The Salvation

Obediently Liz stepped up next to the girl in white. The girl handed her a fish and told her to walk out onto the end of the diving board. Liz stared up at the high dive in question. "The dolphin isn't going to be able to jump that high, is it?" she asked. The steps leading up to the board went up for what seemed like five stories.

"It's a very special dolphin," the girl answered. "It's not from around here." And suddenly, without climbing the steps, Liz was on the diving board. She carefully made her way out to the end and held the fish over the water, using just her thumb and forefinger.

She peered down at the turquoise pool below. "There's no way any dolphin can make it all the way up here," she muttered.

Almost as the words left her mouth, a dolphin nearly as blue as the water, an amazing, light, bright blue, flew straight up into the air as if powered by power. Liz stretched out her hand, and the dolphin's muzzle pressed against it.

At the touch of its warm skin, Liz's bones felt like they had turned to liquid. It was Max. She knew it. The dolphin was Max.

Before she could speak, the dolphin was hurling back toward the pool. "Jump again!" she shouted down. "Jump-"

The next word got jammed in her throat. There was something else in the pool now. Something much bigger than the dolphin. Black and white. A whale. A killer whale.

"Get it out of there," she screamed, sca

"Max!" Liz screamed.

She bolted straight up in bed, slick with sweat. "It was him," she whispered, shoving her hair off her forehead. "He came into my dream."

Was the whale some piece of the consciousness that had entered her dream, too, trying to keep Max from communicating with her?

Liz lay back down and closed her eyes tightly. "Try again, Max," she said. "I'll try, too."

Michael's awareness of the room around him sharpened. He felt one of the flattened beanbags on the living-room floor under his feet, and he heard the clock in the kitchen mooing out the time. And he was back. All the molecules in his body re-formed.

"My heart still hammers like crazy every time I teleport in this body," Trevor complained.

"It's called fear. You have to accept the fact that you're a wuss," Michael joked. "I have a human body, too, and my heart rate is totally normal."

"Well, aren't you special?" Trevor shot back.

"I am," Michael bragged. He looked his brother in the eye and gri

"You're coming back with me?" Trevor exclaimed.

"If we shatter the consciousness, yeah," Michael answered. He'd been thinking about it nonstop ever since Trevor had asked him, and he kept coming to one conclusion. How could he not? His brother had asked for his help. And he couldn't go his entire life without ever seeing the place he came from.

Trevor actually jumped in excitement and slapped Michael on the back. "It's going to be so great. There's so much I want to show you, all these people I want you to meet, and-" He snapped his mouth shut and looked at the floor. "I'm gushing now."

"Like I said, you're a wuss," Michael answered, but a gigantic goofy grin was spreading across his face. His big brother was all excited about taking Michael places. Another cool moment. "Uh, I've got to go pick up the car. I'll be back in a while," he said, needing to get his goofy face somewhere else until it returned to normal again.

"Bring back some of those green alien-head sugar cookies from the grocery store, okay? And some pesto," Trevor said.

"Yes, dear," Michael answered. "But when we're in public, and people know that we're brothers, I'd rather you keep your pesto-eating habits to yourself. Pesto is for, well, wusses."

Trevor rolled his eyes, and Michael trotted down the circular staircase, dodging one of Trevor's shoes as he went, then hurried out of the museum. He checked his watch as he started down Main Street. After midnight. Good. Maria would probably be asleep.

He decided to walk over to her place instead of taking the bus. That way there'd be an even better chance she'd be making z's when he got there.

Not that he couldn't wake her up. He'd woken her up lots of times, crawling through her window in the early morning. But he had to break that little habit cold turkey. If he was going back to the home planet-no, make that when he went back to the home planet-he didn't want Maria to have to go through some kind of Michael withdrawal. He'd use the time until they shattered the consciousness to sort of break her of her Michael habit-wean her off him. And he was going to start by not hanging out in her bedroom late at night.

Michael turned onto Maria's street. He kept his eyes on the Caddy in the driveway, not letting himself check to see if the light in her window was on because on or off, he wasn't going in.

He took the car keys out of his pocket as he cut across the lawn and circled over to the driver's-side door. He pulled it open-and his breath left his lungs with a whoosh.

Maria was curled up on the front seat. Her raspberry-colored lips were partially open, and her sweater had slipped off one shoulder, revealing a stretch of creamy skin and a bright orange bra strap.

His fingers itched with the desire to run across that skin. His mouth tingled with the longing to kiss those lips until Maria woke up and wrapped her arms around him. Because that's what she would do. It had been a long time since Michael had kissed Maria, but he remembered exactly how it would feel, her tongue brushing against his, her hands pulling him even closer.

Do the words wean her off mean anything to you? Michael asked himself. How about cold turkey?

He closed the door as quietly as he could, then turned and ran back down the street.

SIX

Alex leaned against the locker next to Michael's, going for a casual, just-hanging-out-with-my-bud kind of feel. "I think my next list for the web site is going to be the top ten things a guy looks for in a girl. So, uh, what do you look for?"

He felt like a total dweeb, but Michael didn't seem to notice anything unusual. Which wasn't exactly a comforting thought.

You're doing this for Maria, Alex reminded himself. A little reco

"Skin," Michael answered.

"Skin?" Alex repeated. "Like showing a lot of skin?"

Michael pulled a bag of Hog Phasers, Roswell's answer to spicy pork rinds, out of his locker and held it out to Alex. Alex checked to make sure Michael hadn't added chocolate sauce or anything yet, then took a handful.

"Showing a lot would be okay, but what I really mean is, I like soft, smooth skin, you know?" Michael pulled out a can of whipped cream and sprayed some into the bag.

"I'm a butt man myself," Doug Highsinger offered from the end of the row of lockers. He grabbed a stack of books and slammed his locker closed.

"You certainly are," Alex joked. "I already did the top ten favorite body parts list. I'm looking for other… qualities, I guess you'd call them."

"Oh. Well, then, I have nothing more to add." Doug wandered off with a half salute.

"So you're looking for stuff like a good sense of humor." Michael crammed three of the Hog Phasers into his mouth and chewed loudly.