Suddenly the colors in the sky reminded her of something terrifying, like an electric shock had separated the heavens from the earth. The hair on her arms stood up, and she decided that the game would be better off over.

She had been sitting pretzel-legged in the field behind her uncle's house, counting. It was a small field, just a barrier between the pine deck and the vast expanse of country plains. The stalks were tall for midsummer.

It had been a strange year. The weather was cool, the crops were confused. What made the game even more fun among the corn plants was the heavy cover of grass, wildflowers, and weeds. It was a wonderful place to lose yourself, and an equally amazing place for a game of hide-and-seek.

Somewhere beyond the border of neatly trimmed lawn and wild-country foliage was her little cousin, hiding nervously, unaware of the oncoming storm. Way off in the distance, lightning tore through the curtain of gray, country clouds. The older girl stood up quickly, and stumbled as her long legs tried to remember how to hold her up. Then she was off, sprinting into the place of no direction.

It was just a cornfield, but it was also as old as she could remember. For as long as she had been alive, there had been something growing toward the sky behind her uncle's house. It was something to be sure of – a certainty that every spring there would be plants and every fall there would be food.

The rain began to fall. Her cousin cried out in fright, wanting more than ever to be found. The vast expanse of cornfield yielded no direction, only the soft cries of a young child who had only wanted to play a game. Soon enough, everything was wet and the air had chilled, as though God had turned the warm summer off for a while.

The children had always found solace in their uncle's field. It was a place to play and pretend, to imagine that just behind the house was an entirely different world from the one they were familiar with.

After just a minute or two of frantic searching, the older girl stumbled upon her frightened little cousin, both drenched to the bone and happy to see the other's scared face. Escaping the field was an easy feat because the house stood out beyond the horizon.

Hand in hand, they marched through the weeds and wild plants until finally they arrived back in reality, standing on the pine deck at the screen door with their backs to the best place they would always remember.