Wish on a Unicorn

by Karen Hesse

  “Three wishes on a unicorn,” said Mooch. “It’s always three wishes in the stories, isn’t it, Mags?”

  “I didn’t think you were paying attention when I read you those stories, Mooch,” I said.

  “Sure I was paying attention, Mags. Hannie’s the one who don’t pay attention.”

  “Doesn’t,” I said. “And she does, too. She knew all about this unicorn, didn’t you, Hannie?”

  Hannie nodded, smiling.

  “Anyway, just one wish left on this unicorn, and that wish belongs to Hannie,” I said.

  “Hannie,” Mooch said, coming up beside her. “How about you wish for a whole truckful of Twinkies, and all the candy bars at Lessing’s store, and—”

  “Hush up, Mooch,” I said. “It’s Hannie’s wish. She doesn’t care a fig about your stupid old Twinkies.”

  “Hannie’s wish,” Hannie repeated, dripping wet from messing in the water.

  “That’s right, Hannie,” I said. “Do you know what you want to wish for yet?”

  “Hannie want unicorn.”

  “Well, we’re working on that,” I said.

  “Hannie keep unicorn,” she said.

  “Holy,” groaned Mooch. “Does that count as her wish, Mags?”

  I shrugged. What if it did? It wouldn’t be so bad. Something about having that unicorn around felt real good. I didn’t really believe this wishing business any more than I believed in the man in the moon. Moochie’s wish for something to eat was easy to explain. He always wanted something to eat, and I always had a leftover sandwich. And my wish for clothes … well, that wasn’t much more difficult. Aunt Lainie’s box would have come today whether we’d found this old unicorn or not. But I guess it was working some kind of magic, ’cause I hadn’t ever heard Hannie talk this much or look half so happy, not in a long, long time.

  It took a while, but when we were done, that unicorn almost looked like something out of a store.

  “Oooh,” said Mooch, standing back and admiring it in the crowded bathroom. “It looks good.”

  Hannie grinned. “Hannie make good wish.”

  “What you gonna wish for?” Mooch asked.

  Hannie shrugged.

  We shook the dust out of the plastic trash bag and stuck the unicorn back inside it before we slid it under the trailer steps. “We’ll leave it there, at least until we can talk to Mama about keeping it,” I explained to Hannie. “You know how grumpy she is when she comes home after working all night. We’ll ask her when she’s feeling good tomorrow, after we get back from school.”

  “Okay, Mags,” Hannie said, wrapping her arms around me.

  I got Hannie and Mooch cleaned up and ready for bed. I listened while they said their prayers. Hannie said a blessing for the unicorn.

  “You better be careful what you dream tonight, Hannie,” Mooch said. “You might wish for something in your sleep and use the magic up before you know it.”

  Hannie’s face wrinkled up.

  “Don’t pay him no mind, Hannie,” I said. “Mooch and I, we were both touching the unicorn when we made our wishes, weren’t we Moochie?” I scowled at him. “You just make sure you don’t make a wish while you’re touching the unicorn, Hannie, unless you really want it. Now you two get in bed. I’ve got work to do.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Mooch.

  I could have sent him to bed without feeding him, but he wouldn’t have settled down till midnight. Walking slowly past the pile of clothes on the sofa and into the kitchen, my eye lit on that penguin sweater.

  Hannie and Mooch pushed me past it, coming up behind me like a stubby little train.

  I fixed Mooch a bowl of oatmeal with a teaspoon of sugar in it. Mooch dipped his spoon in the sugar bowl twice more before I could stop him.

  Hannie’s head drooped sleepily at the table, watching Moochie eat. I walked her into bed and covered her up.

  “I’ll be in in a little while, Hannie,” I said, kissing her. “You get some sleep now.”

  “Hannie love Mags,” she said, yawning.

  “Yeah,” I said, patting her head. “Me too, Hannie.”

  Across the hall, stretched out on his belly, Moochie was hanging over the side of his bed.

  I straightened him out and tucked him under the blankets.

  “You finish your oatmeal?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  “You soak the bowl?”

  “Didn’t have to,” he said. “It’s all clean.”

  I could just imagine. Knowing Moochie, he probably had licked the bowl clean.

  “You really think the unicorn made our wishes come true?” Mooch asked.

  “Sure,” I said, not believing it but liking the way it was feeling in the house tonight, with the clean white unicorn close by. “You got your wish for something to eat, right? And I got something to wear.”

  “But those clothes were there before you made the wish,” Mooch said.

  “So was the sandwich,” I said. “Maybe all wishes are like that, Moochie. Maybe everything we always wished for is waiting somewhere, waiting for us to catch up and make it come true.”

  “Then I’m going to wish Brody Lawson drops dead.”

  I sucked a piece of food from between my teeth. “Well, someday he will,” I said. “But you don’t need to take any credit for it.”

  “You think Brody will call the police on me, Maggie?”

  “If you keep stealing he will,” I said.

  “I don’t steal anymore,” Mooch said. “Brody’s a liar. He can’t prove anything.”

  “That’s good,” I said, staring hard at him. “You just keep it that way. You hear?”

  “Night, Maggie,” Mooch said.

  “Night, Mooch.” I pushed back his dark hair and kissed his forehead like Mama does.

  Heading straight for those clothes, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I found Hannie out of bed again and staring out the window into the dark.

  “Come on, Hannie,” I said, leading her back to bed. “Your unicorn’s just fine out there. Don’t you worry. You just get some sleep and dream about what you want to wish for, okay?”

  “Hannie bring unicorn to school?”

  Before we’d cleaned it up, I’d have said no right away. But it did look pretty good, and there was less chance of Mama finding it if we took it with us.

  “We’ll see,” I said, but I couldn’t help thinking Patty Jo and Alice would get a kick out of seeing a unicorn, especially a magic unicorn that made wishes come true. And wouldn’t I just have the proof with that brand-new penguin sweater? I was already planning my whole outfit for tomorrow. Between new clothes and a stuffed unicorn, maybe tomorrow’d be just the kind of day I’d been wishing for.

  6

  I made it into the living room in front of the pile of clothes without any more interruptions. There were four shirts, two pairs of shorts, and two sweaters. I laid each piece out on the back of the sofa. One of the sweaters was itchy and plain. But that penguin sweater felt soft as kitten fur.

  I wanted to get right into trying those clothes on in the worst way, but that’d mean turning the bedroom light back on and maybe waking Hannie up. I thought I’d just let her get sound asleep before I went looking through the closet for outfits and all.

  I left the clothes to lie on the sofa while I went in to do the dinner dishes, the whole time thinking how one of those shirts could match up with a pair of pants I already had and how another shirt would go nice with a skirt Mama got me last year at a yard sale.

  Moochie had licked his oatmeal bowl clean. I could have put it back on the shelf, but Mama would have caught me sure as sweat on a hot day. I slid the bowl into the sink with the rest of the dishes and washed up. I always wash up. There aren’t many things that make Mama crosser than a sink full of dirty dishes staring her in the face when she gets home from the mill. I took my time cleaning the kitchen up good before checking on Mooch and Hannie.

  Mooch had the blankets tugged over his head. I tucked them down under h
is chin and touched his hair. He didn’t even twitch.

  Picking Moochie’s pants up off the floor, I yanked my lunch bag out to use tomorrow. A wad of Twinkie wrappers flew into the air and landed on the floor.

  Shoot! Moochie’d lied to me. He had been up Brody’s house. What was I gonna do with that boy? I tried to wake Mooch and tell him a thing or two, but he was sleeping sounder than a rock.

  I remembered how mean Brody’d looked, standing outside the drainage ditch like he owned the world and me and Hannie and Mooch were so much scum needing clearing away.

  Brody was always bad-mouthing me, looking up close at all the things wrong, like my clothes not fitting right or my skinny old flat body, and he noticed all the things wrong with my family, too.

  Well, I didn’t need any more of that kind of attention. I needed some good attention. Not dragging my slow sister around behind me, not sticking up for my thieving brother. Not looking like everybody’s hand-me-down. I needed something good, that Patty Jo and Alice would think, “Now there’s a girl to have for a friend.” I needed to feel as good at school as that old unicorn had me feeling right here at home.

  I slipped into one of Aunt Lainie’s shirts. It smelled a little bit like perfume. The shirt matched up good with my best jeans. Turning back and forth, I studied myself in the bathroom mirror. Pulling off the first shirt, I folded it up and tried on the next one. I matched all of Aunt Lainie’s clothes with things I already had. Some of those outfits came out looking good, good as store bought. But that pink sweater with the penguins was best of all. It came down long enough to hide the stain in my white pants from where I got some blood when I became a woman and all.

  I set that sweater and my white pants out to wear tomorrow and headed back into the living room, looking out the window to where the unicorn waited in silence.

  “Listen,” I whispered against the glass. “I don’t want to take anything from Hannie, but if you’ve got more than three wishes in there, I wonder if you could manage to get Patty Jo and Alice to like me. You hear that, unicorn? I’m not asking you to change my whole life or anything. Just let Patty Jo and Alice like me.”

  That dumb essay was all I had for homework, but it waited, fit to thump down on me and lick me good. Everyone in class had to write about their family. What could I say about mine? That we lived in a trailer where there wasn’t room enough to take more than two steps without walking into something or someone? Old Brody and Patty Jo and Alice would be writing about how their mamas sit home waiting for them in their fine, big houses and serve them Twinkies when they get back from school and cook them dinner, and tuck them into bed each night. And how they go on family vacations to places you can’t even get to but on an airplane. And how their daddies have these big important jobs and make so much money they get a whole roomful of presents at Christmas. Shoot. I didn’t even have a daddy at Christmas—not for a heap of Christmases, as a matter of fact.

  I guess maybe I had my mind more on all of them at school than on my own family and my essay, ’cause I wasn’t half done when Mooch’s night terrors started.

  He has them near every night. When he gets to hollering I go right to him, but as long as he’s asleep he doesn’t hear me.

  I ran into his room and found him thrashing around in bed. “They’re coming to get me! They’re coming to get me!” He was screaming so loud, I guess Mama could nearly hear him up at the mill. Mama knew about Moochie’s night terrors, but she said there wasn’t anything we could do about it. She said Moochie’d grow out of it someday. I wondered if she was right. Mama said night terrors just happened to some kids, that Cousin Willy had had them and Aunt Lainie took him to all kinds of doctors there in Baltimore but no one ever could do a thing to stop them. He just grew out of it. I worried though that if Moochie was stealing again, his night terrors might be different from Cousin Willy’s. They might be ’cause he was afraid someone really was coming to get him. Maybe he wouldn’t grow out of them after all.

  “They’re coming!” Moochie screamed, swinging his arms up to protect himself. “They’re coming to get me!”

  “Who’s coming, Mooch?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to untangle his blankets from around him and wake him up out of his nightmare. He was dripping with sweat.

  “No!” he screamed even louder, fighting me off.

  Hannie limped in, sleep droopy, and stood beside me. “Moochie scared?”

  I nodded yes.

  Hannie thumped over and tugged on Moochie’s pajama sleeve. She yelled right in his ear, “Wake up, Moochie! Moochie all right. Mags here. See!”

  Moochie looked at Hannie and blinked.

  He started crying, awake crying, not nightmare crying. It was all right to hold him now. I cuddled him up and rocked him back and forth just like Mama does. He panted like an old dog.

  “It’s all right now, Moochie,” I said.

  “All right, Moochie,” Hannie crooned.

  Hannie slipped into bed beside Mooch, and I tucked them both up together and sat down on the edge of the bed, brooding on that half-finished essay, waiting until they were both asleep before I turned out the lights and got into bed myself.

  7

  Next morning I rolled that penguin sweater over my head and smoothed it down, turning this way and that in the bathroom mirror, trying to get a good look at myself coming and going. I flattened the sweater over my chest, looking for signs that I was growing some up top, but I hardly even showed. Patty Jo and Alice already wore bras, but I barely had enough to fill a teaspoon.

  “Ohhh,” said Hannie, barging into the bathroom without knocking. “Mags pretty.”

  I grinned. New clothes. Just like I’d wished. Maybe I did look good enough that Alice and Patty Jo would notice. I tiptoed past Mama sleeping on the sofa and got breakfast for Hannie and Mooch.

  “You lied to me last night, Mooch,” I whispered. “I found those Twinkie wrappers in your pants pocket. What are you going to do when some grown-up catches you stealing? ’Cause you know somebody’s bound to. It’s wrong to steal, Mooch. Wrong! Even if you’re turned inside-out hungry and there’s nothing in the house but cold spinach and ketchup, you got no right to take what doesn’t belong to you.”

  “I didn’t take anything! Brody Lawson’s a liar.”

  “Then where’d those Twinkie wrappers come from?” I asked.

  “I just got them, is all. Just let Brody try proving I stole them Twinkies. I’ll stomp him to smithereens.”

  “How’re you gonna do that?” I asked.

  “I’ll take Hannie’s wish,” said Mooch. “That’s how.”

  Hannie started crying, but I shushed her before she could wake Mama.

  “You can’t have Hannie’s wish,” I said. “That’s stealing too, and you can’t do it. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

  “Well, I bet the unicorn would stomp on Brody even if I didn’t wish it, ’cause unicorns are good and Brody’s bad. Bad as dog breath.”

  “You just stay close to the house today, Mooch,” I said. “Don’t go near Brody’s, you understand? Unicorn or no unicorn, you’re going to end up in a hill of trouble if you don’t quit stealing from people.”

  “I’m not stealing!”

  “Okay, okay. We’ll talk about it later, Mooch. Right now I got to get to school. Come on, Hannie,” I said, smoothing her hair with my hands the way Mama does when she doesn’t have time to brush it. “We’ve got to get moving.”

  I slipped my half-finished essay into my notebook, figuring how I’d work on it before school and during recess. Moochie blocked the way out the door.

  “You taking the unicorn with you?” he asked.

  Hannie looked up at me, her dark lashes touching the fringe of her bangs, her mouth sweet and round like a pink-iced doughnut. I know it’s stupid, but when she looks at me that way, I feel like I could do anything.

  “Yeah,” I said. “As a matter of fact we are. We leave it here and you’re sure to get in trouble with it.
”

  “Take me to school too,” he said.

  “Moochie, we’ve been over this before. You’re too young. Next year you go to school.”

  “I’m smarter than Hannie, and she goes to school.”

  “You just have to be six, is all,” I said. “Doesn’t matter how smart you are. You have to be six.”

  “I am six,” Moochie said. “I’ve been six a long time.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But you had to be six before school started last September, and you weren’t six then.”

  “I don’t want to stay here alone,” Mooch said. He socked me on my behind, not so hard it hurt but so I knew he meant business.

  “Well, you just have to,” I said, watching Hannie drag the garbage bag out from under the porch steps. “We’ll hurry home soon as we can.”

  I had to pull him off me, where he was clinging like an old bean creeper to a pole.

  “I’m still hungry, Mags,” he called after me.

  “Hush now, Moochie,” I said, warning. “Don’t you wake Mama. Eat yourself some crackers. Mama’ll be up in time to make you lunch, and I’ll make you something special when I get home. Now stay out of trouble, understand?”

  “Moochie sad?” said Hannie, dragging the plastic bag full of unicorn behind her.

  She took hold of me with her free hand and swung my arm back and forth as we walked toward school.

  “He’s just lonely,” I said. “It’s hard, him being the youngest and having to wait home and no one to play with. Mama’s just too tired from work to pay him any mind. And he’s smart, too. Smarter than a lot of kids in my class even. Smart enough to get himself in some kind of trouble.”

  “Hannie not smart.” Her face hung loose like she didn’t have any bones under her skin. She had my sweater twisted in her sweaty fist.

  I couldn’t decide whether to say something nice to her or yell at her for stretching out my sweater, but before I could say anything at all, a rock rolled up alongside us. I stooped and picked it up and turned it round in my hand. A rubber band held an old Twinkie wrapper onto the rock.

  I turned and looked back down the road behind me to where that rock had come from. Brody Lawson stood there, his hands on his hips, glaring.