The Wild One

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.

He shot a glance at Isabel. She was trying to look semi-uninterested. But he could tell she was totally psyched Nikolas had showed up.

I really have to talk to her about this jerk, Michael thought.

Nikolas squealed to a halt alongside them. He didn't say a word. He just held out his hand to Isabel. Before Michael could do anything, before he could even decide what he wanted to do, Isabel hopped on the bike and Nikolas roared off.

'Whoa,' Maria said.

'I don't like this,' Alex mumbled.

Big surprise there, Michael thought. But he didn't like it, either. He didn't like the idea of Isabel being alone with Nikolas. Yeah, Nikolas was an alien. He was one of them. But that didn't mean Isabel should automatically trust him.

Michael definitely didn't.

*** 7 ***

'Do you care if I cut this up?' Maria picked up a magazine from Liz's dresser.

As soon as they got back from the movies they had dissected the whole Isabel-Nikolas-Alex situation. Then they had dissected the movie. Now Liz was working on her college applications and Maria was working on her nails. Maria loved the way she and Liz could just sit in the same room together, each doing their own thing, sometimes talking, sometimes not. You had to be really good friends with someone before it felt this comfortable to basically ignore them for long stretches of time.

'Sure. Should I ask why?' Liz asked. She stuck some stamps on the application package she was sending to UCLA.

'I saw this girl at the mall who had little words glued on each of her nails. I wanted to try it,' Maria answered.

Liz powered up her computer and opened her chart of college applications. She typed dates in the application-mailed column for UCLA and Brown.

'So what words should I use?' Maria asked.

'You could spell out a ransom note,' Liz suggested. 'Don't kidnappers always use letters torn out of newspapers and stuff so the police can't identify them by their handwriting?'