I fell asleep eventually. After my experience with Megan, I knew what sort of things would get my motor running without involving anything too icky, but I didn’t have enough gas in the tank to do any real self-exploration.

I dreamed, waking up several times to try to consider what I dreamed about, but falling back to sleep before anything much penetrated.

Several dream vignettes involved my younger self — some of them recastings of things I remembered from before, and some of them sheer inventions of my new self in situations I couldn’t remember ever having happened.

If you dream of remembering things that never happened, do they become more real? They apparently do. I seem to have served as flower girl at my Aunt Nora’s wedding back when I was five.

“Do I have to wear a dress?” I had asked perhaps thirty times. “Can’t I wear a suit like Daddy’s?”

“If you did wear a suit, I should hope you would wear it better than my brother!” she exclaimed. “He looks like he went out to sack potatoes and sent the sack to church instead of himself.”

“I d’wanna wear a dress,” I protested. “My feet get cold.”

“Hey! You little tomboy! I’m the one who might get cold feet here!” Then she laughed, grabbed me up and tickled me before passing me off to my mom. “Maddy! Take Little Pete here and show her how much fun dress-up can be!”

I remembered it all, like double vision, wearing a lacy dress with flowers in my hair, but also another memory, paler and less real, of a boy version of me in a tiny tuxedo.

I shook my head. I couldn’t think too much about it; it was crazy-making.

*

I got dressed and grabbed my bag of gym clothes from the laundry room, then headed out to the kitchen for some breakfast. I guess my mind was on one of the dreams I’d had, though, because the picture hanging on the wall just beside the kitchen door caught my eye.

I must have seen it a thousand times or more, but today, I stopped to look at it again. Mom and Dad’s wedding photo, one of those old ones where the photographer has added color to a black-and-white picture. Mom looked radiant in her wedding gown, with Dad solemn and a little shell-shocked in his tuxedo. It made me smile.

Mom spoke to me from near the sink. “Your father looks a little scared, doesn’t he?”

We both laughed. Mom dared say something like that because Dad had already left for the dealership to “crack the whip over the service department,” as he always put it.

“Harry told me later that he had just realized what he was getting into when that picture was snapped,” she said, coming over to stand beside me. “I was feeling like I’d won a great prize,” she added.

For some reason, that made me giggle.

Mom looked at me over the half-glasses she wore when working up close. “You had something of the same look when you came in last night,” she accused with a sly wink.

“Mo-om!” I protested, but I could feel my face get hot. Which made me think of the dream again.

“This is your wedding picture,” I said, and she nodded. “But I remember being in a wedding when I was small,” I mused, still a little disturbed by the memory.

“Oh, yes,” she agreed. “Your Aunt Nora picked you to be her flower girl. And you were so pretty in your little white gown!”

I blinked. She was confirming what I remembered.

“But oh, you weren’t any easier to get into a dress when you were five than you are now!” We both laughed, but she held up a hand. “I think I have a picture.” She started toward the living room, where we kept family albums in the console under the big TV.

I went into the kitchen — not sure I wanted my memories confirmed by hard evidence.

Mom kept talking from the living room. “Oh, Gayle, honey, you so hated that dress. You managed to ruin it with something — mud, or chocolate, or oil. We never figured out what it was.”

“Huh?” I said. “I don’t remember that.”

“Oh, yes,” she went on. I could hear her rummaging in the space under the television. “You actually wore your cousin Jonah’s tuxedo jacket over the dress. It was way too big, but it made you happy, even though you looked ridiculous in it.”

“Ridiculously cute,” she added.

I could feel myself blushing again as Mom came back into the kitchen carrying an album with a finger to mark which leaf to open it on. She laid the book on the table and showed me the picture, explaining, “We had a pic of you in the jacket, but I can’t find it. We took this one before you decided to collect slugs — or whatever you were doing in the garden.”

I stared. It matched my memory perfectly. “Oh, God! I’m adorable!” I whimpered.

After we laughed about my reaction, I decided to get out of the house quickly before she found more pictures. Besides, Molly and Jordan had gotten up and were now cooing over it, and I didn’t need that.

It wasn’t a game day, so I had a light breakfast of fruit, a slice of buttered raisin toast, and a glass of milk and got out the door before seven.

I pushed the photo out of my thoughts and tried to get into a Monday frame of mind. But then the events of the weekend wanted to crowd my consciousness — particularly last evening, and my first date with a boy. I managed to put it all aside. Monday morning team meetings started at 7:30, and Coach Wilson always threatened to make the whole team run laps if anyone were late.

Early morning in late October meant frost on everything, with misty breath and the sharp smell of pines in the clear air. Friendly is a great place to live in the fall, and we might get snow before Christmas this year. Tobogganing on the local hills was great fun and a trip to the real mountains to ski seemed likely.

I was putting my key into the ignition of Baby Blue when it occurred to me that I was wondering if Lee did any skiing. He’d have to have a built-up boot for his leg, wouldn’t he? I tried to push the thought away, but he was on my mind.

He’d wanted to come by and pick me up in his van this morning, and I had told him no, because I wanted to show off my new car. New to me, anyway.

Did Lee ski? I wondered again as I pulled Baby Blue onto the street. I could buy him a nice warm scarf for Christmas. He would look very good in red and black plaid. I felt myself blush again, but for what reason, I didn’t know.