Read Online A Mango-Shaped Space by Wendy Mass - Free Book Online

tell me one thing. Are you sick?”
    “No, I’m not sick.”
Am I?
“I promise I’ll tell you everything later.”
    “Later like when?” she asks.
    “This weekend,” I hear myself saying.
    “Okay,” she says reluctantly. “But I’m going to hold you to it.”
    “I know,” I say, wondering if there is any chance she’ll forget. Not likely.
    When I get home I close myself in my room and set up my easel. As if on cue, my father starts hammering. If I’m going to imitate Kandinsky, I’m going to have to bring on the shapes. I turn on the radio to a heavy rock station and also put in a cassette of a thunderstorm. The shapes come unbidden, as always, and I begin to paint. It’s a good thing this assignment was given early in the year. After all, my colors and shapes may not be around much longer if I can actually find a doctor to cure me. I should record them for posterity — a word I only recently learned means the people who come after you in history, not your rear end, which is your
posterior.
    I concentrate hard and paint fast to keep up with the fleeting images. As soon as I try to capture one in my head, it’s gone and morphed into another shape. After an hour I stand back and admire my progress. It actually looks a lot like Kandinsky’s work. But I bet he didn’t get a headache from all the noise! I paint and paint until I fill up almost every available space on the canvas. When I turn off the music, the resulting quiet is a big relief. I lie down on the bed and let the silence seep into me like a cool breeze.
    Saturday afternoon rolls around all too quickly, and Jenna waits impatiently for me to start talking. The gray sky looks slightly threatening. I keep glancing up as we find our favorite log at the edge of the woods. I run my finger over the words
Mia and Jenna’s Log, Keep Away
, which we carved into the soft bark a few summers ago using my father’s pocketknife. One of our first PIC missions was snagging the knife from his toolshed and then returning it, undiscovered.
    Jenna swings her legs back and forth, side to side, wordlessly willing me to speak. I had hoped to be able to tell her I’d been cured so I wouldn’t have to go into the details, but I still haven’t seen the therapist. Apparently a lot of other people in town have mental problems, because I can’t get an appointment until Monday.
    I watch ants file neatly into the ant hole by my feet and remind myself that Jenna and I have known each other forever. She is closer to me than my own sister. Much closer actually. I open my mouth and force myself to start talking. Breathlessly, I tell her about seeing colors and about how I thought everybody saw things that way and then I found out that nobody did and I felt so alone and strange. I tell her I wasn’t lying that day I got sent home in third grade. She’s not saying anything, so I ramble on, my hands flying around in the air. “I’ve always wanted to tell you that your first name is the color and texture of wet grass. And your last name is purplish pink and white, like a peppermint candy. Grass and peppermint, isn’t that nice?” As I say that I realize how cool Jenna is, and I wonder how I could have been afraid to tell her all these years. I wait for her response. When it comes it almost knocks me off the log.
    She bursts out crying.
    “Jenna?” I say, my eyes opening wide. “What’s wrong?”
    She turns her face away and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. I can see the tears are sliding down her cheeks. She sniffles and wipes again. I feel totally helpless. Finally she faces me again.
    “I can’t believe you hid this from me for all these years,” she says with an unfamiliar hardness in her voice. “I’ve shared everything with you. Everything! Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Shocked by her reaction, my words flow out strangely. “But nobody knows … I kept it from everybody. I got used to keeping it to myself. Please don’t take it personally.” I’m