Sadie's legs were getting tired from squatting underneath the windowsill. This argument seemed like it might go on for a while, so she slid down the wall of the house until she was sitting directly under the window. This way, she could still hear every word Maria said, and she could add to her logbook at the same time.

"This 'alien crap' is what puts food on the table, young lady," Amy cried.

Sadie tuned her out for a moment while she flipped to a fresh page in the notebook on her lap. She took a pencil from her backpack and began drawing a picture of Maria, quickly filling in the details… the pattern on the skirt she was wearing, the way Maria's ponytail sat high up on her head.

"… this is a family business and you're part of the family," Amy was saying.

"You call this a family?" Maria replied. "There are two of us, you and me. You sell alien stuff at flea markets, I work at the Crashdown. That's it. We have no family business. We barely have a family!"

Sadie flipped to another blank page and began to write. Mom sells alien toys and stuff, she scribbled quickly. Maria doesn't like to help.

"… enough of Michael?" Amy's voice broke Sadie's

concentration. Was Michael Maria's boyfriend? Sadie got up and peered through the window again. Maria was standing with her hand on the doorknob, ready to leave the house.

"No, Mom, I haven't seen enough of Michael," Maria was saying. "I like to see him as much as I can. You might not remember this, but when you have a boyfriend, you actually like to hang out with him." She turned and pulled the door open so quickly that Sadie barely had time to duck out of sight behind the bushes.

Maria stomped down the driveway and opened the door of her car.

"There's more to life than Michael Guerin, you know!" Amy shouted after her.

Maria didn't answer; she just climbed into the car and peeled out.

Sadie sighed. So much for trying to follow Maria. She looked back down at the notebook in her lap and wrote some more. Maria drives a reddish Volkswagen. Her boyfriend's name is Michael. Michael Geerin.

That would do for now. Sadie closed the notebook and stared at the cover for a moment. Glued carefully to the front of the book was a large, glossy school picture. A picture of Maria.

"Soon I'll know everything about you," Sadie whispered to the picture. "Everything."

Maris sat behind her huge cherry wood desk, poring over her file on the Healer. She had a photograph from the incident at the hospital in Phoenix last December. The Healer had cured an entire cancer ward full of children, and there was a security photo of a teenage boy with long hair. The FBI Special Unit… from whom Maris had bought this file… had thought this boy was the Healer. But Maris wasn't so sure.

"It's worth investigating, I guess," she murmured, writing a note to herself to have a private investigator find out who the guy in the photo was.

Dr. Sosa's thin, reedy voice interrupted her thoughts. "You told me to report at the end of the day."

Without looking up, Maris said, "Come in and shut the door."

Alan entered her office and closed the thick metal door behind him. "Liz Parker left about ten minutes ago," he said.

"And?" Maris asked. "Did you give her the serum?"

Alan snorted. "Of course not. I had to have some control samples."

"Like what?" Maris asked.

"I have the old samples of the Healer's cells, and now I have samples of Liz Parker's. I managed to get a piece of her hair without her noticing."

"I'm bored by this, Alan," Maris said.

"If you want me to track the changes in her after I give her the serum, we need to have a baseline sample from before she has the serum," Alan said petulantly. "And besides, I found out something very interesting."

"What?"

"Her DNA is odd."

Maris frowned. "Odd how?"

"It has some similarities with the DNA from the Healer's cells."

Maris sat back in her chair. "That is interesting," she said. "Are you suggesting that when he heals, he actually changes the structure of the patient's DNA?"

"It would appear so," Alan said.

"So if he heals my husband, he'll be turning Clayton into some sort of superman," Maris said, more to herself than him.

"No, not at all," Alan corrected her. "Liz Parker isn't superhuman. She's simply… different. There's no reason to think the mutated DNA has any effect on her daily life. It may just be a tag left behind by the healing process. It doesn't seem to serve any purpose."

"Oh, please, Alan," Maris snorted. "You scientists can't. figure out the purpose of most of our genetic material. Don't pretend you know what this DNA does."

Alan sat down in one of her guest chairs without even

asking. "I think we need to reconsider using Liz to test the serum," he said.

Maris stared at him with contempt. "No."

"Maris… Ms. Wheeler. Liz already has compromised DNA. We won't be able to tell how the serum works on a regular person, a person who's never been healed by the Healer. She isn't a good test subject."

"Didn't you just say that you think the mutated DNA has no effect on her?" Maris asked.

Alan looked confused. Got him! Maris thought with satisfaction. She could always tell when Dr. Sosa was trying to worm his way out of doing something unpleasant.

"Be sure to give Liz the serum tomorrow," Maris instructed him. "Now get out of my office."

Kyle opened the front door and walked wearily inside. He tossed the keys onto the table beside the door and wiped his sweaty palms on the dark blue jumpsuit that was his uniform at Toby's Garage. Then he wrinkled his nose. He'd been underneath a car for the last three hours, but the air in the house he shared with his father was even harder to breathe than exhaust fumes. "Jeez, Dad, open some windows," he cried, fanning his face.

"Sorry, son," Jim Valenti called from his seat on the couch. "I guess we should clean up in here one of these days." Valenti took a swig of his Coke and continued watching TV

"Yeah, maybe next time I have an hour off," Kyle muttered as he forced open the living room window. Two men, their dirty clothes, and lots of leftover takeout could create quite a stench.

"How was your day?" Valenti asked.

"Uh… it sucked," Kyle replied. "How 'bout you? What did you do today?"

Valenti yawned. "Oh, a little of this, little of that."

Translation: Nothing at all, Kyle thought. He tried not be angry at his dad. After all, it wasn't Valenti's fault he'd lost his job. He'd been trying to help the aliens, the same way Kyle always tried to help them. He owed Max Evans his life, and Isabel was turning into one of his closest friends. Hell, even Michael had his moments. So if the interplanetary gang needed help, the Valentis were there.

Too bad it usually wreaked such havoc on their lives.

Kyle knew his father would snap out of this depression eventually and find a new job. But he'd been a police officer all his life, like his own father before him. Without his badge, Valenti didn't know what to do with himself.

Kyle opened the fridge and let the cool air wash over his hot skin. He took a cleansing breath and tried to remember his Buddhist teachings. He let the anger drain slowly from his body. He loved his father, even if he was no longer bringing in a single cent.

"When the man becomes a child, the child must become a man," he murmured. They would be all right. His mechanic job covered the mortgage payments, and the new Meta-chem job would buy some food. As long as his father got it together before Kyle had to go back to school in the fall, they'd do fine.

"Hey, close the fridge!" Valenti called. "You're wasting electricity."

Kyle clenched his teeth. "It's my electricity," he whispered. Still, he closed the refrigerator and turned toward his father.