Between taking care of Liz and dogging Morton's every move, she and Michael had not had much time to talk since their carefree weekend excursion had turned into a film by Quentin Tarantino. She kept expecting Michael to say "I told you so," and couldn't quite figure out why he hadn't done so yet. Unless he'd been too busy dodging bullets, that is.

Maybe I should take some of my own advice, she thought. "Say, Michael, can 1 talk to you for a minute, in private?"His lean face immediately took on a wary expression, the universal male response to the prospect of a serious conversation with their significant other. "Sure, I guess," he said dubiously. "Where?"Maria pointed toward an empty booth at the back of the coffee shop. After apologizing to Alex for abandoning him, she and Michael transferred their plates and cups to the other table and settled in. "Okay," Michael asked once their relocation was complete, already sounding defensive. "What's this all about?"This isn't going to be easy, she thought, downing a gulp of fresh orange juice as she gathered her thoughts. "I want to apologize," she said finally.

Michael blinked in surprise. Usually, he was the one she expected to apologize. "Umm, what for?"For making you take a vacation when you didn't feel like it, and then giving you a hard time about not enjoying yourself." She poked at melon balls with her fork while she tried to explain what she meant. "It's like I just told Alex. You can't force someone to have a good time when they're worried about something else. You and Max and Isabel have a lot on your minds these days; it wasn't fair of me to twist your arm like that just because I wanted to pretend you and I were an ordinary couple for one weekend." She glanced out the window at the Motel 6 across the highway, and rolled her eyes. "And, boy, did this little brainstorm of mine turn out to be a complete fiasco!"No, no," Michael insisted. "It was a good idea, even if I was too stubborn to admit it. We were all stressed-out and needing a break." He reached across the table to pat her hand clumsily, an almost astonishingly demonstrative gesture by Michael's standards. "It's not your fault that Liz bumped into the shooter by accident."Yeah, but now look at her!" Guilt snuck up on Maria and whacked her over the head. "She's practically having a nervous breakdown, and all because I wanted to get out of Roswell for a while." Overcome with emotion, she told Michael about everything he had missed while trailing Morton, about Liz's panic attacks and post-traumatic flashbacks. "I'm really worried about her, Michael. I've nevei seen her like this."As edgy and guarded as he often was, Michael sometimes surprised her by revealing his true feelings. This was one of those moments. "I know what you mean," he confided in her. "Max is acting really strange, too. I don't know what's with him." He quickly brought her up to speed on all of Max's bizarre behavior, including the way he had almost lost control while spying on Morton last night in Slaughter Canyon. "It's gotten so that I'm almost afraid to leave him alone," Michael said, "for fear of what he might do without thinking."Maria suddenly wished that they had compared notes earlier. "Ohmigod," she gasped in realization. Her olive eyes lit up and she clutched her head with both hands. "Don't you see what's happening? Max has got it, too. The post-traumatic stress disorder!"Michael looked confused. "But Max wasn't shot."No," Maria admitted, still convinced that she had zeroed in on the truth, "but he mind-melded with her right afterward, while he was healing her." A vivid memory of Max, crouched over Liz's perforated body, flashed through Maria's mind. "Liz told me all about it, about how they shared their memories, and saw each other through the other's eyes." Even now the concept sent a shiver through Maria. Talk about romantic! "Don't you get it? Max must have absorbed everything Liz felt when she was shot by Morton, that's why he's reacting this way, too!"Michael nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, that makes sense, sort of." She could practically see the wheels turning in his head as he digested her brilliant diagnosis. "But how come Max is on this whole bloodthirsty vengeance kick, while Liz ended up afraid of her own shadow?"Testosterone?" Maria speculated. She shrugged her shoulders, not feeling obliged to fill in all the blanks in this particular theory. "Alex said that post-traumatic you-know-what affects different people different ways, depending on their backgrounds, personalities, etcetera. The point is, both of them are having a delayed reaction to what happened at the Crashdown that day."Which means neither of them is exactly thinking straight," Michael concluded, sounding convinced at last. He hastily gulped down the dregs of his coffee and jammed one last piece of bacon into his mouth as he slid out of the booth at top speed. "Sorry to ditch you like this, but I've gotta talk to Max right away." He pulled out his wallet and threw down a twenty to cover his share of the check. Before running out, though, he paused long enough to give Maria an irresistible grin that made her feel like a million dollars. "Good thinking, babe," he said warmly. "And don't beat yourself up about that whole vacation thing. Nobody's blaming you for anything."Good to hear, Maria thought, smiling to herself as she watched Michael hurry out of the coffee shop. Especially from Michael Guerin, of all people.

Liz Parker's journal: Sunday, June 3rd.

I don't know who I am anymore. Am I the Liz Parker who successfully coped (more or less) with the discovery that human-alien hybrids lived among us, even right next to me at school, or am 1 the Liz Parker who, all of a sudden, can't get past the fact that I was shot by accident two years ago? Alex says that it's "post-traumatic stress disorder," and he's probably right. Alex was always more interested in psychology than I was; I'm more of a hard sciences kind of girl, at least I was before I ran into Joe Morton again, eight hundred feet beneath the ground. Now I feel more like a test animal than a laboratory scientist, like a frightened white mouse beingforced to take part in some cruel psychological experiment, which I suspect I'm flunking. Why, 1 don't even have enough strength to run through any mazes, which must be terribly disappointing to whomever's conducting thb experiment.

I'm rambling, I know, but I don't know what else to do. I was hoping that writing in this journal would help me make sense of things, maybe put my traumatic memories behind me, but it doesn't seem to be working. I'm all alone here in this gloomy motel room, with the curtains drawn and the blankets pulled up to my armpits so that I don't have to look at that silver handprint again. I want to be with Max and the others. but I'm afraid to even step outside, for fear that Joe Morton will find me again.

Which is irrational, I realize. Morton wasn't even trying to kill me in the first place. It was all one big stupid accident, like you hear about on the news all the time. "Innocent Bystander Hit by Stray Gunshot." No big deal.

But I almost died. For good. And that's the part that I can't forget anymore, even when I try to close my eyes and go to sleep. (Except for one weird moment last night, when, right in the middle of that same awful nightmare about the shooting, I suddenly found myself reliving a completely different incident: that time when Max and I double-dated with Alex and Isabel, after that silly Jame* Bond movie. Where did that come from?) So what do I do now? Talking to a psychiatrist wouldn't do any good. Last fall, after that whole mess with Tess and Nasedo and the Special Unit, Max's parents made him see a shrink for a couple of sessions, but it was a big waste of time because Max couldn't tell the doctor anything about what had really happened to him. I'd just run into the exact same problem. How can I discuss what happened at the Crashdown when I can't even mention being shot? And how do I explain to an ordinary shrink where this weird glowing handprint came from? I guess I have to cure myself somehow, but how can 1 do that when I don't even know who I am? When I look in the mirror, I can barely recognize myself, and not just because Isabel turned me into a redhead. Who's that pale, trembling, pathetic, little mouse I see where my own reflection should be? That's not who I want to be. That's not who I am.