Made That Way (3 page)

I rock back and sit cross-legged in the dirt, staring at Kansas's feet and four black hooves at the end of four grey legs. I know I should stand up and move out of the way, but even if I could stand, this would mean I'd have to take a closer look at my new horse and I don't want to. I've seen enough. When he lunged at the driver I saw the patch of hair missing from his forehead. I heard his weird whinny. I know what I have here.

I can hear Electra, Hambone and Photon letting loose in the paddock, the air and ground vibrating with the impact of their hooves as they gallop from one end of the field to another. Braveheart is yelling from his stall and Dr. Cleveland is calling from the barn doorway. “Hey, Kansas, could you give me a hand getting him out of his shipping boots, he's a bit excited, I can usually manage him on his own, but—What's going on out here?”

CHAPTER THREE

Kansas insists on calling my mom, even though Dr. Cleveland says I'm probably just anxious. Of course I didn't mention about the headache, because we're all horsewomen, and horsewomen don't give in to pain, or even talk about it unless they absolutely have to. Maybe I am just anxious. But then I have a lot to be anxious about if I'm now the owner of a unicorn.

My mom can't leave work. She says she'll call my dad.

I hear his SUV pull up, skidding in the gravel, leaving ruts I'm sure. He and Kansas already don't get along all that well, and this isn't going to help. He doesn't close his door or remove the keys from the ignition, I can hear the warning chime all the way from the tack room where I'm sitting on a stool with an ice pack on the back of my neck (this was Kansas's idea).

“Are you okay, Peewee?” says Dad. He crouches in front of me and plops a hand on my shoulder. “Did you fall off your horse? I'll kill the bloody thing.”

“Dad, no, I'm fine. I just threw up. Dr. Cleveland thinks it's from anxiety.”

He stands up. “Anxiety? Your mom didn't say anything about that. I thought you'd been hurt. I left a meeting with . . . ”

For some strange reason my eyes are filling with tears, and before I can hide my face, Dad notices. “Oh, never mind,” he says, and puts a hand on my head. “As long as you're okay.”

Kansas steps in beside him. “I didn't think she should ride her bike home. She kind of fainted.”

“I didn't faint. And I don't want to go home yet.” I get to my feet, and stuff the ice pack back into the freezer compartment of the little fridge, which gives me some time to get my act back together. I don't know what came over me. I turn to face them. “I'm fine now. Really.”

Kansas is leaning against the door jamb. She's drying her arms on her t-shirt. She's been scrubbing water buckets and her sleeves are pushed up onto her shoulders. She has more muscles in her arms than I have in my legs. “You have lots of time to get to know your new pony,” she tells me. “It doesn't all have to happen today.” There's a smudge of dirt on her face and a clump of her hair has escaped from the broad blue elastic holding her pony tail. Instead of her usual paddock boots, she's wearing her work boots which I know have steel toes, this must have been in honour of the new horses arriving, and she's tucked her jeans haphazardly into the tops. The laces aren't tied, which kind of defeats the other safety precautions as far as I'm concerned, but what do I know? My dad, on the other hand, is wearing his good beige trousers and white dress shirt and gold and blue striped tie and there's not a wrinkle or crease or smudge anywhere. It's as though he has an invisible protective shield around himself, because I know I can't walk near the barn without attracting a layer of dirt.

“Come on, Munchkin, I'll take you home,” he says.

He holds out an arm for me. He wants to usher me to his car, and partly I want to go with him, I want to fold against him and be taken care of, but also I notice he's calling me Peewee and Munchkin again, and if it's time he stopped treating me like a child then maybe I have to stop acting like one. So I squint at him, and am just about to say something that Mom would probably call defiant, when Kansas says, “Why don't you take him to meet your pony,
Sylvia
?” She puts a nice stress on my name for me.

I take Dad's hand. Maybe if I'm holding on to him it won't be so bad looking at the unicorn. I lead him down the alleyway and Kansas tags along behind us.

Dad and I peer over the half-door into the darkness at the back of the stall where my new “pony” is trying to make himself invisible. Dad stands close so I can smell his aftershave. I warn him not to lean on the door or he'll get his shirt dirty. I have to stand on an upturned bucket because Kansas has asked me not to climb on the doors, she says it's bad for the hinges. I don't mind. Kansas and I both know this is temporary, and that once the growth hormone starts to work I'll be able to see over the doors like everyone else in the world who is more than six years old.

“Is he supposed to look like that?” says Dad.

“He'll be fine,” says Kansas, unconvincingly. “He's probably shell-shocked from the traveling. He'll likely settle in, but we need to give him a few days.”

I can tell that Kansas isn't happy, but I'm not going to tell her that I know what the problem is, and that it's not going to go away, because instead of a horse or even a pony, I have a unicorn. She won't notice for a while, what with the horn missing, and also because he's grey and not white like everyone thinks unicorns are supposed to be. But I know that in horses, if they're grey when they're younger, they gradually turn white. And it's probably the same with unicorns.

Dad extends his arm into the stall and twiddles his fingers, saying, “Hey horsey.”

Kansas reaches over top of me, grabs my dad's forearm and draws it out of the stall. When she lets go I see a mucky brown handprint on my dad's white shirtsleeve.

“There was an incident with the driver. The horse may not like men. We're not sure yet,” Kansas explains.

“An incident?” says Dad vaguely. He brushes at the dirt mark on his sleeve but it doesn't move.

“He bit the driver,” I say, trying to distract Dad from how Kansas wrecked his shirt. “He was like a pit bull.”

Probably this wasn't the right thing to say. Dad looks narrow-eyed at Kansas, who shrugs.

“This horse isn't safe,” says Dad.

Kansas blinks. “Of course he's not safe. He's an animal. If you want safe, ride a bicycle.”

Dad looks down at me. His eyes are pink around the edges.

“Dad, I'll be fine.” And to show him how confident I am, I cross my arms on the top of the stall door and rest my chin on the back of my wrists. I am feeling a bit better. While I was waiting for Dad to arrive, Dr. Cleveland gave me some diluted Gatorade in case I was dehydrated. Then Kansas made me eat some of her peanut butter and honey sandwich. Miraculously it stayed down. And pain is a thing of the mind.

But then Dad takes another look into the back of the stall and says, “What happened to his head?” And my heart stops.

Kansas says, “Some horses are born with big heads like that, they don't all have elegant little faces like Electra's.” She says it like she's trying to make a point about how this whole horse purchase thing was not a good idea.

“I mean the place on his forehead where he doesn't have any fur,” says Dad.

At least there isn't blood pouring out of it, like in my dream. I decide not to mention this.

“Oh that. Sorry, Sylvia,” says Kansas. “I shouldn't have said . . . anyway, it looks like he scraped himself in the trailer, that sort of thing happens all the time.” She doesn't say anything more for a while, then adds, “His eye is nice though, large and dark.”

It took her long enough to come up with something nice to say about him.

“And his ears are nice and large too,” Dad adds.

Kansas makes a kind of gargling sound.

“What's wrong with his coat?” I ask, because I actually like his ears and don't want to hear that there's something wrong with them, but on the other hand there's definitely something unusual about his coat. Kansas hums. She's probably trying to think of the least serious possible explanation so I don't worry. This is the sort of thing my parents do to me and I hate it, even today when I'm feeling weak in the knees. I want to know the truth. “I mean, here we are in August,” I say, “and it almost looks like he's still got his winter coat.”

Kansas sighs. “Well, it is a little coarse. Could be malnourished. Could be Cushings. Could be a bunch of things. Maybe he's part Shetland pony, who knows? How're you feeling?”

“Oh I'm fine,” I lie, because I know she's trying to change the subject. The headache has come back full blast but I am not going to let her treat me like a baby or an invalid like everyone else does.

Kansas tells us she's going to bring Electra in from the field and put her in the stall next to my horse to give him some company. She says that should help him settle in faster, because horses are herd animals.

I'm not so sure that unicorns are herd animals, but I suppose we'll find out soon enough. I watch him at the back of the stall, his head down, eyes half-closed. He doesn't look very happy. Maybe he has a headache too. I look up at my dad to see if he's noticed, but he's watching Kansas disappear up the driveway, the halter and lead rope slung over her back and a carrot sticking out of her bum pocket. Standing on the bucket, I'm about level with my dad's shoulder, and I watch him in profile. I think he's very handsome, even though he's old. I like the way his hair curls out over the back of his shirt collar. I like how I can see the pin prick spots where his beard is growing in despite the fact that he shaves every morning. I like the way he smells.

“Look,” says Dad, “I have a couple of calls to make. I'll be in the car. I'll put your bike in the back. You come out when you're finished and I'll drive you home.” He pats me on the bum and leaves.

Dr. Cleveland exits Braveheart's stall with an armload of shipping boots and the blue summer sheet the horse had been wearing to keep off the dust. Dr. Cleveland is glowing. At least someone is happy, but it makes everything worse, because this is how I should be feeling and no matter how hard I try, I can't.

She stops beside me and peers down into my horse's stall. “Oh,” she says.

“He needs some time to settle in,” I tell her.

For a long time she's quiet and then she says, “I always loved grays.”

She doesn't sound convinced. It's as though she can't understand if she always loved grays then why doesn't she like this one.

There's a long silence. Dr. Cleveland shifts her load of gear from one arm to the other. “You'd seen pictures of him, before you bought him?” she asks.

I know what she's getting at. If I didn't know she was totally distracted by having her own horse arrive, I'd be worried she thought I was plain stupid. I guess I have to make allowances for her, like I seem to have to make allowances for all adults, but it's very disappointing. “My grandpa bought him for me, from a friend of his in Saskatchewan. He wanted him to be a surprise.”

“Hmmm,” says Dr. Cleveland. “Does he have a name?”

Of course Grandpa had told me his name, but it had flown out of my head as soon as I saw him, because it clearly was not a name for a unicorn. “Brooklyn,” I say.

“Like the bridge,” says Dr. Cleveland.

My stomach turns over and I look at her in horror. “A bridge?”

“Brooklyn Bridge,” says Dr. Cleveland, heading off to the locker room, not noticing a thing.

CHAPTER FOUR

I'm dreaming, and I know I'm dreaming, but I'm exhausted from the previous day and don't have the energy to control where the dream goes. I hope nothing goes wrong or that if something does go badly I will have the energy to wake myself up. At first everything's fine. I'm cantering along a trail and we pop over a small drop jump. Then we're going a bit too fast, so I sit up like Kansas has told me to and slow the motion in my back. The horse responds by dropping to a walk and we mosey along, enjoying the countryside.

I know I'm dreaming because Kansas won't let me jump yet. When I have lessons on Electra we only do flatwork. Dressage is Kansas's passion. I don't mind doing it if it's going to make me a better jumper rider, but sometimes it does get boring, which is probably why I never bother to dream about it.

Suddenly the horse disappears, and I'm on my feet.

The unicorn is limping beside me. There's a scab on his forehead where his horn used to be. He says, “Did you hear what the driver said?
Not a bad little guy
?”

I scuff my feet in the dirt. Fortunately I'm wearing my paddock boots. Sometimes in the past I've been wearing ballet slippers, which are the sort of thing my cousin Taylor likes to wear because she is a dance-nut the same way I am a horse-nut. This footwear switching is only one way things can become very mixed up in my dreams. Apparently there are rules to lucid dreaming. Sometimes I break them accidentally and then crazy things happen. The main thing is that I'm not supposed to build bridges between worlds by mentioning the name of someone from the real world while I'm in the dream world. The last time I made a mistake, suddenly Taylor was with me in the dream, and the unicorn followed her in because unicorns used to be her spiritual protectors. She had pictures of them all over her bedroom. But this particular unicorn wasn't very nice, and he had very pointy teeth that scared Taylor out of her mind. Her life has been ruined by my error—she's had to remove all the unicorn decorations from her room and she's still looking for a new guardian for her soul.

I look around nervously, hoping that thinking about Taylor won't be enough of a bridge to draw her into the dream.

“I need to rest for a moment,” says the unicorn.

We are under a large tree. I take a seat on a curve of root and stare at my boots. I wish I could ask the unicorn why my new “horse” was named after a bridge, because it's really bothering me, but obviously I can't.

“I don't know about those drugs you're getting,” says the unicorn.

“The growth hormone? I need that for the Turner Syndrome or I won't grow.”

“What's so bad about being short? I have a good life and never grew over fifteen hands.”

“A good life? You're grumpy all the time.”

“I am not.”

“And Dr. Cleve…” I stop myself just in time. “My psychiatrist said it generally helped people psychologically to break the five-foot barrier.”

“Generally speaking. Not always. Not if it means you have a headache every day until your epiphyses close over.”

“My what?”

“You know. Until the growth plates have fused at the end of your long bones. Until you reach bone age fourteen.”

“I thought you said you didn't know anything about this? You said you reported on the general spiritual picture.”

“I've been reading up on it.”

“Oh right, now you're a unicorn that reads. I suppose you have high speed internet access back home in your mountain cave as well.”

“Sylvia . . . ,” he says, using that warning tone that adults are so fond of and drives me crazy.

I launch myself from the root. “Do not talk to me like that! Do not treat me like a child. I am so sick of this.” I glare at him and barely restrain myself from punching him in the nose. I decide to hurt him another way. “What happened to your horn?”

He turns away. I can see his face in profile, which makes the absence more obvious.

“And why can you call me by my name and I can't call you anything? Is that fair?” I can feel my frustration building. I know I'm going to cry and when that starts I'll wake up. I don't have much time left. “What kind of spiritual creature are you anyway?”

His head sweeps back slowly and he considers me with deep dark sad eyes.

“Flawed, just like the rest of you,” he says.

I throw my arms around his neck, hold him and sob.

Of course this wakes me up.

It's still early.

I ease myself out of bed, hoping not to give myself a headache right away. I part the curtains and look out the window for a while. I can tell it's going to be another hot day, there's not a cloud anywhere.

I can hear my parents chattering away to each other in the bathroom. I wonder how it is that they never seem to run out of things to talk about despite sleeping with each other all night and having lived with each other for a couple of decades.

I stand in front of my mirror. I sleep in a long t-shirt. My mom used to buy me nighties with frills and cutesy pictures on them, and I thought this was my only option until I met Kansas. I helped her fold her laundry once. All she ever sleeps in is t-shirts.

I roll my sleeves up over my shoulders and flex my biceps. A small bulge forms, about the size of half a golf ball. Kansas says not to worry, that doing barn chores and learning to ride will develop all sorts of muscles.

I turn sideways to the mirror and pull in my stomach and puff out my chest muscles.

That's when Mom peeks her head in the door. “Oh, you're up already, Pumpkin?” she says. And before I can answer she comes in, shuts the door behind her and sits on the edge of my bed. She has my injection in her hand but she's lost interest. “You know, Sweetie, there's no reason you can't wear a padded bra . . . until the medication starts working.”

“What?” I say. Then I look back to my reflection in the mirror. “Mom, no. I was checking my
muscles.
”

“No one would need to know,” says Mom. “Auntie Sally says the best place to go is that lingerie shop on Fifth Street.”

“You talked to Auntie Sally?” I am so mortified.

“She went there for Erika,” says Mom, as if this would make me feel better. Erika is ten.

She's relentless. I do what I have to do to get her off my case, though in a way it's too late already because my headache has come back. “I'll think about it,” I say. I sit on the bed beside her.

“Oh good,” she says. “Can you phone Grandpa before you go to the barn today and let him know everything worked out fine yesterday? We should have called him last night but we forgot.”

“Okay,” I say. I'd rather not get into a discussion with her about whether or not everything really worked out fine yesterday.

She waggles the injector in front of me. “I have your medication.”

“Mom, I have a headache.”

“Again?”

Finally she's heard me. Finally I have her complete attention. “Still. I always have a headache. Yesterday I threw up. It's from the growth hormone.”

“Now what makes you think that, Sweetie? They told us there should be no side effects. And didn't Dr. Cleveland say yesterday that she thought you were just anxious? She should know.”

I stare at my thigh and wonder if I can say that a unicorn in my dreams told me the headaches were from the medication. My mom would never buy it. I wouldn't buy it myself, except it makes such perfect sense.

I feel the sting on my thigh as she administers the dose. “I'm sure it's just all the excitement, Honey.”

“Mom, it's more than that.”

She cocks her head as though she's considering a new possibility, and for a brief moment I feel some hope, but then she launches into her usual sort of thing. She even has a different tone of voice, as though she's being interviewed by Oprah. “Well, you've never struck me as the type, but perhaps it's because I've been too close to you. Perhaps you do have an anxiety disorder . . . .” And her eyebrows pinch together as if she's mentally reviewing all the psychology textbooks she studied at university.

I groan. “Mom, no…”

“Oh you're right, I shouldn't have said
disorder,
”
she says. “That makes it sound terrible, that's why we try not to use labels, because they're pathologizing. And really, Sweetheart, anxiety is something that people can learn to manage. In fact I could teach you some terrific relaxation and visualization exercises. We can start tonight. It'll be fun! Now I've got to go, your dad's still here, he's in the shower.” She kisses my cheek. “I love you, Pumpkin. Have a great day. Don't worry, you'll be fine—I promise.”

I close my eyes. Why do adults have to be such morons? She
promises
? Obviously I'm on my own with this one. Tonight I'll do an in-depth search about growth hormone and side effects on Google. Google is usually reliable.

After I hear Mom's car clank off down the road, I throw on a sweater and drag myself to the kitchen. I phone Grandpa and he answers, breathing hard, on the eighth ring.

“Hi Grandpa. It's me, Sylvia.”

“Hey Pipsqueak. What's new with you?”

As usual I'm unsure whether Grandpa is kidding or showing more signs of senile dementia. “Brooklyn got here yesterday,” I tell him.

“Well how is he? Do you like him?”

“He bit the driver.”

Grandpa clears his throat. “What does . . . er . . . Dakota think of that?”

“You mean Kansas. She's not sure. She says I have to be careful around him and give him time to settle in.”

“That's good advice. Do you like him?”

“I think so.” It's not so much that I'm lying as that I'm being kind. Grandpa has been very generous and I don't want to hurt his feelings. “Grandpa, do you know what breed he is? Kansas was wondering if maybe he was part Shetland pony, because his coat is kind of long, and because he isn't as tall as we were expecting.”

“I don't know, Pipsqueak. I'll see if Travis knows, but he kept a lot of horses and now he's stuck in extended care. His son and I haven't been able to find all his records yet. He left things in an awful mess, not that I'm blaming him—how was he to know he was going to fall and break his hip? And who wants to be spending their precious time with paperwork? Life's too short for that. You need to be out there living it up enjoying things while you can. That's my advice to you, Pips.”

“Okay, Grandpa.” There's some crackling and buzzing down the line between us. I can't think of what else to say.

“Some of Travis's horses were imported from Europe,” says Grandpa. “I'll keep looking through his files, how's that?”

“Thanks, Grandpa.”

“And take your time,” says Grandpa. “You don't need to rush anything. Give the horse a chance. Give yourself a chance. Everything will be fine.”

“Erk,” I say.

“You okay, Pipsqueak?”

“I have a headache. I think it's from the growth hormone.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“I'm not scheduled to see the pediatrician for another two weeks. I could go see our family doctor, Dr. Destrie, but he would only say I have allergies. That's all he ever says, even when Stephanie had Chlamydia.” Stephanie is my cousin too. She's Taylor's older sister, and Erika is the youngest. Taylor has warned me about Dr. Destrie, though my mom thinks he's super.

Grandpa isn't saying anything. Maybe he doesn't know what Chlamydia is either; I had to look it up the first time Taylor told me about it.

“That's a bacteria,” I tell him.

“Of course it is,” says Grandpa. He clears his throat. “You know, Pipsqueak, what I said about living it up and enjoying life while you can . . . well, there are limits.”

“Okay,” I say uncertainly. I don't know where this is going all of a sudden.

“When I was young . . . .” He has to stop for a bout of coughing. I hope he isn't getting pneumonia. This is how my dad says most old people die.

“Grandpa, are you okay?”

“Oh hell,” he says. “What were we talking about? Never mind. And I shouldn't have said hell. What do I know? Let me know how it goes with the horse.”

“Okay, Grandpa. And thank you for sending him,” I say, but as usual Grandpa has hung up before I finish.

I turn around and Dad is watching me. His hair is wet from the shower. His eyes are kind of buggy. “You were telling Grandpa about Chlamydia?” he says.

He sounds so perplexed that I figure he doesn't know what it is either.

“It's a bacteria,” I tell him.

“I know that,” says Dad. “How do you know about it?”

He's making such a big deal of this. “Stephanie had it. Dr. Destrie thought she had an allergic reaction to fabric softener. It's an STD,” I tell him, because that's how Mom talks about these things—very matter of factly, preferably with acronyms. His Adam's apple bobbles up and down. I think it's time I changed the subject. “Dad, do you think I might have an anxiety disorder?”