The Wild One

by Melinda Metz

  “Max, why don’t you take your break,” Ray called.

  “Come on.” Max led Liz to the little coffee shop in the back of the museum. It was almost empty. He pulled out a chair for Liz and sat down across from her. “Tell me.”

  “Valenti ambushed me when I got off work,” Liz said in a rush. He could hear a tiny tremor in her voice. “He says he knows there’s still an alien in Roswell.”

  “Was he just pumping you, or does he have some—,” Max began.

  “He said someone broke into the bowling alley last night. They knocked out the security guard—but the guy didn’t have a lump on his head, and he wasn’t drugged or anything. Valenti thinks an alien used his power to do it.”

  “Nikolas,” Max said. Why hadn’t he found a way to stop Nikolas yet?

  “Yeah.” Liz looked down at her hands, which were clenched together on the table. “And Max? I think Isabel was with him. Yesterday night when we all went to the movies—well, except you—Isabel took off with Nikolas,” she went on in a rush.

  Max slumped back in his chair with a sigh.

  “I thought about calling you,” Liz said. “But I didn’t because I didn’t think there was anything you could do. You or any of us.”

  Max dropped his head into his hands. He didn’t need anyone to call him. He’d felt power being used last night. Why hadn’t he kept Isabel away from Nikolas? He should have tied her to a chair if he had to.

  Yeah, like that was a real option. But there must be something he could have done, some way of—

  Liz reached out and took his hand. “You look just like my papa when he’s thinking about my sister. He stares into space, and I can practically hear him thinking, ‘What if, what if, what if.’ Don’t start blaming yourself, Max. It’s a waste of time.”

  She was right. It was a waste of time. He should be figuring out what to do now. He scrubbed his face with his fingers. Okay. First thing he had to do was warn Isabel about Valenti.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told Liz. He stood up so fast, he knocked over his chair. He left it lying there and searched through the museum for Ray. He found him dusting some fossils in the exhibit that illustrated how man really evolved from aliens and not from primates.

  “Uh, Ray, I have sort of a family emergency. I know I just took a break, but I need to leave. I’ll come back. I’ll work late. You don’t have to pay me or—”

  “Go,” Ray said. “And let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Thanks.” Max trotted back to the coffee shop. “Let’s go find Isabel,” he said to Liz. They rushed out to his Jeep. “I guess we’ll just try my house first. If she’s not there, maybe Michael, Maria, and Alex will help us look.”

  “Of course they will,” Liz answered.

  He pulled out of the parking lot. He wanted to floor it, but he forced himself to drive at the speed limit. Getting stopped by Valenti right now would not be a smart thing to do.

  It was only a couple of miles to his house, but it felt like hours before he turned onto the street.

  “She’s there,” Liz said. “I can see Nikolas’s motorcycle in your driveway.”

  Max checked for his parents’ car. It wasn’t there. Good. He pulled up in front of the house, leaped out of the Jeep, and strode across the front lawn. Liz was right beside him. He was glad she was here. He knew he shouldn’t be. But he was.

  “Isabel,” he yelled as soon as he was through the front door.

  “I’m right here,” she answered from the living room. “What’s your problem?”

  He rushed down the hall and saw Isabel and Nikolas on the couch. She was practically sitting on his lap, and her lips looked all swollen. Obviously he’d interrupted a major make-out session. He didn’t even want to think about Nikolas touching his sister.

  “Congratulations, Nikolas,” he spat. “You’ve been back in town, what, a few weeks? And you’ve already got Valenti coming after you.”

  “What?” Isabel cried.

  “He asked me a bunch of questions,” Liz said. “He knows I have some kind of connection to the aliens he’s looking for. He just can’t prove it”

  “Are you okay?” Isabel began.

  “Don’t you have anything to say?” Max interrupted. He locked gazes with Nikolas.

  “I told you I’m not worried about Valenti,” Nikolas answered.

  “I guess you weren’t worried about that security guard at the bowling alley, either. The one you knocked unconscious,” Max said. He turned back to Isabel. “How could you let him use his power like that? You know we never use the power to do harm.”

  “Hey, she didn’t let me do anything,” Nikolas said, anger creeping into his voice. “And you may have a lot of rules about how you use your power, but I don’t.”

  “Max, he didn’t hurt the guy,” Isabel said.

  “Don’t defend me,” Nikolas snapped. He stood up and pulled on his jacket.

  “How do you know he didn’t hurt the guy?” Max demanded. “How do you know that he didn’t do permanent damage to that guard’s brain or something.?”

  “Oh, please. I can’t stand listening to one more second of your whining,” Nikolas said. “You want to see what I did to the guard? Will that make you feel better?”

  In three long strides he reached Liz’s side.

  “Nikolas, no!” Isabel screamed.

  Nikolas touched Liz’s forehead, and she crumpled to the floor.

  “What did you do?” Max bellowed.

  “Just a little demonstration,” Nikolas replied as he strolled out of the room.

  Max wanted to run after him and pound him into the ground. But he couldn’t leave Liz. He dropped down on his knees next to her. She was so still, so pale.

  “Is she okay?” Isabel cried.

  Max ignored her. Form the connection, he ordered himself. Forget Nikolas. Forget Isabel. Forget everything but Liz. He gently rested his hand on her forehead. Instantly he was in. He had become so close to Liz that he could probably form a connection without even touching her.

  Okay, what did Nikolas do to Liz’s body? No, to their body. Nothing separated Max and Liz now. He could feel her heart beating inside him. Feel her blood rushing through his veins. Max focused his attention on her brain. No fracture lines on her skull. No tears on the gray cauliflowerlike surface. He went deeper, exploring the cranial vault. Searching the deepest, oldest ganglia where the brain becomes the spinal cord. Checking the blood vessels for tears.

  Yes. He found it. A rip in one of the arteries was forming a blood clot. The brain tissue around it was swelling. And the pressure was forcing the brain stem down through the hole at the base of the skull.

  She was going to be okay. He could fix this. He just had to concentrate.

  Max nudged the molecules of blood with his mind, gently breaking the clot apart. Then he squeezed the cells of the damaged artery wall together, closing the rip. The brain stem shifted slightly, moving back into position.

  Liz’s eyes fluttered, then opened.

  “Is she okay?” Isabel repeated, her voice high and shaky.

  Max didn’t answer. He stared down at Liz, watching as the color slowly returned to her face.

  “What happened?” she mumbled. She struggled to sit up, and a few drops of blood ran out of her nose.

  Max gently pushed her back to the floor and carefully blotted the blood away with his sleeve. He grabbed a pillow off the couch and slid it under her head. “Don’t try to move yet.”

  “Max, what happened?” she repeated.

  “Liz, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry,” Isabel said softly.

  “What do you remember?” Max asked Liz. He was stalling. He couldn’t stand to tell her what Nikolas had done. It never should have happened. Max should have seen it coming. He should have stopped it.

  “I remember telling you what happened with Valenti. I remember coming over here. I remember Nikolas saying no one was going to tell him … tell him any rules about how to use his power.�
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  “Then he used his power on you. He knocked you out to demonstrate what he did to the guard,” Max continued. He shot an angry look at Isabel, then returned his attention to Liz. “Except what he did to you must have been more severe. He gave you a blood clot that would have required neurosurgery.”

  “If you hadn’t been here,” Liz said. “You saved my life again. My hero.” She smiled, and for a moment Max found it hard to breathe. The way she looked at him … it just made him go all weak inside.

  Max shook his head. “Saving your life isn’t very heroic when I’m the one who put your life in danger. I should have stopped this,” he told her. “I should have—”

  Liz reached out and pressed her fingers against his lips. “No,” she said simply.

  Max kissed her fingertips. He knew he shouldn’t touch her. Not like that. But he couldn’t stop himself.

  “Should I get her some water, or—,” Isabel began.

  He sprang to his feet. “You have done enough,” he yelled. “This wouldn’t have happened if you’d stayed away from Nikolas.”

  “You’re blaming me?” Isabel cried. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You went out with him after we all told you he was dangerous,” Max shot back. “We knew he was going to bring Valenti down on us. But you had to go chasing after him, anyway.”

  “Nikolas says we don’t have to worry about Valenti,” Isabel protested. “And he’s right. With our power we can get rid of him so easily.”

  “Kill him, you mean?” Max demanded. “Suddenly you have no problem with murder?”

  “Not if it means saving our lives,” Isabel exclaimed, her blue eyes bright with anger.

  “Our lives weren’t in danger, remember?” Max asked. “We found a way to get rid of Valenti—without hurting anyone. At least until you and Nikolas started playing around with your power. I hope you had fun, Isabel.”

  Liz pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t do this, you guys. Let’s just figure out what to do.”

  Max slid his arm around her waist. She didn’t look too steady on her feet yet. “Isabel obviously needs help figuring out what to do, so I’m going to tell her.” He turned to his sister and said every word slowly and deliberately “Isabel is not going to see Nikolas again. Isabel is not going to use her power. Isabel is—” “Isabel is leaving!” she screamed. She ran out of the room. A moment later Max heard the front door slam. Great, he thought. I handled that real well.

  “She’ll cool down,” Liz said. “What Nikolas did to me got her thinking, I could tell. She’ll figure out the right thing to do.”

  Max suddenly realized he was alone with Liz, holding her in his arms. It would be so easy just to pull her close to him and bury his face in her hair. That’s all he wanted to do.

  But he couldn’t. Being close to him was dangerous for Liz. Everything that had happened to her today just proved that.

  Max slowly eased his arm away from her. “I better take you home.”

  “I brought a couple of boxes. I wasn’t sure if you had enough,” Maria said.

  “I don’t really have a ton of stuff,” Michael replied.

  He’s not kidding, Maria thought, glancing around his room. Michael had his clothes in neat stacks on his bed. A pair of sneakers and a pair of hiking boots were in one corner. A box of CDs and a Walkman sat on the dresser next to a pile of books on the Roswell Incident, a couple of maps, a compass, and a thick binder.

  And that was it. Maria had more junk on the top shelf of her closet than Michael had in his entire room.

  A picture of her memory box flashed into Maria’s mind. It was a big cardboard box covered with flowers that had all these things from Maria’s childhood in it. Baby shoes and crayon drawings and old report cards. Even little notes that Maria had left her parents on the fridge. Her parents had saved all of it for her because they knew she would want it someday, maybe when she had kids of her own.

  Actually, that was the thing they’d had the biggest fight over when her dad moved out. He’d wanted to take Maria’s and Kevin’s memory boxes with him. Maria’s mom said no way. They ended up giving the boxes to Maria and Kevin right then, although they had planned to keep them until the kids were ready to move away from home, Her parents still liked to add little things once in a while. Or at least they used to B.D., Before Divorce.

  Maria grabbed one of the boxes and started packing the books. Did Michael ever wish he had something from elementary school? Some science project or book report? Or maybe even some special toy. She smiled as she imagined Michael playing with those Trans Formers practically every boy had at least one of.

  “What?” Michael asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You’re over there grinning like an idiot,” he teased.

  No way was she going to tell Michael that she’d been noticing he didn’t have any stuff from when he was little. It would probably come out sounding all sentimental or like she pitied him or something, and he would totally hate that.

  “Okay, I admit it. I was sort of daydreaming I was the heroine in one of those romance novels,” Maria said. She figured the best thing she could do for Michael right now was keep the mood light. It had to hurt packing up your stuff—your really little piles of stuff—for the millionth time and getting shuffled off to another group of strangers.

  Michael snorted. “You mean one of those girls in those long dresses with their ya-yas hanging out?”

  Maria added the CDs and the Walkman to her box. “Yeah, one of those girls,” she answered. “But I have to tell you, no romantic hero in those books ever uses the expression ya-yas.”

  “What do they call them, then?” He unzipped a gym bag and stuffed his clothes inside.

  “They call them orbs,” Maria said primly

  “Oh, baby. You don’t know what it does to me when you say the word orb,” Michael joked.

  Maria glanced around the room, searching for something else she could stick in her box. She spotted a pair of ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like bumblebees on his windowsill. She picked them up. “Should I pack these?” she asked.

  Michael took them out of her hands. “They were from my first foster home. I thought I was going to live there forever, even though the social worker told me it was only temporary. I kept thinking that the Salingers would change their minds and keep—”

  A deep flush spread across Michael’s cheeks. He tossed the bumblebees in the trash. “I don’t know why I’ve been hauling those around with me everyplace,” he muttered.

  “Hey, are you sure? They’re kind of cute.” Maria took one step toward the trash to retrieve them.

  “Leave them,” Michael ordered.

  Maria grabbed the tape and got very busy sealing up her box. She could feel tears stinging her eyes, and she didn’t want Michael to notice them. He was obviously already feeling totally humiliated for revealing he was once a little kid who wanted a real home. She didn’t want to make things worse by letting Michael see how sad she thought that was.

  “Don’t you want to know what they call a guy’s, um, a guy’s equivalent of ya-yas in those books?” Maria asked.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn if you think there even is an equivalent,” Michael answered.

  “You know what I mean.” Maria laughed.

  “I want to hear you say it,” he said. “I don’t believe you can. Not with your innocent little lips.”

  “I told you not to call me innocent,” Maria complained.

  There. She’d done it. She’d steered them away from a subject that Michael obviously couldn’t stand to talk about. She hoped he realized that if he ever did want to talk, she would be there for him. She would always be there for him.

  Max stared at the computer screen. No matches. How could there be no matches to aliens and Elvis? Not two hours ago there had been thousands of matches.

  He checked his search request. He had spelled both words wrong. Max dropped his head back and closed his eyes. At least I spelled and right,
he thought. After what had happened that was pretty good.

  He couldn’t stop picturing Liz collapsing onto the floor. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way Nikolas had just strolled out of the house as if what he did to Liz was no big deal. And he couldn’t stop wondering where Isabel was.

  “Having problems?” Ray asked.

  Max jerked up his head and opened his eyes. He was losing it. He hadn’t even heard Ray walk up to him. This was only his second night on the job. Ray must think he’d hired a total moron.

  “No, no problems,” Max said quickly “I should have some stuff on that photographer really soon.” He typed in the search request again. He couldn’t stop himself from giving a little groan when he realized he’d put two d’s in and.

  “Are you okay?” Ray asked. “You didn’t have to come back if something’s wrong at home.”

  Max sighed. “I wanted to come back. There’s nothing I can do there, anyway”

  Ray nodded. He didn’t ask any questions, but he didn’t walk away, either. It was clear that if Max wanted to talk, Ray wanted to listen. But if Max didn’t, that was okay, too.

  “It’s just that my sister is getting involved with this guy …” Max hesitated. It’s not like he could tell Ray what was really going on.

  “A guy that you don’t approve of, obviously,” Ray said.

  “He’s encouraging her to do stuff, stuff that she wouldn’t do on her own,” Max answered.

  “Do you think she’s in danger?” Ray asked, his gaze intent on Max.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do,” Max answered.

  Ray pulled a chair up next to Max and sat down. “You may not like this suggestion, but have you considered talking to your parents?” he asked.

  Max wished he could talk to his parents about this. They were great in a crisis. They didn’t get all into blame or anything. They were really practical. They figured out what needed to be done and did it. Of course later they might do some yelling. But first they fixed things.