Graveyards aren't scary. Not to me anyway. They're more symbolic than anything. Everyone in a graveyard is dead. And death isn't scary. It's just what happens.

I chased death around a lot when I was younger. But that's a whole other story. Or group of stories maybe…

Dean and I spent a good thirty percent of the roughly four years we spent running wild together outside of our houses at night. Foster homes meant being trapped, being out of control of our lives. We were never in control exactly, even when we were out at night, because that's one of the things being in the foster system takes from you. You can't choose to not be uprooted from wherever you are. They can have you pack your garbage bag at any given time.

So we'd spend a lot of nights out, trying to feel as if we were in control. It generally involved a lot of drugs too, supplies that Dean eventually became an absolute expert at obtaining. More often than not we were lazy about actually getting into trouble while on drugs. That started happening more when we were twelve and thirteen. When we were ten and eleven, we mostly just hung around the playground in the middle of the night, on the deck of the pirate ship or on the swings or the jungle gym. We'd only venture past the playground if we were sure that there wouldn't be any people to come grab us where we went, because at that point our biggest fear was getting caught and sent back to our current carers. It was always like a coin toss with fosters.

One place we loved to go in the middle of the night: graveyards. Sure they have groundskeepers but mostly people don't hang out in graveyards in the middle of the night. People are ridiculously scared of them even in the middle of the day, so at night the fear is amped up even more. But Dean wasn't afraid because Dean is Dean, he isn't scared of things easily. And I wasn't afraid because it's not like dead people pose a threat. And sure, in some ways I can get scared of the dark, but that's more of an inside a building kind of thing. At night out in the moonlight darkness isn't so scary. There's a lot more maneuverability outside.

Graveyards are lovely places honestly. They're always well kept (because apparently there's less of a chance of zombies attacking if the grass is cut and watered. or that could be the 'symbolic' thing about graveyards again, I was never quite sure). People leave flowers by the grave, or rocks on top, and all recent graves are kept nice and polished if they have family who come to visit. The older ones have moss sometimes and have pretty designs or no designs at all. The angels I never liked much because they always made me think that's what the family's wanted me to picture when I thought of their dead relative. Like a beautiful angel or a cherub for the babies (which were my LEAST favorite). I liked having a plain headstone to look at. Then I could imagine what the person looked like with a blank slate.

Dean didn't like the graveyards as much as I did, but he's always willing to do what I want to do if that means that I'll do what he wants to do. So we'd go to the graveyards and roll down the hills if they had them and we'd make up stories for the residents of the graveyard and we'd just generally appreciate the very pristine places, because graveyards are so often neglected by visitors out of fear or lack of interest.

Sometimes in the middle of the night we'd find open graves that had been dug for a funeral the next day. Their depth would always vary slightly, but graves tend to be pretty deep. So that the plots can be used again, you see. I'm not sure of dates and whatnot, but people are buried over people. There are too many people who have lived to make allowances. I mean, I guess famous people get to keep their graves past their expiration date, but for ordinary folk after a while they get replaced. But who cares really, they're long dead. If you want something to last past you dying, a grave isn't the thing to choose. We'd always take note of the open graves because they were deep and we were tiny and the first time we saw one we both ran out of the graveyard and didn't go back to one for a few months.

We weren't scared of the dead rising or anything silly like that. We were afraid of falling in and being trapped. Buried alive.

But we got bolder around them and we got cocky as people tend to do when they think they've mastered an environment or an activity. But the truth is that you can't ever truly master something, especially not when you're a kid.

So we were rolling down a hill one night, racing to get to the bottom. I was winning, far in the lead when suddenly the world dropped away and I was plummeting into darkness. I hit the dirt hard, a good seven feet down. When I'd felt myself falling I'd bitten down on my lip so hard that I bit through it, tasting blood and preventing myself from screaming. So, unaware of the danger, Dean tumbled over the edge and on top of me. It took a minute for both of us to fill our lungs with air again. And there we were.

Trapped in a grave.

First thing Dean did, the first thing Dean always does, was check me over. We could barely see each other, only our rough outlines, but Dean felt me over frantically like a mother hen. He felt the blood gushing from my lip and when he touched my right ankle I let out a hiss of pain. I could hear the wobbly horror in his voice as he said, "I'll get us out. I will."

The first thing we tried was Dean hoisting me up onto his shoulders, but with my ankle wrecked I tried to balance on my other leg, which didn't work in trying to climb out of a hole. We ended up falling in again. The next thing Dean tried was to climb up by digging his hands and feet into the walls, which resulted in dirt falling into our faces and hair. Dean stopped when I had crawled to the farthest corner and covered my head with my arms and started to shake in terror. He was burying us alive.

Dean came over to me and wrapped his arms around me in an attempt at comfort. He put his forehead to mine. He was trying to be the strong one but I knew he was just as terrified as I was. Still, knowing that he was as scared as me was actually more comforting than if he was the bravest person in the world.

We were stuck in that grave for hours. We spent the time telling each other stories and drawing pictures on each others hands with our fingers, anything to distract us from the fact that we were in a grave. By the time the sun came up, we were almost calm. Almost. But the sun did help, it meant that someone was more likely to see us.

The groundkeeper found us at about 9:30. He lowered a ladder and we scrambled up, and then before he could grab us and take our names we were out of there, running out of the graveyard as fast as we could. I went home to screaming fosters and had to get stitches for my lip and crutches for a sprained ankle.

We went back a few months later to see who was buried where we'd been trapped. By then the headstone was in place. The name on the headstone was Ingrid Terefanio. She was 56 years old when she died. From then on I used that as a fake name.

We didn't stop going to graveyards though. We weren't too scared, in fact looking back on the event we laughed about it. We were just more careful.