I wadded the dish towel; retrieved my coat from the living room. That afternoon, Eric had placed the crone, the skull, and the alien on the windowsill to dry; now, however, the alien was missing. I didn’t need to hurry outside. At that moment I knew what Brian had buried in the dirt, knew what he’d stomped into the earth. But I didn’t know why.

In my half-sleep, I heard my bedroom door click open. Brian padded in. Darkness almost camouflaged him, thanks to the black shirt and sweatpants he’d probably mimicked from Eric’s wardrobe. He lurked in the shadows at the threshold of my room, his breathing’s constancy like the steady ticking of a clock. Could he tell my eyes were open? At last he stepped forward, the side of his face and neck exposed by the moonlight’s cold shelf. His skin looked clearer than ever, and I could see one eye, deep blue and dreamy, like a marble held to light.

“Deb,” he whispered. He made the nervous blinking gesture.

I snaked a leg from under the blanket, and he stepped back. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m awake.”

Brian sat on the bed’s creaky edge. Moonlight cast its diagonal across him, striping a banner on his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s late.” I toed his elbow, a gesture to signal it didn’t matter.

He wanted to talk. He needed someone to listen; without speaking, I nodded, urging him on. “Tomorrow”-he looked at the bedside clock-“well, actually today, I’ll meet this guy named Neil. It’s really important. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

I didn’t. “What’s happening? What’s going on with you?”

“I don’t know where to start. It’s about all the things that used to happen to me. I used to pee the bed, I was always blacking out. You remember. All of that, everything, was stemming from something else. Whatever it was, it fucked me up. And I think I know what it was. I know, but I don’t know. It’s all fucked up.” Brian’s sentences didn’t quite connect; they were like fragments gouged from various conversations. And I’d rarely heard my brother swear. But rather than making him seem tougher or more seasoned, these words did the opposite. They lent him a curious innocence.

“Go on,” I said. I was whispering; at that second it seemed the only way to speak. “Be more specific.”

“This guy named Neil. Whatever happened to me, happened to him too. But he remembers better than I do. I’m sure he knows what happened the night you found me in the space beneath the house. He might even know what happened that Halloween, in the woods, when I blacked out.” Brian made a hiccuping sound, then quickly spat out the next sentences. “It wasn’t a UFO. It was our coach. And Neil knows. He’s going to be here soon. He’s going to tell me. To confirm things. I’ve been waiting for him for years.”

His words confused me. I opened my mouth to form questions; Brian must have anticipated this because he stopped me. “No,” he said. At that moment he inched forward, leaning his head beside me, brushing closer until his ear touched my left shoulder. I moved my right arm and cradled his face in my hand, gently closing his eyelids with my fingers. His breathing grazed my skin, as delicate and even as a glassblower’s.

The questions remained, but I couldn’t ask them. I couldn’t speak at all. I simply held my little brother as night dammed the room around us, until, at last, we fell asleep.

A merman starred in my afternoon nap’s dream. He lifted himself from the water, twisting his half-human, half-barracuda body onto a sea-splashed rock. His tail’s scales glittered green, then gold, then green again. He brushed away starfish and anemones, sighed, and craned his neck to face the sky. His flawless mouth opened and he sang, mournfully lamenting the ordinary love of a mortal…

…his voice blended into my grandma’s. “Eric, sweetie, you’ve got a guest.” So much for dreaming. I hauled myself back to reality and remembered it was the night of Neil’s scheduled return. But Neil wasn’t the guest Grandma spoke about. “I believe it’s your friend Brian,” she said. Right-Mrs. McCormick had invited us for dessert, a Christmas Eve welcome-home party for Neil.

Brian appeared in the doorway. His looks had altered, his hair now brushed and parted, his skin scrubbed and shining, touches of pink zit cream daubed here and there. He grinned, but the expression seemed false. Was that expression due to Neil?

“Welcome,” I said. “And happy holidays. Xmas Eve greetings, all that.” My two-foot-by-two-foot window verified I’d snoozed too long, because dusk had begun to settle over the neighbors’ mobile home. I could hear a woman’s angry drawl: “Junior, move your ass right on in here for dinner.”

Brian jangled his car keys. “Let’s go for a drive before the McCormicks’. And bundle up. I think it might snow.”

I slipped on an extra pair of socks and beelined to the bathroom. Tonight’s the night, I told myself. Four months had passed since I’d met Brian, four months of listening to his obsessions and preoccupations alter and equivocate. Whether Brian referred to his memories of UFOs or, as he’d recently called it, “something altogether different, more real-life,” one variable didn’t change. And that was Neil. Neil had been the subject of the first sentence Brian spoke to me, and tonight Brian hoped Neil would provide the final piece to whatever puzzle he’d been linking together.

I splashed my face with water, brushed my teeth, and gargled with my grandpa’s denture mouthwash. Grandma had taped a Christmas card to the bathroom mirror, on which a valiant reindeer led Santa through a starless night. I fingernailed the tape and pried open the card. “Dear Harry and Esther, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and a much-belated Sympathy for what happened last year. Sincerely, The Johnsons.” I thought for a minute, couldn’t remember the Johnsons, didn’t care.

I hadn’t seen Neil in months, and I wanted him to notice some smidgeon of change in my appearance. He’d expect my trademark “depressed,” so I opted for “spry” and “carefree.” I stripped off the black and shrugged myself into Grandpa’s white cardigan. Back to the mirror. Did I look good enough to kiss? Brian pounded the door, yelling to hurry up.

We threw ourselves into Brian’s car. Slam, slam. He blasted the heater, then the stereo. The music was from a tape I’d loaned him, a tape I’d originally borrowed from Neil. In the space between our seats, Brian had sandwiched the photograph from his Little League days-to show Neil, I presumed-and, beside it, a spiral notebook that resembled my journal. I didn’t ask. Instead, I questioned him about our agenda prior to dessert at the McCormicks’. Brian answered with a brief “You’ll see.” I fantasized he’d gone off the deep end, stolen one of his mother’s guns, and would force me to sidekick on a Christmas Eve terrorist spree. Well, maybe not.

Nearly every Hutchinson house had been done up for the holidays. Festive lights flashed from rooftops, windows, evergreens. A massive star strobed from the pinnacle of a water tower. An entire boulevard’s elm branches had been tied with thousands of ribbons. Brian seemed entranced by it all, and he paused at the Chamber of Commerce to inspect their lawn’s nativity scene. Electric candles illuminated the faces of Mary, Joseph, wise men, a donkey, a lamb, and a long-lashed heifer. Someone had stolen the baby Jesus. In its place was a red ceramic lobster, its claw hooking over the side of the manger to reach toward the world.

The car yielded at Main. A teenage girl crossed, gripping leashes on which two Chihuahuas trotted. She peered at us through glasses shaped like the infinity symbol. Her mouth formed the word “faggots.” Brian didn’t seem to care. I sent the girl a message: May your dogs get carried off by owls.