We went over to the well. Cindy ducked beneath the shabby roof and peered straight down into the darkness. I dropped a rock down there. The rock broke a thin skin of ice. The echoes rose. I shone my light down. This was what they call a dug well, about the only kind most people made back then. Most of the dug wells in this area went down into clay and shale about fifty feet.

I kept my light trained down there.

"He probably doesn't like the light."

I looked up at her. "Who doesn't like the light?"

"I guess I shouldn't say 'he.' I should say 'it.'"

"I guess I'm not following you, Cindy."

She sighed and walked a few feet away from the well. I didn't go after her. Right now, for some reason, I didn't want to touch her. It was almost as if I was afraid to touch her.

There was white moonlit snow and there was deep prairie shadow around the cabin, and on a smaller hill nearby there were deer.

But mostly there was just the wind whipping up snow crystals, and the silence. There was a whole lot of silence.

"You'll just laugh at me if I tell you," she said. She sounded almost angry.

"No, I won't."

"You know I had a breakdown. Everybody in this whole f.u.c.king town knows I had a breakdown."

"I won't laugh at you, Cindy. I promise."

She didn't speak, didn't move, for maybe half a minute, and then she walked back over to me and said, "You really promise?"

"I really promise."

"I can't stand it when people laugh at me. That's what it was like when I came back from the hospital. I'd walk by people and I could hear them whispering and see them smirking. And I'd tell this to my so-called shrink and he'd just say I was being paranoid. He also tried putting the moves on me, the a.s.shole."

"Your shrink?"

"Yeah. I really hated him."

"Why didn't you tell somebody?"

She glared at me. "Why didn't I tell somebody? Because I was crazy and if I told anybody they'd just see that as proof that I was crazy. Dr. Granger is an important man in this town." She shook her head. "But I don't give a s.h.i.t about that. It's the well I want to tell you about."

"And I want to hear it."

She walked over to the fieldstone edge of the well and looked down inside.

"He's some kind of s.p.a.ce alien."

I didn't say anything.

"He was inside the meteor that crashed here that time.

"And he stays down in the well?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because if humans ever laid eyes on him, they'd go insane. Right on the spot."

"How do you know that?"

"Ia"communicate with him."

"I see."

She glanced up at me. "You don't believe me, do you?"

"I'm listening, Cindy. With an open mind. I really am."

"You think s.p.a.ce aliens exist?"

"I think it's possible."

"You think one could exist down this well?"

"I think that's possible, too."

"You're not just saying that?"

"No."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Good," she said.

"How did you find out about it?" I said.

"That's the part I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because I'd get my friend in trouble. My ex-friend, I guess."

As soon as she said ex-friend, I suspected who she was talking about.

"David Myles told you about the alien, didn't he?"

"I really can't talk about that part of it. I hate him, but I don't want to get him in trouble."

I thought of what Garrett had hinted at, that he thought Myles was in some serious trouble. "We did things," she said.

She spoke so softly, I could barely hear.

At first, I a.s.sumed she was talking about s.e.xual relationships. Maybe now that they'd broken up she regretted sleeping with him.

But then she said, "He did the things. But I was there. I didn't stop him."

Then: "Put your head down into the well a little."

"Like this?" I said.

"Yeah."

I kept my head down there for a full minute. The wind whined as it whipped in circles inside the well.

"You hear anything?" she said.

"Just the wind."

"Listen harder."

I knew what she wanted me to hear. And I wanted to hear it, too.

But I didn't hear anything.

When I brought my head up, I saw her watching me, disappointed.

"Maybe it takes a couple of times," she said.

"I'm willing to try it again sometime."

"You're just so d.a.m.ned good to me."

She came over to me then and pulled me to her. She kissed me with a kind of desperation that alarmed me a little.

And then we were making love.

It was crazy, it was so cold, and there really wasn't even any good place to lean against.

But she was slipping her jeans down. She got one leg of them off entirely so that I could put myself up inside her.

And then we were doing it, her leaning back against the well, and finding the rhythm and the moisture to pull me up way deep inside her. Her thighs were cold but her s.e.x was so hot and nurturing that it warmed my entire body.

She had a wonderful body and she really knew what she was doing.

I just kind of followed her lead. When she went fast, I went fast. When she slowed down, I slowed down.

One time something funny happened, I heard this voice, it was very strange, it wasn't hers, it wasn't mine, it wasn't even out loud, at least I don't think it was. It was just this voice in my head, and it said something that I couldn't understand, I couldn't understand at all. I thought maybe it was the winda"out here on the prairie, the wind gets pretty strange sometimes.

But mostly I just gave myself over to making love to Cindy.

There was pa.s.sion, but there was tenderness, too. That was the part I liked.

She'd pause every once in a while and hold my face between her hands and look at me and say, "I'm really falling in love with you."

And then we'd start up again.

I held on as long as I could.

Every time I thought I was going to come, I'd slow down so I could hold out longer.

But then I couldn't help myself and I said, "I'm going to come," and she said "oh, yes; yes yes," and I came and it was sort of like dying, I don't know how else to describe it, it was like I was surrendering my entire being to her, and I wanted to, I wanted her to take me and control me the rest of my life.

And then we were done, spent.

I got down on my haunches and helped get the leg of her jeans back on. I couldn't help myself from touching her there again. I felt where I'd just been, felt where we commingled, and she must have sensed what I was feeling because she put her hand on mine and left it there for a long and tender moment.

On the way back to town, her driving her dad's nice new car, she said, "I wish you would've heard it."

"Maybe I did."

"G.o.d, really?"

I told her about the strange brief m.u.f.fled words in my head as we'd been making love.

"That's how it was the first time for me, too," she said.

Then we were quiet for a time, there was just the heater blowing and a rock ballad playing, and the farm fields blue in the midnight moon ran on and on, flat and beautiful, for endless miles.

"I want to tell you something," I said.

She looked at me curiously. "All right."

"I was a virgin until tonight."

She smiled. "G.o.d, I wish I could say the same."

"I mean, you didn't guess?"

"Huh-uh. You did just fine."

I could feel myself grinning. Couldn't help it. "I was afraid I'd do something stupid."

"Like what?"

"Oh, I don't know. Come too fast or something like that."

"You did just great. Really. Just great."