He brought his cupped hands to his chest and cradled the mouse against him. Liz could see the shocking blue of Max's eyes from all the way across the room. A moment later he returned Fred to his cage. The mouse jumped on the exercise wheel with a squeak and started to run.
Liz felt tears sting her eyes. That had to be one of the sweetest things she'd ever seen. And Max didn't know anyone was watching. He wasn't trying to fool anyone. He wasn't trying to trick Liz into keeping his secret-he didn't even know she was there.
He put himself in danger when he healed me, Liz reminded herself. He could have let me die. But that wouldn't be Max. That wouldn't be the sweet, wonderful guy who had been her friend since the third grade.
There was no way Max was a killer. No possible way.
Max closed the cage door and latched it. "No need to thank me," he told Fred. "I'll send you a bill."
He heard a soft scuffling sound behind him and turned to see Liz standing in the doorway. Her aura was rimmed with gray. He could practically feel waves of cold coming off it. Something was very wrong.
"What happened?" Max asked.
"I need to talk to you, but not here," Liz said.
"I have my car," Max answered. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Let's just go. The bell is going to ring soon."
Max grabbed his backpack and led the way out to his car. "Do you want to hit the doughnut place?" he asked as they climbed in. "That's where Michael always goes when he can't handle class."
Liz's face paled a little. "No. I don't want to go anywhere that I can ever smell food."
"Okay, then." Max pulled out of the parking lot. "We can go to the bird sanctuary. Bitter Lakes is only about twenty minutes away. I've been there with my dad. He keeps saying he was a bird in a previous life."
Max wanted to ask Liz about a million questions on the way there, but it was obvious she was too flipped out to talk.
When they arrived, he reached across Liz and popped open the glove compartment. He rummaged around until he found a package of stale saltines. "These are so old, they don't really qualify as food anymore. We can feed the ducks while you tell me… whatever it is you have to tell me." Max always found it easier to talk if he had something to do at the same time.
Liz took the crackers and climbed out of the car. Max followed her over to the edge of the pond. "So," he said.
"So," she repeated. "So, Max, I found out something really important. Something you need to know. I've been trying to think of some good way to break it to you, but there is no good way."
She threw a cracker into the pond, and three ducks started a fight over it, quacking and flapping. "Sheriff Valenti is part of an organization called Project Clean Slate, which tracks down aliens. I don't know exactly what he does when he finds them, but he thinks aliens are a threat to humans, so whatever he does can't be good."
Liz took a deep breath and finally met Max's gaze.
Max felt as though she'd just shot him. He dropped down in the damp dirt near the edge of the pond. His legs felt weak and boneless. Max, Isabel, and Michael had spent hours talking about them, about what they would do if they ever discovered the aliens. But it felt a lot different now that the vague they was a real organization, with a real name. And that one of them was very close to finding Max, his sister, and his best friend.
Liz sat down next to him. "Are you all right?"
"Does Valenti know the truth about me?" Max asked in a strangled voice.
"No. Kyle told him about the silver marks on my stomach. Valenti says he knows they were made by an alien. But I didn't tell him anything," Liz answered.
Kyle saw Liz's stomach? Max felt a stab of jealousy. He told himself to get over it. Now was definitely not the time.
"There's more. Valenti brought me down to the morgue. He showed me a man's body with the same silver marks on its chest. He said… he said the same alien who healed me killed the man."
"I didn't-" Max began.
Liz ran her hand lightly down his arm. Max could feel her touch all the way down to his bones. "I know you didn't do it, Max," she said. "I know you could never kill anyone."
There was no trace of deceit in her aura. She meant what she said absolutely. She knew the truth about him, the truth he thought he could never reveal to any human, and she still trusted him.
Suddenly the rest of what Liz had said hit him. "Valenti took you to the morgue? That's so sadistic. If he did that to me, I would have been sure one of my parents had gotten killed or something."
"That's exactly what I did think. It's what he wanted me to think," Liz said. "I guess he figured I'd break down and tell him everything."
Max still couldn't believe she hadn't broken down. "That man he showed you has to be the guy I tried to heal at the mall. He had a heart attack. I tried to save him-I was making it look like CPR-but I was too late."
Liz nodded. "The handprints looked the same size as yours."
"How did you know… how did you know I didn't kill him?" With all that evidence, how could she still have believed in him? Max thought he would only find that kind of trust and loyalty from Isabel and Michael. He never imagined it could come from an outsider.
Liz met his gaze, and he thought he saw tears shining in her eyes. "I wasn't sure," she admitted. "I… I thought you might have done it. I'm sorry, Max. So much has happened so fast. I'm really sorry."
"It's okay. It's okay." Max wanted to wrap her in his arms and comfort her. But he wasn't sure it would be comfort. Just because she didn't think he was a killer didn't mean she wanted him touching her.
"What convinced you?" he asked.
Liz gave a snort of laughter. "A mouse. I saw you heal Fred in the lab. And I realized that someone who cared so much about a little mouse life could never be a murderer."
Her expression turned serious. "I shouldn't have needed the mouse as proof, Max. I've seen you do hundreds of kind, good things over the years. You always know when someone is hurting, and you always try to help. You're the best guy I know. Really."
Max felt as if someone had reached into his chest and squeezed his heart. He'd never guessed Liz gave him a thought when they weren't working on one of their lab experiments. But she had noticed things about him, and she cared about him. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice.
He grabbed a handful of crackers and threw them into the pond. He didn't know what to say.
"Do you remember anything about the crash?" Liz asked. "I know I freaked out when you tried to talk to me about it before, but I'd like to hear it now if you want to tell me."
"No. I wasn't even born yet-that's probably why I survived. I was in some kind of incubator when the ship went down." Max picked up a stick and started poking a row of holes in the dirt. "The first memory I have is of breaking out of the incubator pod and being in a big cave. I was about seven years old-well, that's how old the social services people thought I was, anyway, even though I'd been in the pod for a long, long time."
Liz picked up another stick and started drawing petals and stems on the holes Max made, turning them into flowers. She shook her head. "You must have been so scared. What happened to you? How did you make it out of the desert all alone?"
"I wasn't alone." Max hesitated. He'd spent so many years not talking about this. He'd been the one who made Isabel and Michael swear they would never say a single word about their past to anyone. But Liz had gone to the mat for him, and she deserved the whole truth. Not just about him-about all of them.