Running from guilt

I’m sure it happened, but how could it?

It must have been the Halloween after that rare summer when the Schoenfelds’ whom I never even saw, let all the neighbor kids come to their pool to swim.

How else would I have known that at the end of the long descending driveway into the edge of the ravine lay a swimming pool.

But why, how was I there alone and why wasn’t I scared?

It was dark and I was notoriously scared of the dark, and kidnappers and boogeymen.

Had I been ditched and was I feeling my way in the dark to find my sister and her friends? Did I think I’d find them at the bottom of the Schoenfeld’s driveway, with no lights to illuminate anything?

I know it must have happened because I’ll never forget the fearful horror of realizing my foot had punctured the pool cover and I sank, one-legged up to my knee in cold water before jerking my leg out and back to the concrete where my other foot waited and then took off running, racing, pounding my way uphill in the dark, up that long dark driveway, terrified of getting caught breaking the Schoenfeld’s pool, running through the pitch black dark uphill, praying with total desperation that I wouldn’t get caught, I wouldn’t get found out.

No one must ever know it was me. I ran into the street – was it deserted too, while the neighborhood horde had moved on to trick-or-treat at the street’s end?

I don’t remember crying, was I too scared to cry? I ran up the hill to the end of our block. Maybe there were some parents with little kids trick-or treating there but all I remember was an unpeopled run in the dark.

I ran up the block, my heart pounding. I ran inside my house, where was my candy? I don’t remember candy. I don’t remember costumes. I don’t remember anything except my terrible guilt and knowing I could never tell anyone.