The Outsider

"No, at least not at first," Max said.

"I can't even imagine what it must have been like for you," Liz said. "I have this huge extended family right here in town. I know everything about them-and they know everything about me. And it doesn't stop there. At bedtime my parents used to tell me stories about my ancestors."

Liz stared out at the lake. "You know, in Spanish there are way more verb forms you can use to talk about the past than the future. I guess that shows how important the past is to my family."

She turned to Max. "I wish I could give you some of my history. Then you wouldn't feel so lonely on this… world."

"It got easier when I started school," Max said. "Because I met Michael, and we both realized pretty quickly that we were… alike."

Liz's eyes widened. "Michael? He's a… one of… He's one, too?"

"You can say it. A-li-en," Max answered. "I don't think there's a politically correct term. We don't even know what planet we're from, so we don't know what to call ourselves. And yeah, Michael is one, too."

He frowned a little. He hadn't meant to tell her about Michael. But somehow it just came out. He couldn't seem to keep any secrets from Liz.

"Are there more of you? Is it like this whole underground community?" Liz asked.

Max scrubbed his face with his fingers. He knew it was normal for Liz to have a lot of questions, but he was starting to feel like some kind of freak. "Just the three of us. I think. We've never seen any indication that there are others.

"When we got older, we spent a lot of time talking, trying to remember everything we possibly could. We all had these memories of another place, a place like nothing we'd seen, even in books. I think they're shared memories that people on my planet are born with-you know, like humans have inborn instincts."

"I think I saw a few of them when you let me co

"Yeah, Michael and Isabel and I all have that memory, even though none of us has ever seen anything like those clouds."

Suddenly Max wondered what else Liz had seen during the co

He cleared his throat. "We did some research and discovered where Michael had been found. Then we got a map and drew a circle that encompassed that spot and the place where our parents found Isabel and me. We started making searches of the area-first on our bikes and later in my Jeep. And we finally stumbled on the cave. Our cave. When we saw the incubation pods, we pretty much realized the truth about ourselves. By then we'd all heard the story of the Roswell Incident-so we knew that the silvery material of our pods matched the description of some of the material of the debris found at the crash site."

"Do you know how the pods got to the cave?" Liz asked.

"We talked about that. We think one of our parents must have managed to hide the pods before they died."

Max knew the aliens in the ship must have been badly injured from the crash. But someone had climbed out of the wreckage and done whatever it had taken to save Max, Isabel, and Michael. Whoever it was must have loved us, Max thought. He felt his throat tighten up.

"Valenti got the facts pretty much right. He said he thought an alien child had survived the crash," Liz said. "I don't know how he knew that."

Max felt stricken. Maybe the alien who moved them had tried to go back to the ship, tried to save the others. And maybe Valenti's organization had found that alien, captured it, tortured it, gotten information from it.

My parent, Max thought. Maybe Valenti's people hurt one of my parents.

"We've got to come up with a plan," Liz was saying. "Valenti's not going to give up. He's going to track you down, no matter how long it takes."

"You've already done enough," Max told her. "You kept our secret. Now you have to walk away. I don't want to put you in any more danger."

"Look at me," Liz said fiercely. Her hand touched his arm, and he could feel its warmth and smoothness. She was so beautiful, Max thought with a pang. "I am not going to just walk away. You saved my life, and I'm never going to forget that."

Relief flooded Max. He wanted Liz out of danger. He wanted her safe. But he also wanted her to help him, to understand him… to be with him. And she would. She wasn't going to just disappear.

"Then I guess we better go tell Isabel and Michael what you found out," Max said.

"And Maria," Liz told him. "She knows, too. We're all in this together."

And that means we're all in danger, he thought.

"I feel like I've been in a tornado," Max said as they pulled into the school parking lot. He exchanged a shy, tentative smile with Liz. Everything was still the same, but everything was different.

"I thought exactly the same thing when Valenti dropped me off after our little visit to the morgue," Liz answered.

That happened to her a lot with Maria-they were always finishing each others sentences and making the same associations and co

"Are you ready to go in?" Max asked.

Liz stared at Max's eyes, his face. How come she had never noticed how handsome he was?

"Let's wait until the bell rings, then we can blend better. We don't need to get busted for cutting class on top of everything else."

"Liz Ortecho, outlaw," Max teased. But he didn't look at her, and his voice sounded flat and lifeless. He picked up the empty cracker wrapper and smoothed it out. He folded it in half, then in half again, and kept folding until it was a tiny square.

The stuff about Valenti is all starting to sink in, Liz thought as she watched him. She wished she could come up with something to say that would make him feel better. But she knew there wasn't anything, so she just sat with him, hoping that at least helped a little.

Maybe I should hold his hand or something, Liz thought. She stared at his hand on the seat. The hand that had touched her wound, that had healed her. Could she help him feel better by holding his hand?

"Did you have a nice talk with my dad?" a loud voice called, jerking her out of her thoughts.

Liz looked toward the voice and saw Kyle Valenti heading for Max's Jeep.

The bell rang, the shrill sound blasting through the school doors. "Let's get out of here. I don't want to deal with Kyle right now," Liz said, keeping her voice low.

"Should I get rid of him?" Max asked.

"No, let's just go." They climbed out of the Jeep and started across the parking lot. Liz walked fast, but not too fast. If Kyle thought she was scared, it would only encourage him.

She heard Kyle's boot heels thumping against the asphalt as he followed them. "Interesting," he called in a snide voice. "You get pulled out of school for questioning, and then you and Max Evans take off together. This is very interesting. I bet my dad would think so, too."

Kyle's right, Liz thought. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out Liz might try to warn the alien she was protecting. And if Valenti heard about her cutting school with Max, he would at the very least be curious about Max-who he was, why Liz would run to him after the trip to the morgue.

Liz turned to face Kyle. Max moved in protectively, standing close beside her-and that gave her an idea.

"Why? Is your father some kind of pervert or something?" she asked Kyle. "Does he like to hear all the details of who is making out with who?" Liz slid her arm around Max's waist. She could feel the tension in his body, every muscle tight.