True Colors by Natalie Kinsey-Warnock Read Free Book Online Page A

anyone with a phobia, a fear of something?”
    I was afraid of the Wright brothers and vocabulary tests, but those probably didn’t count as real phobias. I’d never told Nadine about my fear of clowns, even though the old Nadine wouldn’t have made fun of me.
    I wasn’t so sure about the new Nadine.
    “Raleigh’s afraid of water,” I said. I didn’t really feel right telling her that, but I didn’t see how it would hurt.
    “That’s hydrophobia,” Nadine crowed. “It’s another name for rabies, because animals that have rabies are afraid of water. It makes them choke. Then there’s lygophobia, that’s fear of the dark, and ophidiophobia, fear of snakes”—Nadine shuddered when she said that—“and phalacrophobia is the fear of becoming bald. Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number thirteen, pupaphobia is the fear of puppets, and gephyrophobia is the fear of crossing bridges. I could tell you all of them.”
    She would have, too, if Mrs. Tilton hadn’t called usdown for lunch. That was another thing different about Nadine’s family. What they called lunch was our dinner, and their dinner was our supper.
    As soon as Nadine turned to go downstairs, I filched one of the
Reader’s Digest
s and crammed it into my waistband. My plan was to memorize all the words in “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power,” and next time we played, I’d show Nadine she wasn’t the only one who could throw around big words.
    As I turned to follow Nadine, a word on one of the crumpled-up newspapers caught my eye: STOLEN! I tucked the piece of paper in my pocket and went down to lunch.
    Mrs. Tilton had our plates all ready at our places. I slid into my chair and picked up my fork. Nadine used hers to prod the suspicious lump on her plate.
    “Don’t poke at your food, Nadine,” Mrs. Tilton said. “It’s not polite.”
    “What is it?” Nadine asked.
    “Waldorf salad,” Mrs. Tilton said. “I thought we’d have something nice and light.”
    I’d never heard of Waldorf salad, and even though it didn’t look like any salad I’d ever seen, I liked salads, so I took a bite. I’d only chewed twice before I realized I was in trouble. Not only was I going to have a hard time
getting
the food down, I was going to have a hard time
keeping
it down.
    Apples, celery, grapes, and walnuts, all together in onedish. I loved fruit, and I loved vegetables; I just didn’t like them mixed together, and to make it even worse, they were covered with mayonnaise.
    Mrs. Tilton chattered on, not noticing my distress.
    “I’m fixing sautéed sweetbreads for dinner,” Mrs. Tilton said. “Have you had them before, Blue?”
    I gave my head a little shake, afraid of spewing Waldorf salad all over her.
    “Well, I hope you’ll join us later and try them,” Mrs. Tilton said. “I think it’s important to try new things.”
    Mrs. Tilton went into the pantry to get a pitcher of ice water, and I spit the Waldorf salad into my napkin. I’d worry about how to dispose of it later.
    Nadine looked at me, her eyebrows arched.
    “I bet you don’t know what sweetbreads are, do you?” she said.
    No, I didn’t even know what sweetbreads were, but if they were like Hannah’s cinnamon bread or her currant scones, I was sure they would be good. I wished I were home right now, having some of those scones with Hannah.
    “It’s the organs of an animal,” Nadine said, “heart, pancreas, and throat.” And she watched with satisfaction as the taste of Waldorf salad came back up in my throat. Hannah ate chicken giblets and cow’s tongue (being Scottish, she didn’t like to waste anything), and it sometimes seemed to me that she would have eaten every scrap of animal if she could, right down to the hide. Maybe that’swhy she liked tripe, which was cow’s stomach. She’d made me take a bite once, just to try it. It tasted like a wet leather shoe. I would rather have eaten the shoe. But as far as I knew, Hannah had never eaten sweetbreads.
    The