Read YA The Boy on Cinnamon Street for Free Online Page A

with all these artsy paint splashes all over it. “I bet you two think the center of a painting is important. Right?” says Annais.
    “Yeah,” Reni and I say in unison.
    “Well, to me, all that matters are the edges. I’m working on the textural variations of color along the edges,” she says.
    Reni and I look at each other. Then I put my hand up over my mouth to squeeze back a major laugh.
    “Thumbelina isn’t feeling well,” says Reni, pushing me out of the room like I’m a loaded laundry cart. “And that’s because we have every reason to believe she’s in love.”
    After looking in the phone book, Reni and I set out to walk by a couple of McCartney residences in the area. Paul McCartney of my grandpa’s favorite group, the Beatles, isn’t the only McCartney in the world. There are at least four others in North Pottsboro. But tell that to my grandpa. My grandpa says he’s the most ferocious, dedicated Beatle fan out there. To me, that means fifty years of listening to the same songs over and over again.
    It’s snowing again. My feet are freezing. I’m thinking about that woman mountain climber Henderson told me about. Why didn’t anyone hike down the cliff and look in all the ice crevasses for her? Why did they let her fall off the mountain and freeze to death? I need to ask Henderson. But I couldn’t today because when someone has an open book covering his head, it’s hard to strike up a conversation.
    Reni and I are walking down Nutmeg Street and crossing over to Coriander. Snow is dancing around us, and Reni just keeps trudging along. I’m not sure where we’re going, but we’re making a little path in the lost whiteness all around us. Our voices are puffy and muffled in the quiet snow falling. This is my old neighborhood. I used to be “a Cinnamon Street kid.” I had billions of blue ribbons and white ribbons for tumbling, for cartwheels, for walkovers…. I was a daddy and mommy’s girl. I had a daddy and a mommy. We had a house with two porches. Kids used to come over after school. I used to be a normal size too. I wasn’t little. I was average. I liked being average. It was fun being everyday and ho-hum and just like everybody else. That was before everybody started growing and I stopped.
    Reni gets ahead of me and soon she becomes a bright blur in the soft, falling heavy whiteness everywhere. “Come on,” she calls, “I think he lives on Coriander Street. This way.”
    The houses are covered in snow and have pointed roofs and chimneys puffing and little winding paths like in a fairy tale. We get on Cinnamon Street and we pass number 14. It’s a green house. “Reni,” I call out. “There’s my old house.”
    I stop in the snow and stand there and look at the house. It’s unoccupied. Empty. I feel its emptiness in my stomach.
    “This is where you used to live?” Reni says, puffing back through the snow toward me. Her cheeks are Reni red and her Reni round face is full of light. “That’s a cool little house. I didn’t know this was your house.”
    “Yup,” I say.
    The tree is still in the backyard. I can see its sprawling arms, its twisted branches. It’s all knotted and gnarled just by the back door. I guess I once climbed that tree and wouldn’t come down for five hours. My grandpa had to get up there and pull me out of it. They said I was screaming. You’d think I’d remember something so weird as that. But no. My grandma says I have blocked a whole week out of my conscious mind. She says I have forgotten everything that happened. She says I’m protecting myself. But how could I do that when I don’t even know what a conscious mind is?
    Reni and I sit on the snowy front steps of number 14 Cinnamon Street. We don’t say anything much. If Reni were to ask me what happened here, I wouldn’t tell her. I would run away and never speak to her again, if I could remember. But I can’t remember. Reni might even know what happened, but she doesn’t talk about it.
    “You