My Name Is...
PART 3
Isabel answered the door on the first ring. "Hey, Tess, what's up?"
"Hi," I replied quickly. "Where's your brother?"
She gave me a weird look as I followed her inside. "My brother *Max*? Are you okay, Tess?"
"No," I replied, rushed. "Sorry, Isabel, I just really need to-"
"Tess?" Max interuppted from the doorway.
"Max, what did you do to me today?" I demanded, not caring that Isabel was in the room. "And what happened to the bullet? There WAS a bullet--the hole was in my dress. Why am I not dead? What did you *do*?"
"Oh my G-d, Max," Isabel murmured. "You didn't..."
"What, you know?" I turned on her.
She ignored me. "You *healed* her, Max?"
He looked sheepish. "I couldn't let her *die*..."
"Where was this?" she asked.
"The crashdown," I answered. "Is somebody going to tell me what happened?"
Isabel went into ice queen mode. "The *Crashdown*? How *could* you, Max? All that talk you give me about not using my powers and you go and heal someone in the middle of the Crashdown??? With *witnesses* around? What about us, Max? Did you think of us at all when you announced to the world about us? Or were you just being a dick and saving her so she might fuck you out of gratitude?"
Isabel doesn't really mean everything she says. Like that, for example. I'm *sure* she was just trying to emphasize her point. She would never seriously speak that way about me. Still...nobody calls me a slut, so I slapped her. "What the hell are you talking about?"
She didn't react to the slap, but she did finally acknowledge me. "Shut up, Tess. I'm trying to talk to my brother."
"And *I'm* trying to find out why the hell I'm not dead right now. I'm sure your talk can wait."
She paled a little. "Max, we can't tell her."
"What can we say?" Max asked her, irritated. "Yeah, Tess, I just altered your life but forget the whole thing happened? What would keep her from going straight to Sheriff Valenti and telling him everything?"
"Well, that's your problem, isn't it, Max?" she replied nastily.
"If she tells Valenti, it would affect you, too." he pointed out.
Isabel walked over to the closest chair and sat down. Nobody said anything for a while--we were both waiting for her to talk. Everyone knows you can't talk while Isabel Evans has something to say.
"Well," she finally said, glaring at Max. "That's just great, Max. *You* make a stupid mistake-"
"Izzy, she's your best friend," Max pleaded. "Would you rather she have died?"
It quieted her down for a few seconds, but then she began again. "Okay, fine. *You* do something heroic but stupid. And *I'm* getting busted for it."
What, could they not trust me at all? Did eight years of friendship mean nothing to her? "I'm not busting anyone. Not if you guys actually tell me what happened."
"All right, then." There was something sinister and challenging in her eyes. "We're aliens."
"Aliens. Right." And my whole theory about a setup conspiracy to scare me which included packets of blood in my uniform and my imagination goes down the drain.
"Well, if you don't believe me, you're not going to go and tell the Sheriff, will you?" Isabel asked. And I caught a glimpse of something in her eyes. Was it fear? Was the high and mighty Isabel Evans afraid of something?
Wow. I had power.
"Leave the sheriff out of this." What was their obsession with him anyway? He had nothing to do with this. "I want to know why I'm not dead. And not alien-conspiracy crap."
"It's not a conspiracy," Max said from behind me. I whirled around, and he smiled lightly for a second. The smile faded as quickly as it had come. "We come in peace."
Aliens. Right. And yet...what other explanation was there for the fact that at this moment, I wasn't in the hospital, dead? "You're serious?"
Their faces told me everything I had to know. They, in fact, were not from around here. And I was alone with two of them. No, no, no. I backed away slowly, towards the door.
Isabel shot Max a panicked look, and he held onto my arm. I tried to pull away, but he held tight. Shit...was he going to kill me? "Tess," he whispered. "You can't tell anyone. Do you know what's going to happen to us if you do?"
I nodded. Of course I knew. They'd be taken away to a lab to have experiments done on them...and possibly to be killed. An image of them lying on white tables, being dissected, flashed into my mind. Isabel, alien or not, was my best friend. I would never let that happen to her. "I won't tell anyone."
And the doorbell rang.
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Good-Tess Fic II
Bad-Tess Fic II
Alt.-Tess Fic II
Tess POV Fic II
Kyle and Tess Fic
