Not a Unicorn

by Dana Middleton

  “Wait, honey,” she says, pushing me back and holding on to my arms. “One more thing. I went in to see Mr. Perez this morning.”

  Whenever Mr. Perez comes up, it’s never good.

  “If Dr. Stein can do the surgery, you’ll be in Los Angeles for a few weeks, and—I can’t miss that much work.”

  I feel myself deflating. “You can’t come with me?”

  “But I can,” Grandma says. And I realize this has been discussed and decided without me.

  I look at Mom. “It’s the best we can do,” she says.

  “We can do this, darlin’,” Grandma says. “You and me.”

  Suddenly, every cell of my body floods with relief. Grandma wipes a tear from her cheek, and I see her hand is shaking. “Oh, my,” she says, standing up.

  “Are you all right, Mama?” Mom asks as we watch Grandma disappear into our bedroom.

  Mom looks at me, and I look at her.

  “Grandma?”

  “Come help me with this!” she says, and we both hurry to the bedroom.

  Grandma is sitting on the floor next to the closet, pointing to something inside. “I can’t get it,” she says to me. “Reach in there, Jewel.”

  I drop to my knees and grab the jar she’s pointing at, buried at the back of the closet. When I deposit it on the floor between us, I hear Mom gasp.

  It’s full of money.

  The jar is crammed with crumpled bills and tons of coins. Grandma rests one hand on the lid. “It’s not much, but we’ll need spending money for the trip.”

  “What . . . how?” Mom asks, stunned.

  “My hope jar. My dribs and drabs, the little bits I’ve managed to cling on to from the little money I’ve made.” She grabs my hand and looks up at Mom. “I just wish it was enough for you to go, Angela. I wish there was enough for you to quit your job and be done with Mr. Perez for good. I wish it was more.”

  “But Mama, we’ve had lots of rainy days before now.”

  “I know, but”—Grandma grins at me—“maybe I was saving this for a sunny one. Something good is happening for our girl.”

  I take the jar to the kitchen table and they watch as I count out the money. Three hundred twenty-four dollars and forty-seven cents. Wow.

  “Mama,” Mom whispers.

  “So it’s settled,” Grandma says, the wrinkles on her face becoming exclamation points around her eyes. It’s like God or Santa has spoken.

  “So, when are we going?” I ask.

  “Tuesday,” Mom says back.

  My eyes go wide. So do Grandma’s. “Tuesday?!” we both say at the same time.

  “Tuesday,” Mom repeats.

  Maybe it’s the waves of pent-up energy, but we all three suddenly dissolve into laughter.

  “Oh, boy,” Grandma says, shaking her head.

  Mom puts her hand on mine. Her eyes have never contained more love, I swear. “Let’s get you ready for Los Angeles.”

  I don’t go to school. What’s there for me anyway? One more chance for the whole school to see me as the unicorn girl? No thanks.

  I could go and tell Monsieur Oliver what’s happening. Maybe I could do the essay competition after all. But what if I don’t get my horn taken off? What if it doesn’t work? Ugh! It’s just too much for my pinball machine of a brain to process right now. He’s probably already submitted Josh Martin’s name anyway. I hate to admit it, but Josh would be an excellent choice. He’s almost as good at French as I am. Almost.

  Mom and I come to an agreement. If I email my teachers and get all my assignments for while I’m away, I can spend the next few days getting ready. The thought of not going to school again for weeks is like a gallon of lemonade in itself.

  When I’m sure that Mystic is home from school, I call to tell her first.

  “I can’t believe it!” she says.

  “I know, right?” I’m still glowing from the buzz of it all.

  “Are you excited? Are you scared?” She asks about ten versions of these questions, which I mostly answer in the hyper-affirmative.

  Nicholas is far less excited about the prospects of my surgery. He actually tries to talk me out of it. He reminds me of our future road trip to find all the magical creature geolocations on our map, and how it won’t be as cool to visit those places if I don’t have a horn. What is he talking about?

  On Saturday, he bombards me further with texts like:

  If you take off your horn, you won’t be a unicorn.

  If you take off your horn, you’ll lose your magic.

  If you take off your horn, I won’t recognize you.

  I text him back:

  You’re wrong.

  What magic?

  Of course you’ll recognize me.

  His words work on me, though. There’s someone I still have to tell. I don’t want to, but the more I put it off, the harder it will be.

  That night, I go outside and meet Carmen at the foot of the stairs. I sit so my eyes can be level with hers. The parking lot is empty of people, and a sole light flickers nearby. She nudges my face with her nose.

  And I tell her.

  After I’m done, I pull away and look into her eyes. “Please,” I say. “Please understand. I have to do this.”

  But she doesn’t understand. I could read that thought a thousand miles away. “Please, Carmen,” I say again.

  Carmen lets out a whinny and shakes her mane, and I feel uncertainty settle over me. I’m calm but she’s not? That never happens. She’s either super serene or upset along with me. I’m not upset now—I’m resolved, even excited. But Carmen stomps her hoof onto the pavement and throws up her head. “Carmen,” I say, “It’s okay.”

  But she’s not.

  When Mom finally calls me inside, I reluctantly leave Carmen at the steps. I’ve never felt so out of sync with her in my entire life.

  Before I go to bed, I call Mystic one more time. I’m still unsettled by Carmen being so weird, and I think talking with Mystic will make me feel better. It does and it doesn’t.

  “You have to bring me back something cool from Hollywood,” she says, right before we hang up. “And, hey.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It’s just—going to be different. I mean, things will change. Like, between us.”

  Huh? “Nothing’s going to change with us. And maybe it won’t change with my horn, either. I mean, there’s a chance he won’t be able to do it,” I say. “Don’t tell anyone where I’m going, by the way. I don’t want everyone to think it’s about to happen and then I come back and it didn’t work.”

  “You’re not going out there for nothing,” Mystic says, and I swear a part of her sounds worried. “He’ll do it. And you’ll come back different.”

  That’s what I’m hoping for to the tip of my horn. But a part of me is afraid of being disappointed. A part of me is holding back, just in case.

  Tuesday

  “Come with me.”

  I say these words in the dark like a prayer. “Carmen, please come with me.”

  It’s 4 a.m. and I’m standing by our car waiting for Mom and Grandma. “Please, Carmen.”

  I’ve been talking to her like this for twenty minutes, because the fear that she won’t forgive me has been elbowing for space in my brain all night, and now it’s pushed its way to the front.

  “Come on,” I say, stamping my feet because it’s cold. Carmen stamps her foot back at me—because she’s mad. “You have to understand.”

  When I hear Mom and Grandma coming out of the apartment, I lean into Carmen and whisper, “I’ll see you in LA, okay? Or at the airport. Or on the plane! Okay?” I put my hand on her nose, grasping for confirmation.

  Mom is dragging Grandma’s suitcase down the stairs as my lips brush against Carmen’s soft cheek. “I know I don’t deserve it. I know I’ve been a terrible friend. But I need you. Please, Carmen. Be there.”

  After we load the car, I stare at her through the backseat window. Our eyes stay connected until we pull out of t
he parking lot, and then . . . my unicorn is gone.

  I face forward and grip my hands together. She’ll show up, I reassure myself. Carmen always does.

  When we get to the Atlanta airport, Mom wants to park and go inside with us, but Grandma tells her to drop us at the curb. She has a long ride back and a shift to work in just a few hours. Mom hasn’t shed a tear since Grandma showed us her money jar. She’s been extremely matter-of-fact about everything since then.

  As I pull out our luggage, Grandma wraps her arms around Mom and says, “It’s going to be all right, Angie.” My mom nods curtly, but I can see everything she’s trying to hide through her eyes.

  Mom grabs my hands. “It’s going to be more than all right,” she says, unconvincingly. “You’ll come back without your horn and I will love you all the same.”

  “What if I come back with my horn?”

  “Then I’ll love you even more.” She tries at a grin but can’t hold it for more than a second. “So long as you come back to me,” she says, and takes me into her arms. She doesn’t cry. She just holds me.

  When she pulls away, I tell her, “Okay.”

  It’s legit strange to see so many unchecked emotions on my mom’s face. She’s usually really good at hiding them. I wonder if she’ll let it all out on the drive home without us.

  As we enter the airport, Grandma and I turn one last time to wave to Mom, who hasn’t gotten back into the car yet. Looking at her, I feel the same ache in my heart that I felt this morning with Carmen.

  Grandma takes my hand and we walk inside, and—oh, boy. There they are. All the people. All the eyes. They find me seemingly by instinct. Every person who passes stares with that familiar mix of disbelief and pity. Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many strangers looking at me before.

  Lacing her arm through mine, Grandma pulls me closer. “Don’t let it bother you. They don’t know you.”

  Easy for her to say. This. Is. Why. I’m. Doing. This. There are so many smaller reasons, but this is the big one. It’s not that I don’t want attention. I just don’t want this kind of attention. I want to walk through an airport unseen. Or stand on a competition stage seen. But for who I am. Not because I’m the girl with the horn.

  When the plane takes off, Grandma holds my hand again. Neither one of us has ever flown before. We’re both excited and afraid at the same time. I’m in the window seat, and Grandma is in the middle next to a man wearing a suit and thick black glasses. Once we’re in the sky, he pulls out his laptop and opens his little tray table. I watch how he does it so I can open mine, too.

  He’s fine now, but when we stopped in front of him and Grandma said, “I believe those are our seats,” and pointed to the ones beside him—he was not what I’d call overjoyed to see me.

  The captain announces that the seat belt sign is off and we are “free to move about the cabin,” and Grandma elbows my arm. “They really say that!” she says. “I always thought they made that part up for the movies.” We break into giggles. This is definitely the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

  I can’t seem to stop looking out the window at the clouds beneath us that resemble a collection of cotton balls. Puffy and white. Otherworldly. I almost expect Carmen to come running on top of them, chasing our plane across the sky.

  I got a text from Nicholas this morning listing the places I need to look for from my window on the plane. Like Oxford, Mississippi, where the griffin came from, and Abilene, Texas, whence the harpy hailed, as Nicholas said. We’ll be flying over the real Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, too (which was once the real Hot Springs), but I can’t imagine how I will see any of these places underneath all those clouds.

  “I hate that your mother is missing this,” Grandma says, interrupting my thoughts of Carmen, Nicholas, and Highwaymen.

  “Me, too.” Kind of. I’m sorry Mom’s missing the plane part, but I’m not sorry she’s missing the rest of it. She doesn’t like the staring either, and it’s not like it’s stopped now that we’re on the plane. Every few minutes, I catch someone sneaking a glimpse of me over the back of their seat.

  Grandma leans toward me and says quietly, “I’ve never seen so many different kinds of people in one place in my whole life,” and I realize that Grandma has been people-watching them like some of them have been people-watching me. Her eyes wander to the next row, where a woman is typing on her laptop. A turquoise hijab covers her head and wraps around her neck in a stylish way. There’s a girl in my school who wears one, but I don’t think Grandma has ever seen a hijab-wearing person in real life. She just nods, taking it in, then turns back to the window.

  I watch her gazing at the impossible clouds. The light reflects off her face, and she looks ten years younger. “Do you think they’ll come over with one of those carts and offer us a drink soon?” Grandma whispers.

  Peering around the seat in front of me, I don’t see any carts yet. “Are you thirsty?”

  She shakes her head. “No, I just want them to do that.”

  I grin, glad she’s the one coming with me.

  Everything’s happening so fast that I can’t quite get my head around it. I touch my horn with my fingers. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much in case Dr. Stein can’t do it.

  But who am I kidding? My hopes are higher than this plane in the sky.

  People at the LA airport stare less than people at the Atlanta one, which is a relief. I guess they’re used to freakier people out here.

  At the bottom of the escalator, several men stand holding signs with people’s names on them. The one who wears a fancy blue cap and a navy suit is holding a small cardboard sign that reads CONRAD. I grab Grandma’s arm and point to him. “That’s our guy,” I say excitedly.

  “Are you Jewel?” he asks when we walk up. George, as he introduces himself, is probably a few years younger than Grandma and has salt-and-pepper hair and a gray mustache. He smiles at me and doesn’t look at my horn even once, which makes me immediately like him.

  George takes us to baggage claim, and when we spot our brand-new-to-us suitcases (thank you, Goodwill!), he pulls them off the conveyer. “Follow me, ladies,” he says, and we hurry to keep up.

  The automatic doors slide open, and we walk out into the California sun. It was cool when we left Atlanta, but here, it’s warm. I tear off my sweater. We’re here!

  George is halfway across the pedestrian crossing when a man cuts in between us and practically pushes Grandma and me back onto the curb.

  I see the camera in his hands and freeze.

  “Hey, unicorn girl!” he says, snapping a picture of me.

  “George!” Grandma calls, and I see him turning from across the lanes, the traffic filling in between us.

  “That’s some horn you’ve got!” the man shouts. “I didn’t believe it. Took a runner on this. But wow! Is it real?” More clicks of the camera.

  I’m paralyzed. This reminds me too much of the man with the camera who showed up when I was little. It was scary then. This is scary now. There’s no normal life with a horn when there are people like him in the world. See, this is why I could never be onstage with this thing on my head. This is why I couldn’t go to Paris. One aggressive opinion about my horn, and I can’t move.

  Grandma pushes me back and plants herself between us. As she scolds him, I see George raise his hands and wade into traffic like he’s parting the Red Sea or something. He pulls the man aside and without a word, corrals us onto the crosswalk and over to our suitcases.

  The man isn’t far behind. As he runs in front of us, clicking away, George whips his hat off his head and places it onto mine. The brim sits high on my horn so it doesn’t hide the horn entirely, but it helps a little. “If there’s one thing I hate about Los Angeles, it’s the paparazzi,” he says.

  Gosh. If there’s one thing I love about Los Angeles, it’s George. “That’s a paparazzi?” I ask. “He’s kind of . . .”

  “Aggressive? Obnoxious? Subhuman?” offers George.

  �
�I thought they weren’t allowed to make pictures of children,” says Grandma as we keep up with him.

  “They’re not,” George says. “But that doesn’t stop the scummier ones.”

  Finally, we’re at a nice black car. We get in the backseat, and after George loads our bags in the trunk, he steps into the driver’s seat. It’s like we’re famous! Like a movie star, I shrink down in my seat so the man can’t see me.

  “Don’t worry, Miss Conrad,” George says, winking at me in the rearview mirror. “Tinted windows. You can see out, but he can’t see in.”

  “Really?”

  George nods. “Absolutely.”

  As George backs the car out of the parking space, I see the man through the back window. He stares after us, his camera hanging limply at his side.

  “It’s okay now.” Grandma pats my leg.

  “Don’t worry,” says George. “There’re nice people here, too.” He smiles at me in the mirror, and I know I’m looking at one.

  George takes a ramp that leads to a big wide expressway that crosses over a bigger expressway—and there’s Los Angeles. Across the sky, airplanes come in for landings. Ahead of us, cars are everywhere. Around us, there are so many of everything. My first faraway place! I lean back against the cool leather seat.

  And breathe.

  George points out lots of sights for us, like the Coliseum where the USC football team plays, and the Staples Center, where the LA Lakers play. I think George likes sports. When I comment on how crowded the expressway is, he says they call them freeways out here, and that they’re almost always this busy.

  After we’ve been on three of these car-packed freeways, George exits on what seems like a regular street. Although how regular can a street be when it’s lined with palm trees? George parks in front of an old building that looks like a house but he tells us are apartments.

  I’m about to follow George up the path when I notice that Grandma has gone frozen on the sidewalk and is staring strangely at the sign in front of the building.