Maria gaped at Max and Isabel in a shocked silence, trying to digest all the events of the past few hours.

Max and Isabel had seen a hologram of their real mother? Max, The Great Leader of his people? Tess and Max…together? Geez, no wonder Liz had disappeared. I fit had been Maria in that position, she probably would’ve freaked, too. Probably? Yeah, right! Just remembering how she had reacted when Liz had first told her about the aliens, she would have been surprised if she hadn’t caused the entire town to come out, yelling for her to quiet her hysterical screams.

“Maria? Come on, say something.”

Maria was somehow infuriated by Max’s gentle prompting. How dare he break Liz’s heart like this with that, no-good, curly-haired little B*TCH? And then wanting Maria to say something? What was she supposed to say, huh? Oh, no, Max. Everything’s all fine and dandy. It’s not your fault that Liz is gone. Uh-uh. No can do. Maria just couldn’t sit there, trying to rein in her out-of-control temper at a time like this.

Maria opened her mouth to shriek at Max when Isabel, as if sensing that things were about to get unpleasant, intervened.

“Look, we are accomplishing a whole lot of nothing just sitting here like this. We aren’t helping Liz at all.”

Maria wanted to yell at Isabel, too, but then realized that her words did make some sense. Their number one priority right now was to find Liz. Screaming at Max could come after they were assured that Liz was safe.

“Alright. I guess the first thing to do would be to get Michael over here and have him help us look for Liz.”

Max and Isabel exchanged uneasy glances. “Uh, Maria? Ummm…we hate to tell you this, but Michael’s over at Tess’s. He was pretty shaken up after he heard everything and needed some comforting.”

“And, what, he turned to Tess of all people? Well,” she lowered her voice, “people and extraterrestrials. Why didn’t he come back here?”

“Michael needed to talk about, you know, things. And both of our parents are home right now.”