Wish on a Unicorn

by Karen Hesse

  I looked over at that penguin sweater, all balled up on the edge of the sofa. I just wanted to touch it.

  Mama poked her head out of the bathroom. “Get on now, all three of you. Just make sure you’re back before I leave for work.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  3

  Hannie cried as she bumped the unicorn down the trailer steps behind her. “H-Hannie k-keep unicorn, Mags?” she asked, sniffling.

  I felt crosser than broken bones, thinking about those clothes waiting in there for me, wondering if I’d ever get to try them on, thanks to Hannie and that stupid unicorn.

  “I told you not to bring it in the house, Hannie,” I said. “I told you.”

  Hannie started crying harder, and Mooch kind of leaned up beside her, looking all serious. I swear if they didn’t look like Tweedledum and Tweedledee from the play at the high school last year.

  “Look,” I said. “Mama’s right. The unicorn got left in Newell’s field ’cause it’s wore out and nobody wants it, Hannie, and that’s the truth.”

  “No!” Hannie said, shoving her fists into her ears. “Hannie want unicorn.”

  Hannie can be as stubborn as tar.

  I looked around, expecting Brody Lawson to pop out any second, but there was still no sign of him. I started wondering if the unicorn was one of his tricks after all. I took Hannie’s hands from her ears. “Well, Hannie, if we’re not taking it back to Newell’s field, what are we going to do with it?”

  “We got to hide it,” Mooch said. “So nobody steals it.”

  I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to steal that sorry old toy, but it didn’t surprise me that Mooch would think such a thing. Mooch knows all about stealing. He’s snuck in every house along our road just to get food. He does it while Mama’s sleeping and we’re at school. I caught him with Twinkie wrappers a couple times. Mama never buys Twinkies.

  He got caught by the neighbors just down the road from Brody Lawson’s house last year. They didn’t call the police or anything, but they spread the word all over town that Mooch was a thief. It got so I couldn’t go anywhere without hearing about Moochie.

  Brody told me if his parents ever caught Moochie stealing from them, they’d make sure he went to jail. I didn’t tell Mama what Brody said. She was angry enough. Mama taught Moochie a thing or two about what happens to children that steal, and he said he wasn’t ever doing that again, but sometimes I worry.

  “Hide unicorn?” Hannie said.

  “Where we gonna hide it?” I asked.

  “Under the bed,” Hannie said.

  That’s where Hannie hides everything—I mean everything, from half-eaten bread to dirty underwear.

  “We can’t hide the unicorn under the bed, Hannie,” I said. “Not after Mama told us to get rid of it. If she found it under there, she’d tan us good.”

  “I know a place,” Mooch said.

  I raised up my eyebrows.

  “I do,” Mooch insisted. “But you have to promise not to be mad if I tell you.”

  “I’m not promising anything,” I said.

  “It’s that place back up to the road, that sort of tunnel under the highway,” Mooch said.

  “That old drainage ditch?” I asked. “Moochie, you’re not allowed up there. You know that.”

  Moochie looked down at his feet.

  “Moochie,” I said. “Have you been going up there?”

  “We got to hide the unicorn somewhere, Mags,” Mooch said.

  “Well, you can just forget about hiding it there,” I said. “That’s all the way back up to school.”

  Hannie’s eyes lit up. “School? Hannie go roundy-round?”

  The roundy-round is one of those wooden things on the playground that spins in place. You sit on it, holding on to a metal rail while somebody else spins you until you get real dizzy. That’s Hannie’s favorite place to play. She’d live on that thing if they’d let her. Her teacher, Mrs. Zobris, has to pry her off it at the end of recess. When it gets to spinning, you can hear Hannie’s laughter all the way to town and back. Mama says I’m not supposed to let her on it on account of she might let go and fall off, but Hannie’s as stubborn as boot leather and I never can get her away from it.

  I knew the place Mooch meant. It was a stinking drainage ditch with concrete sides all scribbled where kids had spelled their worst words out in spray paint. Mama’d told Mooch never to go near there. “Everybody knows that place,” I said. “What kind of hiding place is that?”

  “You don’t know nothing, Mags,” Moochie said.

  “Anything,” I said, correcting him. “And I sure do. I know there’s snakes and broken glass there, and you’ve got no business being there in the first place.”

  “I can go any old place I want,” Mooch said. “And you can’t stop me.”

  “You just watch your sass,” I warned. “I can stop you fast as a sink plug. Don’t push me.”

  “Oh, don’t wet your pants,” Mooch said.

  I wondered how come he was two years younger than Hannie and acted ten years older than me.

  Hannie pushed up alongside him. “Moochie hide unicorn?” she asked.

  “Follow me,” Mooch said, heading back up the road toward school.

  “Now, just hold on,” I said. “Who’s oldest here anyway? I don’t think that old place is any good. It’s not safe there.”

  Besides, if we went up that way, Hannie’d beg to go over and play on the roundy-round, and I sure wasn’t crossing her over that whole highway myself. It was bad enough getting across it with a crossing guard.

  I hated that road, with its two lanes going in one direction and two lanes going in the other and that little strip of grass between them. I don’t know just where my daddy died on that highway, but I do know I wasn’t taking Hannie across it all alone.

  “Forget it, Mooch. We’re not hiding it there.”

  “Yes we are,” Mooch said. “Where else we gonna put it? Mama knows all our other hiding places. But down the ditch there’s this good hole for hiding things.”

  I scowled, wondering what all that boy had been doing at the ditch, but he wasn’t about to give me a chance to ask.

  “I got a wish on the unicorn, Mags. And you got a wish. You got all them pretty clothes. But Hannie didn’t get a wish. We can’t let nobody else get Hannie’s wish.”

  Moochie had a point, sort of. Not that I really believed the stuffed unicorn had any power or anything, or that it could make our wishes come true, but Hannie believed it could. And she ought to have a chance at a wish. I looked at her, her head cradled in the dirty neck of the unicorn.

  “Well … maybe,” I said. “If we just shove the unicorn into that hiding space of yours, Moochie, and hurry back home. We wouldn’t be hanging around there or going across to the playground or anything. You hear that, Hannie? No roundy-round. But before we go anywhere with that unicorn, we’ve got to disguise it.”

  “Skies it?” Hannie asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Brody hung around down at that ditch sometimes. Even if this unicorn wasn’t one of his tricks, I didn’t want him seeing me carrying it around. We could put the unicorn in a big old plastic bag. Then if Brody saw us, he wouldn’t know what we had. He might just think we were taking a little trash to the dump.

  “We don’t want anybody seeing your unicorn, Hannie, and stealing it. If we wrap it up, it’ll just look like a heap of rags we’re carting away. It’ll be safe. That is, unless you already know what you want to wish for. Then you can just make your wish and we’ll leave the unicorn down Newell’s field like Mama said. We can leave it for the next person.”

  “No!” Hannie cried. “Hannie’s unicorn.”

  Shoot. I could see she was gonna be extra stubborn about that mangy old thing.

  “Hide unicorn, Mags?” she asked as we lumped the toy into an old plastic garbage bag Mama’d left crumpled under the trailer steps.

  “Yeah,” I said, starting off toward the ditch. “As lon
g as you two promise not to go anywhere near the road. Swear it.”

  “Pinky swear,” said Mooch, reaching up to hook his little finger around mine.

  “Pinky swear,” echoed Hannie.

  4

  Hannie was set on carrying the bag filled with that old stuffed unicorn all by herself, so it took forever getting up to the highway. I kept looking for Brody, but for once he really must have been off somewhere minding his own business. We walked straight up the road past Newell’s field without seeing anyone.

  The traffic rushed like a storm up on the highway.

  We cut along the side of the road and followed the trail to the drainage ditch. The water down the bottom was green slime and stinking.

  Hannie hung back, holding the bag with the unicorn so tight that blue veins popped out along each of her arms. But Mooch eased himself into the tunnel and let out a whoop.

  He turned back around to Hannie and me, grinning at his own echo, his hands on his hips and the freckles on his nose squinched up so tight they laid on top of each other. “See,” he said. “I told you this place is good.”

  It didn’t look all that good to me, especially the way Mooch was balancing himself inside that tunnel, where the cement walls rose from that skinny ledge. Below the ledge was a dirt bank with the stinking water at the bottom.

  “Careful, Mooch,” I said, edging closer. I wrapped my arms around myself, hunching against the roar of traffic above. The sooner I was gone from here, the better. Looking down into the greasy water made me feel dizzier than spinning too long on the roundy-round.

  Moochie reached inside a hole you couldn’t even see from the path. He was clearing a place out for the unicorn. He stood up, shoving his fist in his back pocket.

  Moochie called from inside the tunnel, “Give it here, Hannie.” He stuck his dirty hand out, reaching for the bag full of unicorn.

  But Hannie refused to hand it over.

  “Hannie, it’ll be all right,” I said.

  “No!” Hannie cried, pulling back. She turned toward home, then stopped. There was someone in the path. From where I was standing, all I could see was a pair of legs and some fancy new sneakers. There was only one kid at school who had a pair of shoes like that.

  “Hey, Margaret Wade, what you doing in there?”

  It was Brody Lawson. He slid down the path, closer to Hannie. I hated the way his eyes were spaced so close together on his head and that his thick black hair was all ridgety from front to back. It made me plain sick just looking at him.

  I felt trapped there, between the highway and Brody. “I’m not doing anything,” I said.

  “That’s my ditch,” Brody said. “You’re trespassing.”

  I swear I wonder why the earth doesn’t just open right up beneath that boy and suck him down inside it.

  “This is not your drainage ditch,” I said. “Nobody owns a drainage ditch.”

  “If I say this place is mine, it’s mine, Margaret Wade. You hear?” He came a step closer.

  Mooch moved in the tunnel behind me. I saw his hand tighten around a rock. He was taking aim at Brody.

  “You leave my sister alone,” Mooch said. “Don’t you come no closer or I’ll knock your stupid brains out.”

  “You better watch how you talk to me, boy,” Brody said. “I’m thinking I might just tell my mama about you stealing the Twinkies right out of our kitchen.”

  “I did not!” Mooch said.

  I looked at Moochie.

  “I can prove it,” Brody said. “I can prove you did it. You might just be going to jail pretty soon.”

  Mooch looked at me. “I did not steal, Mags.”

  Hannie looked scared. She started whimpering.

  The whole school was going to hear about this tomorrow. Patty Jo and Alice, too, about my crazy sister and my crazy brother down in the drainage ditch.

  “We’re going, Brody,” I said, helping Mooch out of the tunnel. “Don’t wet your pants.”

  Mooch took my hand. His chin stuck out and quivered a little, but he didn’t cry.

  We started away from the ditch toward where Brody was standing in the path. The wind from the highway blew hot across the back of my neck.

  “Wait a minute,” Brody said. “What you got there in that bag?”

  Hannie’s fists tightened around the unicorn.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “I’m not letting you past until you tell me.”

  “It’s none of your fat-butt business,” said Moochie, glaring at Brody.

  “It is if you found it down in the ditch,” Brody said. “Everything in that ditch belongs to me. Come on, what you got?”

  “You stupid turkey head!” Mooch yelled. “You want to know what we got?… We got dead bodies in there. I been chopping up all the bad people I know. We were just coming for you.”

  “You better watch what you say, boy,” Brody said. “You just keep your mouth shut.”

  “If you want my mouth shut, then you better let me and my sisters by,” Moochie said.

  Brody glared at Mooch with those narrow eyes of his, but he stepped aside. Hannie, Mooch, and I, we pushed right past Brody up the trail. I wrinkled my nose as we came by like I was passing skunk.

  Hannie and I took turns carrying the bag with the unicorn back home. Moochie ran ahead and slipped into the house to see if Mama was looking and gave us the all clear. We shoved the garbage bag under the steps of the trailer alongside some junk Mama was saving for Judgment Day.

  I washed up good at the kitchen sink: my face, my hands, I even splashed water on my hair. I wanted to be full clean of the highway and the ditch and Brody Lawson before I came anywhere near those new clothes from Aunt Lainie.

  I never even dried myself off. I was heading straight for that penguin sweater when Mooch caught me by my pants pocket and yanked.

  “I’m hungry, Mags,” he said.

  “Not now, Moochie!”

  “But my stomach’s turning inside out,” he said.

  Mama poked her head out of the bathroom. She looked so pretty with her makeup and her new clothes and all.

  “Lordy, Mags, are you ever wet. What’d you do, girl, get caught in a rainstorm? Dry on off now, and start some dinner up, you hear?”

  “Shoot!” I muttered under my breath. I swear that pile of clothes picked itself up and moved a little bit away from me.

  What kind of wish did I get on that unicorn anyway? The clothes were there maybe, but it didn’t look like I’d ever get a chance to try them on. Why did I always have to be taking care of everybody else? Why couldn’t I just once take care of myself first?

  I turned around and found Hannie staring out the window at the porch steps.

  “Get away from that window,” I whispered. “Mama’s coming out and she’ll figure what we’re up to, sure as sugar. Come on now, Hannie. Can’t you listen just for once?”

  5

  Hannie followed me into the kitchen. I boiled some noodles till they got soft, and drained out the water, dumped a can of mushroom soup and a can of tuna in the pot, and put the pot on the table for Hannie to stir.

  “Now, don’t touch anything but the handle, Hannie,” I said, pushing the pot in front of her. “You stir it up good so it all gets mixed.”

  Hannie stirred while I got out bowls and forks.

  Mama kissed the tops of our heads and waved us all good-bye and rushed out the door to work. I held my breath as she drummed down the steps, afraid she’d notice the bag with the unicorn, but she didn’t.

  Hannie dropped her fork and scraped her chair back as soon as Mama shut the door. I knew right where she was heading.

  “Hannie, sit down,” I ordered.

  “Hannie get unicorn,” she said.

  “Not yet,” I said, holding on to her. “Sit back down, Hannie. You want Mama catching us with it? She’s not even out of the yard yet. After dinner we’ll bring it on in here and see if we can clean it up a little. Okay? But first we got to give Mama a chance to get to work.”


  Hannie grinned with her mouth all white from a swallow of milk. “Hannie wait.”

  I leaned back in my chair. The clothes still sat there on the sofa. I guess I’d just have to wait too.

  After supper we brought the unicorn into the bathroom and dumped it out of the garbage bag. I didn’t think a year of scrubbing would make a difference, but Hannie was bent on getting it so Mama would let her keep it.

  I was afraid it might just fall apart if we got it wet or scrubbed too hard, so we used a washrag to wet a spot and then went over it with an old toothbrush. Hannie stooped and stood and stooped and stood, fussing all around the unicorn.

  “It’s pretty special, Hannie,” I said, scrubbing away. “Not everybody has a unicorn in their bathroom.”

  “Hannie’s unicorn,” Hannie said, grinning.

  “Boy, Mags, if I had my wish back again,” Mooch said, running his thumb over the wet toothbrush and spraying me, “I’d wish—”

  “Moochie!” Hannie cried, tugging him away from the unicorn.

  “I’m not taking your old wish,” Moochie said, shaking Hannie off.

  “It’s okay, Hannie,” I said. “He already made his wish. He can’t take yours away.”

  “If I could, I’d wish Brody Lawson would turn into a cockroach,” Mooch said. “Then I’d stomp him good.”

  “And you’d leave the mess for me, I bet.”

  “Bad wish, Moochie,” Hannie said.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “And bad wishes don’t count. Not on unicorns anyway, right, Hannie?”

  Hannie nodded.

  “If I had my wish again, I’d—” I stopped.

  “What, Mags?” Mooch asked. “What would you wish? Would you wish bad things on Brody too?”

  “No,” I said. “I wouldn’t waste a good wish on Brody. I don’t know. I just want things to be different … better. You know.” I used my finger and my thumb to flick some water at Hannie and then at Mooch. They both squealed and flicked water back. I didn’t mind if they got me wet. I was already soaked from working on the unicorn. “Doesn’t matter anyway. It’s Hannie’s wish.”

  “Hannie’s wish,” Hannie said.