Zombies vs. Unicorns Page 17

  What am I doing? I can’t take care of a baby unicorn. Even if I could figure out how to feed it, it can’t be legal! And it can’t be right.

  Back downstairs Mom and Dad are waiting at the table. I slide into my seat, and Dad says grace. Dinner takes forever, and I can barely eat a bite. Dad doesn’t eat much either, because Mom is trying out a Moroccan recipe she got from Yves’s mother, and Dad thinks anything more exotic than spaghetti is too weird to count as food.

  But it does give me an idea. Yves’s mom sometimes cooks with goat’s milk. Maybe that’s closer to unicorn than cow. After the endless dinner and the even more endless washing up, I turn to Mom. “Can I run over to Yves’s house really quickly? I need to get his notes from history class.” Lie number two.

  “Be quick,” my mother warns.

  Yves answers at the kitchen door. “Hey,” he says, leaning against the frame. “What’s up?”

  “I need to borrow some goat’s milk.”

  “Borrow?” He raises his eyebrows. “Like you’re going to bring it back?”

  “No. I mean I would like you to give me some goat’s milk. Please.”

  Yves shrugs and heads toward the fridge. “Just so you know,” he says, retrieving the slim carton from a shelf on the door, “it’s pretty nasty all by itself. What do you need it for?”

  So I lie again. “My mom has this new recipe she’s trying out and she, uh, remembered you’d have some …”

  “At nine o’clock at night?” Yves’s big, dark eyes are staring right through me. It’s not fair. It’s hard enough lying to my parents, but Yves?

  “Yeah. It needs to … marinate overnight or something. I don’t know. She just sent me over here.” I look away. “So, in case we ever need to get more, where does your mom buy this stuff?”

  “There’s a Caribbean grocer downtown,” Yves says, handing me the carton. “Hey, Wen, you okay?”

  I step off the stoop into the darkness so he can’t see my eyes. Biscuit the cat is off on another of his nocturnal strolls. He’s shredding Yves’s mom’s flower bed. Mrs. Schaffer really needs to get that beast under control. “I’m fine.”

  I’m not fine. I haven’t been this not-fine in months. And we both know what happened then.

  Part of me expects him to come forward and touch my arm the way he’s been doing since last fall, but he doesn’t. He stays on the stoop, and there’s a space the size of Summer between us.

  “Well, see you at school,” he says.

  I return to my own yard and approach the garage with trepidation. I hope this works. I hope I’m not too late. How soon after birth should a baby unicorn eat?

  What if it’s already dead? I catch my breath, freezing with my hand on the door. What if I went through all this and the unicorn died while I was eating dinner? All that effort, all that terror, and it might just croak in my garage, alone, without its mother nearby.

  And maybe that would be all right. Maybe the wrangler knew what she was doing when she tried to drown it. After all, these things are deadly. Dangerous. Evil. Maybe she had the right idea, to never let it grow up. But then I remember the look in Venom’s eyes, and I rush inside.

  Behind the storage freezer the laundry basket is still and silent. I open the lid, and the unicorn is curled up inside, nestled up against the plush unicorn doll on the blanket. I reach inside and touch its flank. A heartbeat flutters through its velvety skin. It starts from its sleep and turns its head toward my hand, noses my palm and wraps its lips around my finger. Something inside me lets go. Yes, it’s a tiny little man-eating monster. But it needs me.

  I grab an empty water bottle, a rubber band, and a pair of my mother’s rubber-tipped gardening gloves. I cut a finger off the gloves and poke a hole in the tip. Then I fill the bottle with the goat’s milk and secure the glove finger onto the opening with the rubber band. A few moments against the back of the freezer, and the milk loses its refrigerator chill. That’s going to have to be enough.

  “Come here, baby,” I say to the unicorn, lifting it out of the nest and cradling it against me. I try to get the bottle into its mouth, but the unicorn is having none of that, and struggles while goat’s milk streams out of the hole in the glove and smears over us both.

  Gross. The unicorn begins to cry, soft little bleats, and tries to burrow into my torso. I bite my lip, knowing just how it feels. What do I think I’m doing? Goat milk. What a dumb idea.

  I pull off the rubber and stick my finger into the bottle. “Here,” I say again, pushing my milk-coated finger past its lips. This time the baby unicorn suckles, its tongue surprisingly firm. I plunge my finger into the bottle again and again, and slowly, painstakingly, we make it through about a sixth of the bottle. This is going to take a while. There has to be a better way.

  I put the glove finger back on the bottle, then squeeze my finger over it, covering both the bottle opening and the pinprick hole in the glove tip. Milk dribbles out and down my finger, but slowly, controlled by the pressure of my finger on the rubber. I place my finger back into the baby’s mouth and let it eat.

  Its eyes are closed as it suckles, its spindly legs drawn up against its body for warmth. Its skin is mostly white, covered with a soft, velvety down. It doesn’t look dangerous at all. I guess this early, without its venomous horn, it’s not. Just soft and fragile and dainty. I run a finger down its delicate snout. Between its eyes is a reddish mark, like a starburst or a flower.

  “Flower,” I say, and it opens its eyes for a moment and looks at me.

  Oh, no. Now I’ve named it.

  I can’t sleep. Down the hall, my parents’ room has been dark for hours, but I’m tossing and turning, trying to imagine what it’s like for the little unicorn, alone in the garage. Is it awake? Hungry? Suffocating? Dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from the fumes off the freezer?

  Finally I toss a jacket on, slip into my flats, and tiptoe down the hall. Outside, the moon is bright on the lawn, and I realize I should have brought a flashlight. If my parents wake up and see the light on in the garage, they’ll freak out.

  But once I’m inside the garage, I find I can see just fine. Maybe it’s the moonlight. Maybe it’s the unicorn. I peek into the laundry basket. Flower is curled up next to the doll again, and I can see its chest move as it breathes. I hope it’s a girl. Flower would be a pretty funny name for a boy.

  Except, wasn’t the skunk in Bambi a boy? His name was Flower, and that turned out okay. Bambi, also, was a boy with a girl’s name.

  I lay my head against the side of the freezer. I can’t name this thing Flower. I can’t keep it either. It’s so dangerous, not only to my parents, who might have to come into the garage for the lawn mower and end up eaten—but also for me. It’s magic, and it’s all around me, and that’s just not right.

  Did God place this unicorn in my path as a temptation meant to be overcome? I stare down at the tiny creature curled up in the basket. It’s so fragile, like a lamb. How is it to blame for its lot in life? I rest my hand on the unicorn’s back, just to feel it breathe. I watch its eyelids flutter, its tiny tail swish slightly against the blanket.

  When I wake the next morning, my neck is killing me from sleeping hunched over, and I can’t feel anything below my elbow, since the rim of the laundry basket has cut off my circulation. The sun is peeking into the windows of the garage, and the air is stained with the scent of sour milk. The unicorn stirs, yawns adorably, then proceeds to have diarrhea all over the picnic blanket.

  No goat milk. Check.

  As I’m cleaning up—Flower is now cuddled on a red and white Christmas tree apron—I realize that I’m going to be gone at school all day. I’ll have no chance to feed the baby before I go, and what if my mom comes in here and wonders where her gardening stuff has gone and why the freezer is pulled away from the wall?

  Flower starts bleating again as I leave the garage and make my way into the house. In the kitchen my dad is eating oatmeal and grousing about how Biscuit peed on the newspaper again. The fun
ny pages survived; the business section did not. He takes in my pajama pants and jacket.

  “Where were you?”

  “You weren’t in the woods, were you?” Mom’s eyes are wide with fright.

  “No!” I’m so tired of lying. “I was looking for something in the garage.”

  This, of course, sets off another round of lying, as I try to make up a non-unicorn-based object that I was looking for, and my mother offers to scour the garage for it later, and I tell yet more lies in order to convince her to keep out of there.

  Here’s a question for Sunday School: Can one lie to one’s parents in order to save a life?

  I hop in the shower, throw on clean clothes, say a quick prayer that Flower survives and goes undetected until this afternoon, and head to school. School consists of the following: English, math, and history classes, where I fail to pay attention while I fret about Flower; lunchtime, where I brainstorm ideas about what to feed the unicorn and try to avoid glancing at the end of the table, where Summer is sitting on Yves’s lap; study hall, where I think about how if I were the kind of girl who knew how to skip and sneak out of school, this would have been an excellent time to slip home and check up on the unicorn; gym, where we play kick ball; and then bio class, where the teacher says our new unit is going to be on endangered species and extinction, and how there are all kinds of animals that we once thought were extinct (like these tree frogs in South America) or imaginary (like giant squids and unicorns), and it turns out that they were just really endangered, and how changes in the environment can either bring the population back or else put the animal in danger.

  “So we might have all these unicorns around this past year because we destroyed their natural habitat?” asks Summer, sitting in the front row with Yves.

  “They’ve got the woods all to themselves now,” grumbles Noah. After what happened to Rebecca and John, the government closed all the local parks and the state forest that backs up to so many of our housing developments until they could determine the risk to the public. The deer hunters and the Boy Scouts are still pretty livid about it. As for me, even if they ever do open the woods again, I won’t be allowed to go back. Not until the unicorns are gone.

  “Not anymore,” says Aidan. “Didn’t you hear? They caught that unicorn, the one that killed the kids. It’s dead.”

  My head whips around. “What?”

  Aidan is sprawled out behind his desk, and as usual, he’s gotten half the class’s attention. “Was on the news last night. They showed the corpse and everything.”

  My knuckles grow white, my breath grows shallow, and it’s funny but I can feel Yves’s gaze on the back of my head as easily as I could feel Venom calling to me from across the fairgrounds. Class devolves into a discussion of what they are not showing us on TV, until the teacher manages to regain control.

  They caught it. A chorus of angels are singing somewhere in the vicinity of my sternum. They caught it. I don’t care what my folks said about the special unicorn hunters. Maybe they use magic, but they answered my prayers. Someone avenged my cousins’ deaths. We’re all safe.

  And then I remember Flower.

  When school lets out, Aidan invites me to go with him and the others to the mall, but I need to tend to the unicorn in my parents’ garage. I head to the grocery store, where I buy a real baby bottle, some formula, and some hamburger meat. I’m terrified of what the lady at the checkout counter will think of my purchases, but she says nothing, just takes my money and watches me stuff everything into my backpack.

  Yves honks at me as I hit the street. “Need a ride?”

  “Stalker,” I say, and climb in. “Aren’t you going to the mall?”

  “Nah.” He shrugs. “Summer has yearbook, and I don’t need an Orange Julius.” He pulls out onto the road and casts me a sidelong glance. “So, they caught that unicorn.”

  “Yeah.” I look out the window.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Better.” And as soon as I say it, I realize it’s the truth. Who knew I had such viciousness inside me? I wonder if that’s what comes of spending the night communing with a killer unicorn. Even a newborn one. I’m sure my parents would agree.

  Then again, they are probably also thrilled to hear that my cousins’ killer is dead.

  We ride the rest of the way home in silence, and my heart plummets as I see my mom on our front yard wielding hedge clippers.

  “Hey, Mrs. G,” Yves says as we get out of his car.

  I clutch my backpack to my chest and try very hard not to look at the garage. Does she know? Even from here I can tell Flower is scared, starving, alone. Is it possible my mom didn’t see it? Or doesn’t know what it is she saw? After all, Flower has no horn.

  My mom brushes her hair out of her eyes and waves, and I can breathe again.

  “How did that marinade work out for you?” Yves asks Mom.

  She cocks her head to the side. “I’m sorry, dear?”

  Yves fixes me with a look. “Never mind. I must have been confused.”

  I beeline for the house, hoping Mom will stay outside long enough for me to snag the blender without notice.

  “Thanks for the ride, Yves!” Yves calls after me. “You’re my knight in shining armor!”

  My knight has another damsel. Not that I care.

  I dump my textbooks on the kitchen table, grab the blender off the counter, and shove it into my backpack.

  Back outside, Yves is nowhere to be seen and my mom looks like she’s packing it in. She stretches and rolls out her neck muscles.

  “I can take those clippers back to the garage for you,” I say quickly.

  “Thank you, sweetie.” My mom brushes dirt off her knees. “I need to get better at keeping my gardening stuff in one place. You know I had these clippers under the porch all winter?”

  Well, that was a close call. I go to take the clippers from her, but she doesn’t let go.

  “I’m … glad to see you going out with your friends again, sweetie.”

  I tug on the clippers and keep my eyes down.

  “I know the past few months have been hard on you, with all our restrictions.” She places her other hand over mine. “But it’s for your own safety—your life and your eternal soul. Those monsters—they’re demons.”

  “They’re animals,” I reply, and pull the clippers away. “We learned in bio class that they’re back because of environmental degradation of their habitat.”

  Mom smiles at me and nods. I half-expect her to pat me on the head. “That’s the science, my dear. But what happened to Rebecca and John—that was the work of the Devil. And what happens to you when you are near the creatures? It’s sorcery. The snake in the Garden of Eden was an animal as well. Remember that. Don’t let that evil into your heart.”

  She leaves me on the porch, blinking back tears. I want to run inside and climb into her lap and have her sing me lullabies or hymns or whatever it takes to drown out Flower’s cries of fear and hunger. The unicorn has been calling to me since the second I got out of Yves’s car.

  What if I just left it there? It won’t be able to survive alone much longer. If Flower dies, I won’t be able to hear it cry, won’t feel its pain. I won’t be caring for a demon, like Mom says. No matter how innocent the baby unicorn looks, I know what lurks within. It was foolish of me to obey Venom yesterday, foolish of me to defy my parents and everything I knew was right.

  Maybe after it’s dead I can go and bury it. Or drag it into the woods. Or …

  Except how could I save it from drowning, from the quick death the wrangler offered—only to subject it to a day and night of terror and hunger and loneliness? What right do I have to torture it so?

  Ignoring the garage and my backpack filled with groceries, I head to my bedroom. I do my homework, I surf the Internet, and I pray to God to deafen me to the baby unicorn that screams inside my head.

  I resist it for two hours, and then I find myself on my way to the garage, backpack in hand. All my life I hav
e learned that my God is a God of love, and that above all He wishes me to be compassionate. And then He places in my path a monster. If this is a test, then surely I am failing.

  Inside the garage the unicorn is standing and pushing its face against the lid of the laundry basket. It has made a mess inside again. I sigh and empty out the basket. While I get its formula ready, the unicorn takes a few tottering steps on the concrete floor, unsteady on its matchstick legs, then wipes out and starts crying. I do my best to ignore it while I blend the formula according to directions, then add a few handfuls of raw hamburger and set the blender to puree. The resulting mixture looks and smells like something you’d see on a reality television show, and I wonder if this will be any more palatable to the unicorn. Baby birds eat regurgitated bits of bugs or other meat from their mothers, though. Maybe unicorns work the same way.

  Flower seems to like it, sucking from the bottle like a pro and pawing at me for more. After eating, it settles down pretty quickly into the cardboard box nest I’ve made for it. It drifts off to sleep as I’m rinsing out the blender, but when I cross the garage to return Mom’s gardening tools to the laundry basket, the unicorn wakes up and starts crying at me.

  I swallow until I can speak. “Stop.”

  Bleat, bleat. Bleeeeeaaaaaaaaaat.

  “Stop, please!” Why couldn’t I kill it? Why couldn’t I let it die? I clap my hands over my ears and squeeze my eyes shut.

  Bleeeeaaaaaat. I hear Flower throwing itself against the sides of the box.

  “No!” I say sharply. “Stop it. Settle down.”

  And, amazingly, the unicorn listens.

  By the end of the following week, I’ve fallen into a routine. My life circles around Flower—when to feed the unicorn, when to clean out his box, when to sneak out of the house, how quickly I need to run home from school to take care of the little monster. In the middle of the night, I can tell when he stirs from his sleep, when he needs me. Oh, yes, it’s a boy. I made that little discovery the other day when I got a good look at his backside.