The Art of Being... Max Evans

Category: Max
Rating: Suitable for all ages

Summary: It's a new year and Max tries to work through the trials of being a teenaged alien leader. He looks back on his life over the last 15 months; what went wrong, what won't change and why does it have to be him?
Spoilers: Everything up to "A Roswell Christmas Carol: The Miracle"

Disclaimer: Song lyric by the Counting Crows; no infringement intended.

Author's note: Big big thanks to Carrie for your invaluable help and great insight, and for generally putting up with me! I could not have done this one without you - I mean it.

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Part 1: The Art of Being Max Evans

It’s January 2, 2001. I’m Max Evans and I feel really stupid doing this. It’s actually my therapist’s idea. My parents still haven’t given up on the idea of Isabel and I being in therapy. We’ll probably be there until we graduate. If we live that long. Some days I’m more worried than others. It’s just one of those days, I guess.

So Mr. Therapist told me to write down my feelings. He says it will help me see what I’m going through from a new perspective and help me deal with it better. “We can even discuss it in your next session,” he told me. “Sure,” I answered. Like that’s ever gonna happen. I probably shouldn’t actually be writing “personal” things down. I thought what happened with Liz’s diary had scared that idea out of me, but I have nothing better to do tonight. So what the hell. I might even bring it to him, not that I’ll let him read any of it, so he can see that I’m making efforts. It might get me off the hook sooner. I have more important things to do than to just sit there and be told that what I’m going through is “normal teenage stuff”.

Well, I guess some of it could be considered normal teenage stuff. Parts of my relationship with Liz, for instance. Though I doubt most guys aren’t with the love of their lives because they have to save their home planet from some rebel ruler. That’s only one of the reasons we’re apart.

Another reason is fairly simple, yet it took me a while to get it through my head. Liz slept with Kyle. Liz… slept with… Kyle. For the first couple of days, it played in my head on an endless loop until it didn’t make sense anymore. “Liz slept with Kyle” could have just as well been “Elyk htiw tpels Zil”, that’s about as much sense as it made to me.

Now, my therapist would probably call it denial, which I guess it was at first. But after I confronted her about it, twice, and she didn’t deny it, I had to face the truth. Liz. Slept. With. Kyle. Now, the real question is why? Why would she do that to me, to us?

“I made a mistake,” she told me. I’ll say! But it still doesn’t add up. I mean… why? That’s the only word still going through my head on that damn loop. Most of the time I accept that it happened. No, that’s not quite right. Most of the time I acknowledge that it happened. I don’t think I’ll ever really accept it. When I start thinking about it too much, it hurts. Ha! That’s the understatement of the century. I’m beyond hurt. I thought I couldn’t be more hurt than that day back in May when she left me at the cave. I was proven wrong the day I came to see her at the Crashdown and Maria told me she had left to spend the whole summer with her aunt in Florida, without saying goodbye. I thought then that it couldn’t be worse, ever. Wrong again, Max old buddy! That day she came back, when I saw her in front of Whitaker’s office…

I don’t know how to explain it. It was Liz, my Liz, so beautiful and back in my life at last. But cold. The love had gone from her eyes. What I could see of her eyes. She wouldn’t really look at me, not the way that she used to. Thinking back on it, after the whole deal with Nasedo, and the concern she showed for me the night he died, I figured that her being aloof was probably a defence mechanism. A wall she had built up all summer, to make sure she wouldn’t let me get close again. For my sake. For the sake of my people. And I loved her even more for it.

But still, that same day when she said that she hoped it was over “…for all of you”, I was hurt. I wanted to scream “For you too, Liz. You’re part of us, you’re part of ME”, but I didn’t. I don’t know why. Something in her new attitude made me hesitate, and then the moment was gone. After that day I thought I was numb to pain. Nothing she, or anyone else would ever say could ever hurt me again. How could it? I had reached bottom. Or so I thought.

Until that night. I wish I could forget how happy and hopeful I felt coming up her ladder with the Gomez concert tickets in my hand. I wish I could forget the guilty look on her face. I wish I could forget how it felt to have the life drained out of me as I stood outside her window. But it’s forever imprinted in my brain. I will see it in my nightmares until the day I die, I’m sure. Thankfully, I don’t see it anymore when I’m awake. Most of the time anyway. Unless she’s there. Or Kyle. Or I hear a Gomez song.

So, at first I had told myself that her new attitude was her way to cope with us being apart and I was just waiting for the right time to tell her it didn’t have to be that way. Since that night... well, since I admitted to myself that that night happened, I’m not so sure. What if she did fall out of love with me over the summer? What if she never was in love with me to begin with? What if it was just a case of “ooh, I’ll date alien-boy! That’ll be something to tell the grand-kids!”? And stupid me who thought no one could ever even LIKE me if they knew the truth, stupid me just fell for it. Sometimes, late at night, a little voice inside my head speaks up and tells me just that. And sometimes, I believe it.

But sometimes I don’t. Mr. Therapist might still call it denial, but I don’t think it is. I couldn’t possibly have been wrong about Liz. Because if I have, then I’ve never been right about anything in my life, ever. And if I’ve been so wrong about something I thought was so right, how can I ever make a decision where millions of lives could be at stake, and expect it to be the right choice? How can I ever be a leader?

How can I make choices like I did last week at that hospital in Phoenix? Apparently, Liz was changed when I healed her. Maybe I made life worse for these kids. Maybe I just cursed them, maybe it would have been best for everyone involved that life just go on like it was meant to be.

But another part of me doesn’t believe that. A life, even lived as part alien, is better than no life at all. I should be one to know. Most days, I believe it, too. I believed it everyday, when Liz loved me.

Hey, I’m depressed. I’m allowed a bit of self-pity.

And the part of me that believes I did the right thing by using my gift with the children also wonders if there are other people I could have saved. Like Liz’s grand-mother. I didn’t think I could do it, then. I didn’t know how strong my powers were. Maybe I should have tried harder. If there’s one thing I learned over the last 15 months or so, it’s to not be too surprised at my own abilities. I didn’t know I could save Liz either until I did it. With the kids and with Kyle it was different. I knew exactly what I was doing. I even got rid of the blood on Kyle. If I had known back in September that I could do that, it would have saved a lot of people a whole lot of trouble.

Kyle. I’m angry with him. There, I admit it. I hate him. I always have. He had the one thing I always wanted. Then as if in a dream she was mine, for oh such a short time, but mine nonetheless. Then I saved his life and he took mine away. It hardly seems fair, does it? And he gave her the one thing I was more than willing and ready to give her. The one thing of myself I still had to give since she already has my heart and my soul. But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that she gave him that last part of herself that I thought would be mine.

And I don’t care if it makes me sound like a selfish jerk, or if I sound like my male ego has been wounded. Because I know it would have had a deeper meaning between us. The connection that exists between us, we’ll never have it with anybody else. That she could just go and give up that part of herself to someone else, to Kyle in particular, makes me angry. And I choose to be mad at him. Because I don’t want to be mad at her.

She asked me to not hate her. I can’t hate her, I love her. But she hurt me so much. So I hate Kyle. And I blame myself. Because it must be my fault. I mean, perfection was mine and somehow I managed to blow it.

Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. What did I do wrong that week, to make her go to Kyle? I thought she was coming around to seeing things my way, I really did. If such a thing as time travel existed, I would go back in time to that night I came to her balcony with the mariachi band, and not leave her side until I figure out what could have possibly happened between that moment and the time she came to my room to tell me she wouldn’t die for me.

Oh yeah. I almost forgot about that. The hurt-scale went up another notch.

If only I could travel back in time.

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It’s January 3, 2001, I’m still Max Evans. And no, I’m not getting used to this journal idea. My thoughts are on theses pages, black marks on white paper, but my therapist was wrong. I’m no less confused than I was before. I wonder if Liz still keeps her journal, or if what happened scared her out of that habit. I wonder if it works for her, putting her thoughts into words. I wish I could read it, what she writes. Then I’d know for sure if her feelings for me have changed. And maybe I’d finally have an answer to that haunting question, why?

I read what I wrote yesterday, and even though it’s all still true, I feel much better today. Because no matter what I think Liz has done, and what part of her now belongs to Kyle and not to me, I can’t, nor do I want to, forget what we had. Before I left for New York, I told her we couldn’t be friends anymore because I was hanging on to what we had. It’s still true. I thought I could never trust her again. That’s not true anymore. When she saved my life… I don’t know… I know I shouldn’t have needed proof, I shouldn’t have doubted her. But what she did for me in New York, it made me remember that what we have runs deep. And I’ve now also realized that I’m scared. I’m scared of losing her completely. Scared of remembering what life is without Liz Parker. So I asked her to be friends again, because I miss her friendship. But mostly because she means more to me than what happened between her and Kyle.

Back in the days I was still going to Sunday school I learned that faith is when you believe that the guardian of your soul will make everything in your life right again after everything has gone bad. They taught us that God was the keeper of our souls. Well, I don’t believe in God. When you know as much as I do (which is not too much, granted, but still) about how I was “created”, the concept of God is pretty shaky. But someone has my soul and will take care of it, no matter what I do, and no matter what happens between us. And that’s Liz. I believe in her. Despite all that has happened, I still believe in her.

What does that say about me?

I don’t know. All I do know is that all this writing isn’t helping as much as Mr. Therapist said it would. Or maybe it did help a bit... I DO feel better than I did yesterday... But maybe it has nothing to do with it. It might be the fact that I've played the Counting Crows so much that I'm starting to believe them: "It's been a long December but there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last..." Couldn't possibly be worse than last year, could it? Oh hell, I hope not! But back to my writing this journal. All these words and yet, there are always more questions. Never any answers. And I haven’t even started on the subject of Michael questioning my every move, Isabel withholding information about Vilandra and Tess blindly trusting that everything I do is right. Maybe I SHOULD be in therapy until I graduate.

I think I’m gonna go burn this now before someone finds it.

TBC in The Art of Being... Liz Parker

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