Frozen

Ryan, Matt, Bonnie, and I grew up in the same neighborhood. We were best friends by default of location and every spare minute we had or could finagle from our parents we spent adventuring. The Saturday morning we decided to play on the frozen pond next to our subdivision we were all nine years old. I remember the split of the ice and Matt disappearing and the confusion that followed how we yelled for him. He never came up and we all went home.

Things were never the same after that. The body was found and his parents moved away. Our adventures ended, and our own parents never questioned us about why we didn’t play with each other anymore. It was a tragedy. That was understood.

It was a small town, and we couldn’t avoid each other completely but we sure did try. As we grew older we fell into different groups, and after we graduated we all went away to college. I frequently ran into them, Matt usually just gave a slight nod of acknowledgement and Bonnie would smile but there were rarely words.

The first time we talked about it was at our ten year high school reunion. Sometime in the night we had all gravitated toward one another. After a few awkward moments of small talk, Bonnie suddenly blurted “Do you ever think about it?”

“All the time,” Ryan was quick to retort.

“Me too,“ Bonnie replied, “and what I still just can’t get my head to wrap around is why. . . we left?”

We couldn’t look at each other. In the silence, I thought of my own baby daughter who was asleep at my parent’s house.

“I think we were just so young and afraid,” I said finally.

“But what kind of excuse is that?”