Pedro Molina, Seu Romário’s grandson, looked at my flower mixture like he was the biggest authority in soups. Even though he was my age, he was already helping in his family’s kitchen. He pushed a hand through his curly bangs, clearly flaunting the bandage wrapped around his finger.

“What happened to you?” one of his friends asked.

“I was cutting slices of guava paste with my grandfather to make bolo de rolo,” he said with a pleased grin. “It didn’t even hurt.”

All the neighborhood kids looked at Pedro in awe.

But I had seen Pedro after the injury and knew the truth. “I heard you crying earlier,” I contradicted accusingly.

The other kids began whispering behind him, and Pedro seethed.

All knobby knees and elbows, he took one step toward me, wrinkled his nose at my cooking, and said, “If this is soup, then let me see you drink it.”

I held the mixture up to my mouth. The sweet smell of decaying leaves and chlorophyll turned my stomach. The color was a dangerous reddish brown. I had to drink it. Pedro had challenged me in front of everyone.

I was ready to take the first gulp—

But I chickened out.

“Is this the kind of disgusting food that your family serves at Salt?” he mocked me.

Everywhere I went, his friends made sure I heard variations of the same accusation. I even caught them warning each other not to come to Salt, because of how terrible my soup looked. Things were getting out of control and I had to do something to defend Salt’s reputation.

My list of failed cooking attempts only stacked up, though:

I brought Mom’s leftover soup to school, but accidentally dumped too much salt in it. That’s why people call me Salty to this day.

I brought lollipops I’d secretly made with a recipe I found online, but they were so hard they chipped my classmate’s tooth.

I then tried boiling water on the stove at Salt to make real soup, but I accidentally burned Grandma’s hand when she found me. She let out a cry of pain that scared me so much I wanted her to go see a doctor, but she said it was nothing.

Mom learned then that I’d been sneaking into Salt’s kitchen. That it had been my fault Grandma was hurt. She grounded me and made me promise I’d never again cook behind her back. And she didn’t have to ask. I finally realized cooking wasn’t for me, that every time I stepped into the kitchen, something really wrong happened.

Like I was cursed.