that did it, of course. My eyes snapped up to meet his and I could tell he was worried about me. I could see why; my reflection in the napkin dispenser was pale and sweaty and dazed-looking. I hadn’t touched my pancakes, which were now cold and spongy-looking.
Somehow I pushed myself up and out of the booth and staggered to the back room, ignoring my dad’s worried questions and wondering only slightly why a word from Max kept him from following me. I know this because I heard only one set of footsteps on the stairs behind me and they weren’t my dad’s.
Max said something but I missed it because I was making a beeline for my bedroom, and through it, my bathroom. I barely made it to the toilet before I started heaving.
I didn’t have much in me, but I lost what there was. And then I was dry-heaving hard enough that I saw stars (but not the nice kind) and felt cold then hot then cold then hot again and I ached all over. Soon there was nothing more and I sank gratefully to the floor, welcoming the feel of cold tile against my feverish cheek and obscurely glad I’d cleaned it only the day before.
Basically, I just felt numb for a while.
So when a strong hand pulled me up off the floor and cradled me against a strong and now-familiar chest, I didn’t respond or acknowledge the gesture in any way. I couldn’t. If I started crying I might never stop, and the very thought of it kept my eyes dry and my skin clammy and my limbs limp as my worn-out body was placed on my bed.
But my mind ... my mind was working. Hard.
It was time to make a choice. For real, and no more being weak and pathetic about it. I could see then that I’d been too easily cowed, to quickly deterred from my plans, and if I wanted to make my dreams a reality I had to bite the bullet and just do it already.
Damn the consequences.
I couldn’t describe what happened at that moment of epiphany with any certainty, but I remember three things.
One, that at some point someone was trying to talk to me but it seemed oddly disjointed, even disconnected, like an echo I was hearing in my head rather than a voice next to me.
Two, that the comforting presence in my bedroom really was Max Evans, albeit a side of him I’d never known. This one spoke in calm, commanding tones and made part of me itch to sit up and salute or something. And then what he was saying registered, and the chill in my body deepened.
“What do you mean, you can’t get in, Isabel? Are you saying she’s definitely conscious?”
Isabel? Isabel wasn’t there. I was sure of it. Oh, he was talking to her by cell phone. But as soon as it occurred to me, a sneaky little voice inside suggested that the strange echo in my head had in fact sounded a great deal like Isabel.
Max was saying something else.
“ – I don’t need excuses. I need answers. I want to know what happened and how to fix it ... hold on. Have someone review the diner security tapes. See if anything happened before I got there.”
Scarily, it was only minutes later that he got his answer. Part of me listened while another part continued to weigh options and consider situational variables.
“Students? You mean, tourists? ... What? On their shirts? From ... Oh, shit.”
He sighed and something in me ached to crawl out of bed and comfort him – but it wasn’t the part of me in control of my body, and the urge subsided.
“I can’t lose her,” he said finally. Forbiddingly. “I won’t.”
Lose who? Lose me? What?
His phone snapped shut and I felt a familiar, almost electric tingling sensation that meant he was looking at me. I even knew the look, intent and solemn. He was always good at that one.
“Liz, please wake up. Talk to me. We’ll work this out.”
And as he said it, the part of my mind that was racing just zinged to a stop. I didn’t know how or why I came to the conclusion I did, because I’d been paying more attention to the sound of his voice than the way my mind was working, but I never doubted it for a moment. Call it intuition, call it deduction, whatever it was, I knew what I had to do.
So the third thing that happened was perhaps the most significant confrontation of my entire life.
“Liz?”
I spoke, finally. “Max.”
His hand came into view then, pushing a stray wisp of hair out of my face. “Where’d you go, Liz? You scared me,” he tried to joke, but I didn’t laugh.
“I never really left, Max,” I told him, and in a burst of strength I somehow pushed myself up and off my bed to totter over to my closet. My duffle and my backpack were right inside and still packed, just how I left them. “Not yet, anyway. Can you give me a ride?”
Something flickered over his face then, so fast I almost missed it.
“Where?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “It’s okay.” I meant it, too. This was my journey, and if he could help me, great; if not, I wouldn’t hold it against him. “I can walk. I don’t want to make you do anything that – that makes you feel uncomfortable.”
I’d regained full control of my limbs by then, and I was crawling out my window even before I finished speaking. He followed, but he didn’t try to stop me as I climbed down and started the familiar path to the bus station.
No more than five minutes had passed when his car pulled up alongside me.
“Liz, wait.”
I paused, and waited.
“Where are you going?”
“To start? The bus station. Beyond that? I’m not entirely sure.”
His car jerked forward, and I knew that his control had slipped for a moment. “Why?”
“I’m leaving Roswell.”
“No.”
“No?” I wasn’t yelling, but it sounded like I was.
“No.”
I took a deep breath.
“Max,” I tried, “I can’t stay here anymore. I have to go. So either give me a lift or get out of my way.”
“I won’t let you go.”
I looked at him then, really looked at him, and that’s when another piece of the puzzle fell into place. In a dizzying bolt of understanding, I realized that this whole thing was as much about him as it was about me. How could I not have seen this before? I didn’t know how or why, but it felt true, and I believed it.
I did want to know how and why, though. “It’s not your decision,” I said, trying to draw him out, make him say it. To make someone admit something to me while I still had the chance.
“Yes it is!” he half-shouted, and I looked around, embarrassed, until I noticed how alone we were. Odd for that time of day, but the streets around us were completely deserted. It was kind of creepy, but I had more important things to worry about.
Like how to say what I needed to tell him. Although if there was one thing I’d learned about living within a conspiracy, it was how to talk around it. “Say that’s true,” I temporized, “why would you force me to stay?”
“I love you.”
I couldn’t deny the thrill that ran through me when I heard his simple, heartfelt declaration, and I longed to say it back to him. And the truth was, a part of me did – or more accurately, could – love Max Evans very easily.
“How?”
He wasn’t expecting that. “What do you mean?”
“How can you love me? You barely know me.”
“I know you,” he said with certainty.
I accepted that. It even made a certain amount of sense. He was in on the conspiracy, after all. “Say that’s true too,” I continued meaningfully, “the fact remains that I don’t know you.”
“You could,” he countered.
“I could, but I don’t, do I?” All my suspicions were confirmed when he conceded the point.
“So stay. Get to know me. We’d be happy together, I know it.”
Ah. And therein lay the clincher.
“Max,” I told him, as gently as I could, “I could never love my captor.”
Far away, the sound of a dog barking echoed in the empty streets.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, face ashen.
“It wouldn’t be love. It’d be something twisted. A dependency, maybe. We’d both resent it after a while, and then we’d resent each other. And I don’t want that, do you?”
It was so quiet, his ragged breaths sounded unnaturally harsh, almost abrasive. “Liz –”
“It’d kill me, Max. I mean, I wouldn’t kill myself or anything like that,” I said quickly, before he could accuse me of being melodramatic, “and maybe you’re right, maybe I would be happy. But it wouldn’t be me, not really. I’d just – I’d fade away. Whatever makes me me would just disappear.”
“I won’t lose you.” His tone was a promise but also a command, and that’s when I knew what I had to say, what he had to hear.
The world seemed to hold its breath as I smiled sadly down at him.
“You never had me.”
It took a moment for my words to sink in, but when they did, their effect was immediate.
I’d spoken gently but his head snapped back as if I’d slapped him. In a way, I guess I had.
“So go. No one’s stopping you.”
And with that, he drove off with a squeal of tires and a wake of dust.
No one did, either.
The end doesn’t always happen in a blaze of sound and flashes of light. Sometimes it’s quiet. Understated, even. Not a bang, not a whimper, just … change. Transition. The end of one plane of existence and the beginning of another.
The walk to the bus station was eerily quiet. I didn’t see a single Roswell resident, although I felt the weight of a thousand eyes on me.
Even the bus station was quiet. People went about their business all around me but everyone seemed extraordinarily subdued. Few people would look me in the face, although no one challenged me or ignored me when I requested a service.
By contrast, Albuquerque was a solid mass of sound.
And for the first time in my life, I felt anonymous, tiny, and alone. I was terrified.
I was free.
The End.
(Want to see behind the conspiracy? Continue to find out one possibility.)
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