The tree was an anomaly, the only slight blip in the continuous sea of corn. It stood by itself, lonely and wilting. Its few leaves swayed in the slight breeze. A few of them broke off and fluttered into the deep blue late-summer sky. Abby watched them fly away.

If she had been the discontented kind, the daydreaming type of person like her best friend, she would have wished herself to be one of those leaves, blowing off into the unknown. But Abby was perfectly satisfied with her life so far, and definitely not very imaginative. She simply watched the leaves go, faintly appreciating the dead beauty.

Abby was nestled between the tree's two main branches, her head resting against the smooth trunk. Her cat, Boss, was curled up in her lap, purring. He always purred when the dog wasn't around. Abby petted him absentmindedly, thinking about the dinner Ma would have when she got home.

The fact that Boss was purring instead of hissing or screaming was an improvement on the cat's part, but not on the situation of Abby's universe in general. The absence of the dog meant the absence of the dog's owner, who happened to be Abby's best friend.

She had been gone for three days now, and there was no sign of her anywhere, except where obvious. There were frantic, circling footprints near the Gails' front porch, but that was it.

The grownups had told Abby that she was probably all right, that she had just gotten lost in the chaos of the storm, that she was wandering around having a wonderful time among the endless rows of corn. And, they added, she was a feathery little girl who stepped lightly – it would be harder to spot her footprints.

Abby was unimaginative, but not stupid. If her friend had only gotten blown a bit by the twister and ended up in a cornfield, she could easily have found her way back. She had lived here in Kansas only six of her twelve years – half as long as Abby, but she was an explorer: she knew her way around twice as well as Abby did. Every cornfield was familiar to her, every acre, and every stalk within a two-mile radius. And though she was an explorer, she would know how much her aunt and uncle and friends worried about her, and made her way home as quickly as possible.

The grownups, however, apparently thought Abby was stupid. She had seen the fake, hopeful smiles on the grownups' faces melt away into expressions of deep, paralyzing fear the second they thought she turned around. Many times during the night she had peeked around her bedroom door to hear her parents trying (and failing) to whisper about strong winds, heavy flying objects, creeping men snatching little girls amid chaos and confusion. Though they would not tell her as much, they thought that now it was not a matter of finding her, but finding what was left of her.

And, Abby realized as she glanced up at the deceptively blue sky, she was not afraid. Whenever she thought about that friend with whom she had spent every waking moment of the past six years, she felt . . . nothing. She was not hopeful; she had a feeling that Sunday's, "I'll see you tomorrow, Abby – and maybe you should bring Boss. Auntie Em says I can't take Toto out as much because Mrs. Gulch is at the end of her annoyingly short rope. So maybe Boss can get some peace and quiet," would be the last words she would hear from Dorothy. She figured it simply hadn't sunk in yet, and it would when something was found of her.

Abby carefully slid her robust body down the smooth trunk of the tree, landing on the ground with a muffled whump on the edge her family's cornfield. Boss quickly followed her – maybe, he reasoned, if he wasn't with his master that horrible dog would come and get him.

She looked around, at the cornfield, at the sky, at the ground. All monotonous, all the same. Maybe, she thought, she doesn't know the land as well as I think she does, and she's still wandering around, and all we have to do is find her. Maybe she is having a wonderful time, discovering new things, living off raw corn and water from the irrigation.

Maybe.

She turned in the general direction called south and began to run for home, stopped, turned around, and sprinted back to the tree so that she could start again walking. Running as fast as she could towards her house implied that she had made some great discovery or figured out an important truth, and she didn't want to disappoint her mother by running only to outrun the feelings of fear and grief that were slowly but surely catching up to her.

She leaned against the tree, almost ready to start walking. Her hand caressed the smooth bark, back and forth, feeling every square inch of that anomalous plant. Her head was blank; she thought it was only a nervous movement. But somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, a tiny voice muttered to itself, it's here, it's gotta be here somewhere – it's been here forever, it's gotta be here . . .

Finally, Abby found it. Her fingers ran over a slight indentation in the wood, manmade. Slowly, painfully, she turned around and studied it.

She knew exactly what it was, because she had been there when it was made. She had watched Dorothy painstakingly carve it with the sharp point of a kitchen knife, occasionally turning it on its side to shave off extra bits of bark so that it would be perfect.

It was a rectangle, and inside the rectangle were letters whose shapes only an eight-year-old with a kitchen knife could carve: DG LOVES HY.

Dorothy had carved those words inside a square because she had lacked the skill to chisel a heart. It didn't matter, she said. Hiram Yost would not care that she could not carve a heart – he would love her for what was inside.

Hiram Yost, a former handyman, had married and left the state two years ago. Dorothy had disappeared. Abby knew Hiram would never see Dorothy again. And, with that thought, she knew she would never see Dorothy again. Nobody would. Nobody could.

It hit her like a screaming, yowling Boss being chased by a cuddly, fluffy Toto. All the pain and fear that had been building up inside her exploded, filling her mind, body, and soul. She shook uncontrollably, sinking down the trunk of the tree and landing in the grass. Her shirt caught somewhere in the middle, slightly riding up her back. Abby noticed this, and she thought, this will never happen to Dorothy, because Dorothy is dead.

And she cried, and Boss cried with her, although he did not know why he was crying. The dog was gone, he did not want to cry, but his master was crying, so he felt obligated to cry also.

Abby was crying so hard that she didn't notice the shadow that descended upon her until it spoke to her.

"I hope you're not crying because of me," it said sadly.