I couldn’t believe it because yesterday was St Therese who is one of my favorites and my Aunt Margaret always says she gives you roses and we were at school and Father Florsheim who is the new young priest who always wears a cassock and is in a hurry said Mass and after Mass he had a gold thing that looked like a little monstrance and Sister Mary Maximillian who teaches seventh grade said it was a reliquary and inside Father Florsheim said there as a bone from the little flower and I could have kicked him when Jimmy Pochowski said that flowers don’t have bones they have petals he is so stupid and thinks he’s so great because he scored a goal at soccer which anybody could have put in because the goalie at St Elizabeth’s is very fat and slow but we all went forward if we wanted to so we could kiss the bone of St Therese and I wanted to go and so did Maureen and we did and I asked Therese for a rose and Jimmy said it was dumb and he didn’t want to kiss bones or get roses but I told him there was nothing dumb about it and that he was just scared of doing it like the time he almost cried at the Halloween party when he saw a glow in the dark skeleton so he went up to kiss the bone too which made me happy because I can’t explain it but it was like St Therese was right there with us even if it was just her bone but that was better than nothing and why not have a bit of her in that little gold house kind of thing because Sister Mary Albert said God had made all of her holy even her bones and therefore it was like a little bit of her holiness was there with us and I believe it even if Sister Joan who used to be the nun here thinks it was a load of nonsense and I think my Aunt Margaret said she thought Sister Joan was a load of nonsense dressed up like someone from a communist health farm and Sister Mary Albert told us later that this was a relic that was given to the school by Dr Ballast who used to be a Lutheran but became a Catholic and it was a good thing that the converts took relics seriously because no Cathlolics do anymore and she thought Dr Ballast and his wife were very nice because they always came to weekday Mass and Sister said that Mrs Ballast used to be a Lutheran pastor too and wear a backwards collar and pretend to be a priest but she was not doing that anymore and now she wears a black mantilla to Mass just like my Aunt Margaret and I want to get a white one because they are so cool and Jimmy Pochowski would never be able to do that and then at recess he told me that Sister Mary Maximillian was in love with Father Florsheim and he said all the seventh graders call her ‘Mad Max’ so me and Maureen grabbed him and pushed his head in a big mud puddle over at the edge of the playground and when he got up he was really mad and threw a stone at me which hit me in the face and when Sister Mary Albert came over we said he was picking on us which he was sort of if you know what I mean but I didn’t feel very bad about it and neither did Maureen because he had it coming to him and when I got home and looked in the mirror because it hurt where he hit me with the stone there was a round red mark on my cheek and my Mom said it looked like a rose and so I guess I got a rose from St Therese after all.