Hannie and I were walking home from school when we saw a unicorn in Newell’s field. It wasn’t a real unicorn. There’s no such thing as a real unicorn. It was just a stuffed thing, propped up against the fence post.
Hannie ran toward it, her chunky legs and arms flapping as she went, her short, dark hair flying every which way, but I wasn’t moving my skinny self over there in any hurry. I’m the oldest, so I guess I know how to act, even though some folks think I don’t. Well, I know a thing or two. And I sure know one of Brody Lawson’s tricks before I get tied in a knot over it.
Brody wasn’t going to see me run after some old stuffed toy. I felt pretty sure he was out there, waiting and watching, looking for a chance to make my life miserable. Well, he’d be waiting a long time if I had anything to do with it.
Hannie circled round the unicorn, which was leaning against the fence in the long dry grass. It stood tall as Hannie’s waist and was dingy white, like it’d been dragged through the dust and back again.
“It real?” Hannie asked, stroking its mane.
Hannie’s different from other kids. She looks normal enough, except one eye is bigger than the other, but she talks baby talk, even if she is nearly eight, so only Mama and me and my little brother, Mooch, can figure what she’s saying. Mama says Hannie’s slow on account of she didn’t get enough air to breathe when she was being born.
Hannie’s slow all right. Mooch is almost two years younger, but he already knows more than Hannie does. He can even read a little. Hannie can’t read her own name. All the other kids in her class can read some, but not Hannie.
Mama says I have to look out for Hannie and Mooch and teach them a thing or two about this world. Mama doesn’t know what a tall order that can be sometimes. Kids at school, especially Patty Jo and Alice, they won’t talk to me because of Hannie, even though sometimes I think Patty Jo wouldn’t mind being friends. I guess they’re afraid Hannie’ll rub off on them or something.
“It real?” Hannie asked again.
“Course it’s not real, Hannie,” I said. “There’s no such thing as a real unicorn. Unicorns are just something you read about in storybooks.”
I could hear the traffic picking up on the highway behind us. Even on my best day I can’t hear those cars and trucks ripping past without feeling spooked. The ground just shakes underneath me and my insides get to shaking too.
“Why it here?” Hannie asked. She was squatting in front of the unicorn.
I shrugged. “How should I know?”
Hannie picked leaves and dried grass off the unicorn. “Hannie take it home?”
“We can’t take it, Hannie,” I said. “It doesn’t belong to us, and besides, Mama’d never let us keep it. It’s too ratty.”
“Not ratty,” Hannie said. “Pretty!”
She really meant it too.
“Just look at it, Hannie,” I said. “The unicorn’s horn is drooping over and the head’s hanging like somebody tried twisting it off. Mama won’t even let it in the house.”
“Mama might,” Hannie said. “Mags ask.”
Hannie’s forever thinking I can do anything. Well, even if I can do most things, there are some things I cannot do, and one of those things is to talk Mama into keeping an old stuffed unicorn. I know Mama. She’d take one look at that old thing and toss it out faster than spoiled milk.
“Quit touching it, Hannie,” I said. “You’re getting yourself filthy.”
She kept hugging it anyway. “Hannie’s unicorn,” she said.
“Come on. Leave it alone now. I’ll race you home, Hannie. Loser clears dinner for a week.”
Hannie runs slower than cold gravy, but I would’ve let her win just to get her away from that old unicorn.
Hannie squinted her good eye up at me. “Hannie not leave it, Mags.”
Brakes squealed up on the highway behind us and someone laid on their horn.
“It’s getting late, Hannie,” I said, feeling my stomach going to jelly from being so close to the road. “We got to get back home.”
“Hannie bring unicorn?”
“No!” I said. “We got to leave it here, Hannie. I’m sure it belongs to someone.” I was thinking probably it belonged to old Brody Lawson. It’d be just like him to twist a unicorn’s neck.
“Unicorn got magic, Mags,” Hannie said.
“No, Hannie. That’s just in stories. That’s real good you remember what I read to you, but those are fairy tales, Hannie, make-believe. You got a stuffed unicorn there. It’s not real. It can’t ever be real. And it doesn’t have one bit of magic in it.”
“Does,” Hannie insisted, shoving the dirty unicorn into my face. “Make wish, Mags.”
“Wishes don’t ever come true, Hannie. Especially not wishes made on a broken-down old unicorn. Believe me.”
If wishes did come true, I sure wouldn’t be standing on the edge of Newell’s field with the highway ripping along behind me, waiting for my sister to make up her mind to go home. I know for a fact wishes definitely do not come true.
“Hannie not leave it.”
“Come on, Hannie. We got to get home. Mooch is waiting and I’ve got chores and I still need to write that stupid essay for Mrs. Fribush.”
Mrs. Fribush is my sixth-grade teacher. She assigned us this essay to write about our families. Shoot, I get embarrassed just thinking about my family, let alone writing about it.
“Let’s go, Hannie,” I said, squinting my eyes up like Mama does when she’s losing her temper. “I really mean it this time.”
Hannie sat down right in the long grass and refused to come.
I looked around, sure that Brody was watching from somewhere. That was just like Brody, to go sneaking around pretending he wasn’t there and listening meanwhile to everything you said so he could throw it back in your face next time he had a good crowd. He surely must be behind this. Who else would be so sly-dog mean as to saddle me with a stuffed unicorn that my sister wouldn’t let alone?
I scowled blacker than best shoes. Why do I always get stuck with Hannie?
“What are you going to tell Mama?” I asked. “She’s never gonna let us bring this unicorn inside.”
“Hide it, Mags,” Hannie said. “See.”
She stuck the filthy old unicorn behind her and it poked out umpty-dozen places from her back, but she was grinning so the freckles on her nose squinched up close against each other.
That Hannie’s as stubborn as an elbow.
“All right,” I said, helping her up. “Come on.”
I’m not sure how she did it, but somehow Hannie’d sucked me into bringing that unicorn down the road to home.