# Read the first page of Color outside the Lines by Sangu Mandanna Read the opening of Color outside the Lines by Sangu Mandanna free, no signup. Young-adult stories of love across race and difference. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/color-outside-the-lines-sangu-mandanna - Genre: Young adult - Year: 2019 - ISBN: 9781641290470 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781641290470&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781641290470 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781641290470 ## The opening I guess I could start with the flowers, the hundreds of thousands of red dahlia petals gathered into baskets at the behest of a rich man. But that would make what happened more about the rich man than about you and me. This is the way I would tell it, what happened between us. This is how I would piece it together from what I saw and the things you told me: We did not grow up far apart. My school played yours in a handful of sports, so we might have met. You had that season on the soccer team before deciding that the practices took too much time away from the cimbalom. Me, I never played school sports. I never even tried. There was never one I loved enough to spend my tendons on it. You know what I’m talking about. You knew the first time I told you. Because the feeling I know in my ankles—the countless small tears, the sensation of muscle wringing itself out—is one you know in your wrists, your lower forearms, parts of you that you need for the instrument that has you by the heart. Your gringo teacher often told you what immense promise she saw in you. She said that you would elevate the cimbalom to the level of great orchestra. You winced every time, shrugging away the insult, because while she thought of it as a carnival instrument, you always knew it to be the collection of wood and metal strings that gives music all its colors. You learned to repair the steel and copper strings yourself, because there were so few who knew how to do it, and finding a repair shop in our constellation of rural towns was never easy. Or cheap. And there was no one you really wanted to trust with the instrument your grandfather had left you. Your grandfather, who performed in both city squares and grand halls, and who you thought of when your music teacher watched you, her stare so intense it burned into your back. She is beautiful, your music teacher, but I think her beauty dimmed to you every time she pushed you to play the Liszt again, even when you were past the time the lesson was meant to end, even when your tendons felt like they were tearing apart in your wrists. Even when your forearms felt like they were turning to flames. Your mother, you told me, worried as you iced your wrists at night. And you told her not to, that if musicians wanted to become great, sometimes it involved pain. She pressed her lips together and made you lay bags of frozen peppers under your forearms, because if you had to ice your wrists you might as well bring yourself a little luck at the same time. After a bag had half-thawed, she would throw it into a heated pan, add it to what she was cooking. You told me that, later, when your family ate together you couldn’t decide if you were eating your own pain or your own luck. Any bystander might not think the instrument you love so much would wear down the tendons in the wrists and forearms. They would simply marvel at how quickly your hands moved, how precisely you struck the beaters against the strings, the tips making the timbre sound different depending on whether the leather is hard or soft. ## Books with a similar feel - [The White Guy Dies First by Terry J. Benton-Walker](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-white-guy-dies-first-terry-j-benton-walker.md) - [My True Love Gave to Me by Stephanie Perkins](https://uncovered.ink/read/my-true-love-gave-to-me-stephanie-perkins.md) - [Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton](https://uncovered.ink/read/blackout-dhonielle-clayton.md) - [Faeries Never Lie by Nafiza Azad](https://uncovered.ink/read/faeries-never-lie-nafiza-azad.md) - [The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-sun-is-also-a-star-nicola-yoon.md) - [Black Enough by Ibi Zoboi](https://uncovered.ink/read/black-enough-ibi-zoboi.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.