Ricky was scared. They were leaving New England, where everything was green, and moving to Arizona, where nothing was green-or so Ricky thought. His father was going to teach horticulture at a high school, and his mother was going to help refugees learn English.

Ricky didn't want to move. There would be scorpions, giant spiders, skulls and bones half-buried in sand, and plants with spines that reached out and grabbed you. He knew about these plants because the boy next door had visited his grandmother in Tucson, and he told Ricky about the jumping cactus that leapt onto your clothes and stabbed you.

They moved in March just as the desert was just coming into bloom. The desert floor was carpeted with a rainbow of wildflowers, and Ricky had never seen so many different shades of green. Oh my! This wasn't at all what he'd imagined.