He even comes to me in my dreams. I don't know if he's doing it like Isabel does it, with that weird Czechoslovakian power of hers, but I saw him in my dreams last night. He was being the annoying bastard that he is and started screaming out of nowhere. So, of course I told him, "Michael, what the hell are you doing? Do you enjoy randomly blasting peoples' eardrums to kingdom come or what?" And he stared at me. Just...stared at me. And said nothing else.

No cheesehead, no boogerbrains, no Rat-faced Back-assed Girl. He just looked at me, with those dark dark eyes of his, like he was expecting me to kick him in the teeth or something. Why would I ever do that? Yeah, he's unwashed scum, but he's still a human--no wait, scratch that. He's still a person though, even if he is some weird E.T.-Czechoslovakian without a passport. And I see enough humanity in his eyes to know that even he deserves better treatment than what he gets.

Before he can say anything, I wake up. Liz told me once that Michael's foster-father's a bigger bastard than Sheriff Valenti. I guess I wouldn't know, since I don't have a father. I don't know which of us is the luckier bastard--him, because he doesn't know who either of his parents are, or me, because my mom always looks at me and sees the man who left her. I know I remind her of him. I've seen the tears in her eyes often enough growing up.

So why do I care what Mr. "I'm so tough, I don't need you" Guerin thinks? It's not like we're even friends. He's bugged me since I first reached out to him in fourth grade, when he looked so lost and alone. He pulled my hair, broke my favorite pencil, stole my mom's car, broke her cell phone, dragged me halfway across the country to some stupid dome...

But I still remember that little spark that jumped between us when we were eleven, and Alex dared me to kiss him. Just one little kiss, in childish innocence. No eraser room pawings. No Doug Saun in eighth grade, trying to feel up my sweater. Ten small seconds of his lips on mine--it seemed like an eternity then.

And now I wonder why I'm still thinking of something that happened five years ago--why I care about some lost alien that got the crap luck in life. It's not like he and I have anything in common at all. He has Max and Isabel, and I have Liz and Alex. He's waiting for his father in a spaceship. I'm waiting for mine to roll up in a stretch limo. There's nothing there. He's not even my species. Why should I let him in?

And why do I let him irritate me the way he does? And why has his sole purpose in life been to annoy me since he was hatched out of his egg or pod or whatever? No cedar oil is going to calm me down. Sometimes I wonder if only his kiss will...and if I'll ever get to feel that kiss.

I don't care. I don't want to offer him a shoulder to rest his head on, and stroke his weird hair. I don't want to cuddle him like Mom used to cuddle me when I was little, crying about my father leaving. I don't want some big Max/Liz, star-crossed lover thing. I just want...

To know what he really thinks. To understand why I heard the scream, and no one else.

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