Low-hanging clouds had gathered, perching in tree branches and church steeples like chunks of meat on shish kebab skewers. “Not that weathermen are foolproof,” I said, “but the guy on channel ten predicted snow, and it appears he’s right.” Brian nodded and whistled softly to the music: a vain attempt to make me believe he wasn’t nervous. When he stopped whistling, I switched my attention from the clouds to the place he’d parked. The Toyota was idling behind the dugout of a small baseball diamond.

The field looked as though players hadn’t competed on it in years. It was a far cry from Sun Center’s fanciness. The outfield’s brown grass had crept inward, a rash, to surround the spaces where bases should have been. Littering the infield was a flotsam of dead leaves, empty beer cans and tobacco pouches, Styrofoam cups, crumpled pages from the Hutchinson News. The field looked as conspicuous as a shipwreck. “Where are we?” I asked.

“This is the Little League diamond,” Brian said. “It’s where the Panthers, where Neil and I, used to play.” At that, he left the car, stepped toward the dugout, and began climbing the fence. A sign beside him said REPORT ALL ACTS OF VANDALISM; the telephone number it gave was identical to the McCormicks’ except for one digit. As the wind blew, the sign shook, clicking like a Geiger counter.

“I’m staying here,” I yelled. “Too cold.” Brian stood at the plate, staring forward, as if a spectral pitcher were preparing to lob him a home run ball. He began running the base paths; after second base, he seemed to lose himself in the amorphous border of the outfield, and he headed for the fence and its battered scoreboard.

With Brian minutes away from the car, I saw my chance. I wriggled the spiral notebook free from the crevice between the seats. On the cover, in blue ink, were drawings of moons, stars, clouds, and a swarm of orbiting spaceships. Black ink had x-ed everything out. I didn’t want to snoop, really, but I reasoned it necessary. “I’ll feel guilty later.”

At first I touched the notebook’s pages as tenderly as I’d touch a Ouija board after inquiring about my death. Then I plunged in. It didn’t take long to realize it was Brian’s dream log. Yes, I’d heard him mention this once or twice, during up-all-night blabathons when he’d expanded on his UFO stories. But that had been weeks ago. I skimmed through random entries, glancing up every few sentences to make certain Brian still paraded through the outfield. There he was, leaning against the far fence, head tilted upward. So I shuffled to the last pages. Perhaps he’s dreamed about me, I thought.

As I came to the final dreams Brian had logged, I slowed my tempo. His handwriting was atrocious in spots, but I trudged through it. The dreams were dated over a month ago; I didn’t see my name, but I did notice Neil’s. I read.

11/10/91-

Last night, following my father’s disastrous phone call, the dream I suppose I’ve been dreading all these months. This time, I see Neil McCormick incredibly clearly-he’s there in the blue room, his rubber cleated shoes, pizza and panther on his shirt, black line of sunblock under his dark eyes-and then I see the shoes on the floor, the shirt, a white towel smudging away the sunblock. Neil’s lips, warm and fluttery against my ear-saying It’s okay, don’t worry. Then a door creaks open and the figure is there, four wide strides and he’s next to us, one hand on Neil’s shoulder, one hand on mine. “Neil, get his clothes off.” Neil’s pile of clothes thickens, the little hill grows as my Panthers shirt, my socks, my pants are thrown onto it. In the dream I can’t look into the figure’s face, I can only stare into his bare chest-and at first I see the mysterious blue-gray skin again, the same skin from other nightmares, and slowly, slowly, slowly it starts to change-the change takes forever, it goes from blue-gray to just gray, then from gray to grayish white, all the while sprouting little blond hairs. At last its color is white with a hint of pink, proof that it’s alive and blood is jetting beneath it, it’s no longer the skin of an alien, but the skin of a human being. A human arm, wide and hairy and freckled, and it wraps around me-and beside me Neil McCormick says here we go-

11/22/91-

Back among the trees, Halloween, and the figure’s there, his mouth spitting out I sure liked you Brian, I always hoped I would see you again-but this time the mouth isn’t the alien’s skinny slit, it’s a human mouth, full lips, blond mustache-the mouth moves toward me, nibbles at my own lips, just as they’d done two years before in the blue room with Neil-and I know who it is. It’s no alien, I’m thinking-my eyes are open and I’m not eight anymore, I’m not ten anymore, I’m nineteen, and now I know what’s happened to me, and I know they aren’t dreams. They’re memories.

I looked up from the dream description. Just as they’d done two years before in the blue room with Neil. Inexplicably, the voices from the bizarre tape I’d played in Neil’s room rang inside my head, the burping and swearing tenor of the little boy paired with the instigating bass of the adult. My mind’s warped lens focused back to a glossy spread I’d seen in Neil’s pedophilic porno magazine, but superimposed over the preteen’s head was first Neil’s face, then Brian’s. The effect was more abhorrent than hilarious. “Oh, Jesus,” I said, as if that would remedy something. Then I thought about the picture Brian had drawn from weeks back: the shoes, the number ninety-nine on the glove, the baseball scrawled with the word Coach. “Jesus,” I said again. I pulled out Brian’s Little League photograph and paused first at Brian, then Neil-his jersey, number ninety-nine-and, finally, their baseball coach.

At last I understood. The clues had been here all the time. I should have known months ago.

Brian was coming back, galloping toward the car, and somehow his face looked different. It wasn’t his clothes, not the clean skin and hair, not the makeup that covered each pimple. The change lurked somewhere inside him, simmered through his blood and bone, and only now could I see it.

He scaled the fence and opened the driver’s side door. Wind vacuumed the car’s warm air, making me shiver. For a second Brian appeared happy, eager to meet Neil, no longer nervous. Then he turned his head, his gaze dropping from my face to my hands. I still held the dream journal in my left, the photograph in my right.

I couldn’t fathom what to say first. “It’s not a secret anymore” is what came out. “Now there’s no more being cryptic with me.”

Brian took his things; jammed them back between the seats. “I would have told you eventually,” he blurted. “I really would have.” His glasses gradually fogged, and he rubbed them on the knee of his jeans. I stared there, ashamed, as he continued. “Right now, not all of it’s come back to me. I still need Neil. He has to tell me what he knows.”

We sat, silent. The fence’s sign banged and clattered. In a nearby house, a door slammed, shutting someone out. A gust of wind lifted a newspaper page into the air, and it sailed across the car’s windshield. I tried to read a headline; no luck.

“You’re such a snoop,” Brian said. “I would have told you.” I wanted to apologize, but those words couldn’t blanket all the things I was sorry for. All this time, I’d longed to bring Brian and Neil together; instead, I felt like the subject of a conspiracy. “Sooner or later you would have figured it out anyway,” he said. “I’m surprised you hadn’t. Based on what you know about Neil, plus the clues I’ve probably given you here and there. You’re not stupid.” He started the car. “It’s amazing what people know. They just never say anything, they deny it because they don’t want to believe.” Yes, I thought, that was true. “Maybe Neil’s mother even knew what was going on, maybe she didn’t want to believe that whatever was happening was really happening. Maybe my father, maybe my mother.”