The low growth is thick you can barely get a foot between the bushes. I shove one aside, hearing the crunching of broken branches as I slide through the thorny hedgerow. Beyond it is a large open field with tall grass waving like wheat in the gentle wind. Parting the grass, I keep walking. There's nothing and no one over here. Very curious. I expected to see a circle of houses where Cady's friends live, in a small village with a grocery store and a computer repair shop and an outdoor café, all of it shaded by huge, leafy trees -- cottonwoods and magnolias with ancient, knotty trunks. There's none of that.

What I see instead is flat, bare land. Beyond the tall grass is more grass cropped close to the ground, as if it's been grazed by a hundred starving goats and cows, but there's not an animal in sight. I keep walking, half of me quivering with the excitement of discovery, and the other half aware that I'm farther and farther from home, as though I've stepped through some portal into another world. It's a huge relief to see a plane as small as a crop duster circling overhead. The pilot waves to me and put-putters away. Besides him, there's no sign of life. Off in the distance, beyond a circle of low, leafy bushes are several short stone outcroppings, reminding me of something mystical like Stonehenge. They're not lined up neatly -- no, they're stuck in the ground, facing every which way.

Getting closer, my heart starts to pound. Why should these small monuments fill me with such dread? Something's so wrong here. Those stones are menacing because . because . now I'm close enough to see what they are. Tombstones. Some are old markers, pitted, chipped and crumbling, that look like they've been around since the beginning of time. Then there are some newish shiny, pink marble ones.

This is a cemetery.