Waiting for Unicorns by Beth Hautala Page B

lost track of the number of songs he’d played today, spontaneously pulling his guitar around from where it hung across his back and bursting into song. But now as he began strumming, I recognized the melody as something Mom used to sing along to on the radio, and the force of it was so heavy and sudden I almost clapped my hands over my ears. If this song had come waltzing out of the speakers, I would have turned the radio off. Instead I took a deep breath and clenched my hands together in my lap. Though I didn’t really want to, I forced myself to listen as that song floated out into the crisp morning air.
    Surprisingly, it didn’t make my chest ache like I thought it would. This boy and his guitar were different. I might have even gone on listening and actually liking it, but he didn’t get very far into the song before a sudden
twang
interrupted him.
    â€œOh
man.
” He fingered the long string that dangled, broken, from the neck of his guitar. “I hate it when perfectly good things break, ya know?”
    â€œYeah.” I
did
know.
    â€œOh well.” He shrugged. “Sometimes broken things are better for other stuff.”
    Loosening the key, he unwound the broken string, took my hand, and wrapped it around my wrist, twisting and securing it into a bracelet. I stared at it for a minute before glancing up at him.
    â€œThanks, Simon.” I tried out his name, feeling self-conscious as I fingered the broken guitar string.
    He smiled and slung his guitar over his shoulder again, twisting it around till it hung across his back. Then Simon jumped down onto the wing of the plane, and waited, humming, while I scrambled down after him.

THAT FIRST WEEK without Dad dragged on, though the Guitar Boy and the Birdman made things seem a little less bleak. Long days never seem quite so long when there are interesting people in them, and my new friends were definitely interesting. Still, I needed to keep track of my days.
    Dad had taken his pocket calendar with him and I didn’t have one of my own. So instead, I made a paper chain, one loop of paper linked through another, and I strung it around the corners of my window alcove. I’d tear one loop off every day until he came back. That way I’d be able to count down the days until Dad returned, and I could forget how many he had been gone. I didn’t know the exact day Dad would be back, but he expected the ice to go out the first week in July. So I gave him till July seventh. That morning, June fifth, I tore the eighth loop from my chain, leaving, hopefully, only thirty-two loops until Dad came back.
    I should have been used to Dad being gone. He’d been away for a lot of my life. But I missed him. I missed the idea of him and all that that meant. Home. Mom. So when Sura invited Simon and his grandfather for dinner that eighth-loop night, at first I thought she was just trying to make me feel better. But as I watched the three of them around the table—Sura, Simon, and the Birdman—I realized they would have been here whether I was part of the mix or not.
    The Birdman had been coming to Churchill for years. Fifteen to be exact, and he and Sura had been friends for most of that time. Simon had started coming with his grandfather a couple years ago.
    â€œMom is big on real-life education,” Simon told me over a game of rummy later that evening. “I’m homeschooled, you know.”
    I looked up. “You’re homeschooled?”
    He nodded.
    This surprised me. The homeschooled kids I knew were super smart, but kinda quiet. Simon was smart, but he was the furthest thing from quiet I’d ever met.
    â€œYep, I’ve been at home since second grade. Anyway, Mom and Dad are always trying to make sure I get a lot of real-life learning. And real-life environmental and cultural science experiences are sorta hard to come by when you’re moving around a lot. My dad’s in the military.”
    Simon laid