Made That Way

by Susan Ketchen

  It takes a while for me to get used to the extra weight on the back of my bike and then there’s the backward pull from Taylor’s hands on the top of my shoulders, but Taylor says she’s ridden this way a million times with no problems. In my peripheral vision I can see Taylor’s legs spread out to the sides, toes not pointed for a change, but turned up to stay off the road. The bike wobbles a few times, but despite my headache, I get the hang of it and by the time we reach the Dollar Store everything seems to be under pretty good control.

  I lock up the bike and follow Taylor into the store. I tag along, feeling like a puppy. I’m not pleased with myself. It’s difficult to be a boss mare. Even difficult for Kansas under certain circumstances it seems, and she’s had years of experience. I wish I could figure out how Electra manages it. She bosses Photon who is bigger and older.

  Taylor skims up one aisle and down another, finding angels everywhere. Certainly she has much more choice than I had when I was looking for equestrian-themed supplies. In the house wares section she finds an angel coffee mug, angel candlestick holders, angel salt and pepper shakers. In the stationery section there’s a pack of dove grey computer paper with faint white feathers floating down the pages. I find a thin sleeve of angel stickers for her and at first Taylor says she’s outgrown that sort of thing but then she looks at me in that kindly spiritual way that drives me crazy because it makes me feel like I’m three years old. “Okay, for you, I’ll take them,” and she adds them to her stack of stuff. There’s a small clothing section in the back corner of the store. Taylor discovers a pink t-shirt with two white angels embossed on the front. There’s also a rack of scarves. She rubs the fabric between thumb and finger. “Do you think this is silk?”

  “Not at two for five dollars,” I tell her. I would be more supportive if I was feeling better.

  “I’m sure it’s silk,” says Taylor, flicking through the display. She pulls down a flimsy length of sky-blue covered with fluffy white clouds, and on each cloud is an angel playing a harp. “Can you believe this?” she says. “I can wrap it around my ecru lamp shade. It is so perfect!”

  “Hay crew?” I say. She has reminded me that Kansas is stacking hay today, and she wouldn’t let me help her because she thought I wasn’t well enough and now here I am shopping with my cousin who, frankly, I can’t imagine owning a lampshade decorated with people stacking bales of hay.

  Taylor stares at me, blinking, then her eyebrows twitch up. “That’s ecru, Farmgirl. It’s a colour, kind of like eggshell if you really need the agricultural reference.”

  At the checkout she spies a tub of magic wands, hard plastic tubes filled with blue fluid and stars that flow back and forth when the wand is turned. “This is my lucky day!” says Taylor. “I’ve wanted one of these forever!” She places one firmly on top of her stack of merchandise. The cashier rings it up and stuffs everything into a large plastic bag.

  “Didn’t you bring a backpack?” I ask as we leave the store. “How are you going to carry all that?”

  “Easy,” says Taylor, slipping an arm through the handle holes. “Watch me.”

  Of course I can’t watch—I have to keep my eye on the road. I take my seat on the bike and feel Taylor climb on behind me. Taylor’s hands return to my shoulders and the shopping bag lies sandwiched between us. The magic wand sticks me in the armpit. Somehow we glide out of the parking lot onto the roadway.

  “Where’s that stable you go to anyway?” says Taylor. “Why don’t we drop by and you can show me this new horse of yours?”

  “It’s too far,” I say, pedaling as hard as I can up a hill. We must have coasted on the way to the store. I hadn’t really noticed, because it was easy. In this direction it’s uphill and Taylor’s hands tug at me. I can feel what must be the candlesticks digging into my spine.

  “Go on, we can do it, I’ll flap my angel wings!” says Taylor and one of Taylor’s hands lets go and the plastic bag is pulled free. It crackles in the wind and the bike wobbles.

  “Don’t do that!” I tell her.

  Taylor laughs and does it again and then puts her hand back on my shoulder and the bag returns against my back where it rustles every time Taylor shifts her weight.

  “Take me or I’ll use my magic wand to put a spell on you!” says Taylor, which is totally unfair. Taylor has frightened me before with her spiritual interests in palm-reading and Ouija boards. I want to go home, my head is pounding, it feels like someone is sticking a knife in my forehead. I want to lie down in the dark in my bedroom.

  “I bet it’s up this road. Turn here!” Taylor leans to the left. She’s guessed correctly. Somehow she’s picked the road where Kansas lives. I have to turn the bike if only to stay upright.

  “Isn’t this fun?” says Taylor.

  Over the rustling sounds of the plastic bag I hear a vehicle approaching from behind. As it draws closer, it sounds more like a truck than a car. I hope it isn’t Kansas. Kansas will kill me for riding my bike like this. I suddenly realize that Taylor isn’t wearing a helmet and Kansas is fanatical about protective headgear. I guide the bike as close to the edge of the pavement as I dare. The vehicle slows behind us and the driver honks the horn.

  “Pass, you idiot,” says Taylor.

  I feel Taylor’s hand let go, and the pressure of the bag disappears. I turn my head marginally, to see Taylor’s left arm extended, the bag hanging from it, as she indicates to the driver to go around. Except there are two bags, and two arms. I am seeing double again. I look ahead and feel a swell of nausea. The bike wobbles badly.

  “Hey!” says Taylor. “Watch it!”

  The front tire slips off the pavement into a rocky rut beside the road. Taylor’s hands clutch at me then her foot bangs against my calf and I push as hard as I can on the pedals, straining to keep the bike upright and moving ahead.

  “Oh no,” says Taylor, “my foot…” and then all I hear is her screaming.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I can’t get up. I’m on my hands and knees and if I raise my head it pounds like crazy. I’m afraid to open my eyes in case everything is still double. I know my bike is beside me, and Taylor is close by because she’s yelling and she’s as loud as a trumpet in my ear. And then there’s a hand on my back, and a familiar voice asking if I’m all right and did I hit my head. It’s Kansas.

  “I’m okay. I didn’t hit my head,” I say, though it feels like there’s a spike going through it. I fumble with the buckle of my helmet until it releases, slides off and bounces on the pavement. “My cousin Taylor is hurt. I crashed the bike. It was my fault.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I was right behind you in my truck. Taylor was waving her arm around trying to get me to pass, but I couldn’t, my truck is loaded with hay, there wasn’t enough room. She threw you off balance, it wasn’t your fault.”

  I hear another familiar voice trying to soothe Taylor.

  “It’s okay,” says Kansas. “We’re lucky, Kelly Cleveland was right behind me. She’s helping Taylor now.”

  “But it was my fault,” I say. “I let her boss me even though I had a headache and I was seeing double. From the growth hormone,” I add emphatically.

  I flop sideways so I’m sitting on the edge of the pavement. Warily I open my eyelids to a tiny slit, so I’m looking at the world through my eyelashes. The double vision has cleared, but I wish it hadn’t. There’s blood all over the place. Taylor is lying on the grass at the side of the road. Dr. Cleveland is easing the shoe off her foot. The cap is full of blood . . . and something else. I tell myself to stop watching, but it’s too late. A toe slides out of the shoe, rolls across the pavement and onto the dirt at the side of the road. The toenail has pink polish on it, with sparkles.

  Taylor has stopped screaming.

  Kansas groans and leans close.

  “She’s a dancer,” I say.

  Kansas tells
me to sit still and she’ll be right back. She crouches at Dr. Cleveland’s side. “Her name’s Taylor,” she tells Dr. Cleveland. “She’s Sylvia’s cousin. She’s a dancer.”

  Dr. Cleveland fixes her with a brief sad look, then checks Taylor’s pulse. “I think she fainted,” she says. Gently she lays Taylor’s arm back on her side. “Kansas, do you have anything we could use for a tourniquet?”

  Kansas looks around and spies the shopping bag. She drags it out from under my bike and empties it on the pavement. Dr. Cleveland rifles through the pile, then knots the scarf around Taylor’s ankle, forms a loop of fabric, inserts the blue wand with stars and uses it to wind the scarf tight.

  “A magic wand,” says Kansas, shaking her head.

  I wish someone would use it to make the accident un-happen.

  Dr. Cleveland nods. “Abracadabra,” she says, using the free end of the scarf to tie the wand securely against Taylor’s leg. Then she folds the t-shirt into a square not much bigger than her hand and presses it against the end of Taylor’s foot. “Don’t suppose you have a baggie,” she says, indicating with a nod of her head towards the toe still lying in the dirt. Kansas says no. “Fine, we’ll leave it for the ambulance guys,” says Dr. Cleveland. “How’s Sylvia?”

  “She has a headache, and double vision,” says Kansas. “She says she had it before the crash, she says she didn’t hit her head. She was wearing her helmet.”

  Dr. Cleveland nods.

  Kansas says, “Sylvia says it’s from the growth hormone.”

  Dr. Cleveland stares over at me for a long moment as she thinks. “Oh Christ,” she says finally. “I’ll bet she has increased intracranial pressure. She needs to come off that stuff right away. It’s a rare side effect, and would account for the headaches, nausea, vomiting. Someone should have picked that up.” She stops abruptly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  In the distance I hear the swells of a siren. Kansas comes back and sits beside me. She strokes my back and I start to cry.

  “Don’t worry,” says Kansas.

  “Is Taylor going to die?”

  “No. She’s hurt her foot, that’s all.”

  The sirens are deafening. Car doors open and close, radios splutter. I shut my eyes tight. “I’ll never make up for this if she has to take time off dancing,” I say.

  “Look,” says Kansas, “Did you hear what Dr. Cleveland said? She says you’re right about the growth hormone causing your headaches, and you’ll have to come off the stuff. That’s all it is, a side effect.”

  I snuffle. “So I’m going to stay short.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “But I’ve got my horse anyway.”

  “You’ve got your horse.”

  I hear steps in the gravel and open my eyes just enough to see an ambulance attendant kneel beside me. He reaches for my wrist and takes my pulse. “You have a horse?” he says.

  “And he’s a fine animal,” says Kansas mimicking Declan but with a really terrible Irish accent.

  “You really think so?” I say, more grateful for a lie than I ever have been in my life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I’m dreaming. I’m with the unicorn, though without a horn I’m not sure if he is a unicorn anymore. He’s joined the ranks of “the hornless ones”, which used to be his dismissive term for horses. I haven’t heard him say this for a while. If he wasn’t always so grumpy I’d feel sorry for him.

  “It’s time for you to start building some bridges,” says the unicorn.

  “I thought I wasn’t supposed to—I thought it was against the rules.”

  “You were warned not to build bridges until you had more control. Your control in this realm is acceptable now. Though the other realm remains problematic I’m sorry to say.”

  “So I can name people and bring them into my dreams if I want?”

  “If you wish,” says the unicorn.

  “But I have to have better control in the other world?”

  “I believe I said as much,” says the unicorn unhelpfully. He can be so infuriating.

  “I don’t get it. I’m a kid. The adults are in charge. I don’t have control of anything.”

  “Hmmph,” says the unicorn. “If you drew more from this realm when you were in the corporal realm you might fare better. Bridges have been known to operate in two directions.” He uses his ironic tone, which brings out the worst in me.

  “Are you on drugs?” I say. “Because you’re making even less sense than usual.”

  “If you took some time to think about it instead of reacting immediately, you might have asked a more sensible useful question,” says the unicorn.

  I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about anything, because there’s something unpleasant at the back of my mind that I need to avoid. I prefer to change the subject. “You don’t seem to be limping as much,” I say.

  “Thank you for noticing,” says the unicorn. “I’m glad you’re not totally wrapped up in your own problems for a change.”

  “My problems aren’t exactly insignificant.”

  “Medication side effects may be unpleasant at the time, but seeing as how they will disappear when you do away with those awful injections, I don’t see that you have much to complain about. Your headaches are hardly a permanent condition.”

  “You’re sure?”

  The unicorn snorts.

  “But I’ll be stuck with being short forever.”

  “We discussed that previously. That is hardly a problem in the grand scope of things. Perhaps this will allow you to follow your heart’s desire and become a jockey and gallop round and round on a racetrack in front of screaming crowds of gambling addicts.”

  “That is not my heart’s desire and you know better. Why would you even say such a thing?”

  The unicorn stops walking, lowers his head and eats some grass. His forelock fluffs out over the place where his horn used to be so I can’t get a good look at it. I want to be able to compare it to the scab in the middle of Brooklyn’s forehead.

  “I don’t know why you have to be so grumpy all the time.”

  The unicorn lifts his head, chews and swallows. A bulge of food slides down his esophagus, exactly as it does with the horses.

  “Grumpy?” says the unicorn. “I do wish you wouldn’t use that word. Though of course that’s what your parents say to you when they see you sad or angry. I find it exceedingly patronizing myself.”

  I sigh. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “There are better ways of finding out what’s troubling somebody.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well you could ask me.”

  I consider this. I think about all the times I’ve been upset and how nice it would have been if my parents had asked me what was the matter instead of pointing out that I was acting grumpy. “Okay,” I say, “what’s troubling you?”

  “Nothing.” The unicorn looks at me straight-faced, then bursts into laughter. His laugh is very strange, and it’s exactly the same as the strangled bugling noise that Brooklyn made from the back of the transport trailer, though what he had to laugh about then I still can’t figure.

  “You’re funny,” I say, and I laugh too.

  “Laughter is the best medicine,” says the unicorn.

  “Oh brother that’s so corny,” I say, but then I can’t help myself and laugh some more. It makes me aware of the pressure of the pillow under my cheek, and I almost pop out of the dream except that the wind has caught the forelock of the unicorn to expose the scab and I’m drawn back in again.

  I stare at his forehead. “What happened to you?”

  The unicorn closes his eyes and drops his head. The only way he could make it more obvious that he was ashamed of himself would be if his cheeks turned flaming red,
and maybe they are but under his white fur it’s impossible for me to tell. When he starts talking he doesn’t look at me but stares instead at a spot on the ground behind me. “I was bad. I strayed. I made a mistake and did something I wasn’t supposed to do. It got smaller and smaller and I woke up one morning and it was gone—I was a flathead, just like when I was born.”

  I notice that he won’t use the word horn. I reach over and stroke his cheek. Tears are welling behind my eyeballs. I feel the pressure along with the remains of a headache, but somehow manage to switch my attention back to the dream. I don’t want to abandon the unicorn in such a state, and there’s something about waking up that doesn’t appeal either, something happened—something I don’t want to think about.

  “You mean unicorns are born without . . . I mean, they’re born with flat heads?”

  He huffs loudly. “Of course we’re born with flat heads. Otherwise our mothers wouldn’t survive the delivery. Our heads stay flat until puberty.”

  Automatically I tense as though I can expect a lecture on sexual development from the unicorn. Again I feel the pillow, and this time it’s too much and I wake up thinking I’ve just missed a great opportunity to find out if unicorns are born grey and turn white like horses do, or whether some of them stay grey all their lives.

  I don’t open my eyes, but I know I’m not in my own bedroom. The smells are wrong and there’s too much light and noise. And it all floods back to me, that I’m in the hospital. I keep my eyes shut as the memories unfold backwards in my head. How nice the nurses were last night when I couldn’t sleep and one of them sponged my face with a warm cloth and held my hand and said I’d be fine. They just wanted to keep me in for observation overnight, and before that the ambulance ride, and before that . . . Taylor! Oh my god I’d forgotten about Taylor. They took her in a different ambulance. My eyes flicker open against my will, but I slam them shut immediately, because sitting on the end of the bed is my mom, and my dad is leaning on the door jamb sending a text message on his BlackBerry.