A Mango-Shaped Space (7 page)

“Dr. Randolph only wants you to get better. He believes this is the next step.”

“He called me Beth again,” I remind her.

“It could have been worse,” she says, turning to go. “He could have called you Zack.”

At that point I would rather have been called anything but crazy. It is one thing for me to call myself crazy. It is another thing entirely when a doctor does it.

I pull open the heavy front door right as the bell rings at the end of sixth period. I blend in with the throng and make my way to gym class. Running around the track always makes me feel better. I quickly change into my gym clothes and am the first one out on the field. I may be crazy, but at least I can run fast. The other kids eventually file out, and the track fills up. As I pass Roger on the track I decide he must have outgrown his two-different-socks phase. Just as I make this observation, he trips and lands hard on his side. Two kids help him off the field, and he hobbles back inside. After I change into my regular clothes, I find him sitting on the bleachers with an ice pack on his left ankle.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

He looks up and grimaces a little. “I twisted my ankle pretty bad. I could have sprained it.”

“If you wanted to get out of gym class, there are easier ways.”

He smiles, and I think he must have gotten his braces off recently because his teeth look very straight.

“We need to get together about the history project,” he says, steadying the ice pack, which had begun to slip. “I’ll give you my number, and we can make plans over the phone.” With his free hand he reaches in his book bag and hunts around for a pencil. I notice he has a paperback copy of one of the Narnia books.

“Have you read that yet?” I ask him as he pulls out the book and leans on it to write his phone number.

“At least ten times,” he says, handing me the scrap of paper with his number on it. “They’re my favorite books. Have you read them?”

“I’ve only read the first one,” I tell him. “I’m not too big on reading.”

A brief look of disappointment flickers across his face. For some reason I feel like I need to explain. “Reading is hard for me sometimes, that’s all. It’s not that I don’t like it.”

“Oh,” Roger says, clearly unsure of what else to say. The bell rings and startles both of us.

“Call me tonight about the project, okay?”

I nod as I hurry out of the gym. I don’t picture myself calling him any time soon.

Jenna tries very hard not to pry on the bus after school. She talks about the weather, how it should be cooling off a bit. She tells me her gym teacher made the girls cheer for the boys in volleyball and that she’s going to file a complaint.

When the driver lets us out at our stop, she can’t hold it in anymore. “I know you’d tell me if something was wrong,” she says, “because best friends tell each other everything, right?”

“Can we talk about it later?” I ask. “It’s kind of a long story, and I need to start my art project.”

“Just 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 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 cat, or the fact that the cat’s name is Twinkles.

A few minutes later the door opens, and a tall woman who looks like she’s in her late thirties enters. She walks over to me and holds out her hand.

“You must be Mia,” she says. Her voice is sweet and makes me think of whipped cream, which reminds me that I was too upset to eat lunch today and could use some food.

I nod.

“I’m Ms. Finn,” she says, bending over to shake my hand. “Let’s go into my office and get to know each other.”

“Isn’t it Dr. Finn?” my mother asks.

Ms. Finn smiles and says, “I’m a psychotherapist, not a psychologist. Many people make that mistake. I assure you the level of care is the same.”

I’m still stuck in the deep chair and have to use both hands to push myself out. My mother starts to follow us out the door, but Ms. Finn stops her.

“This is usually best without the mothers,” she says. My mother has no choice but to stay behind. I pause at the doorway and look back pleadingly, but my mother waves me on.

Feeling alone and unsure, I follow Ms. Finn into a small office that is very similar to the waiting room. Only this room has framed diplomas on the walls and a bowl of jelly beans on a big mahogany desk. A box of tissues is conveniently placed next to the plush couch where Ms. Finn instructs me to “sit, relax, make yourself at home.” The tissues are a bad sign. Either she expects me to cry or to sneeze a lot. At least I don’t sink in quite as deep this time when I sit down. My toes just reach the rug. I can only gaze longingly at the jelly beans, which are about a foot too far away to reach. My stomach growls.

“Now, Mia,” Ms. Finn begins in a firm voice. All traces of the whipped cream have disappeared. “Dr. Randolph has filled me in on your situation. Maybe together, you and I can figure out what is causing you to see these colors.”

I nod cautiously.

She continues. “I’m a very straightforward person. Another therapist might be the ‘silent type,’ but I call it like I see it, all right?”

“Okay.”

“Do you see the colors when you’re mad at your parents?”

“I don’t usually get mad at my parents,” I tell her honestly, my eyes drifting back to the bowl of jelly beans. “That’s my older sister’s job.”

“Remember, Mia, anything you say in here is confidential.”

I nod. Unfortunately, my only secret is already out.

“I need to ask if you’ve ever taken drugs,” Ms. Finn says, looking me straight in the eye, daring me to lie. “Anything that might have caused these colors as a side effect.”

Taken aback, I tell her no, I’ve never taken drugs. I don’t even like to take medicine when I’m sick.

She jots something down on her notepad.

“Now, Mia, what is your place in the birth order of your family?”

“I have one older sister and a younger brother. But they don’t see things like I do.”

She taps her pen rapidly on her desk and asks, “Are you familiar with middle child syndrome?”

I shake my head. I don’t like the sound of anything that ends with the word
syndrome.

“Let me see if I can explain,” she says, her voice suddenly soothing again. “Middle children are in an unfortunate position. They get neither the privileges reserved for the first born nor the special attention specific to the baby of the family. Do you follow me?”

“I understand what you’re saying,” I tell her, trying not to sound defensive. “But I don’t think it’s like that in my family. My parents don’t treat us any differently.”