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“Oh, mija. What happened?” Abuela rubbed Mandy’s back.

Isa told the story of what had happened while Mandy sobbed. She had seemingly been fine before, but something about seeing Abuela tore down Mandy’s walls. Abuela held Mandy’s hand as she walked them all inside and sat Mandy down at the dining room table.

Abuela calmly brushed Mandy’s hair behind her ears and carefully cleaned her chin. There was a decent-sized scratch there, but it bled like it was a deep gash. “It’s going to be okay,” Abuela said, and Mandy believed her. Abuela always had a way of making Mandy feel safe and loved.

Isa got Mandy a new shirt, and once a bandage was affixed to Mandy’s chin, Abuela got each of the girls an Otter Pop and went to work getting the stains out of Mandy’s blood-soaked top.

Once the washing machine was running, Abuela came into the living room. “I think we are done with bikes for today.”

Mandy didn’t argue, and neither did Isa.

“We could play a game,” Isa suggested, but Mandy wasn’t really in the mood.

“Why don’t we build a fort and watch a movie.” Abuela unfolded the colorful afghan that lay across the back of the couch. This made Mandy smile. She loved to build blanket forts, but Mom hated when she did it at home.

“I’ll get the blankets from the hall closet.” Isa raced off.

Abuela handed one side of the afghan to Mandy. “You tuck this in over there, and I’ll put it up on this side.”

The three of them worked in harmony, bringing in chairs from the dining room and setting up a massive blanket fort around the TV. Once the structure was done, Mandy and Isa loaded it with pillows while Abuela made popcorn on the stove.

Soon the three of them were snuggled in while the opening credits of the movie they had picked out started to play.

“Can we sleep in here tonight?” Isa asked.

“I think that is a fine idea,” Abuela answered.

Mandy laid her head on Abuela’s lap, and Abuela smoothed Mandy’s hair as they all watched the movie together.

Chapter Forty-One

March 2018

The paint on Mandy’scanvas blended together like an intricately woven fabric. As soon as the last box had been brought into her new apartment, this was the first room she set up. It wasn’t as large as the space in the back of her parents’ garage, but the lighting was great—especially in the early morning—and she could come in there whenever her art called to her, which was often those days.

As she mixed the colors on her palette to create the perfect shade, Mandy couldn’t help thinking about the first time she painted.

Although she had been eyeing the painting center for days, she hesitated to give it a try. Mandy never painted at home. Mom thought it was too messy. But that day her teacher encouraged her to give it a try, so Mandy carefully put on her apron and stood in front of the ashy white paper. All sorts of colors were lined up under the large blank page, and Mandy immediately knew what she wanted to paint.

She started at the top with red and created a big arch that began at the bottom of the left edge and went all the way to the bottom right. But she used a little too much, so it was now dripping down. Mandy quickly rinsed the brush to put on the orange, but she didn’t get all the red out, and then when she smeared the orange paint across the page, the colors melded together, leaving only a little that was just red at the top and a little just orange.

It was awful. She tried to use more orange, but that made it too thick. Mandy was no good at this at all. And when she got to yellow, she just made it all worse. Rainbows were seven perfect colors, but hers all kind of blended from one to the next. Tears began to well up in her eyes.

“Wow, that’s beautiful,” a small voice said behind her.

Mandy turned to find a girl she hadn’t seen before in her class standing there with her teacher.

“Mandy, this is Marisa, she’s new to our class.”

“Hi,” Marisa said, then dipped her chin to her chest, where she had on a rainbow T-shirt with a unicorn.

“I love your shirt,” Mandy said. “I have a stuffed unicorn that my dad brought home for me after one of his trips. He works a lot and so he’s not always home, and he always gets me a present and once he got me a unicorn that looks just like that.” Mandy pointed to Marisa’s shirt.

Marisa glanced up and smiled.

“Do you want to paint with me? You could make the unicorn and well…I could try to make the rainbow?” Mandy glanced at the empty easel next to her.

“I won’t be as good as you are,” Marisa said.