Michael knew Isabel was waiting for some kind of response. This time he had no idea what to say, so he just nodded. Like a big jerk.
"So, you know Alex and I broke up, right?" she asked.
And Isabel takes the gloves off, he thought. "Yeah. I heard."
"Michael, I saw your dream," Isabel blurted out. "You had your arms around me. So now you can't… Why are you acting like you have no feelings at all for me?"
"What dream?" he asked, picking the easier of the two questions.
"The dream," Isabel repeated, as if that cleared everything up. "It was a little while before you got captured. Maria and I decided to go dream walking just for fun. She picked your dream orb, and we saw you holding me."
"Wait a second here," he said, a smile of recognition spreading across his face. "Isabel, I think you misinterpreted that hug. It was actually part of a nightmare. I dreamed that Max died and we were at his funeral. That's why I was hugging you."
"Oh," Isabel said. Her face reddened as she looked at the ground.
"It's not that-" Michael struggled to find the right words. "It's just that you're my Izzy lizard," he said, using the pet name he'd come up with for her when she was a little girl.
"And that's it?" she asked. "You've never thought of me any other way?"
"Okay, yeah, I have," he answered. He was a guy. He'd thought about a lot of things with a lot of girls.
But it was different with Isabel. He didn't think about her in that fast, speculative, pretty much automatic way he thought about a cute girl in the park or whatever.
"I've definitely thought about you as something different from a big brother," she confessed. "We come from the same place. We understand each other in ways that no human could understand us. That means something."
It meant a lot. Isabel would never betray him. It would be like betraying herself. Maybe she was right. Maybe they were capable of something more.
Michael's eyes locked with Isabel's, and when she leaned toward him and found his lips with her own, he didn't pull away. They kissed-a deep, full kiss.
But there was nothing there-no chemistry whatsoever. It was like kissing his little sister.
Michael started to pull back, but Isabel laced her hands behind his neck, keeping their lips pressed together.
Suddenly an ice pick of pain stabbed into Michael's brain. He tried to jerk away, but Isabel's hands were now pressing firmly on his back.
Michael made one last attempt to get free before his vision dimmed. His world went black.
Cameron did a quick study of the people scattered around the tiny bus station. Yeah, there were a few good faces. She should have no problem scoring a ticket.
She headed up to the window, scanned the departure times and the rates, and picked a town that was twelve bucks away. Twelve bucks was an amount that a kind stranger would be willing to give to a girl in need.
"One for Hobbs," she told the ticket guy. She reached into her pocket and allowed a slight frown to cross her face. Nothing major. She checked the other pocket. She felt her stomach cramp, as if she'd actually expected to find something there and was sort of sickened when she didn't.
I should be one of those method actors, she thought. The ones who totally live the parts they play.
"Something wrong?" the ticket guy asked.
"My wallet's gone," she answered, the tiniest quaver infecting her voice. "I know I had it at breakfast." She checked her pockets again. "Is the three-fifteen the only bus to Hobbs?"
"Only one today," he answered.
"I really have to get home today. If I called my dad, could he use his credit card to pay for the ticket?" Cameron asked. "I could call collect."
"That would be fine," the guy answered. Not a trace of suspicion on his face.
Damn, I'm good, she thought as he slid the phone toward her. She punched in the numbers for a collect call, then the numbers for a pay phone in front of a deserted gas station she'd stumbled across three towns ago. She'd been using it as hers ever since. If she happened to get picked up by the cops, she liked being able to give them a number where she was sure it would ring and very sure no one would answer.
Cameron held the receiver tight to her ear. She knew that made her look really tense. She gave the ticket guy an apologetic smile. "Just let me let it ring a few more times," she whispered. He nodded, giving her a sympathetic smile back.
Milk it just a little longer, she coached herself. She counted five more rings, then reluctantly hung up. "I guess he's not home. He works out of the house, so he should be there, but-"
Cameron shot a glance at the clock, then she leaned toward the ticket guy. "Um, is the bus station open all night?" she asked, keeping her voice soft, but not so soft the audience behind her in the waiting area couldn't hear.
"Only until six," he answered.
"Oh. Okay." Cameron felt her pockets one more time, then turned and headed to the door. She'd figured out that's how it worked best. No begging. No sob stories. She let the little fishes come to her.
"Excuse me, miss?" a voice called just as Cameron's fingers snagged the door handle. She turned around, a who-me expression on her face.
A middle-aged woman gestured her over. "Why don't you let me loan you money for the ticket?"
"Are you sure?" Cameron asked, widening her brown eyes as if she just could not believe this was happening.
The maternal-looking woman opened her purse, counted out the bills, and pressed them into Cameron's hand.
"Oh, thank you so much," Cameron said graciously. "Please, write down your address so I can send you the money when I get home."
The woman dug out a scrap of paper and a pen and wrote down her address. Cameron made a big show of carefully placing it in her pocket. Then she did everything short of grabbing the woman and kissing her. Why not? She deserved to feel good for her twelve bucks.
And maybe someday Cameron would send her the money back. Cameron had a list of all the people she'd promised to mail money to. If she ever got settled someplace and got a job, she would pay it all back.
With one last smile over her shoulder at the woman, Cameron rushed up to the ticket window. She bought her ticket and headed straight to the bus. It was more than half empty, so she had no problem finding a seat to herself.
In less than ten minutes they should be moving out. She couldn't wait. With the exception of Michael, Roswell had nothing but bad memories. She focused her gaze on the back of the seat in front of her, trying to imagine that the bus was already on the road. Someone had graffitied a heart and dagger on the thick plastic. Cameron reached out and traced the design with her finger.
The memory of Michael's mouth tracing the hummingbird on her shoulder hit her so hard, she almost gasped. She could practically feel the warmth of his lips.
She dropped her head back on the torn seat cushion and gave a muffled groan. In some ways it was one of her worst Roswell memories because it was always going to be linked to the memory of the shattered look on Michael's face when he realized she'd betrayed him.
Maybe someday, when she was, like, forty, scientists would figure out a way to do memory surgery, where they just burned out any piece of brain that held a bad memory. She'd be the first in line. Maybe they could even let her keep the hummingbird memory and destroy the shattered look memory.
She snorted. Even if the technology did get developed, it's not like it would work for her. If all her bad memories were lasered out of her brain, she wouldn't have enough gray matter left to operate a can opener, which meant the image of Michael's disappointed face would be etched in her head for the rest of her life.
The driver climbed on the bus and started collecting the tickets.
The conversation with Michael began replaying in her head. She didn't want it to, but she couldn't stop it. She listened to herself explaining why she'd given Valenti Max's and Isabel's names. Why hadn't she apologized?