Zombies vs. Unicorns (33 page)

Opening the card, Liz read,
Happy birthday to a niece who brings sunshine wherever she goes! A niece like you is …

N
aturally nice

I
n her own loving way.

E
ach smile that she smiles

C
an brighten a day,

E
specially when she’s so pretty and gay!

What the hell,
Liz thought. She read on.

Just want to tell you what a joy it is to have you for a niece, and how much beauty you bring into the world, Liz!
her aunt Jody had written.
That’s why when I saw Princess Prettypants at the renaissance fair I attended with my friends from the Society for Creative Anachronisms last month in the Great Smoky Mountains, I just knew I had to buy her for you. I know how much little girls adore their fairies, princesses, and unicorns!

Holy shit,
thought Liz.

And I know you’ll make sure Princess P. gets a good home!
Aunt Jody went on.
Unicorns have been extinct for years, of course, but a few Appalachian breeders have discovered how to clone them from a perfectly preserved specimen found in a peat bog and are hoping that they’ll make a comeback. Soon they should be as popular as VCRs!

There was some other writing at the bottom of the card, but after Liz got to the words “Princess Prettypants,” she could barely stand to read any farther.

Princess Prettypants?

Liz glanced over at Jeremy. Seeming to sense that she was looking at him, he raised his gaze to meet hers.

Liz mouthed the word she was thinking:
eBay
.

Seriously. With any luck she’d be able to make enough selling Princess Prettypants to pay back all her debts and put a down payment on a decent car. Not a metallic blue Volkswagen convertible Beetle. She’d given up on that dream. Just any car. She’d take any amount of money to get rid of Princess Prettypants, who at that moment let out a delicate fart, filling the barn with rainbows and the scent of night-blooming jasmine.

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Liz said.

“Elizabeth Gretchen Freelander,” her mother said sharply.

“Well, I’m sorry, Mom,” Liz said. “But I’m seventeen years old, not nine.”

Mr. Freelander sighed.

“I told you she wouldn’t like it, Debbie,” he said sadly to his wife. “I told you.”

Liz bit her lower lip. What was wrong with her? Here her aunt had gone to all this trouble to ship what was probably a very expensive gift all the way from the Great Smoky Mountains.

The least she could do was be gracious about it.

“No,” Liz said. She noticed that everyone, including the unicorn, was staring mournfully at the barn floor. “No, I like it. I do.”

“No, you don’t,” Ted said. He too was still looking at the floor, kicking at some feed that had fallen from the hayrack. “You think you’re too cool for unicorns. Well, you know what?” Ted lifted his gaze, and Liz was surprised to see that there were tears gleaming in his eyes. “Evan Connor’s little brother, Derek, told me you guys are the ones who’ve been going around stealing plaster geese out of people’s yards!”

Mrs. Freelander gasped. “No!”

Liz’s father just shook his head, looking as ashamed of her as he had the first time he’d ever heard her use the F word upon accidentally stubbing her toe.

“That’s right,” Ted raged on. “I found them hidden in Munchkin’s old stable! Eleven of them, all in different fancy outfits! I wasn’t going to say anything because I thought you were cool, Liz. My cool big sister. But now that I know you
don’t like unicorns, I don’t think you’re cool at all. And … and one of those plaster geese you stole was from my best friend Paul’s house.
And his mom wants it back!
”

With that, Ted ran from the barn, obviously hoping to escape before the tears gathering in his eyes started to stream down his face.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Liz said in the ensuing silence, during which Princess Prettypants shifted her weight, causing one of her glittering silver hooves to strike against the barn floor and set off a musical chime that sounded not unlike the bells that rang out from the Venice Freedom Evangelical Church every Sunday morning.

“
You’re
the one who’s been stealing plaster geese from people’s front yards?” Mrs. Freelander asked, giving Liz an incredulous look. “The one they reported about in the Police Beat in
The Venice Voice
? That was
you
?”

“Mom,” Liz said, shame causing her own eyes to suddenly fill with tears. “I’m really sor—”

“Young lady,” Mrs. Freelander interrupted furiously.
“You are grounded. Forever.”

And, wrapping her sweater more tightly around herself, she stormed from the barn.

Mr. Freelander sighed and gave the unicorn one last pat on the rump.

“Now you’ve gone and upset your mother,” was all he said as he turned to follow his wife. “And she worked so hard to give you that nice party.”

When he was gone, Liz walked over to the stall door across from where Princess Prettypants was standing and sank
down onto the floor, leaning her back against the rough wood. She wiped her eyes with the back of a wrist.

“Ted’s right,” she said, swallowing against the sudden lump in her throat. “I’m not cool.”

Jeremy crossed over to Princess Prettypants and laid a hand on her shimmering neck. She rolled her purple-eyed gaze toward him appreciatively.

“Selling her on eBay is kind of extreme,” he said. “Don’t you think? She seems like a nice horse.”

“Unicorn,” Liz corrected him. She
really
wanted to cry now. Jeremy hadn’t disagreed with Ted about her being uncool.

Well, Jeremy had always made it perfectly clear that he hadn’t approved of her going out with Evan—and, okay, that
had
been a mistake … almost as big a mistake as stealing the plaster geese. She’d been dazzled by Evan’s good looks and his fancy TAG Heuer watch and the fact that he’d wanted her.
Her
, out of all the girls in school.

She had failed to notice the small fact that Evan, like his friend Spank, was a douche bag.

She stretched her legs out in front of her, then crossed her ankles, keeping her gaze on her feet in order to concentrate on not crying.

“It’s not a horse,” she said, her voice tear-roughened. “It’s a unicorn. And do you have any idea how much money I still owe my parents?”

“Well,” Jeremy said. His voice didn’t sound too steady either. “This should come in handy, then. Here.”

He dropped something into her lap. When Liz looked
down, she saw through her tear-blurred gaze that it was a key. With a red ribbon wrapped around it.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Your birthday present,” he said.

She glanced up at him questioningly. He appeared to have something more he wanted to say to her, but he was holding himself back for some reason… .

Which was unusual, because she’d always thought they could tell each other anything.

Well,
almost
anything.

“I gotta go,” he said suddenly, removing his hand from the unicorn’s neck. “I’ll see you around.”

“But …” She looked down once more at her present. “What’s it a key to?”

But when she glanced up again, Jeremy had already left the barn.

She didn’t get up to go after him. She didn’t want him to see her cry, any more than he, apparently, wanted to stick around to talk.

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.