The Prom Pond

“C’mon Maxine, let’s go. I’ve had enough” Donny implored more than he demanded.

“Hold on Donny, just a minute…Hey Denise, I’m over here!”

“Ooh Maxine let’s dance! They’re playing that Captain & Tenille song we both love…Love Will Keep Us Together” Denise eagerly teased reaching for her friend’s hand.

“Hurry up Maxxie” he voiced shaking his head.

“Well since you won’t dance with me Donny, this is our last Prom! I’m dancing with Denise”

“Geez Maxxie, don’t you think we danced enough already tonight?”

“It’s our last dance Donny. Please let’s not go yet” she said, her voice softer now, resigned to him winning this battle.

She didn’t ask where they were going, she already knew.

“I’m going. I’ll be outside”

“Oh my God. Ok fine.”

Maxine waved goodbye to Denise as Donny grabbed a paper cup of fruit punch.

“Are you two leaving? Remember once you leave there is no coming back kids” Mr. Dipple, the English teacher forewarned opening the school gymnasium door for them.

“Yeah, we know. There’s no going back”

They walked towards Donnie’s baby, his black 1965 Ford Galaxie 500 Fastback across the school parking lot as the band played and the music blared.

“Hold on, I gotta take a piss”

“Why didn’t you go inside?”

“I wanted to get the hell out of there”

“What’s the big hurry? Why the rush? I was having a good time with everyone”

“We’ll have a better time now that we left”

Donny anxiously opened her side door, getting her dress caught as he closed it. As soon as he got in the car, he pulled out two bottles of wine; Lancer’s Lambrusco and Reunite Red from under the car seat.

The music was still ringing in their ears, as Maxine’s laughter came easy, spilling out the open window into the warm night.

“Here Maxxie take a swig”

“In a bit, I don’t want to spill anything on my dress. Hey, we’re supposed to meet everybody at the After Prom later”

“Yeah, I know but I’d rather it be just the two of us, just you and me” as Donnie tried to kiss Maxine awkwardly and labored unsuccessfully to undo her bra.

“Donny, can’t you wait a bit?”

“I’ve been waiting all night”

“Well, you are just going to have to wait a little longer”

For Donny, patience like selflessness sometimes was hard to find.

Frustrated, he started the car and peeled out of the parking lot heading north then west. The gym pulsed with the band’s music as Donny started to drive away. The deep bass echoed turbidly through the open windows long after the school disappeared behind them. Maxine’s corsage had started to brown at the edges, the gardenia petals soft and collapsing inward as did its sweet scent.

Donny shouldn’t have been driving. They both knew it. He blasted the radio singing “Lonely Days and Lonely Nights” by Freddie Fender.

“Donny, hey! Can you turn that music down? Turn it down just a bit!”

“Lonely day’s and lonely niii….”

“Donny! Please knock it off and slow down. I want to get there in one piece for God’s sake. I know where we’re going”

“Oh yeah Maxxie. Where are we going? Where we’re going my darling will be much quieter, more secluded and romantic. AND I can get out of this stupid yellow tuxedo.”

He proceeded to light up a joint he had rolled earlier, heeding Maxine’s request to slow down, the telephone poles were slowly marking time one by one until they turned on that dusty road.

Driving much slower now, hearing only the gravel beneath them. He turned down the radio, as it played The Doobie Brother’s song Black Water.

“That’s way better. I can finally think”

“Think? You only have one thing on your mind. You’re not thinking at all, you have a one-track mind”

“Maxxie here, take a drink and hit this weed”

“You already killed the one bottle. You’re drunk and high already”

Coulby Pond waited at the end of the lane, though neither of them had mentioned its name. It sat tucked away beyond the narrow turnoff, hidden behind a stand of trees that swallowed the road whole. They’d been there before, once, maybe twice, just enough for it to feel like theirs. A place apart from parents, from school, from the ticking clock of everything ending.

Donny parked on the slope overlooking the pond and turned off the car as the engine ticked as it cooled. The headlights cut across the water and for a moment they didn’t reflect back. The beams seemed to sink, swallowed whole, the light was like lead, like it had weight.

The black water appeared way too still.

No wind touched it. No insects skimmed the surface. Even the crickets and frogs had gone quiet, as if they were told to be silent. The air changed, feeling cooler and heavier, like stepping into a room that had long been empty, void even of oxygen.

Maxine rubbed her arms. “I feel cold”

“Take another drink, you’ll warm up”

“Did you see that?” Maxine whispered.

“See what?”

“Shhh”

“It’s just the woods” His voice not sitting right inside his chest. Thinking maybe it was the alcohol and not Maxine’s uneasy jitteriness that was making him uncomfortable.

“I thought I saw something over there next to those trees?” She couldn’t explain it. It felt foolish to try.

“Maxxie It’s just a racoon. Relax”

They stayed in the car holding each other tighter and tighter as the night pressed on.

“Promise me something” she said after a while.

“Anything Maxxie.”

“That we won’t end up like everyone else. Forgetting all this.”

Smiling, touching her cheek tenderly. “We won’t.”

The pond shifted.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Maxine murmured, though her eyes were already closing.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, smiling devotedly.

Maxine’s eyes drifted closed and sealed.

Donny fought sleep, blinking hard, but the darkness outside the windshield felt thick, inviting, like it wanted him to rest. The car gave a small, almost polite lurch forward.

The pond waited.

“Did you…”

Another inch. The tires exhaled behind them as the road seemed farther away than it should have been.

“Donny…” Maxine’s voice was distant now, like she was already somewhere else.

The engine was off. The car shouldn’t have been moving, yet it rolled slowly with that gentle invitation, steady as breath. A soft roll, a quiet surrender.

By the time the front wheels slipped over the edge, the world inside was still warm. Neither of them noticed or heard the splash. Maybe it was quieter and softer than it should have been or maybe there was no one left to hear it. Whatever it was, the water entered the doors in cold silence. The headlight flickered and dimmed black beneath the surface, casting its last beams through the dark, silted green.

“Donny!”

Maxine’s scream broke into bubbles. Donny’s lungs burned, his chest tightening as the last pocket of air vanished. He pulled at the handle. It wouldn’t budge as the cold rushed in, her hands clawing at the door. The water rose too fast. Too smooth. Filling the car like it belonged there. Seclusion and desperation were the doors that locked from the outside.

Inside, nothing stirred.

Their friends waited that night, laughing, wondering briefly where they had gone. Morning would come. Then questions. Then years.

Coulby Pond returned to itself, smooth, unbroken, looking ordinary again. Sunlight filtered through the trees. Birds called. The pond lay smooth and undisturbed, its surface reflecting the sky as if nothing had ever broken it.

Later in the quiet suspended unreachable dark water, where on lazy summer afternoons children stood on the car hood fishing. Donny and Maxine remained exactly as they were; together, untouched by endings and rumors of their disappearance, holding fast in a place no one thought or forgot to look.

No one noticed the faint indentation in the mud along the bank that held its secrets in May 1975.