She groaned and dropped her head into her hands. She would never figure him out. And it just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t like she was the one who had wanted to screw up their relationship and complicate everything. No, she had been perfectly happy being with him. Maybe she wanted to get to actually spend time with him outside of the eraser room, but that shouldn’t have been such a big deal. And to anyone but Michael Guerin, she thought darkly to herself, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But no, Anti-social paranoid delusional that he was, a relationship that actually went beyond major macking in private was just too much to ask.

Maria angrily stomped through the undergrowth. God, what had she done to deserve this? All she wanted was a normal, happy life. But no. First her best friend had to get involved with an alien, and drag her along for the ride. Then her other best friend had gotten involved, and there had been puppy dog eyes and mooning from both humans and aliens alike. And for the other two couples, it even seemed that it was going to work out eventually. But not for her. No, of course not, why should she be so lucky? And who cared, anyway?

Maria sat down heavily on a nearby tree stump. She did, she admitted to herself. She cared. A lot. That didn’t seem to matter, though, because as it turned out, the one being on this planet that she wanted to be with would rather be completely and totally alone than with her. And no matter how many times she had gone over it in her mind, it still hurt her a whole lot. “Damn you, Michael Guerin,” she mumbled, rubbing the heels of her palms against her eyes. “Damn you for making me care about you and damn you for making my life so damn complicated.”

She had no sooner finished speaking than there was a loud crack of thunder, followed almost immediately by a sudden downpour. “Oh great,” Maria said, dropping her head into her hands once more. “Thank you so much!” she cried, looking up at the sky. “I really needed this. This is so great. Just beautiful. Ugh.” She got to her feet, deciding that even though she was already soaked to the bone, she might as well get back to the cabin before the storm got any worse. She glanced around quickly at her surroundings, then realized with a sinking sensation that she had absolutely no idea where she was. Even worse, she had no idea where the cabin was.

By the time the program that Michael wasn’t really watching on TV was over, he realized that the threatening clouds outside had finally burst. He wondered just how long it had been raining, trying to figure out how long it would be before Maria came through the door. He knew she’d be pissed about getting caught in the rain, but he was glad that the rain would cut her walk short. This way she wouldn’t really have much of a choice about talking to him, and now it was very unlikely that she would run out of the house again to avoid a conversation with him.

After ten minutes, however, Maria still had not returned to the cabin and Michael was starting to get worried. She should have been close enough in her walk to have made it back by now. A huge clap of thunder crackled seemingly right over the cabin, followed almost immediately by a flash of lightning bright enough to completely light up the dark day outside. He opened the door and stood on the porch, trying to avoid the rain while he attempted to see if Maria were anywhere near the cabin. However, the fierce wind that was blowing caused him to be soaked in a matter of moments. “Maria!” he called, trying to make his voice heard over the cacophony of the storm outside. “Maria!” His only answer was the raging of the storm.

Maria rubbed her hands over face, trying to see her surroundings a little more clearly. The rain caught in her eyelashes and dripped down her nose. Her shorts were stuck to her like a second skin by now and her pale blue t-shirt had darkened to a dark blue and was plastered against her skin. “I really don’t need this,” she muttered to herself, trying desperately to recognize her surroundings so she could find her way back to the cabin. However, every plant, tree, and fallen log looked the same to her as she scanned the area around her, and a feeling of despair weighed heavily in her chest.

“Okay, okay, just keep calm and be positive,” she told herself. “I’m sure I can figure this out. Sure. I need to go, um, this way,” she finally decided, pointing to her right. “Yep, this is it, I’m sure of it. Now I just need to take this and it will lead me back to the cabin and then I can kick Michael Guerin’s ass for all of this.” Because, she told herself, it was his fault that she had had to leave the cabin in the first place. If he hadn’t gotten all up in her face about talking she would be sitting at home right now in the warm dry cabin, instead of wandering around the woods, soaking wet and shivering.

“Damn Czechesolvakians,” she muttered to herself, as she began to walk, shoving wet tree limbs out of her way. “This is all his fault. His stupid need for space and telling me that he basically didn’t want to be with me.” Maria began to talk aloud to herself to try to take her mind off of the pouring rain and how cold and miserable she was right now. “And why didn’t he want to be with me? Because he had to be alone. Yeah, that makes total sense. Did he care what I wanted? No, of course not, why would he care about that? Did he even bother to ask me how I felt about all of this? No-o. He just dismissed me and then went off on his own little way, trying to get away from earth and everyone here. If I tried to talk to him about how I felt about him or our relationship, he didn’t want to hear it. He’d just brush me off with some nasty remark.”

“Many times I’ve tried to tell you,
Many times I’ve cried alone.
Always I’m surprised how well you
Cut my feelings to the bone.”

“And now he wants to talk. Did he want to talk when I wanted to talk about his decision to end our sort-of relationship? No,” she answered herself, savagely kicking at a rock that was sticking out of the ground in front of her. “He wanted nothing to do with me. He’d tell me I was being “intense” or “irrational” or anything else that let him just dismiss me and what I wanted to say if I tried to bring it up. Hurting me certainly never seemed to bother him before. And now suddenly he’s like my guidance counselor or something. ‘We need to talk about what just happened.’ Why, so you can hurt me again, Michael Guerin?” she yelled up at the sky. “Uh-uh, I don’t think so. Not gonna give you that chance again. You come to me again with your let’s talk or your raging libido, and I’ll tell you just where you can go with all of that.”

Or would she? Maria stopped and groaned as she heard her inner voice calling her a liar. “You wouldn’t do that to him,” her inner voice told her, sounding a little too smug for Maria’s current mood. “You never wanted to lose him in the first place, and you wouldn’t ignore an opportunity to get back with him. You put a lot of yourself into that relationship, and you know you’d be willing to do it again if Michael asked you to. Just because he was a little freaked out by what he called your “getting intense” doesn’t mean you’re ready to leave it at that and you know it. You’d love any opportunity to ease those doubts he has about you two having a relationship and get back together with him.”

“Don’t want to leave you really
I’ve invested too much time
To give you up that easy
To the doubts that complicate your mind.”

“Shut up,” Maria growled at her conscience. “Just because it’s true doesn’t mean I have to admit it.” Just then there was another huge crash of thunder followed by a brilliant flash of lightning and Maria gasped, startled and a little frightened. “Okay, these storms are cool when I’m inside and dry. Out here-“ She cut herself off when she heard another cracking. “More thunder? Is it that close?” she wondered aloud. She looked up to see if she could locate the next lightning flash when she realized that it hadn’t been thunder at all. One of the huge limbs of the pine tree above her was apparently no match for the howling wind and had started to split from the tree. As Maria watched in horror the branch broke completely from the trunk and began to fall - headed directly toward where she was standing!