Zombies vs. Unicorns (35 page)

A sort of red haze descended over Liz’s vision.

She put a hand on her friend’s back.

“It’s going to be all right, Alecia,” she said.

“How?” Alecia moaned into her hands. “
How?
I can’t go back to homeschooling, Liz. I love Venice High. I love it. The pep rallies. Even Mrs. Rice. All of it. But how is any of this going to be okay?”

Liz had no idea.

“I’m going to take care of it,” she said, as if she did know what she was doing. Maybe some part of her did—some part that had been frozen, petrified in a bog since that
day she’d walked into Edmondson 212A, a part that was finally waking up at the sight of Evan cavorting half naked in that hot tub like nothing had happened between them. “Come with me.”

Liz got up and went to the bathroom door. She unlocked it, and a horde of girls dying to use the toilet came spilling in. Alecia, startled, had no choice but to get up and hurry out after her.

“Liz?” Alecia asked. “Where …where are we going?”

“You’ll see,” Liz said in a less calm voice as she made her way across what had once been Mr. and Mrs. Higgins’s media room—which had now been torn apart and puked on by frenzied partygoers. “We’re just going to have a little talk with Spank.”

“Oh, no,” Alecia said, her eyes widening. “I really don’t think that’s the best idea… .”

But Liz was already smashing open the screen door to the backyard with her fist. Outside, the moon was still high, and the stars still glinted coldly down from the dark sky.

But the air in downtown Venice didn’t smell of cut grass or wood smoke the way it did on Liz’s parents’ farm. Instead it smelled of spilled beer from the keg in Kate Higgins’s backyard and of chlorine from the hot tub toward which Liz was striding.

“Liz,” Alecia said nervously. “Seriously. What are you doing?”

“It’s okay,” Liz said over her shoulder. “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you’re fine,” Alecia said. “I just want to go home… .”

“Spank Waller,” Liz said when she got to the side of the hot tub. Spank was crowded into it with five girls and six other guys, including Evan. The hot tub was made to fit only eight, so they
were squeezed in there nice and snug. One of the girls, wearing a bright blue bikini and holding a cup of beer, was Kate Higgins.

“Oh, hey, Liz,” Kate called cheerfully, giving her a wave. “I’m so glad you could make it!”

Liz ignored her. Why was Kate acting like she was glad Liz had come, when she hadn’t even invited her? Kate was so fake. Liz would deal with her some other day.

She’d deal with Evan—who nearly choked on his beer and said, “L-Liz?” when he noticed her—later too.

“Spank Waller,” she said instead. “You took an inappropriate intimate photo a little while ago of my friend Alecia without her permission. So I want you to hand over your cell phone. Now.”

Spank, holding his cup of beer high in order to avoid it filling with foam from the jets, just laughed.

“No freaking way, Freelander,” he said. “Nice nips, by the way.”

Liz didn’t have to turn around to see why all the people in the hot tub, including her ex, had suddenly started screaming and scrambling for cover. She knew without looking.

It was because a giant milk white unicorn had reared up behind her, angrily pawing at the air with its forelegs. Princess Prettypants had let out a neigh …

… only, this time, that neigh hadn’t come out sounding like churchbells or a children’s choir.

It had come out sounding like all the demons from hell, screaming in pain at the same time because someone had stoked the coals burning beneath their squirming pustular bodies.

Liz was pretty sure this was because someone had said
something to really piss off Princess Prettypants’s mistress.

“Yeah,” Liz said, feeling her hair flutter as one of those colossal silver hooves brushed just inches past her ear. “You might want to rethink your decision not to hand over your cell phone to me, Spank. Or my unicorn is going to smash in your face.”

Spank sat frozen in the hot tub, the only person remaining in it. Everyone else had bailed, running for the shelter of the house or ducking behind nearby shrubbery. Evan was crouched next to the keg, gibbering like a monkey, his bare feet in two inches of muddy beer ooze.

Only Alecia had stayed where she was. Alecia’s gaze was fixed not on the unicorn but on Spank.

“Not so high and mighty now, are you, Spank?” Alecia demanded, in a voice that was a little too high-pitched. “You said you were keeping that picture of me for your collection and that I’d better not step out of line, or everyone in school was going to get a peek!”

Spank said nothing. He was still staring up at the unicorn. Instead of the smell of night-blooming jasmine coming from her soft blue muzzle, the odor had turned to sulfur. And Princess Prettypants’s lavender eyes had turned to stop sign red.

Liz just shook her head. This was all so sad and unnecessary.

Liz said, “Alecia. Go find whatever Spank was wearing when you two were dancing, and look in his pants pocket. The phone will be there.”

Alecia pointed nervously at the unicorn, who was snorting and pawing at the ground, making a huge hole in the Higginses’ lawn. The hole looked not unlike a grave.

“It’s okay,” Liz assured her. “That’s not for you.”

Alecia nodded and went to pick her way through the mud to the side of the hot tub. It took only a second or two for her to find what she was looking for. While she was gone, Liz found herself enveloped in another sulfur-scented cloud. She didn’t take her gaze off Spank, who continued to stare at her in terror. She couldn’t help feeling irritated. Clearly unicorns were not supposed to consume ordinary horse feed. She’d need to get in touch with her aunt Jody about Princess Prettypants’s obviously unique dietary requirements.

“Here it is,” Alecia said timidly, handing Liz Spank’s cell phone.

“Don’t give it to me,” Liz said, stepping aside. “Put it there, where it belongs.” And she pointed at the unicorn’s massive front hooves.

Alecia darted another nervous glance toward Princess Prettypants.

But the unicorn only batted her long blue eyelashes demurely, as if to say,
Me? Hurt you? Never! I’m a lady!

Alecia knelt and put the cell phone next to one of Princess Prettypants’s gleaming silver feet.

Which the unicorn delicately lifted and, with a surgeon’s precision, set down on the phone, obliterating it.

“Hey!” Spank yelled from the hot tub.

Liz shot him an annoyed look.

“Do you want to be next?” she asked.

“You can’t go around doing that to people’s personal property,” Spank said, standing up. He was, she saw, wearing trunks, which were bright red and baggy.

Maybe it was because the trunks were red.

Or maybe it was just because he was Spank Waller.

In any case, Princess Prettypants, once the cell phone was crushed to her satisfaction, began moving in his direction.

“You can’t just come in here, Freelander, and have your freak of a circus horse, or whatever it is, step on my phone.” Spank was standing in the middle of the hot tub, pontificating to whoever would listen. “Do you know who my father is?”

It was at that moment that Princess Prettypants, coming around behind Spank, scooped him up by the bottom of his red swim trunks with her three-foot-long lavender horn and began to prance around, with Spank adorning her forehead like a live hood ornament.

“Oh,” one of Kate Higgins’s friends cried, wincing as they crouched with Kate behind her parents’ barbecue grill. “Horned up the shorts!”

“That is twisted, Liz,” Kate said, shaking her head. “You have one twisted unicorn.”

“I know,” Liz said, although of course she’d had no idea. She felt proud of her birthday gift.

The partygoers, beginning to emerge from their hiding places now that they sensed Liz’s unicorn was otherwise occupied, produced their own cell phones and began to take photos of Spank’s difficult situation.

“Hey!” Spank cried. “Stop taking pictures! Liz! Make your unicorn put me down! This isn’t exactly the most comfortable position to be in. Look, I swear I won’t do it again. I swear!”

Liz looked at Alecia. “Do you think he’s learned his lesson?”

Alecia nodded. She looked considerably happier. She’d stopped
crying, and there was a tiny smile playing on her lips.

“I think so,” she said.

Liz called to Princess Prettypants, “You can put him down now.”

The unicorn lowered her head, and Spank fell to the ground, into the grave Princess Prettypants had dug for him beside the keg. A terrified-looking Evan got splashed with mud. He eyed Liz apprehensively, certain that he was next on her list.

“Liz,” he said, holding his hands up, palms out, in front of his naked chest, which was flecked with spots of brown beer-soaked lawn. “I know how things might have looked that day in my dorm room. But you ran out before I could say a word in my defense. I was drunk. And she meant nothing to me. You’ve always been my everyth—”

“You,” Liz interrupted him, “owe me fourteen hundred and eleven dollars.”

Evan gaped at her. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said. “That’s how much you owe me. For texting fees, bus fare, and various sundries I don’t care to discuss in public. Where’s your wallet?”

Evan shook his head, his blue eyes wide. “Are you crazy? I don’t …”

…
owe you anything
was what Liz was fairly certain he’d been about to say. But a snort from Princess Prettypants behind her caused him to modify that statement to a more benign, and slightly terrified, “… carry that kind of cash on me.”

Liz realized he was telling the truth. He wasn’t exactly going
to lie when there was an angry unicorn behind her, glaring at him with glowing red eyes.

“Fine,” she said, and pointed at his wrist. “That’ll do.”

Evan glanced down at his watch. “My
TAG
?” he asked. His voice broke with sorrow and disbelief.

Princess Prettypants took a threatening step forward. Evan quickly undid his watchband, saying, “N-no, it’s okay. You can have it. You’ll get at least that much for it.”

Liz took the watch from him and dropped it into her pocket. She gave Evan a final, scathing look, wondering how she ever could have loved this person, who was not only a liar but had no honor either.

She must have stared at him a little too long, because Princess Prettypants stepped forward, nudging her horn toward his swim trunks.

“No, no,” Liz had to say, grabbing the unicorn by the mane and steering her head away. Not that Evan didn’t deserve it. “Whoa, girl.”

Evan, looking pale, backed up, tripped on his own feet, and fell into the beer-soaked mud, much to the amusement of everyone present.

Spank, meanwhile, cried for someone to let him borrow their cell phone.

No one did. Instead everyone hurried to snap more pictures of Princess Prettypants. A few even took short films with their cell phones to upload later to their YouTube channels.

“Well,” Liz said, conscious of there being many more things that she had to do in order make amends to everyone
she’d wronged. “I have to go. Alecia, do you think you can get your mom to come pick you up?”

“Oh, sure,” Alecia said. “This party is about to be over anyway.” She pointed at Spank, who had managed to wrangle away someone’s cell phone and was whining into it, “Dad, some girl sicced her pet unicorn on me.
No
, I haven’t been drinking again. I
haven’t
! No, don’t come get me! Don’t—”

Kate, overhearing this, whirled on Spank and, slapping him, cried, “Omigod, your
dad
is coming over here? Do you have any idea how many laws I’m violating here? And you just called your dad? Are you
crazy
?”

After the mad rush that followed to go before Sheriff Waller showed up, few partygoers remained, with the exception of Alecia and Liz.

Contented, Liz gave Alecia’s arm a squeeze. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Alecia said, and hugged her. “I guess when boys tease you,” she whispered into Liz’s hair, “it doesn’t
always
mean they like you.”

“Actually,” Liz said, “it does. It just doesn’t mean they’re necessarily nice guys.”

Alecia pulled away and nodded. “I get it now.” She gave a shy glance toward the unicorn, whose eyes had turned back to their normal sparkly lavender. “Thank you … um … What’s her name?”

“Princess Prettypants, officially,” Liz said. “But I’m really going to have to rethink that.”

The spray of small stones hit Jeremy’s bedroom window a few hours later. Looking bleary-eyed, his hair sticking up in dark tufts, he opened it and looked down. “What time is it?” he asked, confused.

“After two,” Liz replied cheerfully. “Come down.”

Jeremy rubbed his eyes. “Is that Princess Prettypants?”

“Gloria,” Liz corrected him. “I changed her name. Princess Prettypants didn’t really suit her.”

“Gloria,” he said thoughtfully. “After Gloria Steinem, queen of the second-wave feminists, I assume?”

Liz nodded. “Exactly.”

“Fitting,” Jeremy said.

“Come down,” Liz said again from where she sat astride Gloria in the side yard beneath Jeremy’s bedroom window. “I want to show you something.”