Not a Unicorn

by Dana Middleton

  Also by Dana Middleton:

  The Infinity Year of Avalon James

  Open If You Dare

  For Pete.

  Copyright © 2021 by Dana Middleton.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

  ISBN 978-1-7972-0305-8 (hc)

  ISBN 978-1-7972-1476-4 (epub, mobi)

  Design by Mariam Quraishi.

  Typeset in Garamond.

  Chronicle Books LLC

  680 Second Street

  San Francisco, California 94107

  Chronicle Books—we see things differently.

  Become part of our community at www.chroniclekids.com.

  Contents

  Magical Creatures

  Unicorn Girl Lives!

  The Trouble with Noah

  Carmen

  Fallout

  Other People’s Property

  Emails from Angela

  Ghosted

  Suspicions

  Lemonade

  Tuesday

  Meeting Dr. Stein

  The Night Visit

  Maps and Minotaurs

  The New Girl

  Emma

  The Unspooling Black

  Esmeralda

  Highwaymen Things

  Mermaids and Mermen

  Faster. Faster. Faster.

  The Dance

  Not the Only One

  The Necklace

  Longitudes and Latitudes

  Truth or Consequences

  Oblivion

  La Fille Licorne

  Six Months Later

  Magical Creatures

  It’s the first day of eighth grade and I sit where I always sit. In the back. My homeroom teacher, Mr. Oliver, stands at the doorway talking with the assistant principal, Mrs. Whatley. I feel them looking at me. When you’re like me, you get a sixth sense about this kind of thing.

  I pretty much know what’s about to happen next so I close the notebook I’ve been drawing in and slip it into my backpack. And then I’m surprised, because it isn’t my name Mrs. Whatley calls out. It’s Noah’s.

  All eyes shift to the front of the class where Noah Samuels sits. As he grabs his things, his dark wavy hair falls across his eyes. A pencil slides off his desk and scuttles across the floor.

  I want to say something like, Don’t move, Noah. That’s not fair. But I don’t. I slink down in my seat instead.

  Noah doesn’t pick up his pencil. He passes Carmen and gives me a quick anxious look on his way to the door.

  “I don’t know how this happened, Noah,” Mrs. Whatley says quietly when he reaches her. Everyone knows what she means, except for maybe the couple of new kids.

  “Bye, Noah,” I whisper to myself as the door closes, revealing the poster of the Eiffel Tower on the back of it. My eyes meet Carmen’s before I look away.

  Through the classroom door, I hear Mrs. Whatley’s thick heels clicking down the hallway and imagine Noah’s front tooth chewing into his bottom lip as he keeps up beside her.

  Later, from our lunch table, I sneak a glance over at Noah. He sits at the nerd table next to his friend Ethan, who’s about a foot taller than Noah and looks like a high schooler already. Noah did Odyssey of the Mind in elementary, and I hear he’s building his own actual robot now. Ethan’s not particularly smart or nerd-like but he’s been Noah’s friend forever and the other nerds accept him because his size means he’s a bully repellent for all of them.

  “Quit staring at him,” Nicholas says from beside me.

  I lower my eyes. “I’m not staring.”

  “Freak. You are.”

  Don’t call me a freak. I say it low and quiet inside.

  “He’s going to notice,” Nicholas says, “and I really don’t want his Neanderthal friend coming over here.”

  Mystic reaches out and grabs one of Nicholas’s Doritos. Her short black nails match the dark liner around her eyes. She’s looking at the nerd table, too. “It’s okay with me if Ethan comes over,” she says.

  Nicholas drags his bag of chips away from her. “Why do you like trouble so much?”

  “’Cause.” Mystic sighs, twirling the stack of bracelets on her wrist, a classic Mystic habit. “It’s so boring around here.” Mystic makes her own jewelry from things she finds or buys cheap. Sometimes what she makes is weird. Sometimes what she makes is beautiful. The bracelets are a little of both.

  As usual, it’s the three of us at our lunch table. Nicholas’s hair has a green streak down the side, and his anime T-shirt, jeans, and white Chuck Taylors look brand-new, like all his clothes. Mystic is tall, almost as tall as Ethan. She wears clunky black boots and thrifted black clothes. I’m a regular height for eighth grade and have regular long brown hair. I wear regular clothes in regular colors.

  “Ethan likes Brooklyn,” Nicholas tells Mystic, and I know he’s stepping on a mountain of fire ants.

  “Shut up!” Mystic says sharply. “You don’t know that.”

  “Just stating the obvious. Neanderthal Boy likes Popular Girl.”

  Mystic’s eyes shoot to the popular table, where Brooklyn Chambers reigns. Around her, the other popular girls with their just-so clothes and silky long hair look to Brooklyn almost worshipfully, ever sensitive to her moods and whims. Emma sits across from her.

  “Sorry, Myst,” Nicholas says. “Reality sucks.”

  “No, Nick,” Mystic says, grabbing her book bag. “You suck.” Her chair expels a long moan as she stands and pushes it away from the table.

  I throw Nicholas a sideways glance. Nicholas is my friend, but he sometimes sounds like a jerk. “Where you going?” I call out to Mystic.

  “Out of here,” she says, storming from the cafeteria.

  So much for a great start to the school year. “Why do you have to do that?” I ask. “Ethan likes somebody else. Why do you have to rub it in?”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings.”

  “But you did hurt her feelings,” I tell him.

  Nicholas shifts uncomfortably. “She’s got to learn sometime.”

  “That Ethan likes Brooklyn?”

  “Yeah. Everybody knows.”

  “So doesn’t that tell you something?”

  He shrugs.

  “Way to be obtuse,” I say. “It means she doesn’t want to know!”

  “Obtuse?” Nicholas tilts his head. “Good one,” he says and goes back to his drawing.

  Mystic probably ran to the bathroom, her hideaway when she gets upset. I should go and see if she’s okay, but then everyone will look at me, and I’m not in the mood. I glance toward the door and see Carmen standing there, staring at me. Why does she have to do that?

  Annoyed, I go back to my drawing. Most lunches that’s what Nicholas and I do: We draw. I’m not as naturally talented as him but I practice more so I’m getting better.

  Nicholas’s bangs hang over his eyes as he concentrates. He’s copying an illustration from this graphic novel series we’re obsessed with called Highwaymen. It’s about a sheriff, an outlaw, and a barmaid from the Old West who fight but mostly rescue magical creatures in 1880s Hot Springs, New Mexico.

  Nicholas never copies anything exactly. He always adds his own Nicholas-esque touches. Like giving a Cerberus four heads instead of three. Or making a dragon spew pea soup instead of fire. Today, it’s a griffin walking down the dusty main street of Hot Springs that gets the Nicholas treatment. His griffin has six legs and a snake for a tail.

  I’m drawing a horse. A regular, four-legged one. I use a No. 2 yellow pencil. Nothing special about it except that it’s Noah’s, picked up from under his desk this morning.

 
“He must have texted his mom,” I say. “That’s why Mrs. Whatley came and got him.”

  Nicholas is sharpening one of the griffin’s claws with his pen. “Who?”

  “Who do you think?” I say, weirdly offended that he doesn’t automatically know what’s in my mind. “Noah.”

  “Oh, him.” He looks briefly at the nerd table, then returns to his griffin. “Makes sense. His mom is kind of intense.”

  “Ah, yeah,” I say. That’s an understatement. “She hates me.”

  “She’s an overreactor.”

  “Who can blame her, though,” I say.

  “Uh, you can. It was an accident.” Nicholas keeps drawing. “He’s in my homeroom now. Whatley tried to not make a deal about it but everybody knew.”

  “You mean everybody knew it was because of me!” I almost hit him with my lunch tray. “Why didn’t you tell me that?!”

  He raises his eyes to meet mine. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings?” he says. And grins. So I really hit him now. Right in the arm.

  “Ouch!”

  “Deserved it.”

  “Did not.”

  A giant sigh escapes my lips as he goes back to working on the griffin’s tail. I watch him draw, then say, “A griffin doesn’t have a snake for a tail. A chimera does.”

  “I know,” Nicholas says.

  “Just saying.”

  “Dude, this is totally legit. Ever heard of poetic license? It can be whatever it wants. It’s a magical creature.” Nicholas doesn’t like it when I question his creative choices.

  “Dude.” I flick my hand toward my forehead. “Who’s the expert on magical creatures here?”

  “Are you kidding?” He looks at me like he can’t believe I just said that. “You suck all the magic out of that thing.”

  “Whatever.” I pull a straw to my lips and suck the magic out of the Diet Coke I’m drinking.

  As much as Nicholas and Mystic think they’ve earned the right to sit at the freak table, their freakiness pales beside mine. For I, Jewel Conrad, am the undisputed Freak Queen. Because I am the only girl here—or, let’s face it, anywhere—with a unicorn horn growing out of her forehead.

  Unicorn Girl Lives!

  Let’s get something straight. I am not a magical creature.

  I come from an ordinary town, have an ordinary mom, and mostly have an ordinary life.

  If it weren’t for the unicorn horn.

  In case you’re confused, let me be clear: I don’t mean I found a unicorn horn on some enchanted street and have it stashed in my bedside drawer. I mean I have an actual horn growing out of my actual forehead that makes me look like an actual human unicorn.

  And trust me, when you’re a thirteen-year-old girl with a unicorn horn on your head, your chances of an ordinary life drop to zero.

  I wasn’t born this way. I came out like most other kids. I was even a normal baby, with the photos to prove it. But things started changing around my first birthday. My mom noticed a hard, pointy knot at the center of my forehead. And then it grew. It burst through my skin and I got a oneway ticket to Freaksville.

  There’s nobody else like me. At least that’s what the doctors said. And with our crummy health insurance, it wasn’t like we were seeing specialists. So for a long time, nobody knew what to do about me. And as they talked and prodded, my horn kept growing.

  That was about the time my dad said adios and hit the road. Okay, who knows if he actually said adios. Whatever he said, it meant goodbye. And no, it doesn’t hurt to think of him, because he’s not a real person to me. He’s just a blank space at the edge of my heart that will never fill in.

  When I was five, my photo showed up on a tabloid website for the first time. The headline read Unicorn Girl Lives! It went viral. The link is still live, and sometimes I click on it to see me back then. I was a cute little kid, but of course that’s not what anyone ever saw. In the photo, I’m walking on the sidewalk in town holding someone’s hand. Mom says it was Grandma’s, but in the picture you can’t see her face. You can only see my face—and my horn.

  It’s one of the rare photos where I’m actually smiling into a camera, because it was before I realized that cameras were the enemy. It was before the man with the camera started following us and taking pictures. It was before Sheriff Satterfield escorted the man with the camera out of our town.

  Doctors loved this picture. They came to us with promises that they could remove my horn and make me normal. One even showed up at our apartment door.

  Some of the doctors thought my horn was a cartilage buildup. That happens sometimes and makes people think they have horns when they do not. They have weird cartilage thingies. Pictures of weird cartilage thingies are everywhere online.

  No weird cartilage thingy for me. Mine was a real, live horn. Doctors slid me into MRI tubes. Took X-rays and ultrasounds. Even brought in veterinarians who specialized in the dehorning of animals—which, by the way, is a pretty horrible process anyway—but guess what? Turns out my horn is not even like an animal’s horn. I’ve got so many blood vessels and nerves up there that it would be a surgical miracle to separate my horn from my skull—at least in a way that ensured my continued breathing.

  Finally, the doctor hive mind concluded that removal was impossible. So, one by one, they went away. Leaving Mom and me to figure it all out by ourselves.

  Even though it’s the first day of school, I already know that fourth period will be my favorite. It’s French with my homeroom teacher, Mr. Oliver. Right now I’m here early for the computer station and the free school-sanctioned internet. If I were most kids, I could have done this on my phone at lunch, but my phone is so old that emails don’t load anymore.

  But it’s okay because I like being in this room. Posters in French are all over the walls. There are scenes from Paris: Notre Dame, the River Seine, and the Eiffel Tower; maps of cities and historical French places; and funny posters, like a piece of cheese that says, “Qui a coupé le fromage?” Over the computer is a poster that reads “Il me court sur le haricot.” Underneath is the literal translation: “He’s running on my bean.” That’s the French way of saying “He’s getting on my nerves.” Whenever Nicholas gets on my nerves, I imagine he’s running on my bean, and it always makes me laugh inside.

  As I wait for my email to open, I feel a little burst of butterflies in my chest. Maybe today’s the day. Maybe it will be there—the email that changes my life.

  My inbox is empty, though. Not one single email for conrad.angela32@gmail.com. Angela is disappointed. Angela gets disappointed a lot, but she never gives up.

  “Hey.”

  I turn to see Mystic leaning over me and quickly close my email.

  “You okay?” I ask. “Nicholas shouldn’t always say everything he thinks.”

  “Yeah, he texted me and took it back twice. He said he was sorry for hurting my feelings.”

  I grin. Good on Nicholas.

  “What you up to?” Mystic asks.

  “Just research. Internet at home is worse than ever.”

  “What about your neighbor’s?”

  “Yeah, well. Kind of depends on which way the wind’s blowing.”

  Mystic plops her backpack at her desk, which is at the back of the class next to mine. “Why am I doing this again?” she moans.

  “’Cause you like me,” I say, and go sit down beside her.

  “I could be in drama right now,” Mystic says.

  “Oof.”

  “What’s wrong with drama?” she asks.

  “Acting in front of all those drama kids?”

  “Uh . . . yeah. Sounds okay to me.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  “Just remember I chose YOU over them,” Mystic says and turns just as Tall Ethan walks through the door. I’d like to believe her, but more likely, she’s here because Ethan is here.

  Ethan doesn’t register Mystic, though. He sits at his desk, several rows up from ours, and stares back at the open door, waiting like he always does. A
s the bell rings, Brooklyn breezes in and takes her seat up front while Ethan clocks her every move. I hate that Mystic has to see this. She may be in denial about Ethan liking Brooklyn, but she can’t be blind.

  As the rest of the class gets settled, Mr. Oliver walks in. In French class, we call him Monsieur Oliver, and we pronounce “Oliver” with the emphasis on the first and third syllables: AH-lee-VAIR.

  “Bonjour, my little French fries,” Monsieur Oliver says, using his pet name for us. I love it when he calls us that, but when I see the stack of papers in his hand, my stomach lurches.

  “Most of you turned in an essay before our summer break, for which I say: Merci, beaucoup!” When he speaks to us in English, he always peppers in some French words. “I appreciated the summer reading,” he says wryly. “But there’s something you didn’t know.” He says this last part with a glee reserved for a pop quiz, and he’s met with immediate groans.

  “Calmez-vous,” Monsieur Oliver says, holding up his hands. He points to his ear. “Écoutez, s’il vous plaît.” But I’m not sure I want to listen. Something about his expression makes me feel like a bomb’s about to go off.

  “The Alliance Scolaire Américaine,” he continues, “is the American organization that supports French education in schools. It holds a competitive essay competition each year. We’ve never sent a student from our school to compete before because . . . frankly, we weren’t ready. Until now.” Monsieur Oliver taps the top of his stack. “I asked for this essay to be personal and for the language to be magnifique. Although many of the essays were worthy, there was one that was . . . well, complètement excellent.” He looks at me. “Congratulations, Mademoiselle Jewel.”

  Everyone in the room turns to me, and my face goes hot. I must look confused because Monsieur Oliver says, “Yes, Jewel, you. We want you to represent us at the competition.” He scans the room and adds, “Right, class?”

  My eyes catch Josh Martin’s. He’s really good at French, too. But he nods at me like this is okay. He even looks happy for me. Monsieur Oliver begins clapping, and everyone else joins in. Some enthusiastically, like Mystic. Others less so, like Brooklyn.