It was like a dream. For her to accept him was one thing, but to accept him like this was another. It was like the kiss they'd both had in their dream the other night. *Now I've taken the side of a beautiful calm. Can you see this disguise fading to a resolve? Hesitation compounds, I've nothing left to sustain. My worries here have allowed a momentary refrain* It was as if the lyrics were speaking exactly what Liz was feeling. It was eery almost how fitting they were. The uplifting music played in the background, *there's something more than the world out there* the words sounded, as Max and Liz were completly enraptured with each other.

Liz had gotten no sleep last night. Not because she had been afraid though, because she had been thinking. Because as Max had silently disappeared last night she had pulled out her journal and begun to write. She wrote for pages. She wrote about how Max had touched her yesterday behind the bleachers, she wrote about how he had so intimately shared with her his lifelong secret. How she knew he'd risked his existence and told her. She wrote about how she knew if she believed Max and she were to trust him, she were to be friends with him with the knowledge of this tremendous secret her life would change. She knew she would be stepping out of her 'comfort zone' as her health teacher had phrased last year. She was going into the unkown. Going places she was so unprepared to go. But as she kissed Max in the middle of the parking lot and more and more students gathered and arrived she didn't care. Max had taken a chance in telling her and now so was she.

"So seventeen people at school already told me about you and Liz," Isabel suddenly approached Max at his locker at the end of third period. His head shot up at the sound of his sisters voice and he immedietly slammed the metal door shut.

"Well it's not true is it?" Isabel almost laughed at the preposterousnesss of it. Max was quiet. "I mean Janine Packard said you two were..sucking face in the middle of the parking lot," a slight smile formed on Max's face at the memory, "and I know you wouldn't do that."

He hid his face from Isabel's view. "Max?" Isabel was beginning to feel less confident of her brothers actions than she had when she'd first been told. "It's not true," she repeated and Max looked up to her with a guilty look on his face. Isabel's face dropped at Max's expression. "The parking lot??" she cried incredulously and Max actually smiled and nodded his head slightly. People walking by stopped and looked at Max. The guys just nodded their head smiling widely and the girls looked at him admiringly. "I don't believe you!" Liz appeared in the distance over Isabel's shoulder and Max's focus immediately shifted to her. Isabel realized her brother was no longer paying attention and as she turned around and saw Liz she gave an exasperated sigh. He walked past his sister to Liz, with what looked like a bounce to his step. "Max, aren't we going to talk about this? I mean -" The bell sounded in the background. "We kind of have to go to bio," Max said, leaving his sister standing there with her mouth gaping open. Shocked, confused and above all things - hurt. The two sat in bio, almost unknowing of how to act around each other. Max had not questioned Liz's motives in accepting everything. In accepting him. She'd walked towards him, kissed him and everything had been forgotten. The rest of the biology class didn't forget anything that had occurred that morning however. The other students whispered, pointed and stared at Max and Liz. Neither seemed to mind however and he reached for her hand underneath the table. She smiled as their fingers intertwined beneath the countertop out of the view of the class and Max couldn't help but notice a sparkle in her eye. He scribbled a note on the blank sheet of paper in front of him and Liz edged over to read it. Fifth period - we have to talk. A worried look crossed Liz's face at the clandestine message. Max shook his head, mouthing the word "no", assuring her it was nothing bad.

"Ms. Parker - since you are behind a day, I suggest you pay a little more attention to what's going on at the front of the room," Ms. Hardy called warningly and Liz felt her face go hot in embarassment as the twenty three other members of the class peered around at her and Max. He squeezed her hand from underneath the table and she glanced quickly at the message and nodded her head.

A gym class was excercising around the track, and many looked up into the bleachers where Max and Liz were sitting. There was nothing to see however, the two were simply talking - Max resting on one bleacher and Liz resting on another, looking up at him.

"It's not like I don't trust you..." Max hesitated as he looked to Liz, "but I just - I have to know you're not going to tell anybody..about - about me."

"Why would I tell anyone?" Liz assured Max, but he couldn't help but worry.

"Maria? I mean - this, I know, is probably hard to keep from her but.." Liz thought about all the conversations with Maria she'd already cut short and dismissed herself from. To avoid conversation about Max and about what had happened.

"No one else knows?" she seemed to grow troubled at the thought of having no one to talk about it with.

"No one," Max answered softly, leaving out the details about Michael and Isabel.

"What about your sister? I mean your parents?"

"Just you," he mumbled and she leaned towards him.

"Max how do you...how do you live like that? How do you -" Liz faltered for a moment, "God it must be so lonely." And he looked up to her.

"Not anymore."

Isabel sat at a table in the outdoor cafeteria in silence with Michael, who at the moment had his headphones drawn over his head. Isabel could hear the tiny drone of Metallica coming from them and she just rolled her eyes. That was Michael's way of dealing with the day's events. Detach himself from them, pretend they hadn't happened.

Isabel couldn't though, she didn't see how Michael could either. She rested her head in her hands and let out a loud sigh.

"Tough day?" Alex suddenly approached her and Michael looked at him strangely from across the table. Alex turned to him. "Which album? Reload or Garage Inc.?" Alex asked casually, but Michael just stared at him. Alex shrugged and turned back to Isabel.

"You look like you could use a rest," he suggested and she slowly picked up her head to look at him. Alex was sweet. A genuine good guy. Who just had this tendency to stare at her a little more than she was comfortable with. She was used to it though, she got it from all the guys in the school. There was something about the way Alex looked at her though. It wasn't so much like he was undressing her with his eyes as it was something else Isabel just couldn't put her finger on. She'd been hanging out with him a good deal since Max's basketball game. Not just him - Maria and Liz too. As a group they'd all gone out, never alone of course. Lately she'd been giving him the brush-off though.

"Yeah," she mumbled quietly, propping her head up with her hands.

"So what's bugging you? School, family, me, all of the above?" Alex interrogated and Isabel couldn't help but smile at his remark.

"You don't bug me, Alex," she shook her head and he smiled from ear to ear.

"I was starting to get the sense that - "