She sat there in the barn, staring first at her present from Jeremy and then at her gift from Aunt Jody, wondering how she could have messed up so badly. The unicorn continued to munch on the hay, occasionally turning her head to eye Liz.
Her horn sparkled in the overhead light. Her hooves glimmered like Cinderella’s slippers. When she shifted her weight, they made a sound like the purest of bells ringing out on Easter Sunday. Every once in a while, she farted.
It sounded like a beautiful wind chime.
And smelled like a florist’s shop.
Liz wondered what on earth she was going to do. Not just about the geese, and her parents, and Ted, and Jeremy.
But about the fact that her aunt had given her a unicorn—a unicorn, for God’s sake!
Finally she heard footsteps outside the barn door, and thought, with relief, It’s Jeremy. He’s come back! She clutched the key he’d given her. What could it be to? His heart? Oh, don’t be such a dork, Freelander. What’s wrong with you today? She climbed to her feet. She was a little amazed at how her heart swooped in eager anticipation of seeing him again. What was up with that?
But it wasn’t Jeremy who came in the barn doors. It was Ted.
“Your friend Alecia’s on the phone,” he said grouchily. “She sounds upset. That’s the only reason I came out here and got you. So you owe me one.”
Liz’s heart came crashing down to earth the moment she recognized that it was her brother and not her next-door neighbor stepping out of the darkness.
But she said, “Listen, Ted. I’m sorry about the geese. And you’re right. I’m not cool. I’m the opposite of cool. And I’m going to give Paul’s mom’s goose back.”
“You don’t even know,” Ted said as the two of them walked back to the house, “which one is hers.”
This was true. Which one had been Paul’s mother’s? The one in the polka-dot bonnet and apron? Or the one dressed as the Venice High School Gondolier? How would Liz ever figure it out?
“Hello?” she said, picking up the phone in the kitchen. Her parents had retired to the den to watch a television drama about sexual predators who preyed on young attractive women in New York City.
“Liz?” Alecia sounded as if she were in tears. There was a lot of screaming and loud music in the background.
Liz pressed the phone more tightly to her ear. “Alecia? Where are you? Are you at Kate’s party? Are you okay?”
“No,” Alecia said. She was crying. “I mean, yes, I’m at Kate’s party. But, no … I’m not okay. S-something happened. C-could you come get me?”
Liz’s grip on the phone tightened. “What?” she said. “What do you mean, something happened?”
“I’m sorry to interrupt your b-birthday.” It was hard to hear Alecia with the sound of all the partying in the background. “And to call on the house line. I didn’t have your new cell number. It’s just that Sp-Spank—”
Fear clutched Liz’s heart.
“Spank what?” she asked through panic-deadened lips. “Tell me, Alecia. What did he do to you?”
“He … he … Oh, Liz.” Alecia let out a sob. “Please just come get me. As soon as you can.”
They were disconnected. Either Alecia had hung up or … Liz didn’t even want to think what else could have happened. It was Spank they were talking about, after all. Spank thinks he can do whatever he wants, without consequence, Jeremy had warned her. Because he can, and as you know perfectly well, he has.
After staring at the phone in her hand for a second or two, Liz hung up and went into the den where her parents sat, her hands and feet feeling strangely numb.
“Look,” Liz said, “I know I’ve been a total bitch tonight. And I’m really sorry. But Alecia’s in trouble and I need to borrow the car to go get her.”
Mr. Freelander tore his gaze away from the screen to look at her. “What part of your mother telling you that you’re grounded forever did you not understand?”
“But,” Liz said, her voice rising, “it’s Alecia! I think Spank Waller may have done something to her. Something bad.”
“Why should we believe you?” Liz’s mother demanded. Her eyes, Liz saw, were pink-rimmed from crying, and her cheeks were flushed. “You’re a thief! A liar and a thief. All those nights you were out with that Evan Connor, saying you were going bowling or to the movies, you were really robbing people! Robbing our friends and neighbors! I don’t know how I’m going to show my face in town anymore, knowing my daughter—my own daughter—is the one who has been stealing everyone’s plaster geese. And they’ve been in Munchkin’s stable this whole time.”
Liz’s stomach clenched. She felt awful. She realized that Jeremy had been right all along … that what she’d managed to convince herself had been a community beautification plan just might, to everyone else, have been theft of rightful property.
Maybe she’d never have to go to juvie for it because Spank had been involved, and his dad would see to it that they’d never be prosecuted.
But that didn’t make it any less wrong.
“I’m sorry,” Liz said, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m going to return the geese. I really am. But please. Please. I think something bad might have happened to Alecia. You have to let me borrow the car.”
Mrs. Freelander turned her head back toward the television screen. Liz’s father looked Liz dead in the eye and said, enunciating carefully, “No. If Alecia’s in trouble, call her mother. She can go pick up Alecia.”
Liz thought about doing as her father said. She really did. It made sense to call Alecia’s mother.
But if Alecia had wanted her mother to know what had happened, wouldn’t she have called her?
Only she hadn’t. She’d called Liz.
Alecia wouldn’t, Liz knew, tell her mother what Spank had done to her. She’d be too embarrassed. Alecia’s mother was a good woman, but she was deeply religious, which was why she’d insisted on homeschooling Alecia for nine years, only agreeing to let her daughter attend the public high school when the burden of homeschooling Alecia in addition to her seven younger siblings had become too much.
And there was no use calling the police. In Venice, Indiana, Spank Waller’s father was the police. In Venice, Indiana, Spank Waller was king.
No. This was all Liz’s fault. Believe me, no good will come of encouraging her crush on him, Jeremy had said when Liz had agreed with Alecia that Spank liked her. Why, oh why, had Liz ever opened her big mouth? Whatever had happened was all Liz’s fault.
After stumbling back outside, and being greeted by the almost deafeningly loud ribbits and chirps of the frogs from the pond, Liz stood there, wondering what to do.
Should she steal her parents’ car? No. She was already in big enough trouble.
And then she heard it: the peal of Princess Prettypants’s silver hooves ringing out as she shifted in place in the barn.
It was crazy. It was insane.
Except … Well, she was technically a horse, wasn’t she?
And horses were made to be ridden.
Liz ran for the barn. Princess Prettypants looked up, flicking her velvety ears forward as Liz came in, and letting out a gentle, musical neigh. The fragrance of night-blooming jasmine, which Liz had only smelled before on a trip to Florida to visit her aunt, filled the air. Princess Prettypants had yawned.
Well, that’s it then, Liz thought.
Liz had no choice but to ride bareback. Munchkin’s saddle, of course, would have been far too small, and besides it had been sold in a yard sale years earlier.
Liz had ridden bareback a few times before, because Alecia’s family had horses and sometimes when it was hot they rode them saddleless for fun.
But this was different. This was a stately, elegant unicorn that stood nineteen hands high (extremely tall, for a horse), with a three-foot sparkling horn and lavender eyes.
Then again, she also farted rainbows. So.
Since there was no stirrup for her to step into, Liz found a crate and, after setting it next to the unicorn, climbed on top of it and said, knowing Munchkin had always liked it when she’d spoken to him in a soothing voice, “Hello, Princess, er, Prettypants. I’m just going to climb onto your back now, if that’s okay. And we’re going to go on a little trip. Okay? Great. Here I—”
But when Liz laid her hands on Princess Prettypants’s impossibly silky back to boost herself up, the unicorn gave a start, reared back, and darted quickly away from her, giving Liz an extremely insulted look with her now wildly rolling violet eyes.
“Whoa,” Liz said, holding up both her hands to show she hadn’t meant any offense. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Honestly. It’s just … I really need to get to town.”
And then, before Liz knew what was happening, she’d broken down into tears.
She was standing there in the barn, sobbing to a unicorn. A freaking horse. With a stupid horn coming out of its head!
“I’m sorry, but I’ve had a really bad day. And now my friend is in trouble. She has this crush on this bad guy, and I sort of encouraged it, and so it’s my fault, and he did something to her at this party, and I’ve got to go to her and make sure she’s okay, but my parents won’t let me use the car, so—”
A second later Princess Prettypants calmed down. She tossed her head, stopped rolling her eyes, and gave a musical nicker.
Then, to Liz’s utter surprise, she folded one foreleg beneath her, stretched the other out before her, and bowed elegantly in front of Liz, like a prima ballerina, with her horn tipped toward the floor and her lavender-eyed gaze on Liz as if to say, At your service, madam.
Liz stared at her, her mouth agape.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Liz asked, as if the unicorn could respond.
Of course Princess Prettypants said nothing, just stared at Liz patiently, clearly waiting for Liz to get on her back.
“Oh,” Liz said, flustered. “Oh my God. Thank you so much …”
She climbed onto the unicorn. It was like sliding onto the back of the softest imaginable pillow … or like the fairy wings made from swan feathers her aunt had sent her for Christmas when she was five.
She was barely seated before the unicorn lurched to a standing position. Liz had to plunge her hands into the silky mane to hang on. Then, the strong back muscles beneath her moving powerfully, the unicorn turned and headed for the barn doors … so swiftly that Liz had to duck in order to keep from hitting her head on the top of the jamb.
“Hey!” Liz turned, and saw her little brother Ted coming toward the barn with an armful of apples, apparently for Princess Prettypants, stolen from the kitchen crisper. “Where are you going?”
“Um,” Liz called down to him. “Just out for a ride. Tell Mom and Dad I’ll be home soon.”
“I thought you didn’t even like Princess Prettypants,” he said, looking suspicious.
“She’s really growing on me,” Liz called as the unicorn lurched into a gallop. “I gotta go. See ya!”
And suddenly, with Liz clinging to the unicorn’s mane for dear life, they were moving through the night-darkened countryside, Princess Prettypants cantering at an unbelievable speed—faster than any car Liz had ever traveled in—toward town.
The unicorn apparently had no need of roads—or of Liz steering, or giving directions. She seemed to know exactly where Liz wanted to go, taking a direct route through fields, along the grassy medians of highways, through parking lots of shopping malls and cineplexes—her hooves making fiery sparks and a symphony of bell-like tones as they struck the pavement—and finally through other people’s yards, simply hopping over anything that stood in her way, including walls, fences, and cars … … causing a great many astonished looks, though traffic was generally light this time of night in downtown Venice.
Liz could only hang on and tell herself to remember to breathe as they flew past the people—and their hastily upraised cell phone cameras—they encountered along the way to Kate Higgins’s house.
Liz completely understood their astonishment. She couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening herself. She’d only had to picture the house where she needed to go, and Princess Prettypants—such a horrible name for such a noble creature!—was dropping her off there. True, they were coming up around the back … right up to the hot tub, into which no less than a dozen people seemed to be crammed.
But still, in no time at all Liz found herself behind the Higginses’ downtown splitlevel colonial. Empty beer bottles were strewn all across the backyard. Loud music was pulsating from the house. People were milling around everywhere, some of them dancing, some of them laughing, some of them throwing up, but hardly any of them noticing the approach of a second birthday girl … this one on her new pet unicorn. Only one highly inebriated young man, who happened to be relieving himself upon a leafy oak tree near where Princess Prettypants slowed her pace upon her approach, cried, “Holy crap! A unicorn!”
He then promptly passed out in a heap behind some bushes.
Liz knew they had definitely come to the right place.
With a pealing neigh, Princess Prettypants bowed and allowed Liz to dismount.
After she’d done so, Liz turned and extended both hands toward the unicorn and said, “Ummm … wait here, please?”
Princess Prettypants, giving the locale a skeptical glance, bowed her head and began to pull tufts of the Higginses’ plentiful lawn into her powerful jaws and gnaw on it.
Satisfied that her ride was going to remain in one place for the time being, Liz crossed the yard, taking her cell phone from her pocket and dialing Alecia’s number.