She looked out the large picture window… and saw the heavy sky, the absence of a single bird on the telephone line. She knew, as everyone from the Midwest knows, that if she stepped outside she would be struck by a far-reaching silence. In the springtime of her childhood it hadn’t been the green skies or the sudden stillness that would finally cause her mother to throw open the doors and windows, grab Rebekah’s hand, and pull her down the stairs to the basement: it was that absence of birdsong, of crickets, of spring peepers that meant a twister was on the way.

— The Used World by Haven Kimmel