There

Twice she had seen at the intersection of Carver and George on foot and heading into town. Nobody goes out there. A lot of old  and derelict houses backing onto a wood that Carver cuts through on its way out of town. A little rundown strip mall with its fair share of empty storefronts, a bodega, a tat parlor, a packie, and some other establishments with murky fly-blown plate windows. So where had she been? Why was she there at all?

Greg had been skateboarding down George on his way to Nat's house one Saturday afternoon when he saw her walking in her slow careless way across the road. 'Hey,' he called as he zoomed by to catch the green light. She looked up startled, smiled and waved.. A couple of days later, Christa called out the window to her as her mother drove her to the dentist. This time she wore a big floppy hat and sunglasses, almost disguised, but still recognizable.

Her circle of friends pressed her at lunch, but she brushed away their suggestions that she was looking for drugs or, and this was Melanie's barb, an abortion. 'Yeah, I'm just checking it out  in case you need it, Mel' she laughed. And then she started on one of her long meandering stories about, this time, an almost extinct deer discovered in the jungles of Vietnam just a few years ago called a 'saola.' 'Did you know they call it the Asian unicorn?'

'Come on, we're not in class now,' said Greg, 'you don't have to be the good little student anymore.'

'Yeah, who gives a damn about the deer there; it's the fighting that matters,' said Nat. 'There's a great video game about the war, full of ambushes and tunnels. I love it. I have relatives who were there, but I don't know exactly who. Probably happy to shoot the damn deer and chow down, better'n this slop,' as he tossed the school lunch.

'Anyway, unicorns are like My Little Pony, for little innocent virgins' sneered Christa, 'not for any of us.'

That was the thing about her. She joined in one whatever we did, in fact almost the life of the party, but instead of talking about herself, she told these stories about the weirdest things. She never snitched even when there was trouble; in fact, she was nice to be around when the others weren't there, which was not very often, but still when you got her alone, she always seemed to be thinking of something else.

Then, one day about a week later, she came into school waddling. She tried to hide it but anyone could see she was in pain there. 'Maybe I was right,' said Mel. 'Our little goodie goodie girl has been keeping something from us.'  But when we asked her who the lucky guy was, she only scoffed at the thought, and since she never complained, the girls started to get angry with her. After all, we'd all shared stories of our exploits; why should she hold back?

The next day, she was surreptitiously scratching herself there when she thought no one was looking, and still she wouldn't own up to anything, so Mel and Christa made a plan to get her to talk. After gym class, when the girls were showering, they snuck into the shower stall and snatched her towel. She called out and asked for it back, or for another, but they refused, only telling her to 'Come clean.'

Eventually, she came out and walked naked to her locker to put her clothes on wet, meanwhile keeping her back to the girls, which only infuriated them more. Christa stepped forward and pulled on her shoulder, demanding 'Look at us.'

She turned and looked them in the face, but their eyes went to where they thought they'd see signs of some medical procedure that would confirm their suspicions. Instead what they saw on the bare skin of her pubis was a tattoo of a horned animal in profile. It had two horns which almost looked like one, and the long muzzle with white (untattooed) patches along the nose and down the jaw, and a big bovine eye with white (untattooed) eyebrow looked out, mild but mysterious.

'What's that,' demanded the girls.

She took a piece of paper out of her backpack with a drawing. 'This is what the artist and I came up with from the photos, and it took about four hours to actually ink. It's a wild, shy animal and I figure over time it will disappear into the jungle. Listen to this that someone wrote: 'Put a saola, even a saola you cannot see, in a forest and the forest, as though it held a unicorn, acquires an energy that cannot be described.'

She stepped forward, took her towel from Christa's slack hand, and proceeded to dry herself and dress. Then she said, 'Let's keep it our secret.'