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"Hi Brian! Wanna play?"
Brian turned around in what seemed like slow motion to him to find himself faced with a girl about his age. "My mommy told me not to talk to strangers and I don't know you, so I can't talk to you."
"But I know you silly. So it's OK." The little girl giggled at him.
Confusion swept over Brian as he tried to remember this girl. He found that he couldn't. "Well, tell me your name and then we can play."
"My name is Valerie. My mommy and daddy call me Val though. You can call me that. Only if you want to," she added shyly.
"OK," he said. "Let's play in the sandbox." So the two new friends sat down to make sandcastles in what Brian thought was his backyard. Something seemed weird about it, but he didn't let that bother him.
It wasn't long before things got really strange and started to get fuzzy to him. Before he knew it, everything around him went black.
"Mommy!! I made a new friend last night! Her name is Valerie. Can she come over?"
"Maybe some other time Brian," Jackie Littrell said, not knowing exactly what her son meant. Brian gave his mother a funny face before he left to go out and play.
About 10 minutes later, Brian was back inside the kitchen begging for his mother to let him play with Valerie. Jackie sighed and said, "Is she a friend from school?"
"Nope. She was in our backyard last night and we played in my sandbox together," he tried to explain.
It was Jackie's turn to make a funny face. But she quickly came to the conclusion that Brian must be at an imaginary friend stage. So she decided to play along for now to make him happy. "She can come over after lunch."
"Yay!!!" He wrapped his little arms around his mother's legs to give her a hug. Brian knew that it was going to feel like forever until it was lunch time and he could see Valerie again.