Did you see his lady
She was looking where he'd gone
But she wasn't letting on that she was grieving

“So, what happened, Max?” Isabel asked anxiously when I returned home without her package. She was curled up on my bed, waiting for me. She looked like she’d been crying, but I knew better than to ask. She’d insisted that I give Michael everything we’d found so far about where we came from. I knew she meant it as a peace offering, but it was too late for that.

I didn’t know how to tell her gently. “He’s really leaving,” I said. I flinched at the look of pain that crossed her face and turned away.

I went to my window and looked out at the darkness, wishing things had been different. Wishing that Michael had taken my hand all those years ago. Wishing that we’d all been adopted together, that he hadn’t been the odd man out. I knew he didn’t resent the life Isabel and I had ended up with, but still, we couldn’t help but feel bad. All these years, we’d known he had it rough, but we’d turned a blind eye. As if making a sleeping bag on the floor available to him absolved us of any other guilt.

“I can’t believe this,” Isabel said brokenly. I couldn’t believe it either. I'd driven back from Hank’s trailer in a daze.

Isabel started crying, but I couldn’t turn around. I knew that if I saw her crying, I’d start too.

“We’ve lost him,” I said, trying out the sound of the words, as if saying them would make it seem real. “He said goodbye. He said he’d stay in touch, but...” my voice broke and I couldn’t go on. I felt Isabel’s arms come around me, and suddenly I was crying with her, as if I was 6 years old again, watching Michael run away from the headlights that had captured Isabel and me. The light had separated us, leading the two of us to our happy Evans home, and Michael to his nightmare of foster care.

We held each other, crying for our brother, until Isabel surprised me by abruptly pulling away. She wiped her tears off with the back of her hand. “I can’t let him go alone,” she said resolutely.

She's bound to go
Perhaps she'll find him waiting for his boat in some city far away
She's bound to go

“Isabel, what are you saying?” I followed her into her bedroom. She grabbed her large backpack and pulled it down from her closet shelf.

“I told him that I would always be there for him,” Isabel insisted. She started throwing jeans and T-shirts into the bag while I stood watching in disbelief. “He needs me.”

I knew she was regretting her harsh words to him, taunting him to go ahead and run away. Even if it *was* what he did best, she hadn’t thought he’d really do it. She’d been daring him to take the other path, the one where we’d all end up living happily ever after in Roswell. But none of us believed in happily ever after any more.

She stopped her packing for a moment and looked me in the eye. “He needs both of us,” she said pointedly.

“Isabel, what about our parents, our lives here? What about Liz and Alex?” What about *me*, I wanted to say, but I didn’t.

“What about them?” she said fiercely. “They have each other, they have the entire human race. We’re all Michael has,” she reminded me, as if I’d ever forget.

Lately I remember afternoons of smoke and wine
There was nothing we could find but peace and pleasure
And with a smile he told me that he wanted just to be
On his way across the sea no man can measure

He won't be back,
And the sun may find him sleeping in the dust of some ruin far away
He won't be back

“You’re serious about leaving Roswell?” I asked her incredulously. She’d always loved her life here more than Michael or I had. She’d seemed happy, determined to fit in, to be popular, to be the perfect daughter. She’d been the one least interested in finding out the secrets of our past.

“Maybe Michael is right. Maybe none of us belong here,” she mused, pulling a jacket out of her closet, examining it for a moment, then putting it back in and pulling out a different one. “What if we have real family somewhere out there? Don’t we owe it to them to search for them? What if there is a way home...to a place where we could be normal? Where we wouldn’t have to be afraid of Valenti and the FBI, or be looking over our shoulders every minute of the day.”

I thought about what I’d said to Michael when I’d handed him Isabel’s bundle. “It means nothing without you.” Had I just been saying that to guilt him into staying, or had I really meant it?

“I’m tired of being afraid all the time, Max,” Isabel said wearily, finally deciding on the second jacket and pulling it on. She busied herself zipping up her bag and pulling her hair up into one of her perfect ponytails.

I felt torn by her words. I was tired too, tired of always trying to be in control of everything. Of trying to be the perfect son, the perfect “human.” Afraid that any day the FBI would swoop down and grab the three of us, so busy keeping our heads fearfully buried in the desert sand that we’d lose any chance at finding our real place in the world.

But I was also afraid that if we found our real home, it would be so different from what we were used to here on earth that we would never fit in. That we’d forever feel like outsiders.

I'd always been the voice of reason, the one insisting that we live these human lives as quietly and discretely as possible. I’d been the one to insist on the sacred pact, and I’d been the one to break it. I wondered if Isabel would ever forgive me for that? I knew Michael never would.

Now that we had a lead on where we really came from, was Michael right to throw caution to the wind and go after it? Was the truth worth the risk?

Was the devil you knew better than the devil you didn’t?

“Make your choice, Max,” Isabel said, interrupting my thoughts. She swung her backpack onto her shoulder and faced me defiantly. “I have.”

Did you see our brother
He was here the other day
But he only came to say that he can't breathe here

Did you see his lady
She was reaching for his hand
Just as if to tell her man that she can't either

Isabel followed me back into my bedroom where I started packing my own bag. If there was one thing I knew, it was that the three of us belonged together.

“If we hurry, maybe we’ll catch him before anyone picks him up hitchhiking,” I told her. She gave me a grateful smile as she went to my closet and pulled out my favorite jacket.

“Should we leave a note for Mom and Dad?” she asked.

I reached for my jacket and she helped me shrug into it. “I wouldn’t know what to say,” I admitted, looking towards the door to the hallway, where our parents were sleeping just a few doors away.

“No farewells, then,” Isabel agreed sadly.

I knew she was thinking about Alex, and I was thinking about Liz. We’d be hurting them, but not as much as if we stayed and brought the FBI down on their heads too. I‘d told Liz that I had to stay away to keep her safe. But I thought I’d always have the crutch of seeing her every day at school, smelling her hair in biology lab, having her bring me bottles of Tobasco sauce along with my Cherry Coke at the Crashdown.

A part of me was hoping that I’d be able to come back one day and explain all this to her. But I knew that I was just lying to myself.

We carried our bags out to the jeep and climbed in. Neither of us looked back at the only home we’d ever known. I slowly drove towards the highway, hoping that our real home was out there somewhere, waiting for us.