A Bonnie-Shaped Space

 is a spoof of Wendy Mass's novel A Mango-Shaped Space.

Prologue
''Freak. FREAK.''

I'll never forget when I first heard the word, that day at the whiteboard. It was five years ago, when I was eight; if you're bad at math like me, I'm thirteen now. Anyway, I was trying to figure out how to multiply twenty-four times nine, and there were five minutes left in class. I kept thinking that maybe the bell would ring before I could finish, no one would know that I couldn't solve the problem.

I stared at the problem and noticed out of the corner of my eye a couple of colored markers on the ledge of the whiteboard. I erased the 2 and began to rewrite it in its correct color.

"Ms. Henson!"

My teacher startled me. I turned around, capping the marker. The click made a small gray spark on the corner of my vision. "This isn't art class," she said.

Like I didn't know!

"Just use the black marker."

"But wouldn't it be easier to do in the right colors?" I asked, and the class laughed. I thought they were laughing at her, not me, but apparently I was wrong.

"What do you mean, the right colors?" she asked. "Numbers don't have colors, they simply have a shape and a numerical value &mdash; that's all."

"But they have all those things," I said.

"This is nonsense," the teacher replied, irate. "Are you going to finish the problem?"

I shook my head slightly. Someone threw a paper airplane across the room. Were they kidding? Of course numbers had colors. Let me guess, they were going to tell me that sounds and letters didn't have colors either, that the letter a wasn't red like a tomato and clicking markers didn't make little gray sparks?

The teacher sent me to the principal, who left me in the hands of my parents. They brought me home and I sulked about how unfair it was. Pretty soon, everyone forgot that happened &mdash; everyone except for me. I learned to never mention that again, but now I'm thirteen, and I just might have to give my secret away.