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They are in Wichita, staying for just under eight months, according to the plan. He can make it almost eight months; he lasted over 10 years in Roswell.
Liz and Max are who knows where, doing who knows what, or more accurately doing each other, often and irritatingly more than a year after they hitched themselves to each other.
They will separate for eight months and then meet back up in Oregon, pretending to be new people who just so happen to look like the old them. That’s the plan.
So he is working security and she got a job in a museum in a big red brick building filled to bursting with crazy eclectic shit that made the old ufo centre look consistent and sensible.
Her once blonde hair, which always reminded him of caramel syrup, is almost as dark as Liz’s now, and it makes him feel things he dislikes almost as much as the buzz cut she gave him with clippers she bought at a Walmart between pretend lives.
After Oregon, they’ll find Kyle and Isabel on the road to somewhere else. And one day, one day, they’ll come up with a plan that doesn’t involve separating and rendezvous and buzz cuts and changing anything more about Maria.
And some mornings he wakes up and he doesn’t immediately want to punch something or run. And she calls him when she knows he’s on the way home to tell him to buy toilet paper and he doesn’t want to grunt and fling the phone into a storm drain instead he says, “Can do, you want me to grab anything for dinner?”
And he smiles when she says she really doesn’t want to eat the leftovers and could she pretty please just order pizza.
And he knows she’ll be there when he gets home and she’ll be there when he wakes up and it doesn’t feel like- when he was in the fourth grade it seemed like every fucking cartoon he’d watch on Saturday mornings one eye on a passed out Hank one on the TV with the coat hanger for an antenna, had some idiot falling into quicksand slowly dragged under, pressed by layers of wet, thick sand until they couldn’t even beg for help- he’d thought, even though he loved her, he really did love her, eventually the quicksand would get him. Loving her would smother and drown him. And it’s not like quicksand and it’s not like latching yourself to a rocket or throwing yourself off a cliff. It’s just waking up and knowing there is someone who will remind you about toilet paper and make crazily attractive faces when begging for takeout.
There is still some of him left that doesn’t want her to know how easily just wrinkling her nose and pouting her Cupi doll lips makes him hard.
He has to win somehow.
They are in Wichita when it starts. He doesn’t notice it at first. It’s just a low buzz behind his ear that makes him look at the door before he hears the car coming down the street. Or knowing she’s not in the museum break room when she calls to tell him about the delivery of 25000 rubber duckies that look like the founding fathers. It could just be the resonance or the background noise. He’s always been good at picking up on that stuff but then she stops in Blockbuster one night not thinking to tell him she’d be late and he doesn’t call, he doesn’t drive around looking for her he just turns up at Blockbuster making her squeal and hit him across the shoulder as she calls him a stalker. But it’s Wichita and they are on the run so there’s like three places she would have been. It was nothing.
Max Evans could heal people, he could bring them back from the dead. His sister Isabel walked into dreams and passed on messages through your subconscious like passing notes in class. And Michael had been feverishly jealous and stubbornly pretending it didn’t matter since they’d walked back into his shitty life all sibling’d up and cared for.
He was just as much a fucked up hybrid alien, grandpa 1935 thing as they were… well maybe not the grandpa part but still even snakey traitor Tess got evil mindwarps and what had he got? He’d got good at blowing stuff up. Mostly rocks.
They were on their own now and every paper cut she got he wished he had Max’s mojo and every night she tossed and turned he wanted to sneak inside her dreams and make her feel safe and sometimes he wished he could make her see a crowded, smokey jazz club and watch her sing like she was meant to.
Because she’d never left him, even when she’d broken up with him, even when she’d told him he was insufferable, unwashed, idiotic and in dire need of her help, she’d never left him.
From the minute she’d jumped into the passenger seat of her stolen Jetta she didn’t let go.
People had been letting go of him his whole life.
One night the battery on her phone and her car up and died like they were colluding. It was cold out, colder than it got in New Mexico this time of year and Maria took a moment to kick her front tire before pulling her jacket tighter across her chest. And before she could decide if she was going to walk back or home or hitchhike and hope she wasn’t in a made-for-TV movie he was there walking over the crest of the hill.
“Space boy, how? You’re not seeing Liz flashes now too?!”
“No flashes.”
“Then, I mean don’t get me wrong, real happy to see you but, just going out for a stroll?”
He looks down at his feet and hunches his shoulders, “I feel you.”
“Uh,” she says rocking back on her heels, “as come-ons go, not your worst.”
“Maria, I mean it,” he says suddenly fixing her with a firm gaze. “It started, well I don’t know when exactly but, I don’t know I just feel where you are.”
“Like Radar? Like a tracking device, Michael?! Have you put an alien tracker on me?” Maria flails at the back of her neck as though an alien tracker is the same thing as an annoying clothing tag.
“Calm down hot stuff. You don’t have anything on you. It's just this little buzz,” he taps the side of his head, “like a magnet or like how birds tell where home is. I think. I dunno, what am I, Liz? I just knew you were here. So I came here.”
She hadn't cried about her mom, her idiot cousin, not going to college but she'd cried about Alex's guitar and he'd held her tight not letting her see that he was crying too.
It had hurt like one of Hank's beatings to ride away from her thinking he'd never go back.
“Michael! You are standing here telling me you’re an alien homing pigeon and I’m home!”
“Well fuck.” He hadn’t quite thought of it like that.
“Yeah fuck. I mean I wasn’t going anywhere without you but still a little creepy spaceboy. No more surprise gifts for you I guess.”
“I… Maria, shut up a minute would you.”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she says setting her jaw.
“Please shut up,” he finds himself begging. “I want to kiss you already.”
“Oh,” she says softly as he bends, bringing her lips to his and feeling calmer in the sure, magnetic pull and the soft warm connection.
She rests against him putting her hands in his coat pockets to warm them. “The others, they,” he shakes his head, “it’s just me.”
“I’m sorry Michael, your first special only you power and it’s just know where your annoying girlfriend is. Kinda feel like I got you cheated out of something.”
“You’re kidding right?”
“No, Max got cure cancer and you got the ability to put away your porn before I catch you jacking off.”
“Delightful,” he says. “Maria, do you really not get it? I can find you no matter what, I can find the most important… I can find home.”
She stops at that and stares at him in the street lights before her lips pull into a small smile. “You levelled up your sweet talk Mister.”
“Yeah, I love you,” he says firmly. “No more annoying girlfriend shit okay. You want me to try to look under the hood?”
“Uh, no I think I want to fool around in the backseat till Triple A arrives.”
“I’ve gotten better at fixing things you know.” He frowns.
“Oh I know,” she grins like she’s got away with something risky and stupid, “but I’d rather you put your hands to better use.”
And three weeks later, Isabel shows up in his dream with a phone number. She hugs him tight and kisses him on the cheek like she used to and she tells him to call Liz because Liz saw something in the future that’s important.
And he is panicked and he’d be sweaty if this wasn’t a dream about scuba diving in green jello and they weren’t sitting on the edge of a boat he is pretty sure is made out of pretzel rods. But suddenly he asks, “You and Kyle are in a suburb outside of Chicago aren’t you?”
And Iz looked horrified for an instant then schooled her face into her perfect mask before she answered, “What makes you say that?”
“It’s not just Maria,” he says blinking into the illusion of a lucky charms marshmallow sunset. “I didn’t try with anyone else. Not till now but…” Isabel tilts her head pointedly. “You’re there I can feel it. I have to think about it. I don’t need to try with her but with you, and… “ His eyes widen as he feels the whole, not real, electrical signal thing. “Iz, Kyle’s in your room. While you’re sleeping?”
“Um,” she stutters, “what are you saying?”
“Uh,” he elongates back at her, “what are you doing with the Buddha kid?”
“None of your business, Michael Guerin!”
“Maria’s gonna be psyched,” he chuckles.“It’s not just a Maria tracker and it’s got gossip applications.”
“Ugh, call Liz! Your dream is weird as shit Michael.”
“Be safe,” he says as she snaps out of fuzzy existence.
Maria is indeed psyched, crawling all over him, her hair soft against the side of his face as he calls the number Isabel gave them.
“Hello?” Liz sounds as cautious and husky as she always has despite the months of absence and the years of insanity.
“Hey,” he says swallowing on the weirdness of hearing her voice, “was told to call you.”
“Michael!” she says and she sounds relieved maybe even happy to hear his voice. “Oh no, Max isn’t here. I’m sure he would have wanted to…”
“Liz, what’s going on? We weren’t going to contact each other till our next stop.”
“No, no of course,” she rushes. Liz Parker unlike her best friend has always kept a little hesitance around him, a little fear, he'd liked it that way. “It’s just I saw, in the flashes. Is Maria with you? She should hear this too”
“Liz!” Maria yells, giddy like they are sophomores again, ignoring the fact that she is trying to hear her best friend by pressing her ear to his ear like he is a can with a length of string.
He rolls his eyes, “Yeah, you could say that.”
“Liz! I’ve got so much to tell you! Michael has a Maria tracker in his brain but it’s not just a Maria tracker and he thinks Isabel is sleeping with Kyle Valenti. Kyle Valenti!”
“Maria!” he snaps, “We don’t have time for this and I didn’t tell you that so you could immediately gossip with Parker who will tell Max before you take a breath.”
“Ugh, Michael.” Maria flaps her hand in annoyance. “I’ve been sick for weeks with a stupid stomach bug that you can’t get like the stupid hybrid you are, let me have something.”
“Maria!”
“Uh guys,” Liz interrupts slowly. “I think it’s more than a stomach bug or somethink.” She is still habitually losing her ‘ng’ to something softer.
“What?”
“Oh god,” Maria leaps off the bed, a flutter, “are alien crystals going to possess me?”
“I saw somethink,” Liz says softly sounding very tinny all of a sudden. “In the future, I don’t think that far in the future.”
“Just tell us.”
“It was a baby.”
“Zan?” he frowns as Maria stares at him, her hand over her mouth.
“No, Michael. I think you and Maria are going to have a baby.” Liz says it like it doesn't make something snap in him like a rubber band pulled too tight and striking him hard across his very soul.
“What?” Maria squeals but he’s not listening anymore. “Michael what did she say?”
“But how Tess was, it only was like months, Liz,” his voice is climbing, “Is she, fuck!”
“Michael!” Maria yells back.
“No!” Liz says perhaps more in response to Maria’s panic than his implicit rage, “I, well they were both there, they looked healthy. I don’t know, I could be wrong and maybe it won’t happen. I just…”
“Michael!” Maria yells again and this time he finds words clearer than the endless fuck that’s rung in his ears since Liz had said the word baby.”
“Liz saw you.”
“Okay?!” Maria says pursing her lips with annoyance. “Why do you look like I end up in a body bag, Michael!”
“She says she saw you with a baby.”
“A baby?” she scoffs, “Well that’s just… what? No, it’s probably just like Isabel’s dream or something.”
“You’ve been sick,” he says lowly.
“So!” She hits him across his arm, “That happens.”
“It does Michael,” Liz says still in his ear and he wishes he could dismiss the idea just as easily. “I could be wrong or maybe it’s far off in the future, I don’t have great control over…”
“Stop looking at me like I’m going to die, Michael! Stop!” Maria says frantically over Liz’s dithering, “I’m right here, look close your eyes, see I’m right here you can feel me like a magnet right?”
And he feels her body warm against his and her hand in his hand, fitting just so. Then the buzz, like overhead powerlines crackling, lets him know exactly where she is, alive and here.
“Yeah” he says and then he feels it, like knowing Kyle’s signal was almost right on top of Isabel’s and that if he reached out he could feel in millimetres how far Max was from Liz right this second, there is a staticky not quite there pulse perfectly inside of Maria.
“Um, guys. I’ve got to go. Just in case. But I’ll get Isabel to send you a new number, and we’ll both be here for the call. I promise…” Liz stutters again.
“Tell Max,” he answers, “We need a change of plans. You’re not wrong.”
He hangs up.
“No, Michael. I’m not going to have a… don’t be… Michael!”
“I’m going to fix this.”
“There is nothing to fix!”
He sucks on his teeth, nods once. “There is something I can track inside you.”
“No,” she says her green eyes wide. “No, Michael. I am not going to have a part alien baby on the run from… no, I accept that Isabel can peek into my dreams and Max can save people's lives but Maria DeLuca is not having…”
She paces and flings her hands about as she speaks. He grabs her shoulders.
“Maria, I’ll fix it. I’ll… I’ll keep you safe.”
“How? You fix things by being a stone wall and oh God… I’m turning into my mother.”
“Maria.” He was a kid when he said that, part kid, part weird genetic memory of being a spaceman general. He didn’t know what the hell he was saying.
“I’m going to have a baby,” she’s shaking as she looks up at him, “I’m not even twenty yet! This is your fault, you, I know you skipped school the day they made us put condoms of vegetables. I should have never trusted you to…”
“I’m sorry.” His voice sounds flat in his ears.
“Sorry! What does that mean? What do you mean Michael Guerin! Sorry, you’re leaving, sorry you don’t want this, sorry what.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Good because I might not have an alien tracking system but stone wall or not me and your kid will hunt you down and make your life…”
“You do.”
“What?”
“You make my life.”
She blinks and then instead of falling into his arms gratefully like he’d hoped she groans.
“Ugh. I want to be angry at you right now.”
“I’m not going to leave you. I’m sorry we’re so young and I’m sorry we’re not safe but,” he slides his hands up her arms, “I’m not sorry it’s you and me.”
She crackles low like one of her songs and now deep inside there is another note playing.
“You can’t just get good at words now. Just grunt and leave so I can scream about how fucking stupid this is.”
He licks his bottom lip, “You really want me to leave?”
“No.” She wrinkles her nose. “I want you to hold me and tell me it will be okay and I want to believe you. But I can’t believe you. Because there is something alien inside me you can track and I’m in fucking Wichita.”
Reflexively he looks down at her stomach, still smooth beneath her orange sweater. “It’s not just alien.”
“What?”
“It’s a little bit you too.”
Her eyebrows raise impossibly higher, “You can tell that?”
“I think so.” He steps back, shoves his hands into his pockets. “Maria, it’s going to be okay. I promise. I’ll make it okay. And if you need we can get in the car and drive out of Wichita right now.”
“I can’t do that Michael.” It’s the most irate Michael yet. She clenches her fists shaking them at the ceiling. “I’ve got work in the morning and diapers cost money.”
He can’t help but smile at that, “I’ll rob a bank.”
“Don’t you dare!” She digs a finger into his chest. “I’ve had enough armed robberies to last a lifetime.”
“Anything.” He grabs the offending finger and pulls her in close. “I’ll do anything you want.” Michael kisses her then, her lips are sticky with the with the watermelon lip gloss she applied as he dialled Liz’s number.
“Dammit!” she pulls back. “I remember when Isabel thought she was dream pregnant and you were all, I’m here for you no matter what. Is this just what you do?”
“Do what?”
“Get girls pregnant and turn into the perfect boyfriend?”
He frowns, feels the clench that usually precedes something exploding. He hasn’t felt that in a while. “I wasn’t Isabel’s boyfriend. I didn’t sleep with Isabel, I don’t, Maria, you know…”
“I know. I know but I think I’m allowed a little freak out right now.”
“Yeah, you and me both.”
She smiles so sadly he’d like to give into the powers out of wack feeling raging under his skin. “We can’t be parents Michael, that’s why Max sent the baby away. I don’t want to…”
“I don’t either.”
“You don’t?”
He opens his mouth gapping at her question.
“I’d have raised Isabel’s kid if she’d actually had one and she’s basically my sister. I love you. What do you think.”
Her eyes soften, “I think, I love you too. But it’s not safe. We’re not safe.”
He shakes his head. “Liz saw us with the kid. Maybe. Look. maybe there’s a way.”
“Really? You think so?”
He blows out a breath “I don’t know Maria, I’m not the brains of this operation.”
“Well who is? Cause they need to…”
“You are, you ding dong. You’ve always been.”
“Oh no! No.” She looks set to ramp back up into a full fit.
“Suck it up De Luca. You know it sucks major ass for me to say that.”
“Don’t try to make me feel sorry for you when you’re really only doing it to make it all up to me.”
“I mean I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bonus.” She swipes at him, clipping him over his left ear. “Hey watch the hair! Look, way I see it, we can’t make decisions until we talk to Max, the others… maybe Liz’ll get another flash, maybe Kyle’s got something useful from the Maxwell effect.”
“Maybe we pretend this isn’t happening?” she asks.
And he’ll never admit it but he is terrified, Isabel lying in Valenti’s bed with 115’ temperature, holding some dead guys finger next to his willing his powers to work, terrified.
“Until we have to, am I wrong?”
“No,” she says suddenly quiet. “I want to pretend.”
“Right.”
“You should hug me now.”
“Not going to hit me again?”
“Like I’m any kind of a threat to your. Giant meaty…” she scans his face and adjusts her stance. “yeah, okay, I’ll stop.”
She curls against him and he smooths a loose brown ringlet down her back. “Maria?”
“Yeah?”
“What if I wanted to pretend we were… normal?”
“You spaceboy?” she turns her head against his chest. “You sound like Isabel”
“What if I wanted to pretend we were straight up humans with like regular jobs and ten more years of life and, don’t say you are straight up human already you know what I mean.”
“You want to be happy about this?” she muses like she understands even his most garbled thoughts.
“Just for a minute, I dunno.”
“I’m gonna get fat, we won’t sleep for 18 years at least, I’ll be hormonal and…”
“Okay,” he shrugs.
“Okay.”
“Yeah. Okay”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, so what.”
“You want to pretend to be happy?”
“I think,” he says because when she says it Iike that it doesn’t fit at all. “I think lately, lately it’s been pretending not to be.”
“You’re happy.”
“I think so.”
“Okay”
“Okay?”
“I… you think I haven’t always wanted you to be happy?”
“Yeah right,” he scoffs, “you wanted me not to kidnap you and to be a better boyfriend and to…”
She presses her lips together before answering, “I wanted to know I made you happy.”
“Sure.”
“Oh no, it’s going kill me to tell you this and you’re making me do it. Before Max poured ketchup on my best friend and aliens stopped being the kitschy bullshit I put up with living in Roswell, I… you made me sooo angry, we’d spoken like 12 words to each other since third grade and I loathed you.”
“Yeah it must be killing you to say that,” he snarls. “What the fuck Maria.”
“No,” she pulls back shocked that he snapped. “ah, look, you don’t loathe someone you’ve barely breathed near unless…”
“Unless?”
“Unless they make your entire being vibrate at a different frequency. Unless they mean something.”
“Sounds awesome.”
“Michael, I was wrong. I didn’t loathe you. I was, I was meant to be with you.”
He nods, trying to believe her over the hot sting of his own regrets. He wants to be honest, he wants to be open but he can’t make his body follow. The best he can do is not to stay angry, “You had the hots for me.”
She rolls her eyes. “Do you blame me?”
“It’s the hair isn’t it?”
“Where are the clippers?”
“You got to me too,” he manages, “you got under my skin, in my head.”
“I know,” she smiles, sliding her hand over his cheek, “you showed me. Let’s be happy.”
“Pretend.” He finds himself frowning. Something fills his chest like an over inflated water balloon. He can't take in a breath.
“You once told me that you were going to leave but you could give me now. So maybe, maybe it’s not pretend." The water balloon inside him pops and with it a rush of something not too far from hope. "Maybe it’s just now.”
“Yeah.” Her lips are soft and urgent. “Just now.”