by Melinda Metz
“What’s wrong?” she asked in a low, urgent tone.
Max snorted. “What’s wrong?” he repeated, mocking her. “You know exactly what’s wrong.”
He didn’t sound scared or worried. So there wasn’t any big emergency. He was just pissed off. At her. What was his problem? She hadn’t done anything. Well, okay, she stuck him with doing the dishes last night. Big whoop.
“Not a very bright move, Iz,” Michael said.
He sounded as disapproving as Max. What was going on? Had everyone just forgotten to tell her it was National Anti-Isabel Day?
“You know Valenti is still looking for aliens in Roswell,” Liz added. “You know how dangerous he is.”
“We barely got rid of him the last time,” Maria chimed in.
Valenti. Wait. Did this have something to do with the sheriff?
“Okay, somebody better start explaining right now,” Isabel declared. “You can’t just toss out the name Valenti and not—”
“Oh, come on,” Michael interrupted. “Don’t try to act all innocent. You used your powers to flip the Guffman mascot into the trash. Did you think we wouldn’t notice?”
Isabel felt her stomach tighten. Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt, guys, she thought. Thanks for having a little faith in me.
“Well, I guess I should tell you now that I also used my powers to put invisible shields over all the toilet seats, and I made Mr. Tollifson’s boxers turn into silk panties,” Isabel shot back. “What am I, like, nine years old?”
Max gave her his don’t-try-to-get-anything-by-big-brother look. “Look, Iz, I felt power being used—I felt the drain on my energy, and so did Michael. And I know neither of us flipped the stupid mascot.”
“Well, I didn’t feel anything. You’re getting all flipped out over nothing.” She gave a tight little smile. “Flipped out. Get it?” She started to push her way between Maria and Michael. She wasn’t going to stand here and let them all yell at her for no reason.
Michael grabbed her by the elbow. “You can’t just ignore this.”
Isabel jerked her arm away. She shot a glance over at Alex. He still hadn’t opened his mouth to defend her. If you couldn’t count on a guy who was all gooey over you to back you up … She glared at him.
“Don’t you have something to say?” she challenged.
“I can hardly talk. I’m still traumatized by the image of Mr. Tollifson in silk panties,” Alex said. “But if you say you didn’t do it, that’s good enough for me.”
“Me too,” Maria added quickly.
“You guys don’t know the stuff she’s pulled,” Max said. “Remember last year when Ms. Shaffer’s car ended up on the roof of the gym?”
“Yeah!” Alex cried. “That was great!”
“That was Isabel,” Max said, frowning. “Flipping the mascot is exactly her style.”
Max remembered every stupid thing Isabel had done in her whole life. Sometimes she thought he had a computer file on her or something. In another second he was going to be bringing up the time she bit Laura Burns in the fourth grade.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” she yelled. “Do you think I don’t remember how close Valenti got to finding us? Do you think I’d risk everything to … to … Do you think I want Valenti …” Isabel pulled in a long, shaky breath. She felt tears sting her eyes, and she blinked them away. She wasn’t going to do this. She wasn’t. She wasn’t going to let just the thought of Valenti turn her into a pathetic, quivering mess.
“Hey, Iz …” Michael reached for her hand and gently stroked it. “I thought I felt power being used, but maybe my foot fell asleep or something. That could have been the prickly feeling I felt. I shouldn’t have just assumed it was you.”
Isabel gave a tiny nod. For Michael that was a pretty big apology.
“It’s okay, Isabel,” Liz put in. “We didn’t mean to get you all upset. We shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. Right, Max?”
Everybody looked at Max.
“Right, Max?” Liz repeated.
Max sighed. “I’m sorry, Izzy. I know I felt power. But it was wrong to jump all over you without even asking you what happened.”
One thing Isabel had to say for Max—when he was wrong, he admitted he was wrong. “Okay, I feel the need for a group hug,” Michael announced.
Alex pretended to wipe his eyes. “I love you guys.”
“I would love you all a lot more if you would stop assuming I’m always going to be the one doing something stupid,” Isabel muttered. They were supposed to be her best friends, and this is the kind of trust she got?
Didn’t they have a clue how careful she had been lately? Careful could be her middle name. Careful could be her favorite perfume. Careful could be the name of her favorite song. How come they didn’t know that?
Sure, she used to be pretty out of control. She used to use her power whenever she felt like it. Just because it was fun. But that was before they found out about Project Clean Slate, before they knew Valenti was an alien hunter.
She would have to be crazy to use her power now. It would be like sending Valenti an invitation to come and get her. Isabel suddenly wished she had worn her heavier coat. Thinking about Valenti always made her feel cold all over.
“Max, can you think of any explanation for what you felt?” Liz asked. “Some kind of electrical current or, I don’t know, some change in the weather?”
It would have been nice if Liz had asked those questions before everyone started accusing me, Isabel thought.
Max shook his head. “Power has a really distinct feeling. It’s not something I could confuse with anything else.”
“Could there be another alien in Roswell?” Maria asked.
Isabel choked back a hysterical burst of laughter. “I wish,” she muttered. When she was a kid, she used to hope there were other aliens. Maybe a girl who would be her best friend. But she had never gotten even the tiniest hint that there was anyone else like herself.
And when they realized how they’d gotten here, when they realized that their parents’ ship had crashed, they’d known the truth. She and Max and Michael were alone. They were totally on their own.
At least until Alex, Liz, and Maria found out the truth about them.
“If there were others on Earth, they would have felt our power. They would have contacted us,” Max explained.
“It’s not something you can keep a secret from another alien,” Michael agreed. “We feel each other’s emotions. It just happens. It’s not something we can control.”
“And we’ve never felt anyone but the three of us,” Isabel murmured.
“I only felt the sensation of power use for a second. I must have been wrong. I must have felt something else,” Max said.
But Isabel noticed that the little wrinkle had appeared between his eyebrows, the way it always did when he was worried.
UFO H2O. Translation: bottled water with an alien on the label. Man, tourists will buy anything, Michael thought. He used the label gun to stick prices on all the bottles. He had to hand it to his boss, Kristen Pettit. Kristen said the alienophiles would pay $6.99 for water, and she was right.
Space Supplies really raked in the bucks. At the back it was just a regular convenience store where the locals could buy milk and soda and stuff. But the front of the store was crammed with overpriced junk the touristas couldn’t seem to resist—stuff like alien-head toothbrushes, glow-in-the-dark alien jewelry, boxing alien puppets, and coffee mugs that said things like, Six Ways to Tell If Your Coworker Is an Alien.
Michael figured he could be a millionaire in about a week if he told everyone the truth about himself. He could probably sell a single hair from his head for a thousand bucks. And nose hair; forget about it. He could probably even sell the lint from his belly button.
Of course there was a little problem with this getrich-instaneously scheme. If he told anyone that he was an alien, he’d probably end up dead. Or in a cage somewhere being studied by a team of scientis
ts. Come see the world’s biggest millionaire alien lab rat. Yeah, right.
The little alien-face wind chime on the front door jangled. Michael didn’t bother turning around. He knew the customer would find him soon enough. Michael geared up to answer the four billion questions about the Roswell Incident every tourist seemed to have.
He should just record a little speech: “Welcome to Space Supplies. Let me give you a short history of the Roswell Incident. We’re all right proud of it around here. See, back in the forties a spaceship crashed right outside town. Well, actually more like seventy-five miles out of town, but we don’t like to tell folks that because it might limit the amount of money we could suck out of tourists’ pockets. Anyhoo, there are citizens, a few still hying in town today, who claim to have seen the ship and the bodies of several alien beings. Why aren’t the ship and those little alien bodies in our own UFO museum? Well, I’ll tell you. The government covered the whole thing up. They told everyone all they had seen was a weather balloon. And—”
“I have a question for you,” a voice said from behind Michael.
Yeah, big surprise, Michael thought. He turned around to find Mr. Cuddihy standing behind him. Michael suppressed a groan. Why couldn’t he have one of those apathetic social workers? The kind that wouldn’t even notice if you missed an appointment?
“You want to know if I think that alien autopsy tape is a phony?” Michael asked.
Mr. Cuddihy shook his head. “At our appointment—you know, the one you blew off—I wanted to ask you how things were going with the Hughes family”
Michael shrugged. “Okay, I guess.” His foster father was a jerk, always playing little power games, but Michael could handle it. None of the foster parents he’d had over the years had been perfect.
“Mr. Hughes mentioned something about a truck the last time we spoke,” Mr. Cuddihy commented.
Michael didn’t answer. What was he supposed to say? He knew exactly what truck Mr. Cuddihy was talking about. The old hunk of junk Mr. Hughes kept up on blocks in the backyard. At least he used to—until Michael decided to liberate it.
Michael and Max had sent the truck to the bottom of Lake Lee. Sheriff Valenti had gotten way too close to figuring out Max was an alien. So Michael had come up with a plan to make Valenti think the alien he was looking for was dead—drowned in the bottom of the lake. Unfortunately for Mr. Hughes, the plan involved his truck.
“Mr. Hughes said this truck mysteriously disappeared a few weeks ago,” Mr. Cuddihy continued.
“He should talk to Mrs. Hughes,” Michael answered. “She hates the thing. She calls it the world’s ugliest lawn ornament. She keeps threatening to glue little plaster elves and stuff to it to pretty it up or something.”
It was true. Taking the truck was like doing a favor for Mrs. Hughes. And she was much cooler than her husband.
Mr. Cuddihy laughed. “So you don’t know anything about the truck?”
Michael shrugged again. “I don’t know how anyone managed to get the thing out of the yard. The engine won’t even turn over.” Of course, if you happened to have powers like he and Max, you could easily shove the truck through space just by concentrating. But he didn’t share that fact with the social worker.
“Okay, I told Mr. Hughes I’d mention it, and I did,” Mr. Cuddihy said. “But I really came by to see how things were going for you at home. I’m not sure that the Hugheses are a great match for you. I was thinking maybe I’d move you to a new spot.”
Translation: The Hughes family didn’t want Michael living with them anymore.
Michael felt himself stiffen, all his muscles tightening up. What do you care? he thought. It was just a place to crash.
“So when should I be packed?” he asked.
“Hey, you’re getting ahead of me,” Mr. Cuddihy protested. “If you think things are working out with the Hugheses, maybe I could set up a few group counseling sessions, and—”
“No, you’re right. We aren’t the best matchup or whatever.” Michael raked his black hair out of his eyes. “Is that all? Because my boss has a ton of stuff for me to do.”
“That’s all,” Mr. Cuddihy answered. “I’ll get back to you with details in a couple of days. We can set up another appointment then—and I expect you to show up.”
“Yeah, I will. Definitely.” Just get out of here already, Michael thought. Mr. Cuddihy was decent enough, but Michael would be very glad when he never had to see the guy again. As soon as he hit his eighteenth birthday it would be good-bye, Mr. Cuddihy And good-bye, foster families.
Not that he knew exactly when his eighteenth birthday really was. He’d broken out of his incubation pod sometime in the winter. He knew that. But he’d already looked like a human who was around seven years old. So did that mean he broke out of the pod on his seventh birthday, or on his first birthday, or what?
There was no use thinking about it, really. All he cared about was the date social services had assigned him for his birthday. Less than six months away That’s the day he would finally get his freedom.
“I’ll call you soon.” Mr. Cuddihy headed out the door.
Yeah, he’d call, and the whole foster family garbage would start again. All the little getting-to-know-you talks. All the rules-of-this-house crap. Michael sighed and started stickering the water bottles again. At least he wouldn’t have to see Mr. Hughes’s superior little smirk anymore. And he was finally getting near the end of the whole fake family thing. That’s what he hated the most. If foster families were just like motels or something, it would be okay. But there was always this idea that you were supposed to care about them. And that they were supposed to care about you. As if that ever really happened.
Well, maybe it did happen sometimes. He’d seen a few kids down at social services who seemed close with their foster families. But they were mostly little kids. Cute little kids.
When Michael was a little kid, he wasn’t cute. He was weird. He was “seven years old,” but he didn’t know how to talk or use a fork or use a toilet or anything. He learned fast, but he still wasn’t exactly the kind of kid that adults looked at and went “awww” over.
The alien wind chime jangled again, and Max walked in. Michael checked his watch. Quitting time.
“I’m out of here, okay?” he called.
“See you tomorrow,” Kristen called back from her office.
Michael grabbed his jacket. “Let’s go.”
“Hey, I wanted to do a little shopping first,” Max protested. “Do you have any of those maps of where the aliens live?”
Michael snorted. “A lady actually asked me that once,” he said as they headed outside and over to Max’ss Jeep.
Max swung himself into the driver’s seat. “Okay, where to tonight?” He pulled out of the parking lot and headed out of town.
Michael took his map out of his pocket. He studied all the little shaded sections, all the places he and Max had searched for their parents’ spaceship over the years. He figured the government—or Project Clean Slate—had moved the ship to a Storage facility somewhere near the crash site. He didn’t think they would have risked transporting it too far. Michael planned to keep looking until he found it.
But what was he going to do when he’d shaded in the whole state on his map? Would he just give up the search? How could he? The ship was his only way back to his planet, his real home. No, there was no way he was giving up. If he shaded in the whole state, he’d just start over and check every inch of the desert again and again and again.
“I heard there are some caves about fifteen miles southwest of the crash site,” Michael said. “I want to see if we can find any of them. Maybe there’s one big enough to hide the ship. They’re supposed to be hard to see. The mouths are just cracks in the desert floor—like our cave.”
Michael, Max, and Isabel didn’t know much about their past. But they had figured out that their parents were on board the ship that crashed in the desert in 1947. The markings on their incubation pods matched
markings on debris found near the site. They didn’t know how their pods got from the ship to the cave where they broke free. Maybe one of their parents managed to save them before they died.
Michael liked that idea, although he would never admit it. He liked the idea of someone caring enough about what happened to him to make sure he was safe.
“So, what did you do all night while I was working for a living?” Michael asked.
“Oh, you know. The usual. Robbed a bank. Started a wild affair with the mail lady. Ate dinner with my parents,” Max answered. “And Ray Iburg, that guy who owns the UFO museum, called. I got the job.”
“Very cool,” Michael told him.
Max gave the Jeep more gas as they pulled out of town. They had the road to themselves as they blasted into the desert.
“Don’t you think there’s something strange about the fact that we both work at tourist traps for people obsessed with aliens?” Michael asked.
“Hey, it’s Roswell. Half the people in town work at an alien-theme place,” Max said.
“Could be worse, I guess. The whole town could sell fish-related products or something.” Michael reached for the radio and cranked it. He knew if they kept talking, he’d eventually blab about Mr. Cuddihy’s visit.
He didn’t want to tell Max that he was switching foster homes again. If he did, Max would just start feeling bad. Not that he would say anything much—Max knew Michael hated being pitied. But he’d probably end up very casually suggesting that Michael move in with the Evanses for his last year of high school.
Michael knew Mr. and Mrs. Evans would agree to take him in. A couple of years ago, when Michael was getting ready to change foster homes for about the millionth time, Mrs. Evans had volunteered to talk to Mr. Cuddihy about becoming Michael’s foster morn. She said he practically lived with them, anyway, and he definitely ate all their food.
But the Evanses had raised Max and Isabel from the time they were little kids. They were a family A real family. And as nice as Mr. and Mrs. Evans were to Michael, he knew they’d only be taking him in out of pity.
Michael had made it this long in foster families, and he could hold out a little long in foster families like he’d been totally miserable all these years. Miserable was way too strong a word.