Bad Unicorn Page 3

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Ricky continued in a mocking voice. “I didn’t ask if you wanted to, I asked if you could. You think because your parents were, like, karate kids you’ve got something on me?”

  Not karate, Sarah thought, but judo. It wasn’t something she talked about because she hadn’t wanted to end up here—standing in the hallway and having to deal with Ricky. But her parents had met as competitors at the world judo finals, so she had pretty much spent her whole life learning the Japanese martial art. As a toddler she didn’t play with her Tickle Me Elmo doll, instead she practiced hip throwing it across the living room. There was a reason jujitsu (from which judo developed) was used by the powerful Samurai warriors of old—it worked.

  “What I can and can’t do is none of your business,” Sarah replied curtly. Now maybe the Kraken wasn’t the sharpest tool in the toolshed, as Max’s grandmother liked to say, but he was smart enough to figure out that Sarah really wasn’t afraid of him. And that had to be a first . . . ever.

  “I don’t believe it, she thinks she’s tougher than I am!” Ricky exclaimed. The rest of the kids laughed and cheered him on as he looked around the hall, grinning wildly. Then he lowered his voice and turned to face Sarah again, only now everyone grew quiet—they’d seen this before, sometimes on the wrestling mat when he was about to destroy an opponent, or sometimes during school when a student was about to get pounded. Ricky leaned forward and looked at Sarah as if she was his worst enemy in the world. “You should probably start something,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Or I will.”

  But Sarah didn’t flinch, and that was saying a lot. Max had seen all kinds of tough kids melt under similar circumstances. George Lobowski, who played center on the football team, broke down and started crying when Ricky did the same thing to him. But not Sarah—to the amazement of Max and every other student gathered in the hall, she actually stood her ground.

  “Hey, why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?” Dirk called out. Max shouldn’t have been surprised by that. Dirk’s ability to say things without thinking was probably hard coded into his DNA. Max, on the other hand, tried to shrink down and be as invisible as possible.

  The Kraken whirled, finding Dirk standing in the crowd and staring back at him. “Oh, is that right?” Ricky said, playing it up for his audience. “You offering then?”

  “Well, clearly I’m not your size either,” Dirk said with a shrug.

  If Ricky had thought he could catch Dirk he might have made a run for him, but he knew better. And besides, he wasn’t finished with Sarah yet. “Keep squeaking, little mouse, and mind your own business.”

  Ricky turned his attention back to Sarah, getting eye to eye with her and violating the whole “personal space” thing they talked about in health class. But Sarah didn’t even blink. “Look, Ricky, I’m just a girl. I don’t see how picking on me does anything to enhance your reputation as the alpha male around here. So I’m going to turn and walk away, and you guys can yell ‘chicken’ or make clucking sounds and that’s fine with me. And if it makes you feel better if I say you’re tougher than I am, I’m happy to. But right now I need to get to lunch. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m leaving.”

  And that’s when it happened. Sarah had started to turn when Ricky grabbed her roughly by the shoulder. She reacted at once, moving so fast it was a blur. She grabbed Ricky’s arm and pivoted on her leg, using his momentum against him. She then bent and threw Ricky over her shoulder so that he landed flat on his back—the air blowing out of his lungs as he hit the floor. But Sarah kept moving, placing her knee against his arm and pulling Ricky’s elbow across her thigh at a painful angle. Ricky yelped, but otherwise didn’t move. Sarah was glaring down at him, and for a moment it looked as if she was going to press down on the arm and break it, but suddenly she let go and her hand flew to her mouth in astonishment.

  “I didn’t mean . . . ,” she started to say, looking around at all the shocked faces. Sarah had just executed what her parents called the ippon seoi nage. Her brain coolly processed the information while the emotion of it all began to surge in her like a tidal wave.

  A bunch of kids started to push through the crowd wanting to get a closer look at the Kraken spread out and lying on the hallway floor. Max and Dirk managed to get caught in the middle of it, and the two of them were suddenly pushed forward. They lost their balance, falling into each other and then tripping over the Kraken, landing in a pile next to him. Before they could untangle themselves and get to their feet, Mr. Jackson, the vice principal, parted the kids like Moses at the Red Sea. He stood there, his hands on his hips, and scowled.

  “What’s going on here?” Mr. Jackson asked in his no-nonsense vice principal voice. On the floor was the Kraken, who still wasn’t moving; Dirk, who was looking wide-eyed and flushed; and Max, who was too shocked to do anything but point at Sarah. The vice principal sized up the situation quickly. “Everyone go to lunch . . . now. Somebody find the nurse and get her here. And you three,” he said, looking coldly at Sarah, Max, and Dirk, “you all come with me. You’re in serious trouble.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP

  (THE TECHRUS—PRESENT)

  SARAH STARED ANGRILY AT MAX AS HE TRIED TO EXPLAIN THAT FINGER pointing was simply an unconscious survival instinct handed down through the Spencer family line. The reaction was so ingrained in his genetics, in fact, that he might as well try to stop a sneeze as prevent an anger-deflecting pass-the-buck finger point. Sarah, however, was unconvinced.

  “I really wasn’t trying to get you into trouble,” Max offered, for probably the thirtieth time.

  The three of them were sitting in an empty classroom, waiting as the whole “situation” was being sorted out. Throughout it all, Dirk just sat and looked at Sarah with a kind of wide-eyed, slack-jawed wonder. She ignored it as long as she could, but finally she’d had enough. “Do you really have to stare at me like that?” she blurted out, tearing her gaze away from Max. “I’m so glad I could be here to provide you with some amusement before I’m suspended.”

  It was as if Sarah were speaking to a stone wall—Dirk didn’t blink. But when he finally spoke, it was with that rare kind of childlike wonder that most kids drop by the time they get to middle school. But then again, Dirk was definitely not like most kids. “You were so . . . awesome,” he finally said.

  Max rolled his eyes, but he knew his friend well enough. No matter what happened in Dirk’s future, whether he ended up collecting cans and living in his parent’s basement or he became the president of the United States, the day he saw a girl take out the Kraken in front of the entire school would rank as one of the greatest moments of his life.

  “Very funny,” Sarah replied, turning away.

  “He’s not making fun of you,” Max offered, hoping that he wasn’t about to get another hard-eyed death look from Sarah. “And I’m not either. What you did . . . it was amazing.”

  Sarah turned back to face the boys. She looked at them a bit closer now. Max had a round face that reminded her of the baby angel on the toilet paper packages her mom bought—only with glasses. He had hair that was naturally messy, with a few strands hanging across his forehead, and a mouth with lips pursed together as if he was holding back a hiccup. Dirk, on the other hand, had a mouth that was perpetually locked in a half grin, with a narrow face and larger ears that hung on the sides of his head. His dark hair was cut as if he was in the army, with expressive eyes and a prominent nose.

  At least they had each other as friends, Sarah thought. Neither of them probably stood much of a chance on his own. “You don’t understand,” Sarah finally continued. “What I did wasn’t awesome or incredible or anything like that. I could have really hurt him—don’t you get it?”

  Dirk snapped out of his hero-worshipping and began emphatically shaking his head. “No way. I saw the whole thing. You tried to leave—you turned away and then he grabbed you.”

  “Barely.”

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p; “No,” Max chimed in. “He grabbed you hard. I saw it too.”

  “Yeah, everybody did,” Dirk added.

  Sarah sighed, feeling a little better despite herself. “Maybe.” She realized it had been Dirk who had called out from the crowd when the whole rest of the school seemed to be against her. Maybe she needed to cut them some slack.

  After an awkward moment of silence, Max decided to break the ice. “So anyway, my name’s Max,” he said, offering his hand. “And this is Dirk.”

  Dirk did his best Renaissance fair bow, “Milady.”

  That made Sarah giggle as she shook Max’s hand. “I’m Sarah, officially now the most unpopular kid at Parkside Middle School.”

  “I never thought I’d meet someone less popular than me,” Dirk replied. “I’m kind of conflicted about it.”

  Sarah managed a meek smile before realizing what she must look like—hair a mess and mascara (that her older sister made her wear) probably running. “Hey, you guys don’t have anything I could clean up with, do you? I must look like a train wreck.”

  “Oh, uh, I don’t carry a handkerchief in my pocket or anything,” Max said. “It’s because I cried real hard once when I was little, I think because I had gotten an ice cream cone and it fell in the gutter when I tried to lick it. Anyway, my grandpa gave me his old handkerchief, and as I sat there, crying and holding my empty cone, I realized it was the same old handkerchief that he’d been using for like forty years to blow his nose in. And it just seemed kind of . . . gross. So anyway, that’s why I don’t have a handkerchief. But if I did I don’t think you’d want to use it anyway—not that I have allergies or anything, just the normal amount of nose . . . stuff.”

  Sarah stared at Max for a moment and then the three of them broke out laughing. It was exactly the kind of release she needed.

  “You know Ricky’s okay, don’t you?” Max asked after the last of the laughter had died down. “I heard the nurse talking about it. You just knocked the wind out of him.”

  “That and his pride,” Dirk added.

  “Well, I’m glad he’s okay. Bullies like that just have self-esteem problems,” Sarah said. “At least that’s what I read in my AP Psychology book.”

  “You take AP classes?” Max asked.

  “And read textbooks?” Dirk added.

  Sarah smiled. “Sure.”

  “Well, I wonder if any of this will increase my street cred?” Dirk posed.

  “You don’t have any ‘cred’—on the street or anywhere else,” Max was quick to answer.

  “Yeah, but maybe I do now—that’s what I’m saying.”

  To her surprise, Sarah realized she was feeling comfortable around these two—as if they had all been long-time friends or something. It was strange, mostly because she didn’t have many friends. What she did have was a single-minded focus on academics and grades. Her plan was simple: get as far ahead as she could in middle school so she’d be able to take as many high school AP classes as possible. Then, when she went to college, she’d compete for scholarships and have a bunch of credits already done. This meant Sarah’s life amounted to school during the day, homework in the afternoon, judo in the evening, and reading at night. It was the same thing day after day, afternoon after afternoon, evening after evening, and night after night. Sarah had never really thought about it in those terms before, or considered how nice it was just hanging out with other people.

  The vice principal walked in, closing the door behind him. “Well, hasn’t this been an interesting day?”

  Max and his friends thought better of offering an opinion, especially when a school official used the word “interesting.”

  “Okay then,” he continued, “I think I’ve been able to piece together what happened. Basically, none of you have been in trouble before.” Mr. Jackson stopped and looked at Dirk. “Well, not for anything more grievous than sneaking dice to school.”

  “I can’t help it,” Dirk responded. “That’s how I roll.”

  Sarah blurted out a laugh, covering her mouth with her hand.

  The vice principal, however, didn’t look amused. “So, you need to understand that we take any kind of assault situation very seriously. Now, from everything I’ve been told, it’s pretty obvious that Ricky was the aggressor, and then you responded in kind.”

  “More like reacted,” Max piped in. “There’s not a lot of time to think when a kid nicknamed the Kraken grabs you.”

  “I’d say she elected to use nonlethal force to protect herself from the threat of bodily harm, as clearly spelled out in the state statutes regarding this sort of thing,” Dirk added for good measure. That caused Mr. Jackson to do a double take.

  “Uh . . . okay, Dirk,” the vice principal managed to acknowledge. “Anyway, it’s Friday and we have the weekend ahead of us. I think it may be best if you three went home early. Would that be a problem?”

  “Problem? Are you kidding me?” Dirk was practically out of his chair and headed for the door.

  “What about you, Sarah?”

  Suddenly the thought of leaving seemed perfectly reasonable. “That would be fine. I just have choir and PE in the afternoon.”

  “Yeah, and I’m good, too,” Max noted.

  “Right now this is a safety issue, so I don’t want you going off thinking you’re getting rewarded for this. I just have things I need to do, so you three go home and have a nice weekend. We’ll probably call you into the office on Monday. Any questions?”

  “Max said Ricky was okay,” Sarah asked. “Is that right?”

  “So far everything checks out,” the vice principal answered. “But Sarah, I don’t know what you were thinking. I know your background, but you need to be more careful.”

  “It was like a fire drill,” Dirk said, zipping up his backpack. “Sarah stopped him, dropped him, and rolled him. Wow, that’s gotta be kind of embarrassing at the next wrestling practice. Hey, are those open to anyone to come and watch?”

  It takes forty-three muscles to frown, and the vice principal usually used all forty-three of them when dealing with Dirk. “Listen, you go home and stay away from Ricky Reynolds. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” Dirk said automatically. Dirk’s dad required him to use “sir” whenever he started to annoy an adult, so the words flowed easily from his mouth.

  Mr. Jackson gave everyone a final look and left, leaving the door cracked open behind him. It was a subtle statement, but it meant that the three of them were free to go.

  “I don’t even have to say it, but I’m going to,” Dirk exclaimed, waiting until the vice principal was well down the hall. “Best . . . day . . . ever! So we totally have to go to the Dragon’s Den on the way home.” He turned to Sarah. “You’re coming with us, right?”

  Max froze, wondering if he’d really heard right.

  The offer caught Sarah off guard. She knew she should probably just go home and get back to her routine, doing her best to forget the day had ever happened. But then again, her routine was already kind of messed up. And what’s the harm in hanging out with these guys a little longer? They’re actually kind of . . . fun.

  “Okay,” she said to everyone’s surprise. “Why not?”

  On Spell Casting

  OFTEN IT’S ASKED HOW ONE BECOMES a spell caster. The answer is much the same as “How does one wiggle one’s ears?” You’ve either got it in you or you don’t. Those who have “got it in them” have three choices: seek admittance to the Wizard’s Tower, apply to the unauthorized Guild of Magic, or seek a master of the dark magical arts (who will require you to wear a hood and leave the lights off in your room).

  Those admitted to the Tower may choose to study creative magic and become a wizard, or study destructive magic and become a mage. Wizards tend to be academic types whose idea of a heated confrontation is going to the blackboard and diagramming their arguments, while mages wear armor, fight with weapons, and battle one another for position and rank. Those who advance in their studies may earn the title of arch-wiz
ard and arch-mage respectively. One who attains the rank of both arch-wizard and arch-mage is known as a sorcerer, and is both heavily in debt with student loans and qualified to serve as regent of the Wizard’s Tower. There has been only one arch-sorcerer however—the World Sunderer himself, Maximilian Sporazo.

  Lastly, there are four types of practitioners within the darker arts: warlocks, conjurers, druids, and necromancers. Warlocks specialize in totems and magical items, conjurers summon various demonic creatures to do their bidding, druids are allergy-free outdoorsy types who focus on the energies of living things, and necromancers play with the energy of long-dead things and therefore have to wash their hands more often than the others.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHY UNICORNS LIKE TEXAS

  (THE MAGRUS—PRESENT)

  PRINCESS THOUGHT THE WIZARD’S TOWER WAS DRAFTY AND LACKED a woman’s touch. She lounged in an overstuffed chair and swirled a drink, but because unicorns have difficulty both lounging and swirling drinks, she’d taken her human form—something only unicorns and dragons could do, but unicorns did it better. The trip had been largely uneventful: a few pillagings and burnings, a scattering of shrieking frobbits, the occasional incineration of an uppity human lord, that sort of thing.

  As a human, Princess looked like a seventeen-year-old pouty teenager with blond hair that ran a bit past her shoulders, dark eyes, and a somewhat elongated face that carried just a hint of horse. The fact that Princess was, in truth, a real princess wasn’t lost on her—and she had mastered the “looking down my nose at you” demeanor to perfection. Sitting next to Princess, but at the proper, respectful distance, Magar looked his typically uncomfortable self. He tried not to make eye contact with Rezormoor Dreadbringer, who sat across from them in a high-backed chair—each arm of the chair was carved into the shape of a great mastiff. The sorcerer and regent of the Wizard’s Tower kept his face and head cleanly shaven. He wore a large belt cast in silver and inlaid with blue stones that glowed even in the daylight. And although his robe moved like soft cloth, Magar suspected it was magically enhanced to be as strong as steel. The large hood was stitched with gold that climbed around the edge to culminate in delicate flames at the top. In addition, two daggers (their blades black waves forged by no human hand) sat at the ready on each hip. Rezormoor was the epitome of a sorcerer—as adept at swordplay as at spell casting. And he was a master of both.