But there is no security gate on the front of Steinman Cemetery. The fence is open as long as the sun is up. And while it is indeed located in the very center of town, it’s large enough to get lost in, like Central Park in New York City, Tammy imagines; a place inside a place. Or, in this case, just enough of a place inside just enough of a place.

Samhattan isn’t much to write home about. Even if it’s home.

“Cool trees,” Marnie says. Because she likes them. Because, like most industrial towns, Samhattan isn’t overflowing with foliage. Isn’t overflowing with much of anything.

Yet the city does have its share of stories. Some that took place in this very graveyard. Like when the men and women who used to run things intentionally buried the town’s only known serial killer alive. Or when the Samhattanite Ben Evans dug up his own parents and filmed their dead bodies.

The girls don’t even bring this stuff up. They’re not interested.

In fact, they don’t talk much at all as they take the one-way gravel road past the first of the many headstones. From here, they can still see the storefronts, the wacky Third-and-Fourth-Eye Books with its window displays of cosmic-self-help that once scared them silly as toddlers. And Otto’s Auto, where the windows are gray with exhaust.

“These store names,” Tammy says. “You’d think business owners only know how to speak in nursery rhyme.”

They’re deeper now, where the trees block out most of the city and some even curl in over the graves closest to the fences. A lot of green now against that slate sky. At the first fork in the gravel, they turn right, wanting to get to the diner before it closes its doors, along with its coffee.

Fourteen years old. Walking alone and seeking out coffee.

Rare kids, indeed.

“You guys won that game?” Felicia asks.

“Yep. I told you so already.”

“I guess so. And, hey, so long as you keep up the grades, I don’t care how many games you win or lose.”

“Shit, now you really sound like Dad.”

“That’s because your mom would rather you win those games than those grades,” Marnie says.

They laugh. A little. ’Cause it’s true.

At the second fork, they make to turn right again but Tammy eyes a long rectangle of clean dirt at the foot of a cluster of red maples.

Big trees. Angels, the Third-and-Fourth-Eye bookstore employees might call them.

“Hold up,” Tammy says.

Felicia and Marnie don’t ask why. Whatever’s caught Tammy’s eye might be cool. So, they follow her off the gravel, up the thin dirt path between headstones, old and only getting older.

“Dirt,” Marnie says. For fresh graves.

But is it? Tammy doesn’t know. It’s not positioned like a pile of dirt they’d shovel into barrows. In fact, it looks more like its own long grave.

The three friends eye it with the same quiet intensity.

“Big enough for Brittney Griner,” Tammy says. She doesn’t need to explain who that is. Her friends know.