Not a Unicorn

by Dana Middleton

  “Nothing, I guess.” I think about Nicholas and how he’s not a fan of Disney creatures. His mermaids would definitely not look like this.

  When I first got to the gym, I sat on the bleachers with everyone else as Emma went over what we have to do. There were twelve of us all together, a weird mix of cheerleaders and art kids. I was kind of annoyed to see Brooklyn here, but I guess you don’t get one without the other.

  “It’s the final push, people,” Emma said, like she was leading an army to war. “The dance is only five days away. You guys get that, right? Tomorrow, I don’t want to turn around without seeing a poster about this dance. We need to sell more advance tickets, and we won’t do that unless boys do what they are supposed to do. So let’s make a lot of these!”

  Emma held up a poster that said ASK HER NOW, spelled out in blue and gold glitter. A cringing image of poor Ethan popped into my head.

  “But since boys are generally unreliable and we’re all obviously feminists here,” Emma went on, “I thought we’d try some parallel messaging. She held up another poster. ASK THAT BOY it read, which made some people laugh. “Hey,” Emma scolded lightly. “Under the Sea is going to be the most successful eighth-grade dance in school history, and gender parity is not a joke, so whatever works, right?”

  “You guys need water?” It’s Brooklyn’s voice behind us now, bringing me back to the moment, but I pretend not to hear.

  “Yeah, thanks Brook,” Emma says, and takes a bottle.

  “Jewel?” Brooklyn says. And I do believe this is the first time Brooklyn has ever said my name.

  I hold up my hand without turning around. “Sure,” I say, and she places a bottle into my palm.

  You’d think she’d get the message and go away, but she doesn’t. Brooklyn sits down beside Emma and inspects my mermaids. “Wow, you’re really good,” she says.

  “Thanks,” I say begrudgingly. Doesn’t she know it’s not cool to suddenly start being nice to somebody after she’s had her horn taken off?

  Emma and Brooklyn talk dance committee business while I decorate one of my cutout mermaids with paint and glitter. This one has blue eyes, green hair, and . . . I almost give her a unicorn horn. I mean, I really want to do that, and I don’t know why. But I don’t.

  “We’ve got like five hundred likes on the last one,” Brooklyn says to Emma. “I’ll post ‘Ask That Boy’ tonight.”

  “Perfect,” Emma replies, then turns to me. “You’re following the dance account, right?”

  I shrug. “You’ve seen my phone.”

  Emma looks at Brooklyn. “Jewel needs a new phone. Bad.”

  “Quel dommage,” Brooklyn says, opening her Instagram and showing me a pic of the phrase “Ask Her Now” surrounded by what looks like stardust. “Regardes.”

  Emma groans. “Cut it out with the French already.”

  “You just don’t like that we can talk behind your back,” Brooklyn teases.

  “Very funny . . . or however you say it in French.” Emma gets up, actually annoyed, but surprisingly, Brooklyn grins at me.

  “Come on everybody,” Emma calls out to the room. “We’ve got to get these posters up.”

  Armed with glittery posters and huge rolls of masking tape, all twelve of us fan out down the halls and plaster Under the Sea dance posters everywhere.

  Emma heads upstairs, which is where I was planning on going anyway, loaded with poster boards. The lunchroom is strangely empty and quiet. “Let’s start here,” Emma says.

  I double-tape the backs of the posters, then hand them to her to hang on the wall. It’s a good system, though it’s easy to get ahead of her because she’s very particular about placing them perfectly.

  As I wait for her to catch up with me, my eyes wander. This is where Emma and I once ate lunch together. This is where the accident with Noah happened. This is where Carmen tried to comfort me every day after Emma left, before Nicholas and Mystic arrived.

  “Do you remember Carmen?” I ask her.

  Emma looks down at me, from up on her chair. “Your unicorn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whatever happened to her?”

  “I don’t know,” I say thoughtfully. It’s not like I haven’t been wondering the same thing.

  “Guess you outgrew her then,” she says, pressing a poster to the wall. “Finally.”

  “What?”

  “I mean, you couldn’t believe in her forever.”

  “Wait,” I say, taking a step toward her. “‘Believe in’ her? You saw Carmen, too.”

  “We were kids,” she says, grabbing another board from my hands. “Who doesn’t want to believe in unicorns?”

  “Yeah, but Carmen wasn’t an imaginary friend. She wasn’t a make-believe unicorn.”

  Emma looks at me, frowning. “Do you still see her?”

  “Not lately, but—”

  She shrugs. “If you don’t see her anymore, she’s probably not real.”

  I step back, feeling like the wind has been knocked out of me. “So you really didn’t believe she was there? All that time? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to upset you.” Emma points her finger to the center of her forehead.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” Emma says. “Just, that thing with Noah was . . . intense.”

  What is she saying? I stare at her, dumbfounded. “You were scared of me?”

  Emma returns to the poster she’s hanging. “No. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just . . . whatever, it’s better now, right? You have to admit that.”

  “Yeah,” I say, but it comes out tight.

  Breezily, she changes the subject and starts telling me about the DJ they’ve hired for the dance. But I’m hardly listening. I can’t believe she couldn’t see Carmen. She always said she could. I try to gloss over it in my head, but I feel genuinely betrayed to learn that she was only pretending.

  When the posters are hung, Emma texts her mom to pick us up, and we head toward the stairway.

  “We’ve got so much more to do this week,” Emma says. “There’s the presales, and the decorations for the gym, and we have to get more volunteers to bake for the refreshment table, and . . .”

  As we enter the stairwell, she’s still talking, but the more she talks, the less I hear. Her mouth is moving, but somehow it’s hard to make out what she’s saying, and my forehead hurts—a sharp, intense pain, like an icicle pressing from the front of my head to the back of my neck. My fingers reach up to where my horn used to be and I suddenly find it hard to breathe.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma asks, but she sounds so distant—like I’m underwater again. “J,” she repeats, sounding even farther away.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. I can barely see. Everything is quiet, and black singes the edges of my sight, like I’m looking through binoculars. I try to hold on to the rail. Then I don’t see her anymore. I don’t see anything.

  Except the black. I hover there, only hearing my lonely breath, until . . . the black unspools and all of it changes.

  Esmeralda

  Slowly, I step up onto the sidewalk. The wooden sidewalk.

  Before me is a pair of swinging doors. Over the doors is a sign that reads THE WATERING HOLE.

  The Watering Hole? That’s the saloon in Highwaymen.

  A woman bursts through the swinging doors—a woman in a long green dress with black trim—and I gasp.

  It can’t be.

  Transfixed, I watch Esmeralda survey the town. Her hands find her hips as her eyes fall on a scruffy dog hurrying nervously down the street. When she looks to see what the dog’s running from—

  A dust cloud rises in the distance. Something’s happening out there.

  “Wesley.” Esmeralda and I say his name at the same time, and slowly, she turns to me.

  Her eyes register my blue jeans and green sneakers with the pink laces before landing on my face. “You’re not from around here, are you?
”

  I shake my head.

  She turns back to the far-off disturbance, using her hand as a visor against the blazing sun. “How do you know Wesley?”

  “That’s sort of hard to explain,” I say. I’m talking to Esmeralda! What? “I’ve never met him in person. I just know about him.”

  “You telling the truth?” she challenges. “People who know about Wesley usually work for Wesley.”

  I guess I shouldn’t tell her how much I know about Wesley, then. Like that sometimes he beats his dog, Joe, with his tightly wound lasso, that he has a younger sister named Mary who walks with a cane, that he carries a crumpled-up four-leaf clover in his breast pocket, that his mission in life is to destroy every magical creature in and around Hot Springs, New Mexico.

  There’s a cry from the sky, and I look up to see an enormous bird flying above us. Wide purple wings. Snakelike neck. Crest of feathers on its head. The phoenix screeches and soars past, disappearing over Holcomb’s General Store.

  “Was that—?”

  “Marv,” Esmeralda answers before I can finish. I was going to say that. I knew it was Marv. “What are those on your feet?”

  “Sneakers,” I tell her, and now she looks at me like I’m speaking another language.

  A gunshot echoes from somewhere near the dust cloud. Bootsteps approach, and the saloon doors part to reveal Beaumont Monroe, sheriff of Hot Springs. He looks me over, then tips his charcoal cowboy hat. “Ma’am,” he says, and joins Esmeralda, gazing at the dust cloud.

  “Wesley is stirring up trouble again,” she says.

  “Yep,” answers Beaumont, in his simple, laconic way.

  “Is that Rock Canyon?” I ask these two people I know so well. They turn to me, puzzled.

  Beaumont takes a step toward me and holds up his right hand, just like he did in the hospital back in Los Angeles. “Truth,” he says, then opens his other palm. “Or consequences.”

  “Consequences” comes out of my mouth, just like I said in the dream, or what I thought was a dream. And suddenly I’m afraid. Something doesn’t feel right. This was what happened the last time I saw Carmen—I mean, really saw her. I only thought I glimpsed her at the gazebo, and I’m trusting my perception less and less. And now it all feels too long ago. What if something’s actually wrong? “Where’s Carmen?” I ask them, feeling a dread I can’t quite explain.

  Beaumont and Esmeralda stare at me oddly, like they don’t understand me.

  “What’d you say?” Esmeralda asks.

  “Carmen!” I say, feeling the panic rise inside. “Have you seen Carmen?”

  “Jewel.”

  Esmeralda cocks her head, looking perplexed.

  A hand touches my shoulder.

  “Carmen?” Esmeralda asks.

  “Yes, Carmen!”

  “Jewel?” The voice is more insistent. The hand is shaking my shoulder.

  My eyes jolt open.

  And Emma is standing on the stair below, looking at me. It’s her hand on my shoulder. “What happened?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say, trying to catch my breath. What did just happen? I can still feel the desert sun of Hot Springs on my face.

  “Are you okay?” Emma asks.

  I pull my hand away from my forehead. It doesn’t hurt anymore. But something else does. My heart is full-blown aching as I stare into Emma’s eyes. What am I supposed to tell her? If she doesn’t believe me about Carmen, she sure won’t believe me about this.

  “J?” she says, staring at me strangely.

  Pulling it together, I nod briskly. “Sorry,” I say. “Yeah. I’m okay.” Though inside, I absolutely know that I’m not.

  If that happened in front of anybody else, they’d make me tell my mom so she could drive me to the hospital. At the very least, we’d be calling Dr. Stein.

  But it happened in front of Emma, and it turns out that Emma is easily redirected toward whatever is most important in her own mind. I didn’t remember that about her.

  By the time her mom picks us up, I’ve convinced her that little blackouts are side effects of the surgery and that they don’t happen often. Soon, they shouldn’t happen at all. She doesn’t press the point.

  When we get home, Emma asks if I want to come over, but I tell her I should probably go rest, so we head to our respective apartments. Actually, I just want to be alone because I can’t get these thoughts out of my head. Why was I asking Beaumont and Esmeralda about Carmen? How was I asking Beaumont and Esmeralda anything? What was that?

  I pass Soccer Sam kicking the ball around, and look up to see Grandma sitting on the top step outside our apartment door. When I reach her, I ask, “Are you waiting for me?”

  “It’s a nice day.” She lifts her face up to the sky. “Thought I’d watch Sam play with that soccer ball I hear all the time.” Then she adds, “Don’t you have a phone?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “You weren’t on the bus. You didn’t call me.”

  “Oh my gosh, I forgot. I’m sorry.”

  “Where were you?” she asks, squinting up at me.

  “I was working on mermaids for the dance. I’m on the dance committee.”

  “The dance committee, huh?” Grandma says, and I sit down beside her. “That something with Emma?”

  “Yeah. It’s her committee. I didn’t mean to worry you.” I feel bad. How could I forget to tell her?

  Sam’s soccer ball bounces several beats before she asks, “Is everything okay with you?”

  I look at her. “Why do you ask?”

  “Grandmotherly feeling.”

  How does she always know everything? No, I’m not okay would be the truthful answer. I mean, what just happened to me was insane. I still feel a little light-headed, and I’m definitely confused. But how to explain it? I don’t even know what it was. And I don’t want to worry her, at least until I sort it out for myself first. But it felt so real. And now I’m worried about Carmen.

  Grandma elbows me gently.

  I’m not sure what to say so I confess the other thing that’s been on my mind. “It’s just weird being normal.”

  “How do you mean?”

  I haven’t said this out loud yet, so I search for the words. “You know when you want something so bad and you get it, and you think it’s going to make you completely different?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, I don’t feel as different as I thought I would. I mean, I look different, but . . .

  “You don’t feel so different inside.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  She pats me on the leg. “I think that’s called being human. We can move around all the pieces, try to change them, try to control them, but at the end, we’re still just who we are.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me that?”

  Grandma grins. “’Cause it’s the kind of thing you have to learn for yourself.”

  I guess she’s right. If anyone had told me that removing my horn wouldn’t completely change me, I wouldn’t have believed them.

  “Just remember,” Grandma says. “I love you normal, weird, and in between.”

  Good thing, I think as I look into the sky. Because I have the odd suspicion that I might be less normal now than I’ve ever been before.

  Highwaymen Things

  “Are you okay?” Mom says, sounding suspiciously like Grandma. We all overslept, and she’s driving me to school.

  “Yeah,” I tell her, even though my forehead hurts, and I had a horrible dream last night. Carmen was falling and I couldn’t save her. It was so terrifying. And so real.

  “I talked to Dr. Stein yesterday.”

  “You did?” I ask, wondering if he knows what’s going on with me. “Why?”

  “He’s been checking in. He wants to know how you’re doing.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Well, that the bad dreams have continued, but other than that—”

  “I’m not having bad dreams,” I say, because I
’m not, except for last night.

  “Sweetie, you’ve been having lots of them. Ever since you’ve been back.”

  I turn to her, baffled. “What are you talking about?”

  “You share a room with your grandma, remember?” She looks at me. “And you’re not exactly a quiet dreamer.”

  I suddenly feel exposed. They know something I didn’t know about myself. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I thought you knew and just weren’t talking to us about it.” Big drops of rain hit the windshield and Mom puts on the wipers. “What are you dreaming about?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, but I do know. I must be dreaming about Carmen.

  At school, I hurry past the main office and spot the clock that says I have about two minutes to get to homeroom. I sprint upstairs, past where I had my vision—vision, dream, encounter, whatever—about Highwaymen yesterday, and around the corner, passing dance poster after dance poster.

  Suddenly, a locker slams shut in front of me, and a boy swings around.

  BAM! His books go flying. I hit the floor. And so does he.

  Dazed, I look up and see Noah.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  He pulls himself up. “Yeah, you?”

  Kids avoid us like we’re victims of a crime scene as we scramble to pick up everything, dodging feet, legs, and continuous motion. “Here,” I say, and hand him his algebra book and a bunch of papers.

  “Thanks.” He takes them awkwardly. “Sorry about that.”

  “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I say, but the joke doesn’t land, so I add, “It’s me, Jewel.”

  “Yeah, I know. I recognized you even without your . . .” He stares at my invisible horn, and my hand touches the bangs over my forehead before I can stop myself. “Did it hurt?” Noah asks.

  I grab for my backpack, mostly just to do something with my hands. “You mean getting my horn taken off?”

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “Not during. They knocked me out for that. But after, it did. It hurt a lot.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he says, but his eyes wander past me. Great, even as a former unicorn, I’m boring.

  “Where—” he starts, and then the bell for homeroom rings.