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This pond I visited once, White Pond, haunts me.

It was night when we visited, the hours when most significant memories of Melissa formed. She was not a creature of daylight, at least not then. She was something fed on cigarettes, fast food, and one drug or other in the extreme, indulgence to stave off the morning.

It must have been summer -- or very nearly -- for us to be outside this late. If I had my entries better organized, I am sure I wrote something about the night, but I trust I did not then have the confidence or skill to put it down accurately. Or, as the ostentation now trumps the inadequacy of two twenty-somethings at the water's Edge.

A dock jutted into the still black water. I remember it as octagonal, for all that detail matters now. Some earlier occupants left litter behind, which we left alone -- not our problem. Melissa dared us to jump in the water. (Who is "us?" Would this be Angela? Who else? Liz, with whom she went to Hawaii and had sex, though she told me before that their friendship was already over?) I cannot say, though, that it was anyone but Melissa and me.
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