A Place To Call Home... (All UC- Mature)

[Ann]

This is a fic that Angie and I wrote together. Hope you enjoy.

A Place To Call Home: A New Beginning
By Ann and Angie

Mature

Disclaimer: We do not own nor have we ever owned any of the main characters from the show and or Roswell books in this story. Although we do use the main characters from the show (Max, Liz, Michael, Maria, Isabel, Alex, Tess, Diane and Nancy, Valenti family, exc.), they do not belong to us. The characters that we created in addition, have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are a figment of our imagination.

Summary: The group is in for some big changes.

Part One:
It was a cold and rainy day in Niobe. Not uncommon for April 16th in New York. Liz Parker was sitting at her desk in her room reading Riptide which was her favorite Cathering Coulter book. This was the third time she has read it and she was enjoying it as much now as she had the first time.

She was just getting into it when her mom knocked on the door.

“Hi mom.”

“Hi honey.” Nancy replied. “Done with your homework?”

“I did it in detention.”

“Detention.” Just the sound of it made Nancy roll her eyes and let out a sigh of aggrivation. “I still cant believe they gave you detention for cleaning the erasers during lunch. What are our school systems going to when a student gets into trouble for trying to be helpful?”

With that, Nancy rolled her eyes again and walked out shutting the door behind her.

Before Liz could rally her thoughts around her mothers innocent way of seeing Liz, her brother Michael walked through the door that connected the bathroom to their bedrooms. Michael was Liz’s twin brother and her only source that aggravated her, thus far.

Michael Parker stood a whole 5’9 with sunset blonde hair spiked wildly with black tips. Muscular for his seventeen years, to the many female observers in the Niobe area, Michael was seen as a sex symbol. There was something about his “bad boy” image that drove the girls crazy. He wore a silver earring in his right ear that dangled to his adams apple, a silver loop in his left eyebrow, and a chain hung from his belt loop.

His lifetime idol was Billy Idol and like the pop star, Michael craved wild music. He had recently formed a band where he was the lead singer and bass player. Mother still did not know about this and if he could help it, she never would. Michael wanted to have this be totally his thing.

“If only mom knew how well you clean those erasers and who you clean them with. My so called perfect sister making out with Jesse Slater. Mom would have a heart attack! Gee Liz, maybe you’ll be the one to kill her off instead of me!” Michael chuckled.

“Yeah, well I wouldn’t say anything if I were you Michael. Because if you do, I will just have to tell mom about your little rock group and how Jesse is your drummer! And then I will tell her how Melissa Slater snuck in your bedroom window last night and didn’t leave until 5:30 this morning! And oh, the noises coming out of your room! I should learn to keep a tape player handy!”

“Damn! Why cant I ever get any real good beef on you? You are just so…so…Oh, there just isnt a proper word here other than you suck!”

“No Michael, but I heard that Melissa Slater does!”

With that, Michael got a huge grin across his face and said simply “I don’t kiss and tell Liz.”

He walked out and went back to his room to get ready to sneak out and meet the rest of the band.

“Tell Jesse I said hi!” Liz yelled to him as he crawled out his window. It always seemed to elude Michael just how Liz could know at the right time when he came and went…or who left his bedroom. He didn’t think how thin the walls were, or how she often kept her bedroom window open when it was warm enough.

Liz picked her book back up and continued where she left off.

Meanwhile, in Roswell, New Mexico…

Roswell High was a small town school, centrally based in the town of Roswell, a sleepy busybody town the size of 1200 people. One of the nicest things about this, aside from the obvious degree of safety a person could feel walking the streets at night was the simple fact that a teenager could stand out in a crowd. Max Evans stood out. It wasn’t because he was popular, for that was not the case at all. His best friend in the world was an old indian chief that went by the name of Chief Hughohonoboon, who lived on the Sandhill reservation on the outskirts of Roswell. Growing up, Max secretly wished he could be indian so he could use many of the secrets and experience the life that Chief Hughohonoboon had often spoken of and taught him.

No, Max was not noticed for popularity, he was noticed for his strong interest in painting. He had loved drawing, doodling, landscaping since he was a small boy. It started when he was in grade school and now, at seventeen, it was a big part of his life. He didn’t date much, his love interest as of late was the art studio at the high school. He had a key to it—another handy thing about living in a small town, the trust—and so anotehr night was being spent in the basement floor of the high school.

A paintbrush in hand, Max looked at his latest piece of work, the sand dunes of the desert, the brilliant blue sky of summer, with all the vibrant hues of orange, burnt amber, red, and azure. Max poured all of himself into his painting and would often lose track of time. Somehow it would just get away from him. An hour spared for his love would turn into three or four and sometimes all night. No one could understand this passion, no one except an artist.

There was another side of Max that he tried to ignore for it unnerved him at times. As far back as he could remember, Max had been able to heal people and animals. He didn’t realize he had this ability until put under the position. A year ago, while driving his jeep to the dunes, Max wasn’t looking and hit a dog. He got out and looked and the dog was clearly dead. He went to go pick it up, move it out of the road, and the dog mysteriously came to life. He could not make himself leave the dog there and so took it home and named it Lucky. Then one day, he cut his arm while changing the blades on the lawnmower. When he went to put pressure on the wound to get the bleeding to stop, the cut mysteriously disappeared. Max never spoke a word of any of this to anyone else, for it was something he couldn’t comprehend himself. Why spook his family or anyone else for that matter? No, this was his own secret phenomenon that he kept hidden, often telling himself to forget it ever happened. He had controlled the memories but at night they appeared to haunt him when he least expected them to.

But the one thing that Max could not ignore was much more life altering than this. One Friday afternoon he was in his bedroom watching Footloose. He kept thinking to himself how he wished he could be Kevin Bacon because he ended up with the girl and happy in the end. After the movie had ended, he went into the bathroom to get some ibuprofens out of his medicine cabinet to get rid of the sudden headache he had just acquired. When he looked in the mirror, he realized he was no longer Max Evans! He had turned into Kevin Bacon!! Spiked hair and all. How had this happened?

He could not figure out how to get back to his normal self and could not face his family this way. So he got in his jeep and left home. He found the nearest pay phone and called his mom at work. He told her that he was going to spend the weekend at his friend Daryl’s house. He was the only one that knew that Daryl and his family were in Paris. She didn’t have to know. It took him the entire weekend to figure out how to get back to his normal self. If he had only known that all he had to do was concentrate on who he wanted to be and drink a glass of water, he could become whoever he wanted to become. What in the world did water have to do with it? He had no clue, but whatever worked, he was willing to do and was determined to figure it out.

Dismissing this thought, Max got to work on his painting. What was the use in dwelling on it when he had work to do?

What in the world had she been thinking? Isabel was questioning this to herself ever since she walked into the nightclub with her four friends, Danielle, Rachel, Simone and Rachelle, an hour and a half ago. Isabel was not the partying type, though she did enjoy hanging out with friends. She was social, she guessed, but not so ready as they appeared to be to go dance club hopping to find a boyfriend. If she wanted that, she could go to the school dance next week—which she most likely would anyway. She liked dances. Still trying to get over the breakup with Billy Brinson, a boy she had dated for over a year, Isabel wasn’t so crazy about getting involved again. She had become afraid of being used and rejected again. But her friends were determined she needed to get out, get back into the swing again. And there they were, the five of them, moving around a very crowded hall with wall to wall people dressed in provocative clothing, rubbing against each other, some smoking. The longer they were there the louder and more cramped it became, the more uncomfortable Isable felt. Isabel turned to Danielle, her most outrageous friend with red hair and green eyes who had dated eight guys in the past two months. Danielle was not against playing the field and she was not against bragging about it either. Isabel was no angel herself, but she wasn’t a girl who talked about her love life to the world. Grimacing to the point of whining now, Isabel said, “Danny we need to get out of here. This place is a harem of trashy people.”
Danielle or as she liked to be called “Danny” rolled her pretty make-up covered eyes and said, “It is not! It is cool.” Isabel pulled Danny to the side, in the first place she could find, and said, “Cool? Cool! This is terrible. I’m leaving.” Isabel started to walk away, but was corralled by her other patrols, Rachel, Simone and Rachelle and they were crossing their arms, looking indignant. Isabel knew she could hold her own to one or two, but four? Impossible. They were too willing to call her a prude and make her feel an inch tall. Just as they started doing. By the time she had gotten her argument out and had heard theirs, Isable knew it was pointless. So there she stayed for the next hour and a half, alone, miserable, and wishing she could be anywhere but at the Hotspot Night Club on a Friday night….

Isabel had considered the four to be her friends since they were in the seventh grade. However, over the last six months, she began to notice that as she matured, they seemed to get more immature. She liked to hang out with friends, go shopping, and see movies whereas they liked to go to nightclubs, smoke, drink, and have cheap sex with any man willing. This was not the kind of lifestyle she chose to live.

After they left the nightclub and she went home, she decided it was time to end her relationship with the other four girls. Being friends with them was going to do nothing but get her into trouble and she avoided trouble at all costs. Being in jail once was enough for her and she did not want to go back. She didn’t want to go the first time but when her so called best friend decided to shoplift while her and Isabel were out shopping for homecoming dresses, Isabel went down with her because her friend hid a tube of lipstick in Isabels’ handbag. Just for being there, she now has a mark on her record.

It took her over a year to live it down and prove that she had nothing to do with it and was not some hoodlum out to cause trouble. She had to see a probation officer and go through counseling because even though it was proven that she had nothing to do with it, she was still an accessory to the crime. It was a long and hard road and one she didn’t want to go down again. This is when Billy decided she was not good enough to be with.

She had fun with Billy after the breakup though and he didn’t even know what hit him. Isabel had learned right after the breakup that she could enter peoples dreams and make them see and hear her and/or whatever she wanted them to see and hear. So after the breakup with Billy that left her devastated, she went into his dreams.

By the time she was finished with him, Billy had strong feelings for his best friend Mike that he could not quite explain. All he knew was that he had recurring dreams of being with Mike. Isabel never let him see or hear her because if he had, it probably wouldn’t have worked. When he made a move on Mike, their friendship quickly ended leaving Billy to feel the same feelings of rejection as Isabel went through.

When his parents found out about his newfound preference, they decided it would be best if he no longer lived with them. Shortly after that, Billy moved to New Haven, CT.

She later dreamwalked him again and reminded him that he was not in fact gay so that he would not be permanently marked. She did not want to ruin his life, just teach him a lesson.

Isabel lived her life with fear that someone would figure out that she had the ability to do this so she was very careful not to let anyone figure it out or get too close to her.

Back In Niobe, NY

Liz had put her book down for the night and was getting ready to go to bed when she heard Michael come back in. She thought something must be wrong because he was only gone for 2 hours. He normally stayed out half the night. Before she could go to check on him, she noticed Jesse climbing in her window.

He had dark blonde hair that went halfway down his back, blue eyes and a somewhat odd build. He had very broad shoulders and a tiny waist. Liz did not know what she saw in him but was something captivating about him that she could not quite explain. He was the first guy she had ever dated.

Her parents were very strict about who her and Michael could date and so they dare not let it be known who they are with.

Liz noticed a look of worry and anticipation on his face.

“Hi Jesse.” She said as she walked toward him.

“Hey Liz. We need to talk.”

These are the four words every girl hates to hear. She knew she had not gotten very close to him but she thought it would make it more special when they finally did come together.

Liz sat down expecting the worst. Would he break up with her since she had not given herself to him?

“Whats wrong Jes?”

“I…I…” He wiped the sweat off his brow. “I am moving back to Oregon. My dad is getting transferred to a military base up there and we have to go. I am so sorry Liz, I love being with you and hoped this day would never have to come.”

With that, Liz wiped a tear from her eye, walked to Jesse, put her arms around him and kissed him. She wanted him to know how she felt about him. They kissed passionately.

Jesse suddenly pulled away surprising Liz.

Liz had a look of almost hurt and confusion in her eyes.

“I cant do this Liz. I cant get this close to you because if I do, I am not sure I could stop myself and I will not take advantage of you. I care about you too much.”

He looked at her for a minute, kissed her on the forehead and crawled back out the window.

Liz could not help but feel happy. Not that he was leaving, but that he actually cared about her that much.

She ran to the window and yelled out at him.

“Goodbye Jesse Slater. I will always remember you!”

Michael walked into Liz’s room and sat on the bed.

“Well, now what?” he asked.

“Now we move on somehow. We continue to support each other and we will eventually get through this.” She replied with tears streaming down her face.

Liz was surprised to see that Michael was also crying. He had only been dating Melissa for two weeks, so she knew he wasn’t crying over that.

“Michael, what in the world are you crying for? It isnt like you were dating her for that long.” Liz said

“I am not crying about Melissa, Liz. I am crying because she took my favorite jacket!”

Liz rolled her eyes and pushed him out of the room saying “Only you Michael. Only you!”

TBC...