“It matches your dress, too,” I say with a grin, as she presses the book against her chest.

I know the feeling, kiddo.

The girl looks up at me and blinks several times. “Oh!” is all she says.

“What? Do I have powdered sugar all over my face?” I shouldn’t have eaten that beignet on the go, but the smell knocked me out as I passed by the store in the mall. I truly didn’t have a choice.

“No,” she assures me. “But you’re too beautiful. My dada says that when a girl looks like she’s perfect, it’s because she’s wearing lots of makeup. He says no one is as floo—flo…”

“Flawless?” I offer.

She nods eagerly. “Flulesh,” she repeats after me, butchering the word.

“Well, your dad’s right. I’m certainly not that.”

“Are you wearing lots of makeup?”

“No,” I admit. “But that doesn’t mean I’m flawless.”

I can’t believe I’m having a conversation about beauty standards with a six-year-old on a Saturday morning, but if it helps the little girl grow up to realize that perfection doesn’t exist, I’m happy to discuss it all day.

I tug at the end of the fishtail braid thrown over my shoulder. “My hair’s all over the place unless I tame it like this. It's like it explodes all around my head. I had a buck tooth, until I wore braces for three whole years. If I don’t tint my eyebrows, I look like I don’t have any, because they’re too pale. And in the summer? I turn as red as a lobster after an hour in the sun.”

Her eyes widen. “A lobster?”

Children are so literal. “Maybe more like a piglet. Oink, oink,” I add, squishing my nose.

She laughs so hard I think she’s going to stop breathing.

Suddenly aware that we’ve been chatting for a while, I turn my head. “Are you here with your family?”

The little girl looks around, and I see her face switch from laughter to panic when she realizes there’s no one around us except the sales clerk staring at us with amusement. “Da! Da was right here. Da!” she screams.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” I assure her. “What’s your name, sweetie?”

“Octavia.”

“I’m just going to speak to the man here, okay, Octavia? I won’t be a minute.” I keep an eye on her as I step towards the clerk. “Excuse me, is there a way to call security? I think she lost her dad,” I say quickly.

The man makes the call, and in no time, there’s a voice calling Octavia’s dad to get his ass back to the stationery shop—though in a more polite tone than the one I would have used. How the hell did he lose her?