Wish on a Unicorn

by Karen Hesse

  The sun disappeared behind a big stretch of gray clouds, and I shivered. My shirt under the pink penguin sweater was soaked with sweat.

  I remembered Hannie’s damp undies and I couldn’t help worrying about her. I felt the knot in my stomach tighten as I came in sight of the trailer. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what. But just looking at it, I could tell. Something was wrong.

  13

  “Hey!” I called.

  There was no answer.

  “Hey, Hannie! Mooch!”

  I thought maybe they were angry on account of I hadn’t come straight home with Hannie. Mama was sure to be ripping. She’d probably be trying to get dinner at the same time she was getting ready to leave for work. Maybe Hannie and Mooch were so busy helping her in the kitchen, they didn’t notice I was home.

  But when I got inside the trailer, no one was there.

  I came into the kitchen. On the floor was a balled-up scrap of paper. I picked it up and flattened it out on the table. It was a note written in Mama’s scrawl.

  Maggie,

  Mooch done bad. We’re at the police.

  Take care of Hannie till I get back.

  Mooch … at the police. It couldn’t be. He was six years old. Could they really put a six-year-old in jail, like Brody said? Could they do everything to my family that Brody said they’d do?

  Mooch wasn’t bad. He didn’t belong in jail just because he was hungry. Couldn’t people see that? That we were trying the best we could, me and Mama and Mooch and Hannie.…

  Hannie! My heart started banging against my ribs like a fist at a door. Hannie!

  Where was Hannie?

  Mama had gone to the police with Moochie before Hannie’d come home. Why else would Mama have said “Take care of Hannie”? Hannie’d made it home all right. She’d made it home all by herself. But when she got here, there was nothing but an empty house. Mama and Moochie were already gone. Hannie’d found a note she couldn’t read and no Mama. That’s why the paper was balled up on the floor.

  I tore through the house, checking everywhere for her. Even under the bed. She wasn’t there.

  “Hannie!” I called.

  I flew out the door and down the trailer steps. Maybe she was hiding under there, the way we’d hid the unicorn, but there was nothing.

  I looked up and down the road and across the grass toward the woods, but I didn’t see any sign of her.

  Racing to the nearest house, I pounded on the door. Maybe they’d seen her. Maybe they’d taken her in. Nobody answered.

  “Hannie!” I yelled.

  I had told her she’d be safe as long as she had the unicorn. All she needed to do was wish on that unicorn and she’d be fine.

  How could I have lied to her like that? How could I have taken a chance with Hannie?

  I’d said those things to get rid of her. I’d done it so I could go with Patty Jo and Alice. And now Hannie was walking around out here somewhere with the unicorn, thinking she was safe, thinking she could do anything and she’d be fine, that all she needed was to make a wish and nothing could hurt her.

  “Hannie!” I cried.

  My voice bounced around the clearing.

  Where would she go? I was pacing back and forth in front of the trailer now, trying to think where Hannie might be.

  She’d be scared when she got home, and lonely. She’d go looking for someone. For me. And the last place she’d seen me was back to school. She’d have gone there, toward the highway.

  It was late, so late the highway’d be roaring with cars. She couldn’t possibly make it across on her own. I couldn’t lose Hannie like this. We couldn’t lose Hannie the way we’d lost my daddy.

  Oh please let her be anyplace but near that highway.

  I started running. A pain like the lid of a tin can sliced into my side, but I kept going. My chest burned like snakes of live wires. I still kept running.

  “Hannie!” I called as I came down to Newell’s field.

  And then I saw it. The unicorn. It was propped up against the fence, looking just like it had when we first found it. Filthy and broken and unwanted. I ran over to it. I didn’t care if Brody saw me. I didn’t care if the whole world saw me. I took the unicorn up in my arms and held it to my chest, trying to feel Hannie in it, to smell Hannie, to touch Hannie.

  “Hannie!” I cried.

  But there was no answer.

  “Please,” I prayed, clutching the unicorn, gripping its horn in my fist. “Please let Hannie be all right. I wish it. I wish it with all my heart. If there ever was any magic, let there be enough left for this. Please let Hannie be all right.”

  I put the unicorn back against the fence post and turned toward the road. The traffic whined up on the highway. It was nightmare sound. It was the monster that came after me in my sleep, the way Moochie’s night terrors came after him.

  I could smell the stinking fumes and hear the bellyache of tires on blacktop. What I couldn’t hear was Hannie. Not anywhere. There was no sign of Hannie.

  14

  I tried to block out the road sounds. I was listening for Hannie the way I listened for Moochie when I went to bed before his night terrors started. My ears strained, strained to hear all the bad sounds, all the danger sounds. My ears were listening for Hannie’s danger.

  I veered off to the side and went down the path to the drainage ditch, thinking maybe, just maybe Hannie was hiding down there.

  “Hannie?” I called.

  The ditch was empty. There was no sign of her. I was wasting time. Hannie would never come here. She was afraid of the ditch. She was afraid of Brody, too.

  I tore back to the road, imagining Hannie hit and lying on the shoulder, broken, just like my daddy. Just like my daddy when he went out on the highway.

  I was running, my eyes searching the road for a sign of Hannie. I didn’t see the rock sticking up on the path until I’d tripped over it and twisted my ankle. A car came out of nowhere and whistled past me.

  I pulled myself back up. The foot I’d twisted wouldn’t hold my weight. Tears boiled up behind my eyes and I didn’t even try to stop them from falling. I didn’t care if the whole county saw me crying. It didn’t matter what anyone thought about me anymore.

  I just kept searching the highway for Hannie. And then something across the road caught my eye. Someone was on the playground, someone small and alone, sitting on the roundy-round.

  “Hannie!” I cried. “Hannie!”

  I was so relieved to see her. Hannie was all right.

  But there was a whole highway between us. Cars, endless lines of cars, spun out down the highway. It was late afternoon and the sun hung low in the sky, making the drivers squint their eyes down to slits. Hannie rose up from the roundy-round like some awkward bird and ran toward me, her chunky legs and arms flapping as she went, her short dark hair flying every which way. She ran straight toward the traffic.

  “Hannie! Hannie!” I screamed, trying to make her see the danger. But it was too late. Hannie ran out into the road.

  Tires squealed and horns blared. A car swerved around her.

  But a moment later the traffic started moving again, moving back and forth around Hannie as she stood trembling on the strip of grass dividing the highway.

  “Hannie, stay there!” I screamed, pushing the palms of my hands at the air as if I could hold her back from the danger. “Stay right there!”

  I didn’t have to tell her. My sister stood, her arms flapping, her dark hair wild with the wind, her legs dancing with panic. My sister stood with her face turned toward me, looking at me like I could do anything.

  Like I could do anything. Well, I can do most things, but one thing I cannot do is cross this highway. I’d do anything for Hannie, anything. But I cannot cross this highway.

  “Mags!” Hannie was pleading.

  Cars were honking at her and she stood in the same spot but always moving, like in a nightmare when you’re scared but no matter how hard you try to run away your legs won’t go. />
  “Hannie!” I cried back. “Stay where you are.”

  I tried again to put weight down on that twisted ankle, but the pain screamed up my leg and made my fists tighten.

  “Mags!” Hannie cried. “Mags take Hannie!”

  “I can’t, Hannie,” I called back. “I can’t—my ankle.”

  But it wasn’t my ankle keeping me from getting to her. It was the road. I was afraid of the road.

  “Mags!” Hannie’s cry ripped across the roar of the traffic.

  I had to go out there and get her. I had to break into that string of cars and trucks tearing past me and get Hannie out of the middle of the road, where I’d wished she’d be stuck forever a million years ago this morning.

  I was breathing like a freight train, short, tight breaths, and they weren’t getting me air enough to fill a straw.

  I saw a break coming in the traffic and I put one foot on the road. But the next car, it was coming so fast and my ankle burned so bad. I couldn’t get out there.

  Hannie was howling, howling worse than Mooch in his worst night terrors.

  Another break in the flow of cars. I could do it. I could get her.

  “I’m coming, Hannie,” I called. “Wait there. I can get you.”

  And I tried. I did. I tried. But I kept seeing the unicorn flattened under Brody’s shoe. I kept seeing Mooch in prison. I kept seeing my daddy’s back as he headed toward the highway.

  “Hannie!” I cried.

  She stopped howling. She looked at me … she looked at me and really saw me. The look in her eyes wasn’t a look that said I could do anything. It was a look that said she needed me.

  “Maaagsss!” she wailed.

  “I’m coming, Hannie. I’m coming.”

  I didn’t wait for a break this time. I rolled that sweater up over my head and started waving it. I waved it at the oncoming traffic the way Mrs. Clinton, the crossing guard, waved her stop sign. I waved my sweater and limped up onto that highway.

  Cars screeched. The sound of a semi’s air horn split through the hazy afternoon. A car skidded onto the shoulder, spitting gravel, but it finally stopped. The traffic ground to a halt, and slowly, slowly I made my way across, one step at a time, waving that penguin sweater while the traffic waited. My eyes were fixed on Hannie, waiting for me out on that little grass strip in the middle of the highway. I reached out and took her hand and pulled her to me. And still holding up my sweater with one hand, I led Hannie, step by step, with that wall of cars and trucks hanging over us. Step by step we made our way out of the middle of the road and back across, where we belonged.

  “Hannie,” I said, letting out my breath for the first time since I’d started out to get her. I held her safe against me and felt her heart pounding. Her chunky little body gave a shiver, and I wrapped my arms tight around her and rocked her back and forth, back and forth. “It’s all right, Hannie,” I said, my tears dropping in the dust on the path beside the highway. “It’s all right.”

  And it really was. “Come on now, Hannie,” I said. “It’s time to go home.”

  15

  As we went past Newell’s field, Hannie and I looked over to the fence post at the same time.

  “Gone,” Hannie said. “Unicorn gone. Good-bye, unicorn.”

  I looked over to where I’d seen that unicorn, where I’d held it and wished for Hannie to be all right. Even in the fading light, I could see it was gone.

  “Hannie make wish,” Hannie said. “Hannie make wish on unicorn.”

  “Is that why you left it here, Hannie?” I asked. “You made your wish and then you were finished with it?”

  Hannie nodded.

  “What did you wish for, Hannie?”

  “Hannie wish Mags back.”

  I put my hands on her shoulders.

  “You used your wish for that, Hannie?” I asked. “You wished for me?”

  Hannie nodded. “Hannie wish for Mama and Moochie and Mags.”

  She hadn’t just wished for me. She’d wished for all of us. Hannie understood better than I did that we were all important. We were family.

  We walked up to the fence post where the unicorn had been only an hour ago.

  “Good-bye unicorn,” Hannie said.

  “Yeah,” I said, touching her dark hair. She’d been saving her wish. She’d been saving it so she could keep that unicorn. But she’d found something she wanted even more. I had too.

  We were nearly to the trailer when Mooch banged out the door and raced to meet us.

  “Mooch,” I cried. “You’re home!”

  Hannie hugged Mooch and danced him around in a crooked little circle.

  “Course I’m home,” he said. “Where’d you think I was?”

  “What’re you talking about, Mooch?” I asked. “I thought they put you in jail for stealing.”

  “I never took those Twinkies,” Mooch said. “Brody just said I did. He said I took other things too, but I didn’t. He made his mama call the police on me.”

  “Then how’d you get those wrappers in your back pocket, Moochie?” I asked.

  “I just found the wrappers down in the ditch under the highway, Mags. Sometimes there’s a little bit of cake left on the wrapper and I lick it off. That’s not stealing.”

  “Then you weren’t lying?” I asked.

  “Heck no,” Mooch said. “You and Mama told me no more stealing, and I didn’t steal no more. I just didn’t want Mama thinking I was eating somebody’s old trash.”

  “Well, how’d those Twinkie wrappers get down to the drainage ditch in the first place?” I asked.

  “Brody took them, Mags,” Mooch said. “He took beer and stuff there too. I saw him. And he knew I saw him. He said if I told anyone, he’d make it look like I took all that stuff.”

  “Why didn’t you tell on Brody before?” I asked.

  “Well, I knew I’d catch it if you found out I’d been down to the ditch.”

  “You’re right about that,” I said. “You should have never been down there in the first place, Mooch. Mama and I, we told you not to go down there. And I don’t want you going back there again either, you hear? That place is good for rats and snakes and nothing more.”

  “Ditch good for Brody,” Hannie said.

  I grinned. “You made a joke, Hannie! That’s a good joke! You’re right. That drainage ditch is good for three things: rats, snakes, and Brody Lawson.”

  I put one arm around Mooch and one around Hannie, and we walked back toward the trailer, three in a row, with me in the middle—limping on that bad ankle—dragging my filthy pink penguin sweater behind.

  “Was Mama mad about going to the police station?” I asked.

  “Ohhh,” Mooch said. “She was boiling. Mama told the Lawsons a thing or two when she found out what Brody’d been up to. It wasn’t nice what Brody’s daddy did to Brody either.”

  “I just bet it wasn’t,” I said.

  “We got to ride home in a police car, Mags. The policeman let Mama and me sit in front with him. I made the siren go off by the Lawsons’ house and Mama started getting mad, but the policeman laughed and Mama wasn’t as mad as I thought, ’cause then she started laughing too.”

  We climbed the steps to the trailer and went into the kitchen. Mama was at the stove, cooking dinner.

  “I can do that, Mama,” I said. “You’re awful late for work.”

  “I already called,” Mama said. “I’m not going in tonight.”

  She smiled like she didn’t even care about a short check this week, and I smiled too for having Mama home, cooking dinner and taking care of us.

  I went up and hugged Mama right then and there with her back to me standing at the stove, and Hannie came up and hugged her too. And then Moochie joined in, and Mama laughed like slow music and said, “You kids,” and kept on cooking.

  Later that night, while Mama sat outside on the porch steps, Hannie, Mooch, and I, we piled into bed. We were all feeling good, with our bellies full and Mama right out front waiting to
tuck us in and kiss us good night. Mooch asked a million questions about the unicorn. Hannie’s eyes lit up, and she started chattering like a squirrel in a gum tree.

  Mooch wriggled around, digging his old elbow into my side. “Hey, Mags,” he said. “You think maybe Mama being here, and Hannie so happy and all—you think maybe that’s a little magic the unicorn left behind?”

  Hannie’d been messing around under the blankets. She came up grinning, her hair poking every which way.

  “Could be, Moochie.”

  Mama pushed the screen door open and called in for us to settle down and get ourselves to bed.

  “It could just be,” I said.

  GOFISH

  QUESTIONS FOR THE AUTHOR

  KAREN HESSE

  What did you want to be when you grew up?

  Braver.

  When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to write.

  What’s your first childhood memory?

  Going to the hospital to have my tonsils removed. I was three.

  What’s your most embarrassing childhood memory?

  There are so many. One of the most memorable was the time I gave a classmate a black eye.

  What’s your favorite childhood memory?

  One of my favorites is going out to eat at the Pimlico House with my mother, my grandmother, and my aunts. I was the only child and I wore white gloves and white anklets and shiny black patent-leather shoes. I felt so grown-up.

  As a young person, who did you look up to most?

  Everyone. But particularly my grandfather. He was so kind.

  What was your worst subject in school?

  MATH!!!

  What was your best subject in school?

  Everything else. I LOVED school.

  What was your first job?

  Bagel Shop waitress.