1

The boy dies after staying awake all night
reading "The Plague." He drowns himself in a lake. This is summer of '94. 
We all attend the funeral. Nobody talks, except for the priest, as the body is being lowered into wet grounds. The rest of the time it is as silent as the boy's body was in the moments
after drowning.

2

Summer of '94 I am eighteen, lying in bed in between sheets that are as white and as cotton as my mother's wedding dress. The moon's face is as cruel and as yellow as that of a boy's. I dream up my first nightmare: I am a widow and I am being strangled by my corpse of a husband until my skin is dark blue, the color of the lake the boy drowned in. 

3

Summer of '94 is the hottest summer. Billy The Neighbor takes me to behind the yellow house. We are both barefooted, our toes grassy and sticky with sweat. He seems to love me, he tells me he does, before having me lie beneath him on the ground. It is night and I can barely see his face, but I know that it is tinged with glistening pink. I touch his back and it feels like a childhood fever.

4

There are days when Mother thinks
that she is her mother, who died before I was born, or at least pretends to be her:
dresses in her mother's clothes that we keep
in the attic, talks poorly about herself. I have to hold her until she begins 
to whimper and then is herself again. 

5

The last night of summer the dog dies. The vet tells us that it is a natural death. 

6

The last night of summer the moon is as bright as an old ghost and I do not get any sleep. In my head I am the boy drowning himself in the lake.