The Wild One

by Melinda Metz

  Yes. Now he could concentrate on the force field. Now he could feel it against his skin. Slick, and oily, and thin. Very thin.

  “Aarrgh!” Michael channeled his power and smashed a hole in the force field. He broke one hand free from the cave wall.

  His eyes opened, and he shoved his fingers onto Nikolas’s chest. Connect, he ordered himself. And that’s all it took. The connection was instantaneous. Maybe because Nikolas was an alien, too.

  Michael focused his attention on Nikolas’s left lung. He used his mind to crush the cells together.

  Nikolas gasped for breath. Michael kept shoving the cells together. He would collapse Nikolas’s lung if he had to.

  Nikolas kept his fingers locked on Michael’s forehead. Michael’s head began to pound. Jagged streaks of red light flashed in front of his eyes.

  He struggled to keep his focus on Nikolas’s lung tissue. Crush it, he thought. I have to crush it. His vision blurred. His hand began to slip off Nikolas’s chest. He dug his fingernails into Nikolas’s shirt, keeping the connection. And he smiled when he heard Nikolas wheeze as he struggled to pull air into his damaged lung.

  Michael gathered his strength and bashed another hole in the force field. Now his head was free. He shook it back and forth, trying to knock Nikolas’s fingers off. But Nikolas wouldn’t let go.

  Michael’s vision dimmed. He was going to black out. Nikolas was going to win.

  “Stop it!” Isabel screeched. Her voice sounded far away. Outside the connection.

  Suddenly her face loomed in front of his. She pushed Nikolas back, away from Michael’s fingers. Nikolas’s hand slipped off Michael’s head.

  The connection was broken.

  The force field disappeared, and Michael tumbled to the floor. He didn’t try to stand up. He turned his healing powers on himself. Dissolving the two blood clots Nikolas had formed in his brain. Repairing the torn blood vessels.

  “Okay, let’s just call that a tie,” Isabel said, her voice harsh. “I hope you’ve both figured out that there’s no way one of us can kill the other—without ending up dead, too.”

  Michael grabbed Alex’s arm and pulled him up off the floor. “Come on, Isabel,” he said.

  She didn’t move.

  “I said come on,” he snarled.

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” Isabel whispered.

  “What the hell has happened to you?” Michael exploded. “This jerk just tried to kill me! He hurt Alex! I am not going to leave you alone with him. Now come on—we’re going home.”

  Isabel’s eyes blazed. “No.”

  Without another word, Michael turned his back and left her there.

  Isabel gazed at herself in her dresser mirror on Sunday morning. She’d been staring for so long that her face didn’t look like a face anymore—just a jumble of shapes and colors.

  “We’re going to the office for a few hours, honey. We’ll be back around one,” Mrs. Evans called through Isabel’s closed bedroom door. “Max is already gone, so you’re on your own.”

  “Okay,” Isabel answered. “Bye.”

  The spell was broken. Her face looked like a face again. Isabel turned away from the mirror. She wondered if Nikolas would come by for her. Nikolas never made plans in advance. He just roared up on his motorcycle and she jumped on.

  When he did show up, Isabel knew she had to have a talk with him. A long talk. Usually when she started to say something Nikolas didn’t want to hear, he would kiss her. By the time she floated back to earth, she would pretty much have forgotten her point.

  But she wasn’t going to let him do that. Not this time. She had to make it very clear that if she was going to be with Nikolas, he had to promise never to use his powers against Alex, Max, Michael, Liz, or Maria. If he wouldn’t do that, she would walk away. No matter how she felt about him. No matter how right it felt to be in his arms.

  She had a few little things she wanted to say to the others, too. It’s not like they’d been so totally perfect. Isabel pulled her hair back into a ponytail and frowned at her reflection.

  Why did it have to be this way? Why couldn’t they all see how incredible it was to have Nikolas around? For all their lives they’d thought they were alone here. Just the three of them. And now there was someone else, someone like them.

  Michael and Max should be excited about Nikolas. They should have accepted him as part of their group. And Liz, Maria, and Alex—even Alex—should be happy that Isabel had found one of her own kind to be with. Someone who understood her. Someone who taught her not to be afraid …

  Isabel’s thoughts were interrupted by the doorbell. Nikolas! She rushed out of her room and down the stairs. She swung open the front door and saw Alex standing there.

  Of course it wasn’t Nikolas. Nikolas was not a doorbell kind of guy.

  Looking at Alex, Isabel couldn’t help thinking about what she saw when she healed him last night. The inside of Alex’s mind was like an Isabel shrine. He remembered things about her that she didn’t even remember.

  Connecting with Alex convinced her that he was on her side. He was not happy with the whole Nikolas situation. But he would always be there for her.

  Even after she let her boyfriend knock him out …

  Isabel quickly pushed that thought aside. So Nikolas had a wild side. He was always nice to her. And that was all that mattered. Right?

  Alex shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Was Isabel going to say anything?

  “So are you here to see me or Max?” Isabel asked softly. “I know everything isn’t about me.”

  Was that supposed to be an apology? Alex wondered. “I’m here to see you,” he answered.

  Isabel stepped back and swung open the door. “Do you want some toast or something?”

  “You’re offering to cook for me? I’m touched,” Alex answered. She does seem like she’s trying to say she’s sorry, in an Isabel kind of way, he thought.

  “Come on.” Isabel led the way into the kitchen. “My parents and Max already ate, but I think they might have left some muffins.” She picked up a plate covered with crumbs. “Or maybe not.”

  “I’m not really hungry, anyway,” Alex said. His stomach was in knots. He didn’t want to have this conversation with Isabel. But he needed to.

  “Are you feeling okay? Your head?” Isabel asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. You do good work.” He sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. Isabel sat across from him. Not next to him, across from him. So don’t get too excited about the whole implied-apology thing, he thought. She’s hardly throwing herself at your red-haired self.

  “Uh, the reason I’ve called you all here …” Alex took a deep breath. “It’s because I’m worried about you.”

  “You don’t have—,” she began to protest.

  “Wait. Let me finish,” Alex said. “I know you hate being told what to do. But sometimes what people are telling you to do is the right thing to do, you know?”

  Isabel stood up and started gathering the dirty dishes off the table. She dropped them in the sink with a clatter. “So you’re here to tell me to stay away from Nikolas.”

  “Yeah. I am. Because you’re not thinking clearly,” Alex said. “I know you don’t think Valenti is any threat to you and Nikolas because you have your power, but—”

  “No. We are not having this conversation. Because that’s not what it’s about,” Isabel said. She scooped up a handful of silverware and hurled it into the sink.

  “What is it about, then?” Alex asked.

  “It’s about that you’re jealous. It’s about that you see that there is something going on between me and Nikolas, and it’s driving you crazy,” Isabel answered. She jerked on the hot water and sent it splashing over the dishes.

  “I admit that,” Alex told her. What was the point of denying it? It was obvious. “But what about your brother? What about Michael? What about Liz and Maria? They have no reason to be jealous, and they all think Nikolas is putting you in danger. No
, not just you—all of us.”

  Isabel snatched up one of the dishes and scrubbed it furiously. “I want you to leave,” she said, without turning around to look at him.

  “Fine,” Alex said. “But you have to know this is it. I go now, I’m gone. I’m not going to come running back if you change your mind.”

  “I can live with that,” Isabel answered.

  “So do you feel any better?” Maria asked.

  Liz glanced over at Alex. She knew Maria thought dragging Alex out for ice cream would cheer him up. But cheerful wasn’t exactly the word Liz would use to describe him right now.

  “Not really,” Alex admitted.

  Maria turned to Liz. “What do you think? More M&M’s?”

  “Umm. No, I think the problem is the sprinkles. He needs the rainbow ones, not the chocolate ones,” Liz answered. “Rainbow equals happy, right?”

  “Right. I’ll take care of it.” Maria jumped up and snatched Alex’s sundae off the table. She hurried over to the counter.

  Liz took a bite of her frozen yogurt. She was basically stalling. She was hoping she’d come up with some great thing to say to Alex about the whole Isabel sitch. But there wasn’t anything. Liz knew that. It’s not like anybody had been able to say anything that made her feel better about Max wanting to be just friends.

  “Those rainbow sprinkles don’t taste like anything,” Alex mumbled.

  “Yeah. They look like they should taste great. Like they should just explode in your mouth with all these flavors,” Liz agreed. “Maybe you could do one of your lists on that, on food that tastes totally different than you’d expect it to.”

  “Maybe.” Alex got really interested in smoothing out all the wrinkles in his paper napkin.

  “Hey, I’m sorry.” Liz patted his arm as if he were a puppy or something, which made her feel like her abuelita. That’s what she always did when someone looked upset. “I know sometimes it makes you feel worse when people try to cheer you up,” she said.

  Liz definitely had times where she just wanted to curl up under the covers, listen to some really sad songs about love gone bad, and think of Max. When she was in that kind of mood, she didn’t want anyone trying to make her feel better.

  She leaned closer to Alex. “I know ice cream isn’t going to help, either,” she whispered. “But it makes Maria feel better to do something for you.”

  Maria had force-fed Liz the full menu of comfort food after Max told her he wanted to be just friends. Liz had choked down many varieties of chocolate, macaroni and cheese, french fries, and all the other greasy, fatty, sweet foods Maria could think of.

  Which just proved what an amazing friend Maria was. Maria was a total natural food fanatic. She refused to eat anything with preservatives, additives, or artificial colors. She never ate meat or eggs or any dairy products. But when her friends were feeling blue, Maria made it her job to get them the food she thought would make them feel better. Even if she was dying to stuff them full of blue-green algae, wheat grass, and tofu.

  Maria hurried back over with Alex’s new and improved sundae. She watched him intently as he took a bite, then shook her head. “It’s not working. He doesn’t look any happier,” she said. “I have a theory about why. Alex eats junk food three meals a day, so junk food doesn’t give him that little boost it gives most people.”

  “Maybe,” Liz said. Or maybe when you got your heart broken, nothing could make you feel any better, she thought.

  Every day when she woke up, she did a little experiment on herself. She looked at a picture she had of Max and then tried to rank how much it hurt on a scale from one to ten. She kept hoping one day she’d at least be at 9.9 instead of a full ten. But it hadn’t happened yet.

  “Alex, tell us again what happened when you went miniature golfing,” Maria said. “What exactly did Isabel say before she kissed you?”

  “I have to remind you that I’m a guy,” Alex said. “I know that we hang out a lot and that you might have started getting a little confused. But I do burp and scratch myself, and I even own a jockstrap. I am a guy with full guy standing. And guys don’t do the whole ‘then she said, then I said’ analyzing-every-little-detail thing.”

  “That’s nothing to brag about,” Maria told him. “It’s healthy to talk about things.”

  Liz wasn’t so sure. She and Maria had analyzed every moment of the little span of time after Liz and Max were friends but before they became just friends. But it didn’t help. It didn’t make Liz feel any better. And it didn’t give her some great idea about how to get Max back.

  “Just tell me what kind of kiss it was,” Maria begged Alex. “You know, like how long it lasted. It will help, really”

  Alex put his head in his hands and moaned. He’s totally miserable, Liz thought. I wonder if Isabel has the tiniest clue.

  She knew Max had to be feeling as horrible as she was, and that made her feel better. She knew it shouldn’t, but it did.

  A little.

  Michael slid open Maria’s window and pulled himself inside. He tossed the Evil Dead video on her bed. Where was she? He cracked open her bedroom door and listened. The house was empty. This sucked. He’d been looking forward to listening to her squeal her way through another horror movie.

  Maybe he should have called first to see if she was even home. But it’s not like he planned to come over. It was his last night at the Hugheses’, and Mrs. Hughes had asked him to be sure and be there for dinner, which he was. She made a cake and everything. It was kind of obvious that she was feeling bad about kicking him out.

  But the whole thing was just so fake and phony. Mr. and Mrs. Hughes’s auras made it real clear they were not having a good time. And Michael definitely wasn’t, either. But they all sat there, putting on an act for each other. Pathetic. By the time he choked down a piece of cake, he was dying to get out of there. He made up a lame excuse about wanting to say goodbye to some of the neighbors—as if—and took off.

  He wandered around for a while, and when he passed the video store, he got the idea of picking up a flick and hanging out with Maria. Evil Dead was one of his all-time favorites. It had this great scene where a guy’s hand becomes possessed and he starts breaking all these dishes over his own head. It was kind of like what would happen if the Three Stooges made a horror movie.

  Michael thought about taking the video over to Alex’s. But since Alex’s love train had crashed, he wasn’t exactly fun to hang out with. If the two of them got together tonight, their double bad mood might push them both over the edge.

  He definitely didn’t want to hit Max’s house. For one thing, he didn’t think he could look at Isabel without starting to scream at her. Plus Sunday night was sort of family night over there. Mr. and Mrs. Evans were always cool about having Michael around. They joked about him being their favorite kid. But he didn’t feel like being an honorary Evans family member. Not tonight.

  Michael sat down on Maria’s bed. Maybe he’d wait for her for a while. He stretched out and felt a lump under his back. He dug around and pulled out a pair of purple-and-orange camouflage pants. He snorted. Camouflage was supposed to help you blend into your surroundings. It’s not like there were many purple-and-orange trees or buildings or … anything.

  And the legs on the things were huge. Each leg would hold two of Maria’s whole body, practically. So they were really bad camouflage, and if you needed to run—forget about it. But the pants had looked pretty cute on Maria the other day when she wore them with that tiny fuzzy little sweater.

  Michael shifted around on the bed. There was still something jammed underneath him. He felt around and pulled out a pair of boxer shorts. Wait. What was Maria doing with boxers on her bed?

  He held them up, and a smile broke across his face. These definitely didn’t belong to a guy. They had little baby ducks all over them. And they did look Maria size. He dropped them on top of the pants.

  He grabbed one of her pillows and stuck it under his head. It had that weird smell, the c
ough-drops-and-flowers smell. He took a deep breath. Maybe Maria was right. It actually did smell kind of good. And it totally cleared his nose.

  Footsteps came down the hall toward him. A second later the door swung open and Maria stepped inside. She gave a little scream when she saw him.

  “I brought a movie,” Michael told her.

  “Actually, I have to make a cake for my mom’s birthday,” Maria said.

  Michael shoved himself to his feet. He should’ve known better than to just invite himself over. “I guess it’s kind of late, anyway. I should take off.” He headed toward the window.

  “Wait,” Maria called. “I could use some help.”

  Michael turned around. He felt this big, goofy grin spreading across his face. He tried to control it, but it was like his mouth muscles had a will of their own.

  “Okay,” he answered. “But I’m not wearing an apron.”

  Isabel grabbed a pair of black espadrilles out of her closet and hurled them into the trash. She never wore them. They had those lame laces that wrapped all the way up to her knees. Who wanted to walk around looking like you belonged in some drama club production of Julius Caesar?

  She snatched up a pair of lavender flats she had to wear when she was a junior bridesmaid in her cousin’s wedding. She threw them in the trash, too. Her cousin was getting divorced, so there was no reason for Isabel to get all sentimental about the shoes. Maybe her marriage would have lasted longer if she had better taste, Isabel thought. The shoes had lavender flowers on the toes. That said it all.

  Someone knocked on her door. Before Isabel could order whoever it was to go away, Max stuck his head in. “We’re starting the movie,” he told her.

  “I’m cleaning my closet,” she answered.

  “Come on. You know Mom and Dad like us to do stuff together on Sunday nights,” Max said. “I rented a chick flick. I know you liked it.”

  “You don’t care if I liked it or not,” Isabel snapped. She grabbed a pair of flip-flops and tossed them into the pile behind her. “You just want me down there so you can watch me.”