Things That Surprise You

by Jennifer Maschari

  DEDICATION

  For Lauren

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Summer Us

  Shifts

  New Teen Trends

  Pinehurst

  First Day

  Giant Neon Arrow

  Wildebeests

  Be the Best Me!

  Five Thousand Pieces

  Dad’s House

  Bowling Night

  Movement!

  Be the Balloon

  Welcome Home, Mina

  Then and Now

  “Family” Dinner

  Weekend Breakfast

  Things to Notice

  Punctuation Day

  The Garcias

  Three Things

  Life

  Cafeteria Adventures: Uncensored

  School Picture Day

  Like Sisters

  A Phone Call

  Natural History Museum

  Movie Time 8

  The Great Divide

  Waffle Emergency

  Monday

  All the Little Pieces

  Snow Day

  Letting Go

  Things That Surprise You

  Change

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  SUMMER US

  Glitter is everywhere.

  It’s sticking to the tops of my summer-burned toes, which still have flecks of blue polish from the last time Hazel painted them. It’s on the faded green and pink rug in my room where I’m sitting cross-legged. There’s a little bit of glitter on the top of Bean’s brown head, too, right next to her bald spot. I’m trying to decorate the construction paper unicorn horn that I’ve stapled together. Things are always messier than I expect.

  There are two knocks at the front door. A pause. Then the doorbell rings. Even if I wasn’t expecting Hazel, I’d know it was her just from that. “Mom!” I yell. She’s actually home today instead of at the bank. “Can you get it?”

  Mom’s footsteps echo down the hall and then pound against the wooden stairs. The door opens. Bean jumps up to follow behind, even though she knows who it’s going to be, too. Everything about Hazel is loud and clattery—like a cymbal clashing. Her voice carries. I hear Mom ask if she wants something to drink (no) and if she’s excited about school starting (new school: yes, homework: no). By the time Mom’s yelled, “Emily, it’s Hazel,” she’s already up in my room and face-planting onto my bed like she’s doing a belly flop into the deep end of the neighborhood pool.

  I think she says hello, but it’s pretty muffled because she’s speaking into my comforter.

  The bed creaks as she rolls over. “Ugh,” she groans.

  “Ugh?” I’m still concentrating.

  “We did sprints today. My legs are noodles.”

  “Hmm.”

  “There’s still time for you to join,” she says hopefully. “Games don’t start till school does.”

  “Gym class last year,” I remind her.

  She sighs, probably remembering how I came last in the mile run. “Right.”

  I’m still decorating the horn. I sprinkle the last bit of glitter onto the glue swirl and wave it around in the air a little so it dries faster. It’s perfect, like I’ve captured little bits of the sun. It looks exactly like Nightshade’s horn on the cover of the latest Unicorn Chronicles book. The one that’s coming out today. I glance at my watch. In exactly one hour.

  When I finally look up at Hazel, though, I’m not thinking about her noodle legs or the horn in my hand. “Your hair!” The words just slip out. I hope I’ve said it in a nice-surprise way and not a bad-surprise way. Her usual light brown hair has thin streaks of blond in it like someone’s painted them on with a brush. Hazel sits up on the bed and pulls out her ponytail holder, shaking her hair out. Her hair’s shorter now, too, cut straight at her shoulders.

  “Do you like it?” Hazel asks. She pulls a strand through her fingertips.

  “It’s so fancy,” I say. And it is—even though she’s just been running at field hockey tryouts, her hair still looks bouncy and shiny, like the picture she showed me in Teen Scene. It doesn’t look anything like a summer ago when we spritzed on lemon juice, and Hazel’s hair turned a strange shade of orange till it grew all the way out.

  “Mom took me to the salon yesterday. Andi says she’s given three haircuts just like mine this week. And when we were leaving, one of the ladies up front told me I looked totally different.” She grins. “I think I do, too.”

  I don’t know why but my face starts to feel a little flushy. “I think you kind of look the same.”

  Her grin fades.

  “No, you know what I mean,” I rush in. “You always look great.”

  That puts the spring back into her. “So when are we leaving?” she asks. “I gotta find out what happens.”

  “As soon as you’re ready! Where’s your costume?” I look around. Maybe she left her bag downstairs or is planning to change once we get to the bookstore.

  “I’m sorry, Em.” She doesn’t look directly at me. “I didn’t have time to make anything. You know. Practice and stuff.”

  My heart skips a little. I’m thinking that maybe all the time that went into texting me pictures of a possible first-day-of-school outfit could have been used to make a costume instead. But I don’t say that. Last year, we spent a week on the floor of Hazel’s room sewing sweatshirts together and made a giant eyeball out of papier-mâché to be the Cyclops of Doom. Last year, we won first place in the costume contest and got our picture on the front page of the newspaper.

  This year Hazel has on her running shorts with the funky stripe down the side and her official Eleanor Roosevelt Middle School Field Hockey practice shirt and her sneakers. All that would normally be fine, except none of the characters in the Unicorn Chronicles books wear any of those things.

  I get an idea. “I think Mina has a T-shirt from last year you could wear!”

  I jump up and race out of the room and into Mina’s across the hall before Hazel can say anything. There are fresh lines on the carpet from where Mom’s vacuumed. I feel bad for getting my footprints all over, but Mom will just vacuum again tomorrow. She’ll dust off the stuff Mina’s collected on her bookshelves: shells from the beach and jazz choir awards and her collection of weird key chains. All things that make it look like a real live person is living there but isn’t. Mom wants Mina’s room to be clean and ready and perfect for when she comes home.

  I root around in Mina’s bottom drawer where she keeps her old shirts. Right underneath the one that says Ithaca Is Gorges, I find the one I’m looking for and hold it out in front of me. It has a picture of Nightshade with her detective hat. She’s holding up a magnifying glass with her hoof. The magnifying part is still shiny. The back says The Unicorn Chronicles Magical Mystery Tour.

  It should fit Hazel. Hazel and Mina used to be about the same size.

  “I’ve got it!” I call. “And I bet I have an extra horn from last year you could wear. Remember? From our Halloween costumes?”

  “I think just the shirt—” she says, but now I’m already back in my room and going through a bin at the bottom of my closet. I find one. It’s a little bit crumpled but it’s purple, like the horn of Nightshade’s best friend, Starlight.

  I hand both of them to her.

  There’s a moment where she’s holding the things in her hand and just looking at them. The tiniest bit of worry settles under my skin. But she turns toward the wall and slips out of the one shirt and into the other and I exhale. Then she pulls the elastic band attached to the horn tight and slips it under her
chin. Just like before with the hair, she changes again, but this time to something more familiar. I swish my detective cape around my shoulders and tie it at my neck. I stuff the rest of my frizzy hair into Nightshade’s detective cap. I’ve sliced open the top of it so the unicorn horn can stick out.

  We crowd into the view of the small mirror over my dresser. Hazel squeezes my hand. It’s summer us. Freckle-dotted. Matching lime green Popsicle earrings in our June-pierced ears. My orange soda–stained smile and Hazel’s that’s coated in the Very Berry lip gloss she got at the mall last week.

  In five days, it’s going to be middle school us.

  As a last-minute thought, I sprinkle a little bit of the remaining glitter onto the top of each of our heads.

  Hazel winces, maybe because of her perfect new hair. But then she must see what I see, how the bits of glitter are like little pieces of light.

  She grins now. “Perfect!”

  By the time Mom’s taken our picture together on the front step and we’ve ridden the back way to the bookstore and tied up our bikes to the rack, the line for the Unicorn Chronicles book party is stretched halfway around the building. Also, there are two puddles of sweat that have formed underneath my armpits because I’m riding around in white sweatpants and a sweatshirt when it’s August hot in Ohio.

  Hazel sighs a little bit when she looks at the line. “I wish Mina were here.” Last year, Mina drove us to the bookstore with her new license. She had rolled the windows down and me and Hazel made up car dance moves to the songs that blared from the speakers. Last year, we arrived so early that we were at the very front of the line.

  “Yeah,” I say, but I don’t want to talk about Mina right now. I want to talk about unicorns and Nightshade and eating pizza afterward. I feel like a little bit of the glitter’s been shaken off the day. “The line will move fast! It won’t take long at all.”

  Hazel bounces on the toes of her sneakers, her focus shifted. We’ve waited a little over a year for this. A year spent on the Unicorn Underworld fan forum and combing through books one through five trying to find any kind of clue that would reveal Nightshade’s fate.

  In line, we’re stuck between a dad with a kid on his back who keeps making faces at us and an older lady who seems very confused about why there’s a line and a bunch of people dressed up like mythical creatures. “Okay, new theory,” Hazel says, thinking aloud. “What if Disastero is really Nightshade’s father?”

  “No way!” I say. “Why would Disastero try to kill her then?”

  Hazel shrugs. “He doesn’t know.” She spins around excitedly. “Or maybe he does but knows that Nightshade is close to revealing the secrets of the Hidden Kingdom? What about that?”

  I turn her words over in my mind. At the end of the last book, Nightshade and Disastero were fighting on the edge of a cliff with Nightshade dangling over the side, holding on by only one hoof. “It could be. There were lots of chances for him to get rid of her before. Maybe there’s a reason he hasn’t.”

  “Exactly!”

  “You’re brilliant, Starlight.”

  Hazel winks at me. “You’re spectacular, Nightshade.”

  The minutes start to add up. We’re waiting in line longer than I had anticipated. The sun seems even hotter than before. I can feel my hair getting soggy and gross under my cap, and the elastic of the horn is cutting into my chin. I rub my hand underneath it but I don’t want to take it off. Hazel’s getting impatient, I can tell, even though they’re pumping music from the Nightshade movie soundtrack over the speakers. Her answers to my book questions are shorter now—a yes or a no or a maybe. But I know it’s only because it’s hot and the line is long and she’s hungry for our favorite pizza at the Slice. Once we get inside the bookstore and into the air-conditioning with the books in our hands, everything will be fine.

  “Okay, three middle school things you’re excited about.” It’s a game we play—just the two of us. You pick a category and then name three things: vacations you want to take or your most favorite foods or your favorite jokes.

  Hazel brightens and I feel my shoulders relax.

  “Eeee!” she says. “Good one. Just three things? Okay—lockers. One hundred percent lockers. Playing field hockey. And . . .” Her eyes roll up like she’s thinking really hard. “It’s totally new.”

  “Totally new?” Of all the things she could have picked—the cafeteria breadstick bar or the big class field trip to the ball game in the spring or anything really—she picked that?

  “Yeah—think about it. No one knows us. Well, some people but not many. We could totally be someone different. Like you could be Em.”

  “Em?” I’m echoing back things Hazel’s saying right now because it’s like I’ve learned something new and different and strange about her. I like Hazel the way she is and can’t imagine this brand new Middle School Hazel.

  “Yeah!” She grabs my arm and leans in like she’s sharing a secret. “Em Murphy. It sounds so cool, doesn’t it? Em Murphy, who wears Very Berry lip gloss and knows the best dance moves and writes her name in fancy-pants cursive.” She pretends to write my name in the air with extra squiggles. “How does that sound?”

  “Cool?” I hate the way my voice goes up. I try again. “Cool.” I think it could be very cool.

  “Middle school is going to be so different. But so great, you know?” The line starts moving then and Hazel goes back to talking about Nightshade, so I don’t get to say my three things, which is good because I can think of only one: spending sixth grade together with Hazel.

  SHIFTS

  The inside of the bookstore is loud. It’s packed full of bumpy elbows and “excuse me’s” and older kids. Even kids I recognize from Mina’s grade. Brightly colored balloons bounce against the ceiling. There are trays with unicorn sugar cookies and a bowl of bright green leprechaun punch that I always have too many cups of.

  A giant cardboard cutout of Nightshade in her detective clothes is set up in front of a white sheet. One of the bookstore staff members stands in front of it with a Polaroid camera.

  Walking in here is like stepping into a pair of the fuzziest socks. It feels cozy and right.

  “There it is!” Hazel says, pointing to stacks and stacks of books piled up on a table in the front of the store. I grin. My stomach feels like it’s fizzy with Pop Rocks.

  They have two mini spotlights trained on a table in the front that flash alternating blues and yellows. Hazel and I weave through the crowd. She hands me a book off the stack and then grabs another one for herself.

  “Don’t even think about reading the end,” Hazel says, smiling. She somehow knows, even though she’s reading the inside flap and isn’t even looking at me. I stop mid-flip, my cheeks flushing.

  “You caught me.” I laugh it off and close the book. It’s a bad habit I have.

  Because I’m not reading the end, I’m looking around. There’s a kid—way shorter than me—who has his back against one of the shelves. He has these thick glasses and black hair that’s sticking up like the quills of a porcupine. Green paint covers his arms and face. His shirt is ripped at the bottom like his body is too big for it, and he has on matching green and purple high tops.

  “The ogre,” I whisper. It’s maybe the best ogre costume I’ve seen. And believe it or not, I’ve seen a lot of them. Half the kids I saw out last year for Halloween were Unicorn Chronicles characters.

  “What?” Hazel asks. She’s already flipped to the front page.

  “He’s the ogre,” I say. “From book two.”

  The ogre kid hears me, because he looks up from his book and grins. “Nice costume,” he says.

  There’s a girl next to him—same green paint and same black hair, but hers is longer and split into two matching braids. “Your horn looks great.” She holds up the book, marking her place in it with her finger. “Almost an exact match.” She nods approvingly.

  “Is it Disastero?” I ask. “Is he really the Unicorn King?” I can see that they’re both alre
ady twenty pages in and certainly they’ve found out what happened to Nightshade on the cliff by now.

  I feel a hand on my back. “Emily,” Hazel says in a low voice. “I’m ready to go.”

  “What? Wait. We just got here.”

  Hazel raises her eyebrows at me and I think she’s trying to communicate without words, but I’m not really sure of the message. There’s air-conditioning in here and unicorn cookies and I haven’t even had any punch yet.

  “Hold up,” I say. “I mean, he’s got to be, right?” I strain forward to peek at the page.

  The boy opens his mouth to speak.

  “No, stop,” I say. “Don’t tell me anything. Okay, maybe something. Wink once if he is, twice if he’s not.”

  Hazel has grabbed my hand now, but I plant my feet. The ogre blinks.

  “You blinked. Does that count as two winks or is it supposed to be a single wink?”

  “Em,” Hazel says. I can tell she’s getting impatient. “You’ll get to read it tonight.”

  “Is that your name?” the girl says. She looks like the boy. They have the same crooked smile. I bet she’s his sister. “Em? Like the letter?”

  I could correct her and say that my name is Emily, but maybe new names need to be broken in, like a pair of jeans. Emily was my fifth-grade name. I wonder if I’ve outgrown it.

  “It’s really good so far,” the boy says as Hazel pulls me away. “And Disastero is in the first chapter. . . .” His voice trails off.

  Hazel ducks her head toward mine as we walk away. She’s so close that our unicorn horns touch. “That was Soap Boy.”

  “Who?” I’m not sure why only questions are coming out of my mouth today. “Soap Boy? What kind of name is that?”

  “A name you don’t want! His actual name is Hector, but no one calls him that. Lucy said they put a bar of soap in his desk on the last day of elementary.”

  “Lucy? Field hockey team Lucy?”

  Hazel nods.

  “Why would she do that?”

  At this Hazel bristles. “I don’t know. I guess he smelled bad. I wasn’t there. Anyway, it was just a joke, you know. It wasn’t serious or anything.” She turns away from me.