The Unwanted

Chapter One

“I’m sorry, what’d you say, Billy? What was that? I can’t hear you. Are you going to say it again? Are you? Are you?”

Billy couldn’t answer, of course, because she wouldn’t let up long enough for him to get a word out. I’d never seen Sarah behave like that before, and it frightened me more than a little bit to see her lose control so completely. I think she might have tried to kill him, but then suddenly, finally, Coach Brandt showed up and lifted Sarah off Billy—literally, she was airborne, and the coach’s whistle beaned her in the back of the head as he shouted, “What the hell is this shit?”

That got an ooh from the crowd—it was never a good sign when a teacher cussed. Someone helped Billy get up and led him away, probably to the nurse’s office. By the time I got to my feet, the crowd had broken up and it seemed like everyone had forgotten all this started because Billy punched me in the face.

Typical. Even when it started out being about me, it ended up being about someone else.

#

I left school early. While I didn’t exactly ask for permission to go home, I figured being ignored while I was bleeding was all the permission I needed. My car, as usual, was in the shop, and I’d ridden to school that day with Sarah, so I had to walk home. We didn’t live far away, but it still took me almost forty-five minutes. Maybe I should have waited to see what happened to Sarah, or to at least tell the principal (I’m sure that’s where Mr. Brandt took her) that Sarah was just defending me. Of course, that would look great, a girl defending a boy. I’d never hear the end of it. Neither would she, for different reasons.

The house was empty. No big surprise there: Dad never got home before me. When I checked my nose in the bathroom mirror, it was starting to swell up and look like someone had painted purple under my skin. I didn’t think it was broken, but no one had ever punched me in the face before, so what did I know?

At that moment, I knew three things. I didn’t want to explain my nose to my dad when he eventually got home. I probably needed to put ice on it. And I didn’t want to go to school tomorrow.

In the kitchen, I filled a towel with ice. As I tilted my head back and lifted the towel to my nose, a flash of white darted past the sliding glass door overlooking the backyard. Our yard was fenced, so no one should have been back there. By this point, thanks to the almost-daily antagonism from Billy, it was in my nature to see every unexpected or unexplained thing as a possible threat. It seemed foolish, but I grabbed a knife from the butcher block before I opened the door and peered out.

I was lucky I didn’t stab myself in the foot when I dropped the knife. A white horse, its head lowered to the ground as it searched for bits of grass to its liking, ambled slowly across the yard. When it heard the knife clatter, it looked up and stared right at me, blinked its glossy black eyes—

—and shook its wings.

I was glad no one was around to hear me, because I screamed like a girl. My first thought—well, my second thought, right after Oh my God there’s a horse with wings in our yard—was that Billy must have given me a concussion when he hit me and knocked me down. I looked away, shook my head, and blinked a couple times.

When I looked back, the horse was still there. It had folded up its wings and gone back to browsing the lawn.

“Richard, is that you?”

The voice, a woman’s, came from upstairs. It was followed by a clanking noise, like someone rattling pots and pans. I picked up the knife again and slid the door shut as quietly as possible.