April Fools

By Tepp

Rated PG

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Time: Spring Break at Roswell High, one week after Max and Liz’s discovery of the orb in the desert)

Liz Parker climbed over her window ledge onto the balcony outside her bedroom. As she so often did nowadays, she looked up at the stars for a moment before settling herself indian-style on her lounge chair. The nighttime quiet was only occasionally disturbed by the sound of a car passing along the the street below. A steady breeze cooled the desert air, and she pulled a blanket over her legs up to her waist. She opened her journal and began to write.

It’s Saturday the first of April – fool’s day – and I’ve got a lot to catch up on. Everything has changed again, and for the first time in a long time I feel like my life is headed towards something good, but I feel bad too. I feel bad because Max isn’t here with me, and I feel worried because I never know when things will suddenly change again. Why does everything have to be so complicated? Why does everything good have to have a bad part too? The good part -- the very good part -- is that Max and I are together again, and this time it’s different. Max is different. He called me again tonight from Phoenix. He said he missed me. Max has changed. He’s starting to tell me how he really feels, starting to open up in a way he couldn’t do before. I think he actually knows how I feel about him now, and I think he feels that way about me too. He won't say it yet, but I feel it; I can see it in his eyes when he looks at me. But I miss him so much. When he’s not right here in front of me I just worry. Am I making it all up? Am I just seeing things the way I want them to be, am I just another April’s fool? Hearing his voice was so wonderful, almost like he was here touching me, stroking my hair, whispering my name. But everything is so complicated. I worry that something could happen to him, that something will take him away. And everything is so huge -- huge secrets, huge problems, huge consequences. And then there’s our parents. Now on top of everything else we have a normal problem. I know that’s why his parents decided to take Max and Isabel away this week, to keep us apart for awhile. I so don’t want his mother to hate me, but she wouldn’t even look at me when we saw all of them in the cafe. Max was so great; he was unbelievable. He looked my Dad right in the eye and apologized for keeping me out all night and told him how much he cared for me and how he would never do anything to hurt me and how we had things that had been between us for a long time that we just had to work out that night. I almost died right then on the spot, and then Max squeezed my hand, which I just remembered he still had hold of, and he gave me this look, this little confidential smile that said he was answering my question before in the Jeep, that he really felt that way about me, right there in front of our parents. I just almost exploded. When I finally looked at my mom I realized I had this huge smile on my face. She looked like . . . well let’s just say that I don’t think Mom appreciated the joyful aspects of the situation. She’s hardly spoken to me since, but I really think Dad likes Max. But I’m grounded, Maria’s with her mom in Dallas, Alex is at some kind of computer seminar in Tempe, and Max isn’t here with me. I want so much to talk to him about everything, about everything that happened last week and about what happened out in the desert, about what it all means and where we go from here now that we’ve actually

"Liz! . . . . are you up there?"

"Oh my God," Liz gasped at the sharp whisper from the street. She slapped the journal closed, jumped to her feet, and took two steps towards the wall surrounding the balcony before the realization that the voice wasn’t Max’s stopped her. Confusion mingled with her excitement, and she couldn’t decide whether to go forward, stay where she was, or run into the house and hide. The creaking metal ladder alerted her that someone was climbing up. That voice? She knew it. But whose was it? Get a grip, calm down, she thought, but her heart was running in place. Then two hands reached the top of the ladder followed by the top of a head covered with unmistakable spikes of unruly hair.

"Michael!" Liz’s involuntary exclamation was accompanied by no logical thought at all, not even the worry that, considering her current status with her parents, she had blurted out his name too loudly. She just watched, stunned, as Michael swung his lanky frame over the wall onto the balcony. All she could think was that he was so tall.

"Hey, how’s it going?" Michael said, running all the words together.

"Ssssshhh," she said, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him over by her bedroom window, out of sight of the other one. "What are you doing here Michael?" she whispered, "is something wrong?"

"Nice to see you too, Liz," he said, easing the sleeve of his jacket from her clutching hand and turning away from her, slowly scanning the balcony as if he were looking for something. "I just wanted to talk to you . . . about something."

"Oh," she said, more puzzled than ever, following his eyes around her little private retreat, she too noticing every detail of it as though, like him, she’d never been there before.

"What the hell is that?" he said, his gaze freezing on the brick wall behind Liz’s lounge chair.

"Oh . . ." Oh God, he was looking at the heart with their initials Max drew the night of the blind date. "Uhm, that’s uhm, that’s a long story, just . . ." Michael was looking at her again, his head cocked to one side, his forehead all wrinkled into a sort of frown, his lips pursed. " . . . just, uh . . . wait a second" Liz quickly turned to look in the hall window. Her parents’ door was closed and no light shone from underneath it. It was after 11:00, and they were probably in bed, sleeping peacefully now that Mom’s new close confidante, Max’s mother, had told her that Max would be out of town all week. Suddenly Liz could again hear what her mom had said last Sunday -- that Diane Evans had agreed that Max and Liz shouldn’t see each other for a while. "Yeah, thanks for telling me that, Mom," Liz said under her breath before turning back to Michael.

"What?" Michael said, tapping his hand on his thigh.

"Oh, . . . Michael, here . . . sit down," Liz motioned to the lounge chair by her window, "but be quiet. What are you doing here?"

"Man, you’re acting like, weird, like . . ."

"Like what?"

Like . . . Maria," he said, his brow even more tightly furrowed than before. "You want me to leave?" Michael was still standing where he was before and was again scrutinizing the balcony.

"No," Liz lied. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Michael, but this was just so uncharacteristic, so unexpected. "No, sit down, Michael."

He gave her a long look through squinted eyes before finally settling on one end of the lounge chair. Liz sat down at the other end.

"Still doing that, huh?" he said pointing at her left hand.

Oh God, she was still holding her journal. "Oh . . . yeah, uhm . . ." Could she stop babbling like an idiot? "but I’ve got a really good place to hide it now, Michael; you uhm, you don’t have to worry about . . ."

"It’s okay, Liz."

"I don’t . . ."

"It’s okay, Liz." He directed his most serious gaze at her. Maybe he was about to reveal his hidden alien death stare power, but he probably wouldn’t need to use it since Liz was going to die of embarrassment anyway. "Anything good about me in there since last time?" he suddenly laughed.

"Okay, Michael!" Liz said more sternly than she meant, but his teasing had instantly restored her composure.

"So I’m still not a major character?" he chuckled as he jabbed at his chest with his hand.

"Sssshhh," she whispered and then leaned over to gently shove his arm. "Didn’t you have some other reason for coming here?" she said, not quite laughing.

"Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about the job," he said, looking away out into the night but still grinning like the devil himself.

"At the cafe?"

"Yeah," he said, still looking straight ahead, the grin fading.

"Oh, yeah, well I did mention it to my Dad, and he said to have you come by some morning next week before school."

"Great."

Liz flashed on an image of Michael and Maria when she had spied them the night they first got together, the two of them sprawled across one of the Crashdown’s tables, his hand roaming under Maria’s shirt, one of Maria's bare legs thrown over his, her hips thrusting against his rough jeans, her hands tangled in his unkempt hair. "I hear that you’re a pretty good cook," Liz said, shoving the image from her mind.

"Yeah, well, with Hank it was all self service, you know?" The grin was gone.

"Right . . . well I don’t know if they’ll let you start out there . . . as a cook; I mean you might have to bus tables or something . . . you know, to start."

"Whatever, but you think he’ll hire me?" Michael said, turning back to Liz.

"Yeah, I think so . . . I mean we’ve been short-handed for a while, and Dad sounded pretty positive about it."

"Great," he said, leaning his shoulder against against the backrest of the lounge and looking up at the stars.

Even though Liz had no idea how to communicate comfortably with Michael, if such a thing was possible at all, she could see why Maria was so attracted to him. He really was a good-looking guy, so tall and powerful with those distinctive, bottomless "Czechoslovakian" eyes and that whole rebellious nature that Maria would be determined to tame and that whole wounded victim thing that she would be aching to heal. And Maria would be good for him . . . if they didn’t kill each other. Liz wondered what Max was doing right now, and as the cool night breeze teased her cheek she thought of waking in Max’s arms under the rising desert sun and watching him sleep.

"So, you spend a lot of time out here?" Michael said, breaking Liz’s reverie.

"Oh, yeah, I guess I do."

"It’s nice."

"Right," Liz replied, trying to think of something to say and slowly starting to wonder why Michael was still there or why he was there at all. It just wasn’t like him to be even this sociable, and except for the night he brought her journal back or the afternoon she warned him about Topolsky at the trailer park he’d probably never said more than 10 words to her in a day. "So how are you liking your new place?" she asked.

"It’s all right," he said, running all the words together again. He sat back up to look at her: "You talk to Max today?"

"Uhm, well yeah, a little while ago actually." Where was this going, she wondered.

"He called you, huh . . . from Phoenix?" Michael said, as he twisted at the waist and leaned his back against the upright part of the lounge, stretching his arms out for a moment and then lacing his fingers behind his head, looking unusually relaxed but still positioned somewhat awkwardly with both feet on the ground, as though he wanted to be able to run away if he needed to.

"Yeah." Again, Liz’s mind was just blank, but she took hold of the blanket lying beside her and pulled it back over her legs.

"I don’t have a phone yet."

"Well, he probably would have told me to say hi to you, but I don’t guess he thought I’d see you, you know?" Good move, Liz thought, what a stupid thing to say. Michael didn’t move or say anything back. His eyes were closed now, the lashes so long that it looked like he was wearing mascara. Perplexed, Liz just watched him for a little while before her gaze wandered away to the red heart drawn on the wall behind him, and she began imagining Max’s voice as it was on the phone earlier -- that quiet, calm dreamy voice that made her feel safe and warm and sleepy and limp all over, and again she recalled being cradled in his arms in the sunlit desert. A gust of the night breeze blew her hair across her face, and she closed her eyes.

"Why is it always you, Liz?"

"What?" she said, brushing the hair from her eyes. Michael was sitting up again but again looking out over balcony wall at the rooftops beyond.

Michael answered in his characteristic monotone, "you know, you saw the picture, you found River Dog," Michael turned to look at Liz, "you had the visions, you found the thing . . . you know . . . the thing in the desert." He cupped his hands in front of him as if holding the egg-shaped object.

"I don’t know, Michael." Where was this headed?. Was he upset or mad? Jealous? "You know, I was just there."

"Just there?" Michael intoned, his alien death gaze directly in Liz’s eyes.

"What do you want me to say, Michael?" Liz quietly pleaded, the calm of the last few minutes rapidly turning back to agitation.

"Aren’t you ever scared . . . you know, scared of all this?"

Liz returned his gaze for a moment, "Yeah, sure . . . of course I get scared sometimes. I mean we’ve had some scary times."

"Yeah, you’ve been in jail; you’ve been chased by the FBI -- shot dead and brought back to life . . . why do you do it? I mean I know why you do it . . . I think . . . but why . . . why are you and Max so . . . look, forget it. I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’d better go." Michael clambered to his feet and abruptly started for the ladder.

"Me and Max . . ." Liz said softly to herself. "Wait Michael . . . wait a minute." She threw off the blanket and hopped to her feet. He was already starting down the ladder but stopped, only his head still above the top of the wall. Liz padded towards him, smiling. "I forgot to tell you something, Michael; I don’t know why; you just surprised me showing up here like this. It should have been the first thing I thought of; it really should’ve." As she reached the ladder, Michael took one step down and stopped again so that she had to lean over the wall a little to see his face.

"What?" he said, one foot tapping impatiently on a rung of the ladder.

"Maria called me this morning," Liz bubbled, " . . . from Texas. She asked me if I’d seen you or knew what you were doing. Of course, I hadn’t and I didn’t, but she told me to tell you that she was thinking about you if I did see you and that she had gotten you something."

"Really?" he said flatly.

"Really . . . and I know she’d want me to give you this too." Liz grabbed the rails of the ladder with both hands and leaned out over the wall, her stomach resting on the cool brick and her feet lifting slightly off the ground, to gently kiss him on the forehead.

Michael just stared at the gleeful Liz for a moment before shaking his head once and then scrambling three more rungs down the ladder, but he stopped two short of reaching the ground and looked back up at Liz with just the flicker of a grin. "Good night, Liz," he said, and then he let go of the ladder and dropped, hitting the ground running, quickly disappearing into the night.

"Good night, Michael," Liz softly lilted, smiling after him before turning to go into bed.