And then it hits me. My essay is going to the regional competition! A deep smile burns inside. Monsieur Oliver liked my essay. He chose it!
The assignment was to make the essay personal, and I did. I wrote in French what I’ve never been able to express in English. What it’s like to be me. What it’s like to be a girl with a horn on her head—who underneath it all is just a girl.
Bubbles tingle in my chest. I clasp my hand over my smiling mouth.
As the clapping dies down, Mystic pokes my arm and whispers, “Way to go, Mademoiselle.”
“Now, something else you didn’t know,” Monsieur Oliver says. “This isn’t just an essay competition. Jewel will be representing our school by performing her essay in front of an audience and judges representing the Alliance. If she wins, she’ll move on to the statewide competition.”
The bubbles in my chest instantly pop. What does he mean, performing my essay? In front of people? In front of judges?
The class breaks out in whispers, giving voice to my fears. When I was in second grade, I had to stand in front of the class and recite something from The Wizard of Oz. But when I looked out at the other second-grade faces, I realized I wasn’t Dorothy, I was the witch. Minus the green face paint, but plus an impossible-to-miss horn. I was so embarrassed, I peed my pants.
Monsieur Oliver smiles at me, the only one in the room not reading my mind. My mouth is completely dry as I picture the audience at the competition. All those faces. All those strangers.
When the bell rings almost an hour later, I’m startled back into my seat, realizing I haven’t been listening for the rest of class.
As Mystic zips up her backpack, she asks, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say flatly.
“It’s amazing, Jewels! You should be excited.”
She’s right. I should be excited. I would be excited, if I looked like her. Okay, maybe not the clunky boots and the ultra-black eyeliner. But that forehead! What wouldn’t be possible with a smooth, unmarred forehead like that?
As I follow Mystic toward the door, Monsieur Oliver calls out, “Jewel, could you wait for a moment?”
Mystic looks back at me. “You okay?” she mouths, and I nod and step aside to let the others pass.
As the room goes empty, Monsieur Oliver approaches. “Your essay is wonderful, Jewel.”
“Really?” I say quietly. “My French was okay?”
“Way more than okay. You know that. But it’s what you wrote that was so special. You could go to the state finals with this,” he says and smiles. “I think people would be very interested to know what it’s like to be you.”
“I don’t . . . I mean, I didn’t know I’d have to read it in front of a lot of people.”
“I thought that might make you nervous. Maybe I should have given you advance warning. But this is a great opportunity, Jewel, and honestly, I didn’t want you to say no.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” I say, still processing. “But—”
“And you won’t be alone. We’ll come with you. You’ll have your own cheering section.”
My teeth bite into my bottom lip. “I don’t know. Maybe you should send someone else.”
Monsieur Oliver looks confused. “Like who?”
“Josh,” I say, and then I can’t believe what comes out of my mouth next. “Or Brooklyn.”
“Brooklyn?” he asks.
Actually, she is pretty good at French. And maybe the judges would rather hear about what it’s like to be the captain of the cheerleaders or the most popular girl in eighth grade—or maybe about her particular talent for stealing best friends.
“You know, teachers aren’t supposed to say this, but”—he looks around the classroom like he’s making sure no one’s hiding under a desk and listening—“you’re just better than everybody else.”
This fills my heart and hurts it at the same time. I worked hard on my essay. I was proud of it. “Yeah, but nobody else has a . . .” I can’t even bring myself to say the name of the thing that causes me more stress than all my life’s homework combined.
“Exactly. Being uniquely you is what made your essay so great,” Monsieur Oliver says warmly. “And anyway, so what? Yours was the best essay. By far. I’m the class judge, and I chose yours.”
That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. So the words catch in my throat when I say, “I just wish things were different.”
“Listen,” he says. “Let’s take our time about it. The competition isn’t until November. Ça va?”
“Ça va,” I say awkwardly, knowing it’s not really okay at all. “I’ve got to get to science.”
“Think about it. I know you can do it.” He says this with confidence, like he’s sure I’ll change my mind.
He doesn’t know me very well.
I nod and turn carefully so I don’t hit the doorjamb with my horn. It’s rare to talk about my horn with anyone out loud, and our conversation leaves me feeling strange.
As I step into the hall, I keep to the walls. It’s safer that way—not just for me, for everyone. That doesn’t stop a sixth-grade boy from bumping into me. And, yep, here it goes: When he looks up at me, he freezes.
I watch the thought bubbles explode above his head: What is that thing?! Get me out of here! Where’s my mommy?! If he were just a little older, there’d be a pity bubble there, too. But he’s only a sixth grader. No pity yet.
Slowly, he unfreezes and backs away into the middle-school tide. I stand by the wall and watch him go.
How could Monsieur Oliver have read my essay and still think I’d want to get up in front of a crowd? It’s bad enough to have one sixth grader look at me that way. Imagine a whole audience.
Then it’s my turn to freeze. Because there she is.
Emma.
I watch her approach, wearing her cheerleading camp T-shirt tucked into super-nice jeans. Her sandy hair is as long as I’ve ever seen it. Her smile is for Brooklyn though, who is waiting at her locker.
There’s no acknowledgment of me, good or bad. I’ve become completely invisible to her. She passes by and I wonder. My features aren’t bad. I have a good nose, deep brown eyes, long lashes. My lips are the right amount of full, and my teeth are pretty straight for someone who can’t afford braces. But that’s not what anyone ever sees.
I sit cross-legged on my bed in front of my laptop, a hand-me-down from Nicholas, doing homework. My room is small for two twin beds. Mine is the one nearest to the door.
A collage of pictures of faraway places hangs over my bed—the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Venice canals, and other places I wish I could go. I made the collage myself from photos I cut out of travel magazines from the library’s recycling pile.
I’m wrapping one of Mom’s old scarves around my horn when headlights appear from the parking lot outside. Peeking through the blinds, I watch Emma’s mom’s car pull in. Emma gets out of the passenger side and doesn’t look my way. She hasn’t looked my way for a long time.
Carmen does though. She’s on the sidewalk gazing up at me through the slats in the blinds. No matter what I do, Carmen always has a way of seeing me. I know she’s hurting, but it’s complicated.
Emma walks past Carmen as if she wasn’t there, either. At least she’s consistent.
I flick the blinds shut and sit back on my bed. Grabbing the small stuffed unicorn that hangs from a ring on my backpack, I rub it between my fingers.
Emma and I have lived in the same low-income, single-mother apartment complex our whole lives. Our rooms even face each other’s across the parking lot. She used to say my horn made me special. When I didn’t believe her, she bought two little stuffed unicorn key chains, one for me and one for her, which we hooked to our backpacks so everyone would know we were unicorn girls together. As long as Emma had her unicorn dangling from her backpack, I never felt alone.
Then came middle school and Brooklyn. Emma’s stuffed unicorn went away. And so did Emma.
T
he door creaks open. “Can I come in?”
“Yeah,” I say, and Grandma enters. There aren’t many girls my age who share a bedroom with their grandmother, so I’m a lottery winner there, too. Ever since she went on disability from being injured at the ball-bearing plant, she moved in with Mom and me. Which means she moved in with me. Hence the second twin bed.
“Movie over?” I ask her.
“Uh-huh,” Grandma says. “They sure don’t make movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck anymore.” I silently nod, even though I’m not exactly sure which one Barbara Stanwyck is. Grandma likes watching movies—mostly the kind that were made before she was even born. I still don’t get why someone would watch a black-and-white movie when there are plenty of color ones available, but Grandma tells me if I’m lucky, I’ll understand when I’m older.
“I like your scarf,” Grandma says, and sits at the end of my bed.
Self-consciously, I wind it off my horn. “It’s Mom’s. I should give it back.” Mom is at Walmart, like she always is this time of day. Working, not shopping.
“She won’t mind,” Grandma says. “How was your first day of school?”
I could tell her about how Noah was taken out of homeroom because of me. Or how Emma ignored me. Or how Angela’s inbox was empty. But ever since French class, I’ve had only one thing on my mind. “Remember that essay I wrote for French class before the summer?”
It takes her a second, but then she says, “The one you read out loud to me and I didn’t understand a word?”
“That one,” I say. “Guess what? My teacher picked it for the regional competition.”
Her face lights up. “That’s wonderful, Jewel!”
“Monsieur Oliver told me how great he thought it was. He said it was the best essay in the class.”
“I’m so proud of you.” She pats my leg with her good arm. Her left arm hasn’t healed well since the accident. “I could tell it was excellent.”
I laugh. “But you didn’t understand it!”
“Didn’t have to. I just knew.” She grins at me. “So, what does all this mean?”
“That’s the bad news. I have to read it in front of people. Judges.”
“So?”
“Grandma!” I point at my horn.
She swats at the air. “Pish. Do you want to do it?”
I hesitate, then say, “Yeah, I do.”
“So, you’ll do it,” she says, like it’s a fact.
But it’s not. If things were different, of course I’d do it. There’d be nothing that could keep me from that stage. I want it so badly, but . . .
I look at Grandma and fight the sudden urge to tell her about the emails. How hearing back just got a hundred times more urgent. And how everything is so much closer to being possible now.
I smile at her instead. Soon, I tell myself. I’ll tell her soon.
The Trouble with Noah
“Have you guys seen my bracelet?” Brooklyn calls up to us from the track below. Mystic and I are sitting on the bleachers waiting for PE to start. “It’s real gold with a pink stone in the middle.”
At first, I’m confused. Is Brooklyn really talking to us? “I don’t think so,” I call down to her. “I haven’t seen any bracelets.”
Brooklyn’s perfect shoulders slump. “Everything gets gone in that locker room. I only left it on the bench for half a second.”
Mystic leans forward. “We’ll let you know if we see anything.” She says it cheerfully, like she actually cares.
Brooklyn mutters a “thanks” and goes to join Emma and some other girls by the track. Carmen is down there, too, looking up at us.
Coach Tuck is late, so Mystic and I don’t move from our place on the bleachers.
“Cheerleaders,” she says under her breath. “Why do they have to have everything?”
Mystic’s eyeliner is so thick, she looks like a painting of Cleopatra. “They don’t have everything,” I say.
“Really? They have nice houses and nice things and—”
“Emma doesn’t have a house at all.”
“Okay, so one of them lives kind of like us. But you’d never know it, the way she walks around like a queen.” A part of me wants to defend Emma even though she probably doesn’t deserve it. But before I can, Mystic asks, “So, are you going to do the French thing?”
“You mean am I going to read my essay in front of a bunch of total strangers?
“You really should.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Mystic cocks her head. “Is this about your horn?”
“Uh . . . duh.”
“I get it,” she says. “Actually, real talk, I don’t get it. But you’re good at French. Like a natural talent or something. What if you went all the way to the state finals?”
“That’d be even worse!” I catch sight of the shadow my horn is casting against the bleachers and put my hand up to obscure the image. “Unless I didn’t have it anymore.”
Mystic eyes shift to my horn. Rarely does she look at it so directly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Um.” Mystic was in Florida to visit her dad over the summer and I promised myself I wouldn’t talk to her about it till she got home. Now it’s time. “I’ve been emailing doctors.”
She squints against the sun. “What kind of doctors?”
“Specialists. I’ve been researching them for a long time.”
“Like, how long?”
I clear my throat and croak out, “Since . . . Noah.”
“Since Noah?!” Her eyes go wide. “That was like two years ago.”
“I know,” I say. I know all too well. It was back when Emma and I were still best friends.
It was the beginning of middle school. Emma and I were sitting in the cafeteria together when Thomas Kelly, like the jerk he is, came up and started making fun of my horn. For no reason. In front of everybody.
Usually, I can take the jerk stuff. But on that day, I couldn’t. Grandma had just had her accident at the plant, which was really scary in the first place, and that morning, Mom had told me she was moving in with us. It was a lot to take in, and I was NOT in the mood to be teased.
Thomas wouldn’t stop though. “Don’t listen to him, J,” Emma whispered, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Shut up, Thomas!” I yelled. Of course, that made it worse. Yelling always makes everything worse.
“Aww, the unicorn wants me to shut up!” He mocked. “Come on, freak. Wanna make me?”
I’m not going to lie. A part of me wanted to run him through with my horn, just to call his bluff and actually shut him up. But I knew better. I’d never use my horn to hurt someone, even jerk-face Thomas Kelly. I knew I needed to get out of there, so I swung around and bolted from my chair, full of rage I couldn’t express. Except I expressed it right into Noah.
It happened so fast that I tasted the milk from his lunch tray before I realized my horn was lodged in Noah’s stomach. There was screaming. Not from him. But from others, including—I couldn’t not hear her above everyone else—Emma. Noah and I fell to the floor, attached together. And when we came apart, there was blood everywhere. Blood on his white shirt. Blood on his face. Blood on my horn. He had just been passing by, an innocent bystander. And he could have died. I could have killed him.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Mystic says, startling me back to the present.
“That I was emailing doctors?” I shrug. “I don’t know. I haven’t told anyone. I’ve got a notebook full of names and I’ve read tons of research articles. It wasn’t worth telling until now.” I pause for effect, and say, “Because I think I’ve found him.”
“Found who?”
“The doctor.”
“Okay, I’m confused,” she says.
“Who can take off my horn!”
“Oh,” Mystic says, and pauses, taking it in.
“He’s doing this trial, kind of an experimental thing,” I tell her. “But he says I could be just what he’s looking for.”
“He’s a vascular surgeon. He does veins and arteries. Really complicated ones.”
“And Angela’s cool with it?” Mystic asks.
Angela—the real Angela—is my mom. “Well . . .”
“What does that mean?”
I look away.
“Jewels?”
“Angela doesn’t know about it.”
“Dude!” Mystic exclaims. “You’re doing this behind Angela’s back?”
“What are my options?” I say, and stare back out at the track.
The doctor’s name is Dr. Stein. I sent him every scan I’ve ever had—which wasn’t easy for tons of reasons including my internet situation—and I’ve been emailing with him for almost four months. Except he doesn’t know the emails are from me. I made up a fake email with my mom’s name and have been emailing him like I’m Angela the whole time.
“You’ve got to let that Noah thing go,” Mystic says, shaking her head. “I can’t believe you’re still thinking about that. You can’t let it mess you up forever.”
“I probably started looking for a doctor because of Noah. Who, allow me to remind you, I’m still barred from sharing classes with. But the reasons keep piling up.”
“The French competition,” she says knowingly.
“The French competition,” I repeat.
“So where’s this doctor, anyway?
“LA.”
She grabs my arm excitedly. “Los Angeles! I’d love to go to LA.”
I scan the mountains that rise beyond the bleachers. We’re about as small-town as you can get, which has its advantages when you’ve got a horn on your head—fewer strangers, fewer eyes—but sucks when you’re Mystic and want to be where things happen.
“Me too, but . . . you know.” I force a grin. Mystic knows it’s my dream to see all the faraway places on the collage in my bedroom. And that it’s one of my greatest fears that it will never happen. Paris is full of strangers, after all.
Coach Tuck’s whistle blows down by the track. “Conrad. Jenkins,” he calls out, like we were the ones who were late. “Any time now.”
“We’re coming,” Mystic says, and we start down the bleachers. The other students are already running, and Mystic hates running. As we step onto the track, Carmen moves toward us. Our eyes meet. So much for pretending she’s not there.
Not a Unicorn Page 2