Not a Unicorn

by Dana Middleton

  The rest of the week, Emma doesn’t take the bus. And at school, she acts like we never spoke. It makes me think of how I treated Carmen. It’s awful to be ignored, but I probably deserve to feel this way. Karma sucks.

  By Friday, I’m starting to wonder if Emma even talked to me at all. Could I have wanted to be friends with her again so badly that I made it all up? So when she plops down beside me on the bus after school, I’m surprised. And happy. And confused.

  “Who did your bangs?” she asks. “It’s a good look for you.”

  That’s the first thing she wants to know? O-kayyyyy. “Mystic, when I got back.”

  “Mystic, huh?”

  Am I imagining it, or did she say Mystic’s name funny? It makes me wonder if she did hear us in the girls’ locker room that day, if she does know it was Mystic who “borrowed” Brooklyn’s bracelet.

  “Hey, listen, what are you doing this afternoon?” Emma asks, like the past two years never happened.

  “I have some French homework, but—”

  “French homework? You sound like Brooklyn,” she says, rolling her eyes. “That can wait, can’t it? Come over.”

  “Sure,” I say. She scrolls through her phone and I feel tingles of excitement bubble up—nerves, too. I haven’t been to Emma’s apartment in two years, either.

  Sneaking a peek at Emma’s phone, I watch pictures fly by, freeze, and fly by some more. Most are selfies of Emma or Brooklyn or other cheerleaders. When she catches me looking, I turn away, pretending I wasn’t.

  “Why aren’t you following me?” she asks.

  “Huh?”

  She holds up her phone. “Why aren’t you following me?”

  “Oh, my phone’s messed up. I can’t download apps.”

  From the look on her face, I might as well have told her that somebody died. “Let me see it.”

  I retrieve my useless phone from my backpack. “Password,” she says.

  “One, two, three, four.”

  “Seriously?” As I start to explain, she waves it away. “Never mind. We’ll deal with that later.”

  She stabs at my phone like some kind of telecommunications surgeon, and I watch, amazed, until the corners of her lips turn down. Literally. I’m tempted to say, Turn that frown upside down when she looks at me, bereft. “Your phone’s messed up.”

  I know.

  We get off the bus and I follow Emma to her apartment. As the familiar aroma of fried chicken hits my nose, I’m taken back to all the dinners with Emma and her mom at their kitchen table. Emma’s mom is an excellent cook.

  “Emma, didn’t you get my text? I’m—” Her voice trails off as soon as she sees me. “Jewel. Hi,” Emma’s mom says, wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “It’s so good to see you. Your mom told me about your trip. You look really good.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and stand awkwardly until Emma grabs my arm and drags me into her bedroom.

  “We’ve got stuff to do,” she tells her mom.

  “I’ll be gone for about an hour. Have some chicken if you’re hungry.”

  “Okay, we’re good,” Emma says, and closes the door behind us.

  Emma’s room is so different. Her blue walls, once pink, are now covered with posters, mostly of boy bands. The burgundy bedspread is a far cry from her Tinkerbell one. “I like your room now,” I say.

  “Yeah, it’s okay.” Emma twists her hair into a messy up-knot and sits down on the bed. “My dad’s getting me a new desk, finally, so . . . pretend that one’s not there.”

  “Your dad’s around?” I know for a fact that Emma’s dad left town when we were in first grade. I remember how sad she was about it—and how angry.

  “No, he’s still in Texas, but we talk like all the time. He’s married now, to Josie. She has two kids, the cutest little girls ever, omigod, and they want me to come visit next summer.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “We’ll see,” she says. “So, okay, who are you going to the dance with?”

  “What dance?”

  “Uh . . . the eighth-grade dance,” she says, her eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Oh yeah, that dance. Nobody,” I say. “When is it again?”

  “Saturday. A week from tomorrow. How do you not know when the dance is?”

  “I guess I’ve had a lot going on.”

  “I guess.” She looks at me. “Then you don’t have a date? Really?”

  “Really. Who are you going with?”

  “Thomas Kelly.”

  “Thomas Kelly?”

  “He’s not a jerk . . . anymore,” she says with a sly smile.

  Um, I know for a fact that Thomas Kelly is still a jerk. Just last month, he stole the stuffed unicorn she gave me! I guess in the past year he did grow about a foot and got hot. Does that make him not a jerk anymore?

  “I’m sorry, but Thomas Kelly is still a jerk,” I say.

  She stares at me, making me regret my bluntness. “Nah, he’s all right. Better than he used to be.”

  I’m still standing awkwardly by her door, wondering if this was a good idea at all. Is it too early to leave yet?

  “You know,” Emma says. “I’m in charge of the dance committee, and I was thinking, you want to help us out? Marianne broke her ankle, so we’re down a member. And there’s so much more we have to do.”

  “How’d Marianne break her ankle?”

  “Gymnastics.” Emma rolls her eyes in what I’m coming to recognize as her new signature move. “I guess she landed on it wrong or something. Anyway, you’re good at drawing and excellent at glitter, so I was thinking . . . maybe you would join the committee?”

  “You want me to be on the dance committee?”

  “Uh, yeah. We need you, J! And it’ll be fun.”

  “I guess I could. What do I have to do?”

  “Just come help us after school next week. And since you don’t have a date, you could be in charge of the refreshment table. Marianne was on refreshment duty.”

  “At the dance?”

  “If you’re on the committee, you have to be there, J.” Emma grins. “Plus, it’s the eighth-grade dance and you’re an eighth grader! Of course you’ve got to come.”

  I hear the click of a camera and turn, startled, toward the sound.

  “Sorry,” Mystic says, handing me her phone so I can see the picture. “You just looked so happy.” There I am, bangs, no horn, with the most chill look on my face.

  I’m glad Mystic can’t read my mind to know I was thinking about Emma. After I agreed to be on the dance committee, Emma pulled out this big notebook and showed me her Under the Sea designs for the dance. I drew her some mermaids like she needed, and they weren’t too bad! Sure, Nicholas’s mermaids would be better, but Nicholas wouldn’t be caught dead drawing mermaids for the dance committee. I stayed over for dinner with her mom and we even watched some YouTube. It was a legit hangout.

  That was yesterday. Today Mystic and I are at Tina’s Treasures, the thrift shop in town, scavenging for cheap trinkets for her jewelry before meeting Nicholas at the gazebo later. There are only three dollars in her wallet, but Mystic can make three dollars go a long way.

  “What’s on your mind, smiley?” Mystic asks as she takes her phone back and eyes the picture.

  “I don’t know,” I lie.

  Mystic and I went to elementary together, but we weren’t friends then. She knows I was best friends with Emma, and she blames Emma for hurting me. I have the sense she’d somehow be both jealous and protective if she knew Emma was back in my life now.

  I look out the window at the crowded town square. Saturdays are the busiest days for tourists at the peak of leaves-changing season. Even though I’ve lived here all my life, I’ve never been to the square this time of year. No way with a horn on my head.

  “What about this?” Mystic says, holding up a crystal teardrop. “I could make a hole right there, and put this wire through it.” In her other hand, she’s got some beads, silver wire, and a string of leather.
>
  “I love it,” I tell her.

  It’s strange. It used to be so easy with Emma, and Mystic had a moat. Now it’s the opposite. I have to parse my words with Emma, but with Mystic, I just speak without thinking.

  We walk out into the brisk afternoon and head toward the gazebo on the other side of the square. The sidewalk is so crowded that it’s hard to get through. We wind our way through tourist after tourist, stranger after stranger, until suddenly, I stop and gaze around in astonishment.

  “Do you see this?” I ask, stopping and forcing people to circle around us.

  “See what?” Mystic looks around. “The million tourists? Why are we stopping?”

  “They’re not staring at me.” I rotate completely around, my eyes landing on face after face. All these people who’ve never seen me before, and not one of them looking at me at all. Their eyes pass right over me like I’m just a regular teenager here to cause trouble and shop in thrift stores. “I’m invisible,” I say. It sounds so silly, but it honestly feels like a great achievement.

  Mystic grabs my elbow and pulls me to the side. “Welcome to ninety-nine percent of the human race.”

  A mother with a tiny daughter approaches. I make eye contact with the little girl, but her eyes don’t linger curiously. Her mother doesn’t even notice me. It’s almost like I’m not even there.

  I gaze up at the gold, orange, and red leaves dangling from every tree in sight. It is beautiful. I guess I never noticed it before.

  As we escape to the gazebo, Mystic looks back at the masses with disdain. “It’s not that great to be invisible, trust me.” We step into the empty gazebo and sit on the leaf-covered white benches.

  I grin. “No, it’s pretty great.”

  “Just wait until you want a boy to notice you and he doesn’t.”

  “Oh,” I say, coming back to Earth. She’s talking about Ethan. “You won’t always be invisible to him. Brooklyn’s that girl. He’ll see who she really is someday.”

  “Maybe,” Mystic says, clearly unconvinced. “Do you like anybody?”

  “Ah . . . I don’t know. I mean, I had a horn until last month. It seemed kind of pointless—get it?” I crack up at my own weak pun. “Who’s going to like a girl with a horn?”

  “But you don’t have a horn anymore,” Mystic says, narrowing her eyes. “It’s not Nicholas, is it? That would be weird. He’s our friend.”

  I laugh. “If I liked him, I would have kept the horn on.”

  Mystic’s eyes drift over my shoulder. “Speaking of.”

  I turn to see Nicholas jogging toward us. He reaches the gazebo and jumps over the rail. “Too. Many. People,” he pants.

  I grin. “It’s kind of beautiful, right?”

  Nicholas gives me a look like I’m insane. “Ice cream line is way long,” he says. “What should we do? Cones or Factory?”

  Nicholas and Mystic jump into a debate about which place is better and worth the wait, Fudge Factory or Cones on the Square.

  I swing my head around. In the gardens on the other side of the gazebo, I could have sworn I saw—

  “What’s wrong, Jewels?”

  I look at Mystic. “Ah, nothing,” But that’s not true. Out of the corner of my eye, I could swear that saw I her.

  “You look like you saw a ghost or something,” Nicholas says.

  I feel cold, like maybe I did see a ghost. It was a flash of white. Fast, fleeting.

  I gaze at the gardens again. Nothing. Just a squirrel scampering up a tree. Not a unicorn in sight.

  The Unspooling Black

  Carmen. I’ve been thinking about her nonstop since the gazebo. I can’t be sure that I saw her, but I know I felt her. So many times in my life I’ve sensed Carmen before I actually saw her. I’d feel a rush of reassurance, a wave of calm, and then I’d look up and there she was. The feeling I had on Saturday was neither of those, though. It was more like a rush of panic.

  By Monday, I’m agitated, distracted. I’m in no state to be holding an actual pig’s heart in my hand. But it’s science class and this is dissecting day.

  Gloomily, I stare at the heart in my rubber-gloved hand and imagine it beating inside a real pig who frolicked through fields of green grass and clover—though these days, most pigs probably never frolic through either. I hope this pig did. I hope this pig was up to her corkscrew tail in clover before she bequeathed her heart to me.

  “You going to put it in the tray?” Ethan asks, and I gently place the heart in the pan. Tall Ethan is my dissecting partner. Our science teacher, Ms. Meyer, paired everyone up and put me and Ethan together.

  Ms. Meyer tells us to pick up our scalpels, and I’m hoping Ethan will make the first cut, but when I see his face turning green, I reach for mine. I do exactly as Ms. Meyer says, pressing down with the blade and separating the flesh of Clover’s heart.

  “Are you okay?” I whisper to Ethan because, really, he doesn’t look it.

  A cry erupts from the front of the class and I can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl until Thomas Kelly holds up his arm. A rivulet of blood runs down his hand.

  “Already?” Ms. Meyer sighs. “Come on, Thomas, let’s get you to the nurse’s office.” As she presses a paper towel over the bleeding wound, I grin inside. No matter what Emma says, Thomas Kelly is a unicorn-stealing jerk. And now I know he’s a big baby, too.

  “Quiet while I’m gone, please,” Ms. Meyer says to the class. “You may continue following the instructions at your station. Just don’t anybody else cut yourself, okay?” She says this in a weary tone usually reserved for teachers much later in the school year.

  As she leads Thomas from the science room, Ethan and I sit back on our metal stools. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” I say with a snort, suddenly feeling better than I have in days.

  “If he bleeds out, maybe she won’t come back,” Ethan deadpans.

  I drop the scalpel next to the tray holding Clover’s heart and grin. “I didn’t know you were funny.”

  Ethan cracks a grin back. “My mom says I have a dry sense of humor.”

  “Cool.” I nod, not knowing what to say next.

  After a moment, Ethan breaks the silence. “You look nice, by the way.”

  “Ah . . . thanks?”

  “I mean about your horn,” he adds hastily.

  “I know,” I say, then, “I’m sorry about what happened with Brooklyn.”

  He lets out a sigh. “Yeah, me too. I guess I was being kind of dumb. But a guy’s got to try. That’s what my dad says.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I say. Dude, you need to stop listening to your dad.

  “That’s what you did, right?” he continues. “You tried, and it worked. That’s got to feel good.”

  “It does.” My hand moves to my bangs. But then I think of Mystic. “You know, there are other girls.”

  He looks at me strangely.

  “Oh, I don’t mean like me or anything.” I can feel myself blushing.

  “Got it. I won’t ask you to the dance.”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying,” I say. Now I’m totally flustered. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

  “Don’t worry. You can’t make it worse. It’s already worse.” Ethan’s eyes register something behind me and I turn to see he’s looking at my backpack. “I’m sorry your little unicorn’s gone.”

  “Like I said. Thomas Kelly is a real nice guy.”

  Ethan starts to say something, then stops himself. His eyes land on our dissecting tray, where Clover’s naked heart lies in the cold, sterile pan, and he takes a breath. “I don’t feel so good,” he says. “Gosh, if I can’t handle this, how can I ever be a fireman?”

  “Why do you want to be a fireman?”

  “My dad’s a fireman. So’s my uncle. Kind of runs in the family.”

  So this is what it’s like to have a dad. Sounds like a lot of pressure. “Don’t worry. I’ll do the rest.”

  Picking up my scalpel again, I slice through the veins lea
ding to the heart ventricles, exposing their tubular interiors, and then into the heart chambers themselves, while Ethan dutifully notes our findings. At the end of class, when I dump Clover’s heart unceremoniously into the trash bin, I feel a little heartless myself.

  As usual, I head to my locker at the end of the day, where Nicholas is waiting. “Want to come over and do homework?” he asks. I know he really means “Want to come over and talk about Highwaymen?” and usually I’d be completely down for that. But today is the dance committee meeting, and I promised Emma I’d be there.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?” he asks.

  I don’t want to tell him about the dance committee for some reason, so this comes out: “I have French club.”

  “French club?” he says, frowning. “Since when do you have French club?”

  I don’t. There is no French club, but after the first lie, the second one’s easier. “It’s new.”

  “How are you getting home?” he asks, and that’s a problem. Emma’s mom is going to pick us up, but I can’t tell Nicholas that.

  “Ethan,” I blurt out. “He’s in French club, too. I’m getting a ride with him.” STOP TALKING, JEWEL. Too many details. I stand there staring at Nicholas with a frozen smile on my face.

  “You’re being weird,” he finally says. “So . . . have fun at French club.” Nicholas’s eyes stay glued to mine for a second too long before he hikes his backpack over his shoulder and moseys down the hall.

  Phew. That was close. No. That was wrong; I know it was wrong. But I promised Emma, and Nicholas wouldn’t understand. At least, that’s what I tell myself as I head downstairs to the dance committee meeting.

  “That looks rad, J.”

  I look up from the mermaid I’m working on to see Emma standing over my shoulder. “Thanks. They’re turning out okay, I think.”

  Emma sits down beside me and picks up one of the mermaid stencils I cut out. In front of us, glittery cardboard mermaids swim across a blue paper ocean on the gym floor.

  “You don’t think it’s a little too Ariel?” I ask.

  “What’s wrong with Ariel?”