Chapter One

My blood boiled. My heart tried to squeeze out between my ribs. My knuckles tightened on the branch until they were white as sheets. I wasn’t breathing. With narrowed eyes I watched Katilyn’s pet unicorn trot prissily around her backyard, her hot pink Mohawk bobbing stiffly in the humid air. Finally, I couldn’t stand the lack of air. I had to take a breath. It came out sounding like a vacuum. The unicorn turned her head in my general direction, though she had no way of seeing me. I was artfully concealed in the branches of our oak tree.

Zura thinks I’m jealous. I’m anything but jealous. I’m just insanely obsessed with proving that unicorns do not exist. Honestly, anyone can paint a carrot, stick it on a horse’s head, and call it a unicorn!

Only Kaitlyn would do something that extreme to gain popularity. Every afternoon hordes of kids can be seen clustering around her fence to get a closer look at Priscilla the unicorn. They’re lucky. They have to walk to get here. All I have to do is look out my window to see that girly abomination contaminating my precious soil.

Kaitlyn and I have been enemies since the moment we locked eyes. It must have been written in the stars. The cosmos must really enjoy playing cruel tricks on me, because not only are we neighbors, but we go to the same school and have six out of seven classes together.

She started it. I could have lived happily with Kaitlyn, but she takes pleasure in getting under my skin. Finally, I had to go on the offensive and fight the battle out to the end.

Something warm and leathery fluttered onto my shoulder and burrowed under my sweater. “Hi, Zura,” I said absentmindedly.

My pet bat popped her head out of my collar. “Your mom’s yelling at you to get inside. I tell you, you’re going to melt into this tree some day.”

“Sh. I’m spying.”

“Morgana, you’ve been spying on Kaitlyn since you were six years old! Can’t you forget about enemies and find yourself a friend?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t need friends. Too many loyalties…I prefer being independent.”

Zura snorted. “Well, you can independently conquer Kaitlyn. I don’t want to be involved in this.”

Don’t get Zura wrong—she’s a great kid. But she acts like my guardian angel all the time, ironic as it may seem for a bat to do that. We balance each other out in a way. We both have crazy ideas that the other can’t agree with and squashes so it can’t get out of control. Still, she’s my best friend. I wish Kaitlyn could just get a real pet.

But soon I found something better to do than fight Kaitlyn. It completely rearranged my world and made me believe that maybe unicorns are real. And it all started with a skirmish with Kaitlyn in our backyards.

Our neighborhood is generally quiet—a spot for reclusive piano players, retired spelling bee champs, paper boys, garden-obsessed widows, and eccentric people who talk to themselves and bake cats into tuna casseroles. But more about them later. This is about Kaitlyn. You see, we’re the only teenage girls in the neighborhood. And once you reach that age, you’re a magnet, whether you like it or not. It’s impossible for Kaitlyn and me to ditch each other. That’s why we spend most of our free time killing each other. It’s become an addiction.

As if that isn’t bad enough, Kaitlyn goes to my school. My school. Don’t forget it. And as long as I own Westminster Junior High, Kaitlyn had better watch where she sets her designer sneakers. If she sprays perfume where she’s not welcome, I’ll chase her down. Thankfully, Kaitlyn’s potency is diluted by the other kids there, and we don’t have as much contact—mental or physical.

No, at school, Kaitlyn and I are repelling magnets. She tends to attach herself to a dimwitted jock, twine her painted fingers in his dirty blond hair, and flirt, flirt, flirt. She’s memorized the dictionary of flirtations. Her personal library is probably full of those goofy teen-help books, like: How to Survive Getting Dumped and The Best Friend’s Handbook. It’s enough to make me gag. Honestly, that girl’s only purpose in life is to seduce handsome eighth-graders in her watermelon kisses.

It just so happens that Kaitlyn had gotten a new boyfriend when all this began. As far as I could tell, he was no different from the rest. Blond, squinty-eyed, dull as a broken light bulb.

Kaitlyn had her lips glued to his. She was like a lecherous vampire draining his life’s energy.

I set my books down on my desk and folded my hands angelically while secretly devising an evil plan to break them up. My eyes wandered to the jars of pickled specimens by the window. I carefully sidled out of my chair and meandered to the counter. I then pretended to be innocently curious about a bloated swamp frog with three legs, hovering in preservative fluid. A glance over my shoulder told me that Mr. Lemnos had not arrived yet. Into my pocket went the frog.

“Sit down!” Mr. Lemnos barked, hobbling into the classroom.

The poor guy got mauled by a Rottweiler. His right leg was all wrapped up in gauze and a stiff strap-on cast. Personally, I don’t blame the dog.

“This is unacceptable.” His rant continued. “I fear for you in high school. It’s already half-way into the school year, and you still behave like Kindergarteners.” His eyes bugged out in cruel disbelief. “My granddaughter’s unborn child could understand it: come into class quiet and prepared.”

“Ouch,” said Sammy Stills behind me. “Burn.”

Mr. Lemnos’s gaze cut the room like a serrated knife. “See me after class, Mr. Stills.” Then he lurched around to face the white board.

After his tediously-boring lecture on Carbon 14 (during which I had drawn vicious dogs in the margin of my notebook) we dispersed to our various lab stations to dissect…things. What they were was no longer discernable. Lucky, lucky me, I got to be next to Kaitlyn. I held up a pickled leech. “Hey, look, Kaitlyn; it’s you.”

She tossed her yellow hair. “Get a life.”

“I’ve already got one, thanks.”

She made a disgusted sound in the back of her throat. “You’re such a loser. You’ll never get a boyfriend.”

“Good. I don’t like gagging on other people’s tongues.”

“Just shut up.”

“Okay,” I said cheerfully.

Some of the cutesy girls in the glass were the very essence of squeamishness. While I delved enthusiastically into a frog’s bladder, they squealed pitifully, refusing even to look. What, you don’t want to spoil your nails? Is that it?

Five minutes till the end of class. Kaitlyn asked to go to the bathroom. I was at her desk the second she was gone. Unscrewing the cap of her water bottle, I quickly emptied the contents of the frog jar into it. Innocent as a baby I strolled back to my desk, unable to hold back my smile. These are the moments I live for.

Kaitlyn returned just as the bell rang for lunch. Predictably, she clung to her new boyfriend on the way to the lunch room. I didn’t want to miss anything, so I put off getting lunch until I saw the results I wanted. Inconspicuously seating myself at the table behind them, I watched and waited. I felt like a vampire-hunter. My eyes were glued to Kaitlyn. And then it happened.

“Dude, I’m so thirsty,” said her boyfriend. His voice alone decimated a patch of my brain cells.

Kaitlyn instantly offered him her water bottle.

I sighed happily.

His eyes flew open. He slammed the water bottle down, retched, and then there was a dead frog on Kaitlyn’s pizza.

“Ew!” she screamed, scrambling to her feet. Her face was horror-stricken.

The record player in my mind was humming, “…and I think to myself, what a wonderful world…”

Kaitlyn’s boyfriend was glaring at her. Deleting all the beeps, what he said went something like this, “What was that for? God, Kaitlyn, I never…you’re such a…forget it. We’re through.”

And frog-boy went to find a new girlfriend.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I know when to stop. The last thing I’d want to do was cross paths with a recently-dumped Kaitlyn. When she’s mad, her eyes start steaming, and her claws clench anything she can get her hands on. Any attempt to talk to her painfully fails. If she didn’t have so many creepy cronies, I would have gotten out of this mess unscathed.

However, one of her buddies spotted me pour the frog into her drink. I didn’t know this until I was assaulted by Kaitlyn in the hallway. BANG! I suddenly found myself pinned to a locker, gazing passively into her made-up mask of madness. She was a volcano waiting to explode, a raging, bubbling lake of magma. Lesson number one: don’t let her think she’s won.

I smiled stupidly at her like she was butterfly.

The cat struck. I stared outraged at her as my cheek stung bitterly. Did she just scratch me? There was no doubt about it. There were four painful streaks on the side of my face.

“You freak! You demon! You abomination!” I howled, writhing to get away from her.

“You ruined my life, you—(insert beep here)!”

I needed to get out of the lion’s cage. But it seemed hopeless. Kaitlyn was locked onto me now, punching, scratching, hissing. Down, kitty, down! Okay, Morgana, time to get into gear. Two can play this time. I retaliated sharply, otherwise known as sinking my fangs into her arm. She doesn’t taste that good.

“Ladies, stop!” the vice-principal yelled.

I returned home that day with two things—cream and bandages on my face and a yellow envelope for my parents.

I’ve told them once and I’ll tell them a thousand times that I only live with my mom. As for where my dad is, that’s like trying to use a satellite to locate God. I’ve never met him, but we have some old pictures in the basement of me and him when I was baby. He had black-brown hair, like me, and a mole on his upper lip. He also had a huge, perfect smile and white, perfect teeth. Mom doesn’t like to talk about him, which is very odd. Mom loves to gab, but she won’t say a word about him.

Dad sends us letters…or at least he tries to. I try to rush to the mailbox every morning before Mom gets there, but I sleep like a dead horse. Zura has to batter me with her wings to get me up. But that’s not the point. The point is that Dad is the most drop-dead awesome man in the history of the planet.

In the last letter I was able to grab, he was in the Himalayas hunting down the rare and elusive yeti. He traveled with a bunch of bald monks and ate nothing but hallucinogenic roots so he could visit the spirit world. And they get to ride on yaks! I want a yak!

But lately I’ve been sleeping harder and harder, and Mom gets the letters before I do. If I’m lucky, I can dig the charred remains out of the fireplace. Apparently he’s too much of a dreamer for her.

“She’s a fine one to talk,” I mused as I pushed open the gate.

The garden path is paved with tractor tires, more of which are scattered artistically around the yard. The bottle-tree rattled noisily as I walked by. I looked down at the envelope in my hands and felt a wave of rage. Stupid, stupid Kaitlyn. I vented out my anger on a rosy-cheeked garden gnome. “Uh-oh,” I said. “I hope Mom won’t notice.”

The thing’s porcelain face was smashed in. Now it kind of resembled Mr. Lemnos.

“Mom, I’m home!” I wailed, kicking the front door shut behind me.

Instantly I was blinded by a miniature Broadway light show. Shielding my eyes, I was able to make out a giant aluminum Christmas tree straining against the ceiling. Mom was on a stepstool tying flashing lights to it. Christmas tunes were blaring on the old record player she had rescued from the thrift store.

“Isn’t it a little early for Christmas?” I gasped, pointing to the word NOVEMBER on the calendar.

“I was trying to get into the holiday spirit a little early this year,” she said brightly.

“Like last year wasn’t extravagant enough?”

I shuddered as I remembered the fireworks, reindeer, and fake powder snow swamping the living room.

“Definitely not,” she snorted, not realizing I was being sarcastic. “This year I want the theme to be bubbles. Can’t you see it? Big, shiny Christmas bubbles all over the neighborhood!”

“Yeah, and maybe Dad can kidnap Santa.”

Silence. I blinked stupidly, realizing I had just made a huge mistake. Mom sighed heavily and lost her grip on a blinking glass reindeer. It shattered to the ground, making the silence even more painful. I couldn’t make eye contact. Instead, I threw the envelope on the counter and stormed up the stairs, wondering why, why, why couldn’t she just admit I had a father?

At that point, I wanted to smash the whole house with a sledgehammer. Every corner is covered with something either insanely modern or pathetically rustic. Mom raids everything from Target to the seediest downtown antique shops, hunting for treasures. She’s a stay-at-home inventor, that’s what. A crazy genius that spends all her time causing chemical reactions in the front yard. That’s when I close the curtains and lock myself in my room. Sometimes she just gets too creative. Honestly, do you know anyone else who blows up baby dolls and video tapes them in slow motion?

“Morgana! Morgana, come back!”

I ignored her.

I also ignored the KEEP OUT signs on my door, but I have a right to that. Throwing myself inside, I locked the door. Then I slumped to the floor, scowling. I let my eyes go out of focus. The carpet became a ketchup and mustard-colored blur. Had the frog episode been worth all this? Speaking of episodes, I was ready to get in bed and watch reruns of American Idol all night.

Zura was hanging from my curtain rod, asleep. My rowdiness must have woken her up, because she yawned, stretched her wings, and glided down to meet me on my bedspread. We stared at each other for a moment, two mismatched maidens in a demanding world. “What evil plan failed this time?” the bat asked.

“Oh, no, everything went perfectly. It’s the aftereffects that went totally wrong.” While talking, I grabbed a handful of darts from my nightstand and hurled them with passion at Kaitlyn’s school picture on my wall. “Die, frog-face.” That one stuck right between her eyes.

“A hundred points,” said Zura.

“That witch ambushed me.” Thunk. There’s one in her eye. “So I obviously fought back. And guess who gets in trouble?”

“You?”

“Correctomundo, my fine leathered friend. And I’m going to get back at Kaitlyn if it’s the last thing I do.”

Author's Note: Please don't comment on the fact that Morgana doesn't believe in unicorns, even though she has a talking pet bat. Her world is exactly like ours except for the fact that ordinary animals can talk.