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

practically begging her now.
    She stands up. “How can I not? I thought you were my best friend.”
    “I am,” I say, jumping up from the log. “And you’re mine. We’re Partners in Crime!” My eyes fill with tears. This hasn’t gone at all as I expected. My head is reeling.
    “Maybe you don’t know what a best friend is.” She steps away from me.
    My jaw falls open. “Maybe
you
don’t. I thought if anyone would understand it would be you.”
    “Well, I don’t understand,” she says angrily. “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me in third grade. Or fourth grade. Or seventh. It’s always been you and me against the world. I’ll bet there are lots of things you don’t bother to tell me.”
    “There aren’t,” I insist. Jenna and I had never fought before. Ever. I can feel my hands start to shake.
    “I have to go home,” Jenna says suddenly. She hurries along the path back to our houses. I run to the edge of the woods and wait for her to look back, but she doesn’t. I’m so shocked, I don’t know what to feel. As I walk home I decide on anger. By the next morning, I change my mind and choose disappointment. And after school on Monday, after Jenna had ignored me all day, I decide on very, very hurt.

Chapter Five
    The fight with Jenna is still playing over in my head as my mother leads me into the therapist’s office. This waiting room is completely different from Dr. Randolph’s. No crying babies, no scratching sisters. The doctor’s schedule is supposedly full, but the room is completely empty, silent as a tomb. The oversized chairs are white; the walls, covered with occasional landscape paintings, are white; and the plush carpet is the whitest of all. I’m insanely glad I didn’t bring a cup of grape juice with me.
    On the wall above the magazine rack is a row of light switches with different names under them. My mother scans them until she finds the one marked “Finn.” She then flicks the switch to the On position.
    “What’s that for?” I ask in a whisper. I’m afraid to make any noise in this quiet, white place.
    “Dr. Finn told me to do that when we arrived,” she says. “A light turns on in her office so she knows to come get us.”
    I sit in one of the chairs and sink down deep. My feet don’t even reach the floor. This office doesn’t feel like a place for crazy people. At least not a place for crazy people with grape juice. I have the uneasy feeling we’re being watched. If there had been a moose head on the wall, I swear the eyes would have been moving. My hands get that numb feeling.
    “Mom,” I whisper from the depths of my chair, “do you think they have a hidden video camera focused on us? You know, to see what we’re like before we go in there?”
    “No, I don’t,” she replies. “I wish you’d just relax. Dr. Finn only wants to talk to you.”
    “At least
someone
wants to talk to me,” I mutter.
    “What do you mean?” my mother asks, shifting around in her own plush chair. “Who’s not talking to you?”
    I sigh and say, “Jenna. She hasn’t spoken to me since Saturday. I told her about what’s going on, and I don’t know, she just freaked out because I hadn’t told her before. She didn’t say a word to me in school today.”
    “You know how sensitive Jenna is,” my mother says. “But she’ll come around, you’ll see.”
    I don’t know what I’d do if she didn’t. There isn’t anyone else I would want for a best friend. I twist the friendship bracelet back and forth on my wrist. Molly and Kimberly and Sara are fine for school friends, but we’ve never spent much time together outside of school. We all live too far from each other. I wish Mango were here with me, his dirty paws leaving little tracks on the white carpet. I haven’t seen much of him this week. I think he’s been hanging out at the Roths’ house lately, sniffing around their new cat, Twinkles. I don’t know which is more embarrassing: Mango having a crush on the