What happens next in this story of mine, I remember quite vividly. I was at the Crashdown, sitting with Max, Liz, and Maria in a booth. We were talking about something… Okay, that I don't remember. However, I do remember what happened when we were interrupted.

Valenti came walking in the door, looking as if he had just seen a ghost. How could I have known at the time that he did see a ghost, I don't know. The look on his face, though, it was urgent, like he was losing control. It scared me. I mean, he is supposed to be the grown up here. As a kid, you always think that grown ups are the ones who are all taller than you are, and have it all together. The feeling I had, it was sort of similar to how you feel the first time you see your dad cry. I will always think of this man as Sheriff Valenti, the indestrutable leader of the Roswell Police Force. Seeing him spooked out so to speak was bound to give me an unsettling feeling. As it would turn out, after he told his story, that unsettling feeling of mine would get worse.

"Max," he had said, "you're not going to believe this! I don't know who else to come to. I was driving in my car, when I thought I saw someone, David Sanders, a friend of mine from years ago. I didn't know what to think, so I pulled over on the side of the street. I got out of my car, and I chased after him. I called his name, but he didn't respond. I stopped him, confronted him, and asked him flat out, 'Dave, how can this be? I was there when you died.' Then things got really nuts, Max! He glared at me with fury, a fury I never saw in Dave before. After that he punched me the in the face! He went off and ran around the street corner. I was a bit slow getting up, the last thing I expected the guy to do was give me a good sucker punch. Anyway, I got up and ran around the corner to confront him again, and he was gone. I looked everywhere, above, on the buildings, he couldn't have gone inside anywhere without me seeing him. He just disappeared."

Max just looked at me, I knew what he was thinking. He was sorry that he had doubted me, I could read that off his expression. Max was also concerned. Two of these old (and very much dead) friends spotted within days. Max broke away from my eyes, and talked more with Valenti.

"Are you sure," Max was asking him, "that it was your friend? You're positive that you weren't mistaken?"

"Max," Valenti said, "I know what I saw, and I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I saw Dave Sanders this morning. It was him, Max, in flesh and blood, and that's not possible because I know he's dead. I can't explain it, but I know what I saw."

Max at looked at me again. I looked him in the eye for a moment, but then turned away quickly. How could this be happening? I was thinking to myself, how can any of this explained? At least Max would believe now, but I was just starting to come to terms about how not to deal with my experience. One thing was certain: something strange, something new was happening in Roswell, New Mexico, and it scared me. I wanted to know what ever happened to our normal lives? Things used to be different. I remember a time when there wasn't some intergalactic crisis brewing every other week, and I miss that. I've been missing that ever since Max had to go and rescue Liz Parker, his damsel in distress.

Max continued his conversation with Valenti, "Isabel came to me a few days ago, she was convinced she had run into Alex on the street. I dismissed it, thinking she was acting on an overactive imagination. Now I'm not so sure."

Valenti looked at me, "He didn't recognize me either," I told him. Valenti stepped back a bit. It was so easy to see that a chill had just ran down his spine, it was probably the same chill that ran down my own spine when I heard him describe seeing his old friend.

Max was concerned, "Two credible people with the same story, we can't just dismiss this."

"And what if it's not just us?" Valenti said, chiming in again, and everyone was very attentive because we knew that he only spoke up when he had something important to say. "The real question is: how do we explain all of this?"

"I don't know," Max said, a deadly earnestness about him. He stated it so plainly. It was frustrating for us aliens, being involved in all of these major events, and being unable to come up with all the answers. You watch these TV shows like Star Trek and Superman. They always seem to know what's going on, and what to do. Real life doesn't work that way, though. We aliens have always had questions, ever since the day we came out of those pods. We've learned a lot, but there is so much more we need to know. The humans always act like everything involving aliens is our fault, and it's our responsibility to deal with it. I guess they're right, but the problem is, more often than not, we don't know how to deal with it anymore than they do. I can imagine that's the hardest for Max, being the leader and all. He's supposed to lead us, and we're supposed to follow. Max tries, but he doesn't know where to lead us. In the past, I've been frustrated by this, but now I think we both understand things better. We have to make our decisions together because that's the safest way – the best way. "This is too far out there," he added.

Maria and Liz stayed there of course – at the table, never budging. They were listening, anything to pick up the latest gossip, but they could only tell each other, so I don't why they were so into it.

"Wait," said Maria, speaking up at last, I hadn't known she could stay quiet that long, "are you saying that this involves aliens somehow?"

"I don't know," Max told the little group, "but how else can we explain what's happening?"

I had been looking down. Before, I would have also been curled up into a ball of fear, shaking and emotionally unstable. I felt much better at this point; I was just sitting there absorbing the situation. Looking down, and thinking about everything I had just learned. What Maria said, though, it triggered something in me. I had been just wondering what it was, it never occurred to me that it was more aliens.

My head shot up, "Shapeshifters?" I wondered.

"Shapeshifters?" Max asked, "what, like Nasado?"

"It's a horrifying thought I know," I told him, sounding maybe too eager because I was convinced I was on to something, "but what a great way to try to attack us, with shapeshifters. We'd have no way to tell who is who. Besides, with Kavar and Tess and the rest of our enemies, there's no shortage of reasons why we'd have shapeshifting aliens here."

Valenti had been standing at the edge of the booth, with his hands on the table leaning in as a part of our intimate conversation. I can't help but to wonder sometimes what the other customers at the Crashdown were thinking. He took his hands away, and stood straight up, "Now hold on," Valenti said, "why would they take on the identities of people who are dead? That's a bad way to keep things discrete, it doesn't make any sense."

"I think Valenti's right," Max said, "besides that, how did they come here? Travel between our worlds isn't easy."

"What are you going to do, Max?" whimpered Liz. That drove me crazy, she's so weak and so pathetic sometimes.

"I think we should just wait," Max decided, typical Max orders. We'll just wait and see if the big bad aliens will come and hurt us. Michael really hated this about Max, and it didn't exactly give me a very comforting feeling. When signs pointed to trouble brewing, Max always wanted to step back and watch. If we did something, anything, but take some sort of action, at least I'd feel like we were helping ourselves. "We can't rule anything out at this point, and we can't be certain of anything either. Let's see what happens from here."

"Good idea," Valenti said, obviously approving, "now you'll all be keeping your eyes open. Report to me if you have another one of these sightings. In the mean time, I'll do some digging around, see how widespread this thing is. Hopefully, we're just looking at a few isolated incidents here."

Valenti walked out, and our table fell silent. We all had gone off into thinking. I couldn't tell you exactly what Liz, Maria, or Max were thinking. Only that I was thinking how I wouldn't be able to rest until this situation was settled. I mean, how was I supposed to just go on with my life knowing that I might see a person I knew, supposedly dead, but walking around alive? It's a chilling feeling, and one could really freak out by dwelling on it too long. That could have happened to me, but events were moving too fast to give me the time to think in-depth about ghosts and shapeshifters.

The silence at our booth did not last long. I looked up as I heard the door open, I expected to see a customer coming in. What I saw shocked me. It was Valenti, but something was strange about him. He carried himself in a different manner; he was not nervous and awestruck. He stood up proud and tall, although his face was expressionless. His clothes were different too. In fact, I think that's what was strangest about him. He was wearing his old policeman's belt with the gun in its holster, the gun they took away. He also had his old brown jacket on, with his badge pinned onto the jacket, glistening in the Crashdown's lights. He wore his cowboy hat, which he hadn't worn forever, and entered the café with a pair of sunglasses on. He was reaching to take them off as he walked in.

"Sheriff?" I said quietly to myself.

I don't know what it was exactly, the way I said it, or the expression on my face. It got the attention of Max, Maria, and Liz, though. They too turned around to look at Valenti. So we all got to stare at this strange sight, for about two seconds. Then, Valenti just disappeared. It really got to me; he had just vanished, vanished into thin air.

To Be Continued