“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.