A flashing light turned two Victoria teens' laid-back weekend upside-down.

As Christopher Valdez and Conrado Castillo sat in the bed of a red pick-up Saturday on Upper Mission Valley Road, near The Windmill convenience store, they saw a bright light that they think was a UFO.

It was midnight or 1 a.m., Castillo said, as the duo sat in the cool night air, gazing at the sky. They'd been there for about 45 minutes, he said, waiting for his mother to drop off money for a late-night fast-food run.

"We were just talking about life and stuff and we looked up into the sky," said Castillo, a 13-year-old Crain Middle School student. "(Christopher) goes, 'Look!' and there was a bluish-white light in the sky."

The small light appeared far away, said Valdez, an 18-year-old Victoria landscaper. Flashing, it began falling, falling, falling silently, before it simply disappeared.

After a few back and forth "Did you see that?" and "What do you think it was?" comments, the friends bolted, mainly because they weren't sure what they'd seen or whether it would return.

"You know, I'm just a kid," Castillo said. "I was afraid. It was pretty scary."

They went straight to their families with the news, Valdez said, but no one believed them.

"They just said 'Yeah right, you're dumb," he said. "They didn't believe it."

And while Valdez, a self-proclaimed skeptic, said he's always thought UFO stories were crazy, now he isn't so sure.

Castillo, on the other hand, said it's his second sighting. The first, he said, took place about two weeks ago near Memorial High School, when a large round light filled the sky.

The friends said that, after their families' reactions, they weren't quick to tell others about the sighting. When they saw an article in the Advocate discussing UFOs on Monday, though, they decided to share the tale.

"We didn't know if it was a UFO or what," Valdez said. "I know it ain't a helicopter."