The police didn’t handcuff me and stick me in the back of one of those shiny, slick cars.  The police and all the people, who had gathered at the scene of the crime, just stared at me with sad eyes and sympathetic smiles.  One officer shook his head and said, "He’s probably in shock." 

A teenage girl, wearing soaking wet cutoffs and a black tank top, told the crowd, "I’ll stay with the boy until his parents come."  She sat with me for over an hour, quivering in the afternoon shade of the maple trees. 

Just a couple hours before, I had been at that same spot in the park with Kyle, his baby sister, Annie, and our retarded baby-sitter. 

I can’t even remember the baby-sitter’s name.  She smiled all of the time, with a strange floppy grin, and she stuttered and blinked a lot when she talked. Most of the time I had the sense that we shared the exact same understanding of the world and that made me nervous.  I didn’t like the baby-sitter.   

It was a hot day and we had walked the few blocks from our street to the park.  The baby-sitter found a spot on the grassy hill and spread out Annie’s blanket.  Instead of going to the playground, Kyle climbed into his baby sister’s stroller and I pushed him along the walkway at the top of the hill.  Being five years old, he was too big for the stroller, but he liked to sit in it and pretend it was a racecar.  In a shrill, loud voice, he would say, "Evan, push me.  Faster, Evan, faster."    

I pushed Kyle to one end of the sidewalk then turned the stroller around, clumsily and with effort, and pushed to the other end.  I did this until my bangs were plastered down on my forehead with sweat and my feet burned inside my sneakers.  All the while, Kyle jabbered about how he was the fastest and best driver that ever lived.   

After a while, I didn’t feel like pushing him around in that girly pink stroller, with baby elephants all over the cushions, but Kyle kept begging.  The baby-sitter sat on the sloping lawn facing the pond, which connected to a larger lake just beyond a little bridge.  Annie fell asleep on the blanket with a bottle resting in her pudgy hand, drooling milky-white saliva.  Looking back on it, the two of them looked kind of peaceful resting there on the bright green grass, next to the dark pond with the blue sky all around them.  Even with her back to me, I could picture the baby-sitter’s wide, floppy grin.

The afternoon was still warm as the sun fell behind the trees, and gnats swarmed in tight circles around me.  I tried slugging them but there were too many, and they were too small.  A lot of kids were on the playground.  I looked to the right and I saw the baby-sitter reclined, facing a family of ducks near the pond water.  I looked to the left and saw kids running around like wild monkeys, climbing bars, hanging upside down, and swinging into the sky. 

The gnats regrouped and went on the attack.  I swung my arms around frantically, trying to get them out of my face.  At that moment, Kyle began to whine, "Evan, push me more.  Don’t stop."

I wanted to sit next to Annie, who was sleeping on the cool grass down below us, and have a juice box.  Kyle wasn’t about to give up that easily.  I was older than him, but somehow Kyle always got what he wanted.  It wasn’t that he was better than me; he was just bossy.

"One more push and that’s it."  He stared at me with a desperate look, like a madman who’d have a full-fledged tantrum if he didn’t get that one last push.  He squinted and his face crinkled into a pink ball.  

I stood behind him gripping the handles with tight, white fists.  I started to push him along the sidewalk slowly.  I was tired, my mouth was parched and the gnats were buzzing around my ears.  Kyle began again in a high-pitched cry, "Faster Evan, faster."  His voice rang in my ears and my brain felt like it was on fire. 

Suddenly the noise of kids screaming on the playground, gnats humming in my ears, and the shrill cries of Kyle exploded in my head.  I was dizzy and I couldn’t see anything except white spots flashing before my eyes.  When I could finally focus, I saw the stroller tumbling down the grassy slope, end over end like a huge snowball in a cartoon, hoarding everything in its path.  

As it rolled, it gained momentum—but I could see Kyle’s arms flailing and his curly brown hair and the color red of his shirt in a blur. The stroller, with Kyle still buckled into it, splashed into the water and sank with the conviction of a large rock.  Then the surface of the pond was eerily calm.

The baby-sitter stood up with her hands at her sides, facing the mossy-green, deep pond—dark like a black hole sucking all of matter into its void.  She turned to me and stared blankly.  The big, stupid grin still hung on her face, yet it seemed suspended in air. 

We simultaneously turned toward the distant shouts and hollers of kids swimming in the lake at the other end of the park.  They swam right next to the warning signs: No Swimming Allowed, Danger.

"Evan, go for help.  Run, Evan, run fast..." the baby-sitter said without a stutter.  Just before I ran off, I noticed Annie still asleep on the blanket.  Her brother just fell into a pond, but she slept in peace, completely unaware. 

I ran across grassy knolls and along the clean, smooth asphalt of the sidewalk until I reached the teenagers.  I was out of breath, so I bent over, rested my hands on my knees while panting.  I saw that my shoelaces were untied.  My breath felt heavy and my chest was tight.  Sweat trickled from my temples and I could actually feel the color red on my flushed cheeks.  

"A boy fell into the pond over there."  I pointed.  That was all it took.  The six of them urged each other with nudges, slaps on the shoulders and shouts.  They made a dash for the playground.  I trailed behind at a slower pace, still trying to catch my breath.  My white t-shirt felt damp and it had a big grass stain, but it seemed to state ‘I surrender’ in an appropriate manner to the world. 

When I finally made it there, I was surprised to find that the teenagers weren’t in the pond.  They stood together, wet and jittery, in a snug group observing the commotion.  A very tall, barrel-chested man was wading at the bank of the pond.  The crowd stood riveted as he slowly trudged along, waist deep and cautiously making attempts toward the middle.  He held back and shook his head.  "The problem is there’s a steep drop off," he bellowed in a deep voice at the crowd.

Then I remembered the baby-sitter and Annie.  I looked over at the spot on the grass and saw the blanket and diaper bag, but no one was there.  I glanced up at the sidewalk, imagining I’d see Kyle sitting in the girly pink stroller, screaming, "Push, Evan, push."  But he wasn’t there either.

I could hear a woman sobbing now, "I saw her go in.  That lady just jumped into the water and sank without a fight.  She just sank."  The woman then grabbed a little kid and hugged him into her legs. 

I remembered just then what the baby-sitter had said, as I was running away to get help, her voice trailing off, she had yelled out to me, "Hurry, Evan, I don’t know how to swim."  I guess she had decided to jump in anyway. 

I overheard comments, voices chirping out of the congregation of onlookers.    

"Remember that boy who drowned in the pond, what was it, three, four years ago?  They never even found his body."

"Who would imagine a fifteen-foot deep pond next to a playground, anyway?"

"Well, the city will be forced to drain and fill it now."

As the police arrived and the teenagers explained my involvement, I began to look frantically for Annie.  I could hear one of the kids say, "This boy called us over to help, I think he was with the victim."  I probably looked like I needed some help of my own—by now I was snot-nosed, red in the face, panting like a wild animal.  Where in the hell was Annie?  I was pretty sure by then that she had managed to roll herself into the water, too.

Trying to explain the whole picture, who had drowned and who had gone missing was no easy task.  I blurted it out as best I could, hoping they were able to make sense of my sniveling, jumbled account.  While I sat on the grass, with several police officers standing over me, one of the teenage girls walked up with Annie in her arms. 

Annie was throwing a fit, crying and screaming and pushing the girl away with her little arms.  Annie saw me and reached out, nearly lunging out of the girl’s grasp.  I stood up and took her into my arms, and the feeling of Annie rubbing her round, soft head into my shoulder, her chest collapsing with relief, made me want to hold her tight and never let go.

"I found the baby under a tree on the other side of the playground," the girl said and then strolled away to her group of friends, who were consoling each other with hugs and back rubs.

I told the police, "I saw the stroller roll down the hill and splash into the water.  I think Kyle was trying to climb out, and maybe his foot got caught.  The baby-sitter told me to go get those kids to help, so I ran and when I got back she wasn’t here." 

"And what is the baby-sitter’s name, son?"

"Her name?  She wasn’t really my baby-sitter, I don’t know."  I wanted them to know that I was old enough, I didn’t need a baby-sitter, and that even though I was supposed to go to Kyle’s house every day after school, many times I just went home instead.  But I didn’t have the energy to explain all that.

"Okay, you poor kid.  Let’s call your parents."

The mystery in my mind was how Annie got to the other side of the playground.  She was unscathed, but I was sure someone had moved her there.  I guess she was lucky not to have been kidnapped.  The police took her after I gave directions to her house, only seven blocks away. 

And that’s how I ended up sitting on the grass with a teenage girl wrapping her arm around me and wiping grimy smudges off my cheeks with the palm of her hand, saying, "That’s okay, you can lean on me."  Her hair was damp and stringy, and her wet jean cutoffs were cold, but she still emanated steamy warmth, making me feel as though I were shrouded within a humid cavern.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the butterfly tattoo on her ankle.  It reminded me of when my cousin stopped breathing while asleep in her crib one night.  My mom told me that children were God’s favorite angels and had a special place in heaven.  And even though it didn’t look like an angel, the butterfly still had wings and I thought it might be some sort of sign. 

Then the girl gave me a juice box and the cool shade of the trees felt refreshing against the heat of my body. The noise had settled down, so it was suddenly quiet and peaceful, which is just what I had wanted all along.    

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