"No," I told her. "People are the same everywhere, whether it's here in Flock's Rest or in some other town. They take one look at me, and they just can't control the things they say and do."

Miss Leticia waved her hand. "Don't you give no mind to the things people say. It's just a whole lotta quacking from a whole lotta geese."

"Yeah," I said, "but what about the things they do?"

Miss Leticia didn't have a quick answer for that one. "All I can say about that is what goes around comes around. You may never get to see it, but those kids who played that evil trick on you to­day, they will get theirs. And if it's not in this world, it will be in the next."

She said it with such certainty, it made me feel better. After that, I began talking about everything, as though a floodgate had opened inside of me. I went on and on about the things people said about me―to my face and behind my back. I told her about how most strangers treated me―as if touching me would some­how make them unclean. I even told her things about my parents that I'd never told anyone. Like how years ago, when my momma was sick, my dad had to take me to work with him. I spent a week with him on the car lots, and that was the week people stopped buying his cars.

"Within a year, all of his lots, except for one, went out of business, and we had to move to a trailer park. We've been there ever since. He never said it out loud, but I know he blames me. He thinks my face cursed his business."

"Hmm," said Miss Leticia. "Tell me, is your father an honest salesman?"

"Not really," I admitted. "His cars are mostly pieces of garbage."

"Well, then, his business deserved to be cursed."

I told her about my ink drawings, and the green valley I go to in my mind, where the people don't seem to notice my face― and how the flowers of her greenhouse reminded me of the gar­dens I imagine there.