Seventeen Years Later
Today as Lynda Jones hopped down the steps of her home on Spring Beauty Lane she notices a looper caterpillar was inching up her ankle with a slightest tickling sensation. Although people chalk it up to the fact animals simply like her, Lynda had a condition where she was like a magnet to insects. She did not consider this to be a bad thing thanks to the influence of her brother and naturally tomboyish nature.
Lynda was adopted into a lower middle class African-American family as an infant. Her family are father Sam, a medical attendant, mother Audrey, a high school teacher, and older brother Clyde, a student at the local community college. Lynda loved everything about her adopted family, but had some secrets kept from them. One thing she didn’t feel ready to share was that she was “definitely bisexual”.
The bigger issue in Lynda’s mind, though, was that she has been suffering from some unusual physical anomaly since age eleven that she has been too shy to ask a medical professional about. Every time the year gets cold strange growths would pop up along Lynda’s torso. These small protuberances that reminded her of flower buds could easily be broken off. (When this first began she would secretly collect them into an envelope before ultimately deciding that might be a bad idea.)
Rats and Hats 