The scene: a kitchsy diner in Roswell, New Mexico, with a strong “aliens and UFO” theme: the tables are shaped like flying saucers, and the waitresses strut around in Star Trek-esque skirts. Two men at a far table begin arguing, tempers flare, a pistol fires, and a waitress drops to the floor. Instantly, two other teens rush to her aid — both trying to stop the bleeding. One of them, though, is an alien with the ability to manipulate matter. A life is saved, a secret is shared, and a series begins. I mentioned near the start of summer that I intended to re-read Roswell High, a ten-book series I devoured in middle school, and have finished the first three over the weekend.

The Outsider kicks things off when Max Evans risks his and others’ lives to save that of the girl he loves, Liz Ortecho. Max and Liz are lab buddies and friends, and each harbors feelings for the other that they don’t admit even to themselves. Max has an especially good reason for suppressing his feelings: he’s an alien. His first memories were of waking up in an incubation pod with his sister Isabel, each appearing age seven, and climbing out of a cave into the New Mexico desert to wander in confusion until being picked up and effectively adopted by a pair of lawyers. Max and Isabel proved incredibly able to absorb information, learning English quickly and then connecting the story of the “Roswell Crash” to their unusual origin. They also encountered another child like them, Michael Guerin, when they realized he had some of the same superhuman abilities they had — like seeing ‘auras’ around people. But how they came to be hidden in that cave, and why their evidently-dead parents came to Earth to begin with, is a complete unknown.

The Outsider largely deals with Max, Isabel, and Michael’s sudden exposure to Liz and Maria, and then later their friend Alex Manes, and all of the emotional ramification involved. Isabel and Michael are both horrified and angry at Max’s decision to save Liz’s life, not because they dislike her but because of the potential ramifications. The local sheriff, Valenti, is a terrifying spectre already, and he’s very interested in what happened at the diner. He doesn’t buy the story of Liz falling down in shock and accidentally breaking ketchup bottles in the process at all. As we find out, Valenti is a member of Project Clean Slate, a government organization charged with investigating the prospect of aliens on Earth and ….mitigating the threat, shall we say. Valenti is certain an alien was involved at the diner, because Max’s healing left a shining imprint of a hand on her belly — an imprint Valenti has previously seen, at a murder. As the story develops, Michael has a plan to make Valenti think the alien he’s after has died.

With that nice and neat-ish end, we move to The Wild One. In later years I have wondered if The Outsider was intended as a trial of sorts, a pilot, because The Wild One is largely incongruous. I’ve suspected it was written after the publishers realized how popular the first book was, and needed something to fill in the gap while Metz was still developing the overall story of the series. Its premise is simple: another alien teen has arrived, but he’s a Bad Biker Boy. Unlike our trio, he has no fear of humans, and utter contempt for the law or moral norms — and Isabel, who has lived her entire life in fear, is riveted by him. He’s her devil in skin-tight leather, a man as wild as the wind, and Isabel is happy to embrace him despite his disdain for her brother and an outright attack on Liz. Ultimately, The Wild One leads to tragedy and trauma — but contrary to my adult ponderings, The Wild One is fully connected to the rest of the series. Not only does it introduce Ray Iburg, who has a much more important role in the book series than the WB series done later, but the Cool Rider’s ring is the center of the next book.

In The Seeker, we deal largely with teen drama. Although Max and Liz have strong feelings for one another, Max’s concern for Liz’s life prompts him to pull away. Isabel is largely traumatized by the ending of The Wild One, and Alex is there as her human teddybear. Maria and Michael are also developing uncomfortable feelings for one another: Michael is used to seeing Maria as cute and innocent and increasingly unsettled by finding her….well, sexy. Maria, for her part, provides the non-teen drama part of this novel: she found a ring in the mall that appears to have unlocked her innate psychic powers (Maria’s very New Agey). She can use objects — like the sheriff’s pen, say, or Michael’s t-shirt — to “see” what they’re doing. Given the Sheriff’s connection to Clean Slate, she hopes she can use it to help the gang find their parent’s ship, since they’re confident it still exists. The ring — the Stone — is not innocent, however, and as Ray Iburg tells them, it’s connected to the Roswell crash. An object of immense power, it was stolen by a man who later stowed away on the ship to hide, and his discovery lead to the ship losing control. Ray was the sole adult survivor of the crash — that he knows of — and the man responsible for hiding the incubation pods. Ray’s role as mentor will become increasingly important.

Beginning my revisit of this has been fun so far. I’ve mentioned previously that I have a strong sentimental attachment to this series: my best friend and I discovered it together, he lending me the first book, me lending him the second book, and when we got to The Watcher, we buddy-read it on a school bus and talked about it chapter by chapter. I read and re-read the series in my teens, and have a strong affection for the characters. It was also fun to revisit the culture of the 1990s, with the Internet being a thing but of completely marginal relevance to the plot: Alex has a website that sounds a bit like 11points (“because Top Ten Lists are for Cowards”), and that’s it. I noticed a few jokes that I definitely wouldn’t have gotten as a sheltered Pentecostal kid, and enough local references to make me wish I’d read this before visiting Roswell back in 2016.

These books are fairly quick reads, so expect more clump-reviews before long.