The Pond
The scene of a tragedy often has a morbid fascination for kids . . . but things look very different in the dark
We stand beside the pond where the little kid died, and peer into it.
“Maybe his ghost’s in there,” Scooby says.
I look at him and shake my head. “Don’t be stupid. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“There is,” he says. “My Uncle Derek saw one, once.”
“Your Uncle Derek sees all kinds of stuff when he’s wasted,” Pete says. “Which means, like all the time.”
I walk away from them along the bank of the pond, leaving them to their bickering. Around me, the bare earth and rocks are being slowly baked by the sun. The bushes on the other side of the pond are fizzing with insects. I reach a large, squarish rock and climb up onto it and sit there, with my legs dangling.
This place used to be a quarry of some sort years ago — so my Dad tells me — but it’s been disused much longer than the ten years I’ve been alive. There’s an abandoned warehouse and a bunch of offices way ahead of where we are, at the foot of an artificial cliff. But we don’t go down there very often because that’s where big kids hang out, drinking and smoking and stuff.
