There’s a table near the meat counter, and it’s set up with a red checkered tablecloth and a vase of fake daisies. It’s a display for Miss Daisy’s Home Cookin’, a local catering company, which everybody knows is Daisy Alcott from down the street, whose husband died two years ago and so she needs something to do with her hands. I set my food down next to a case of pimento cheese. That’s the kind of place this is. You can just grab stuff and eat it in the middle of the store, and nobody thinks you’re stealing or tries to page your mom over the intercom.

“You are very attractive.”

I choke on a piece of sausage and look up to see a kid standing in front of me with his arms crossed over a white apron, and—is that blood on it?

“Excuse me?”

“I said, ‘You are very attractive.’ At least”—he pauses and, I swear to you, looks me up and down—“your averages come out right.”

He takes the chair opposite me. He’s got hair as black as Harry Potter’s, but with none of the charm. I look around to see if I’m being watched. This has to be a joke, right?

“Uh, so am I attractive or average?”

He blinks at me and then blinks again, and it’s like the computer’s spinning wheel—like he’s uploading information and I am just going to have to wait it out. I crumple my trash and start to look for an easy exit.

“Both. According to researchers, it’s often the most average, or symmetrical, faces that are most appealing.”

“Uh-huh.”

I act all put out, but I kind of get that. People like ordinary—even numbers, even teeth, average height and intelligence. But in my experience, nobody would call a girl in a wheelchair attractive unless he was messing with her.

He’s still blinking at me. That is blood on his apron. His name tag says BERT. I wonder if he works here or if he just snuck in to butcher something. A scene flashes back from The People Under the Stairs and I shiver.

“All right, then. Well, I think I hear my mom. Catch you later.”

He just stands and holds out an arm that says, After you, miss.

I can feel his eyes on me when I leave.

“There you are!” Mom is standing at the front holding a ginormous bag of groceries. I pull the food wrappers from my pocket, and she rolls her eyes but hands me some cash. I run them through self-checkout and think how weird it is to hear the same automated voice from the Publix at home say “Please take your receipt” here at Food & Co.

“Where were you?” Mom asks as I follow her out to the car.

“Getting verbally harassed.”

“What?”