Warped (Maurissa Guibord)

toward Alicia, so gaga all the time. It was embarrassing.
    "Alicia is three years older than me," her father replied. "Not that it's a big deal."
    Tessa blew on her tea and tapped her fingernails on the sides of the mug, making a ceramic clink that seemed loud in the quiet kitchen. She waited, staring at the amber-colored liquid. Then she said it:
    "She's nothing like Mom."
    It was a casual observation. That was all. And if she could have taken the words back ... well, she wouldn't. But the cold silence that followed in the Brody kitchen could have halted global warming. Tessa didn't look up. She knew the hurt her remark had caused; she could feel it too.
    "No. She's not like your mother," her father answered at last. "Nobody is." His voice sounded tired. As if he was saying something to humor her, something that was obvious and didn't need saying. And it made him sad.
    "Dad," Tessa began. "I--"
    Her father stood. "Hadn't you better get to school?" he said, putting his dishes in the sink. Tessa glanced up. His mouth was pressed into a tight, unforgiving line that said I don't want to talk about this anymore . The expression made Jackson Brody look older; it made him look like a tired, middle-aged man. And Tessa had to deal with the fact; she was the one who'd put it there. She got up and left.
    After school the bookstore was busy. Tessa's father stayed at the front counter with customers while she threw herself into cleaning a small stack of used books in the back. She dipped a rag into the pot of cleaning paste and rubbed hard. Gradually the black grime lifted away and a clean, fresh-looking cover of Wuthering Heights emerged. But the work didn't give her the usual feeling of satisfaction. She laid that book aside and went on to the next. Why did she have to make that stupid comment that morning? Way to be mature, Tessa .
    Getting up to stretch, she decided to forget about it. Later, she would apologize to her father. It would all be fixed.
    In the meantime, she would do some research. Tessa pulled all the books she could find that included unicorn folklore from the shelves. Maybe reading about unicorns would put her weird dreams to rest. Or at least put a better spin on them.
    By break time Tessa was settled in a back corner of the storeroom with her dinner, practically barricaded in by a stack of thick volumes that constantly threatened to topple over without an occasional steadying nudge from her sneaker. She selected one called the The Legend of the Unicorn .
    She skipped the prologue, took a bite of veggie wrap and read from chapter one. The earliest description of a unicorn was recorded there, by a historian from 400 B.C.
The unicorn has only one horn in the middle of its forehead. It is the only animal that ventures to attack the elephant; and so sharp is the nail of its foot that with one blow it can rip the belly of the beast .
    "Okay," Tessa murmured. "Maybe that's not what I needed to know." She skimmed ahead a few centuries. She had never realized unicorn lore was so extensive. The book said that in the Old Testament there were references to a unicorn called re'em in Hebrew. And in Japan the word for unicorn was kirin . It had a lion's face and a body covered with scales. The Persians even had a unicorn, known as a shadhahvar . Apparently the shadhahvar looked cute and gentle; it lulled the unsuspecting with lovely music it created by channeling wind through its hollow horn. Then it cut them to shreds.
    "How sweet," Tessa commented, closing the book. She picked up another that looked more promising: The Compendium of Fantasy and Folklore . At least this one had more pictures. An illustration on thick, glossy paper in the segment on unicorns looked more like what she'd always pictured them to be. A white horse, basically, with an elegant spiral horn. It was grazing in a moonlit meadow. It looked so peaceful, so pretty. "That's more like it," she murmured. But on the facing page another picture caught her eye. Interestingly, it was a picture of a tapestry entitled The Unicorn Hunt .
    In this one a wavy-haired maiden with a pouty mouth and vacant eyes sat in a clearing in the middle of a forest. A silvery unicorn knelt by her side. And it was wounded; a long spear hung from a gash in its side. Its anemic-looking head was nestled in the girl's lap. One of the girl's tiny hands was resting on the unicorn's head, as if she was petting its mane. The caption underneath read: Medieval legends tell of the unicorn