The corn grew dense in the field behind my childhood home. Their rich leaves rustled as I brushed them aside. Where had you gone off to? I looked up at the sun that was then directly overhead.

Earlier that afternoon, I had waited anxiously for the doorbell to ring. Though my mother watched a few of the local children while their parents were busy, you were the only one that was my age. You had blond hair, cut short in a sort of sexless manner. I too once had golden hair, but over the years it darkened into “dirty blond” and finally settling into a rather generic brown with a few rare blond strands.