Pathetic, he thought.
Max checked his watch. Time to go inside. He climbed out of the Jeep. His new boss, Ray Iburg, had seemed cool at his interview. And working in the museum had to be more fun than his last job-doing research for his dad. Maybe if his dad were a criminal lawyer, it might have been kind of interesting. But his dad did all this environmental law, and Max was sick of reading about oil spills.
He walked through the museum doors, and a white jumpsuit came flying at him. A white jumpsuit covered with rhinestones.
"Your uniform," Ray Iburg called.
"Thanks, Mr. Iburg," Max said. "I'm really looking forward to working here."
"Ray, you have to call me Ray," he answered. "Otherwise I'll feel like I'm a hundred years old."
Max wondered how old Ray was. His hair was kind of thinning on top, and it had some gray in it. But his skin looked like it could be in the "after" part of a pimple cream commercial. It was clear and smooth. Max didn't even see one wrinkle.
"I've decided that it's time for the museum to do a full and thorough exploration of the Elvis-alien connection," Ray said. "That's why I got the new uniforms. I thought we could draw on some sideburns, too. Or maybe I could make some out of carpet remnants…"
Max nodded as if he had a clue what his new boss was talking about. It was his first day. He wanted to make a decent impression.
"I started a big display around a blowup of that photo of Mars," Ray continued.
"Mars," Max repeated. Was the guy insane? Had he just gotten a job working for a complete lunatic?
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" Ray asked.
"Uh, no," Max admitted. "I guess I'll have to do some reading or something."
"There are amazing pictures of the surface of Mars that show a gigantic rock formation sculpted to look like Elvis's face. At least that's what some people think," Ray explained. "Carl Sagan had a great quote about it. He said, 'Out of the billions and billions of rocks on Mars, this one just happens to resemble the King. I grudgingly admit this may be a sign of not highly intelligent life but aliens with low standards of entertainment.'"
Max felt a bray of laughter building up inside him. He tried to hold it down. He didn't want to offend Ray.
Ray slapped him on the shoulder. "It's okay to laugh," he said. "I laugh about this stuff all the time." He glanced around the museum. "Just try and contain yourself when you're talking to the people who come here. They take it all very seriously."
"Right," Max said. He thought he was going to like this job. Ray seemed pretty cool.
"Go try on your jumpsuit. I want to see if it fits okay," Ray told him. "There's a bathroom in the back."
Max headed off with the sparkly jumpsuit, reminding himself never to let any of his friends meet him at work. They would laugh their heads off if they saw him dressed up like Elvis.
Elvis. How could he make a connection between Liz and Elvis? She didn't have a hound dog. He thought she had some blue shoes, but not suede ones.
I am totally obsessed, he thought. I have to get a life.
"So what are we going to see?" Maria asked.
"How about that new movie that has Freddy and Jason in it," Michael suggested. He sat crammed between Maria and Liz in the backseat of Alex's Rabbit. Not that he was complaining.
"It looks scary," Maria said.
That was exactly why Michael suggested it. Watching that horror movie at Maria's had been fun. She got so into it, screaming and practically digging holes in his arm with her fingernails.
"You don't have to be nervous with me around," Michael teased.
"Liz hates horror movies," Maria said. "She's too scientific. She's always like, 'If someone got chopped with an ax that many times, they would absolutely be dead.'"
"So what do you want to see, Liz?" he asked.
She didn't answer. She just kept staring out the window with her forehead pressed against the glass.
Maria turned to him and mouthed the word Max. He nodded. He should have recognized that lovesick look. He saw it on Max's face all the time.
"What about you two?" Michael asked Isabel and Alex.
"Whatever," Isabel answered. She continued painting her nails a pale green. Michael wasn't sure why. Who wanted green fingernails?
"I don't care," Alex said.
Michael and Maria exchanged a look. Alex and Isabel both usually had strong opinions about what to see and didn't mind giving them to everyone very loudly. Alex even had a whole list of movies he refused ever to see. He called it the S list. He refused to go to any movie any critic described as sensitive, any movie with subtitles, and any movie with Meryl Streep. There were a bunch of other ones, but Michael couldn't remember them.
"O-kay, then," Michael said. "Freddy and Jason."
He had a pretty good idea why Alex and Isabel were both so quiet. He would bet anything they were both thinking about Nikolas-for totally different reasons.
Michael wondered if Nikolas would end up being part of their group, going to the movies with them and stuff. He couldn't really see it. Nikolas had been way out of line with Liz at lunch. He would have to do some major apologizing, and some major attitude adjusting about humans, before he would be able to hang out with them.
It could happen, Michael thought. It had sort of happened to him. Before the night that Max formed the connection between the six of them, Michael had had no interest in hanging out with humans.
He never thought of them as insects or anything, the way Nikolas seemed to. He'd had no problem joining a pickup basketball game with some of them or even flirting a little with a cute human girl.
But before the connection Michael never had a human he thought of as a friend. And now "friend" didn't seem quite strong enough to describe how he felt about Maria, Liz, and Alex. They were more like his family, totally there for him. He never thought he'd feel that way about anybody but Max and Isabel.
This family of friends-that's why he could move from foster home to foster home without it ripping him up. He didn't need his foster families for support or love or whatever. He already had that. He'd always had that from Max. And of course from Isabel. But now he had it from three humans. The fact that Maria, Liz, and Alex had become part of his family so fast just blew him away.
He would have thought he'd form that kind of a bond with another alien almost immediately. Just because they had the same species memories, the same genetic code. Just because neither of them belonged here. But Nikolas seemed to have no interest in even talking to him or Max. It was as if everything they shared meant nothing to him. He only seemed interested in Isabel.
Michael gazed at Izzy in the front seat. She didn't belong with a guy like Nikolas. She was way too good for him, no matter what planet he came from.
Alex pulled into the mall's parking lot. Maria and Michael climbed out, but nobody else made a move to get out of the car. Michael glanced at Maria and shook his head. They should have gone to the movie with three zombies. It probably would have been more fun.
"Please collect all your belongings from the overhead compartments, and thank you for flying with us," Maria said as she opened Alex's door.
Michael leaned back into the car and opened Liz's door. "Buh-bye," he said. She gave him a little smile and got out of the car.
He and Maria led the way across the parking lot. Michael kept wanting to check behind him to make sure Alex, Isabel, and Liz were keeping up. He felt like he was leading a kindergarten field trip or something.
A motorcycle engine roared behind them. "Uh-oh," Maria muttered.
Michael turned around-and saw Nikolas speeding across the parking lot. Heading right toward them.