But finding the guard would be as hard as finding the ship, Michael thought. The guard could be in the desert or DC or South America or China, too.
"I guess if you knew how to find the guard, you wouldn't really need my help, though, huh?" Maria said, echoing his thought.
She sounded really bummed. Michael studied her face. She looked tired and sad. Maria was like that. When you were her friend, it was like what happened to you happened to her. She cared that much.
"I should get home," Maria said. "Remember to ask Dylan how the dance went. And get details. Guys never bother to get the details."
She grabbed her purse. Well, actually it was a beat-up lunch box-one of the old metal ones. It had a picture of Miss America on the front. Definitely G rated.
"Details. Right," Michael answered as he followed her out of the room and down the hall to the front door.
"Nice to meet you, Maria," Mr. Pascal called from the living room.
"You too," Maria called back.
"I'll walk you out," Michael told her. He led the way to her car. They both hesitated when they reached it. "Are you sure you're okay?" Michael asked. "I hated the way you looked when you were paralyzed."
"I'm fine. I just wish I could have helped," she answered. She opened her lunch box purse and pulled out her keys. Then she stood there, jingling them in her fingers.
The image of Maria with her arms around him as they danced in the living room shoved its way into his mind. Had she really wanted him to kiss her last night? Did she want him to kiss her now? Was that why she was just standing there, not making a move to get into the car?
Maybe he should do it. A fast good-night kind of kiss. Nothing major. A test to see if the little-sister feeling came rushing at him. If he was really careful about duration of lip-to-lip contact, he might not even completely cross over into the something-more-than-friends zone. There was such a thing as a friendly kiss, wasn't there?
He took a quick glance around the street to see if anyone was watching-and spotted Sheriff Valenti's cruiser gliding toward them. He heard Maria give a little squeak, so he knew she'd seen it, too.
Valenti continued past without slowing down. "That guy is everywhere," Maria said.
"Yeah," Michael agreed. "He doesn't want a dog peeing on a fire hydrant that he doesn't know about. I bet he knows where my parents' ship is."
He and Maria locked eyes, and he knew they'd had exactly the same thought at exactly the same time. If they could get something of Valenti's, Maria could use it to do her seeing thing on him.
"Michael-" she began.
He nodded. "I guess I'll need to pay a visit to the sheriff sometime soon."
"You mean we will," Maria corrected him.
"And after we snag a pair of his boxers or whatever, you can just check in on Valenti a couple of times a day until you find out what we need to know," Michael continued.
"I'm not touching Valenti's boxers-even for you," Maria joked. Then her expression grew serious. "But it might take a while to get any good info." She sounded worried.
"Hey, it will be a lot quicker than crawling over every inch of the desert the way I've been doing," Michael answered. His odds of finding the ship had gotten much, much better in the last few minutes, thanks to Maria.
She unlocked her car door and climbed in. She rolled down the window. "Okay, so we have a plan," she said. "I'm spending the day with Kevin and my dad tomorrow-a visitation rights thing-but after that we can get started."
He felt like doing one of Maria's wild happy dances. He was going to find his parents' ship. He knew it. He was going home!
Except… except it wouldn't be much of a home with no family there waiting for him. He'd be surrounded by a bunch of strangers.
Maria gave a little beep on the horn as she pulled away from the curb. Michael waved to her.
Maybe Max and Isabel would go with me, he thought. Yeah, that would be cool, taking in the sights with Izzy and Max. He smiled at the picture.
Then his smile faded. Max would never leave earth, not while Liz was here. And Isabel had decided to live the rest of her life as just a "normal human girl," whatever that meant. And besides, if he did get the ship to work, if he did return to their home planet, he'd be leaving Maria, and Liz, and Alex behind. The three humans had become almost as close to him as Max and Isabel. Losing them… Michael didn't even want to think about the hole that would rip inside him.
He stared down the deserted street. Maria's car had disappeared. He pulled down the sleeves of his sweatshirt. It was colder out than he thought.
Maybe he should have kissed Maria. That would have kept him warm.
"A nematode, for example, can dry up and turn crispy. Crispy-that's a scientific term," Ms. Hardy told the class. "But when it's put into water, it comes back to life."
Just call me Mr. Nematode, Max thought. Because when Liz wasn't around, he could feel himself drying up inside until he was half dead. And then when he saw her… total reanimation.
"Here's how it works. When the nematode dries out, its cells make a special compound," Ms. Hardy said.
Max tried to pay attention to the teacher's explanation, but his eyes kept drifting back to Liz. She had her head lowered as she took notes, her long hair forming a curtain that hid most of her face from his view.
But he didn't need to see her face to know how she was feeling. Her aura said it all. The deep red bolts of fury that he'd seen in it outside UFOnics had faded. But what had replaced them was even worse-the oily gray-green of deep sadness now covered her entire aura. Liz was miserable.
And it was all his fault. From the day he first told her his secret, he'd been screwing up her life. He'd put her in danger from Valenti, that was bad enough. But then he'd messed with her head-kissing her, then telling her they had to be just friends, then kissing her again, then telling her they had to be just friends again. Could he have hurt her any more if he'd spent months coming up with some master plan? He didn't think so.
The least he could have done was leave her alone after all that-even if it did make him feel like he was drying up inside. But no, he had to pull that psycho stalker boy stunt. The next time Liz was out with a guy, she'd probably spend the whole time scanning the crowd, trying to figure out which one was Max.
He had to admit part of him-the big, ugly, selfish part-liked the idea of Liz ignoring other guys, even for such a twisted reason. But Max wasn't going to let that part rule him. He was going to do the right thing. If it made him crumble into a pile of gritty dust, well, too bad for him. He deserved it.
Max forced himself to tune into Ms. Hardy again. "Answer the questions on page forty-two for Wednesday," she said.
The bell rang. Liz shoved her notebook in her backpack and bolted. She obviously did not want one more second of Max contact than was absolutely necessary. She'd even skipped lunch in the quad today.
Max grabbed his stuff and took off after her. "Liz, wait," he called, running out into the hall. He realized a second too late that she'd been talking to Jerry. Great. He had to end up doing one more thing to make himself look like a total jerk, right?
Liz spun around and strode back over to him, her dark eyes glittering with anger. "You better be calling me to say you're moving to another state," she snapped. "Otherwise I'm out of here."