Go on, take my picture, I thought. Go on. I dare you.

And I smiled for him, as wide as I could, stretching my lips over my terrible teeth.

The lens shattered with such force the entire camera fell to pieces.

People nearby shielded their eyes from the flying shrapnel, and the photographer, his hands and face bloody, stood for a mo­ment staring in shock, then raced down the aisle in pain.

"Cheese," I said.

Then I took off the number 13 sticking to my shirt and left.

My mother found me walking by the side of the road ten minutes later. She pulled up in her classic pink Cadillac―the kind they got sticking out of the roof of the Hard Rock Cafe. It has wings like the Batmobile and funky bullet-shaped taillights. Everyone knows when Momma drives down the street. When she saw me, she slowed down, matching my pace.

"Cara DeFido, you get yourself into this car."

"Give me one good reason."

"Because it's a twenty-mile walk back to Flock's Rest."

"So I'll hitchhike," I told her.

"And who is it you think's gonna pick you up?"

"Yeah," said my brother from the backseat. "One look at her and they'll break the land-speed record to get away."

Momma turned around and tried to whack him, but her headrest got in the way. "You just shut that piehole, Vance," Momma said.

"Hey, I'm just trying to help!"

The way Momma saw it, she was the only one allowed to tell me how ugly I was, and she had no qualms about doing it. "Honey," she used to say when I was little, "you're as ugly as a duck­ling coming out of its shell." And then she would kiss all those ugly parts of my face.

It might sound horrible, but you gotta understand, she said it out of love. Okay, maybe a little out of bitterness, too, but mostly out of love. See, my momma, she's smart enough to know there's some things the world doesn't forgive. The world can forgive you for being stupid. It can forgive you for being blind, for being deaf; it can even forgive you for being bad. This world doesn't forgive ugliness, though―and if Momma had pretended that I wasn't, it would have been a cruelty beyond measure, because how could I ever face the world without being prepared for the nastiness it would eventually kick back at me?