Trouble and Other Shortcomings (1)

The Unicorn
I never read that many stories involving magical creatures, but I figured usually if someone is going to meet some fantastic beast, say, a unicorn, there is something mystical involved. (No kidding.) For example, usually the person who is supposed to meet the unicorn is half mystical himself/herself. Say, half witch, half sorcerer, half wizard, full enchantress, or maybe a prince or princess whose grandmother twice-removed was some kind of fairy. If the person is not from the medieval ages, some ancestor was mystical, or maybe they were some kind of reincarnation of a person who was mystical. In all cases, the meeting of a unicorn takes place in some rural area where everything is green and the skies are filled with stars, as if unicorns are only capable of appearing in a place as pretty as they are. So it is natural to believe that if such things like unicorns actually do exist, if we ever have the misfortune of meeting one, we would assume it would not take place in a city where 24/7 car horns and trucks could be heard blaring outside the windows while trains blow their own horns and rampage under bridges and over railways and pigeons and swallows drop their treasures on targeted individuals walking below.

Well get real.

The apartment I lived in was about ten minutes away from the school campus; I lived there with one roommate, Anna, a blonde Russian girl who sympathized with my fear of Russian musicians from my parent's generation (they love their craft– a lot) with some friends in nearby apartment buildings within a one or two block radius. Anna and I both have the same first class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays: orgo I, short for organic chemistry I, which starts at 8:30, either because they could not help it, or because the professors hate us so much they want to get it over with sooner in the day, or because at 8:30 in the morning no one is awake enough to cause them any potential trouble. Whatever the reason is for their scheduling this horrid class at such an abominable hour, Anna and I have the issue of who gets to use the bathrooms first, and neither of us wanted to wake up earlier than we had to. I do not spend much time in the bathroom, so I got priority, but Anna likes to shower in there every morning instead of at night, so the deal was for me to wake up at the lovely hour of seven in the morning, finish my business, and browse the internet while Anna enjoys herself in there until 8:15, when Anna was to hop right out of there and get dressed if she has not already and we would walk to class together. Honestly, it is only because Anna is such a lovely person otherwise that I put up with this nonsense, but browsing the internet for about an hour before class starts does give me a sense of satisfaction in a strange way, so it was not a big problem.

Since I had to wake up earlier than Anna and I had that hour to kill, I usually gave myself the freedom of sleeping early the nights before, usually at around eleven, which is ridiculously early for a college student. This of course meant planning everything to end by eleven, so on Sunday I had planned to buy groceries, do a little window shopping, hurry back home by six, have dinner, start work at seven, giving myself a grand total of four hours to complete everything before I shower and go to bed. It was the middle of October at that time, but something happened to the weather and it was scorching hot and was supposed to continue being scorching hot for at the very least the next week or so, even though we were on the northeast coast and we definitely have four seasons in a year. I had this crazy idea of buying a fan (those traditional hand-held ones, not the electric ones, and feathered, since those are easier and cooler) and carrying it around campus so that in any room that is not air-conditioned I have the satisfaction of ventilating myself while everyone else sweats. It was only crazy because fans, paper or feathered, are apparently not too fashionable in the US–I had never seen anyone carry something so practical even on the hottest days of summer. Still, as a radical college student, I was not someone to be discouraged from a concept just because it was not popular.

In any case, the store I was planning to go to was a thirty minute-bus ride away. I had already arranged to eat dinner with someone at six so I had to be back a little earlier than that, and by the time I arrived at the store it was 5:20. Well, not all cities are like New York–the buses here do not necessarily come every ten minutes, nor do they always come on time, or come at all, for that matter. So I was planning on going in, getting something cheap, busting out of there and hopefully arriving at the bus stop in time to get home by six. I had called my friend to give myself a little bit of flexibility but considering all the work I had waiting in my room, I had to hurry. So pick, look at price tag, pay at the cashier, and I was out of there.

Apparently I should have noticed something wrong with the fan, because I was told it should have been glowing as soon as I touched it, and continued glowing all throughout. As it was in one of those white plastic bags that do not conceal the contents very well, I am very heartened to say that if it was glowing, no one on the bus saw it either. Nor did anyone in the restaurant notice when I met up with my friend, and when I got home to my apartment at around fifteen minutes past seven, I simply tossed it into the closet and set to work.

There are several things that really frustrate students. For example, if anything happens to our internet for more than thirty minutes, we can potentially go nuts. Usually this is also because we leave everything for the last minute and if we notice something had happened to our internet it is usually because we need it. I had a worse problem–we had a blackout, smack at 8:50 that night, and though my laptop had batteries, all lights were out and I was sitting there like an idiot in the darkness. In any other situation, it would have been intriguing to see the city suddenly completely dark–not even the traffic lights were on, and the only lights I could see were that of cars, moving along invisible streets and around invisible buildings, and all of the sudden stars were visible in the sky now–or at least, they were kind of visible, when they were not covered by clouds. The work I was doing was due on Thursday, so I had time, but the problem was I did not have a good block of time to work on any other day before Thursday, so I stomped around waiting for the blackout to be fixed, opening the door and calling on other classmates who were having the same problem. Anna, at the time, was at the library on campus, and I called her to ask if the school had been affected as well. It had. She was sitting in the dark being frustrated along with everyone else in the library. Well, it was better than being frustrated all alone.

Now was the time I noticed the fan glowing. It took a city-wide blackout for the glow to be perceptible at all–so it was definitely not my fault I had not seen it earlier. I approached the fan and stared at it for a moment contemplating what could cause it to glow. Then, I decided perhaps it was something outside, some light source lighting on it, perhaps, and in order to prove that to myself, I reached down and moved the fan, to see if it still glowed–as obviously, if it was just reflection, something else should be glowing instead. But no–the fan continued to glow, and when I picked it up I heard this bray.

It scared the living daylights out of me. I whirl around and...well, there was this unicorn.

Usually when we think of unicorns we think of white horses with some kind of spiral horn on its head. Elementary school girls like to draw unicorns with additional Pegasus wings on their backs. It was later on that I learned the traditional view of a unicorn is this semi-goat like creature with a billy goat beard, a horse's mane, and a lion's tail with a horn on its head that can neutralize poison . It goes around looking for virgins and sleeps on their laps. Then it gets caught and killed by men. Go figure.

In reality unicorns are...well they are not real in the sense that they are not tangible. They are spirits that take some general form of a sleek animal with four legs. They look like some kind of white fire, so that might be where the mane and beard came from, but they definitely have no fur and they definitely have no hooves, cloven or otherwise. As for the horn, that is the only thing that was clearly defined in their entire figure. That, and something resembling eyes. They come in all colors. This one was white.

" Hi." I said. It was dark and there was a unicorn in my room. Other than freak out, what else was I supposed to do?

The unicorn made a bleating noise and seemed to paw at the carpet. It was waiting for something. I looked at the fan, which was still glowing, and then I looked at the unicorn. I tried waving the fan at it. Well, despite not being solid, I did not manage to blow it away. It did, however, get very impatient and bleat in my face–naturally when someone sticks their nose into your face you would want to block it from actually colliding into you, so I did just that.

The lights flickered back on and the unicorn was gone in a blink of an eye. I did feel the nose–it was warm and very unnerving because I did not actually feel anything solid–just a sharp change in temperature from the normal mugginess of the room to a real, living warmth, the kind one gets only from feeling a solid object. Yet there was no solid object to be felt. Since the lights had turned on again, and the specter was gone, I thought I imagined the whole thing. The fan, by then, had stopped glowing as well, so like the well-conducted college student I was I went back to my homework.

Anna got home after I went to bed, so she waited until the next morning as we were walking to orgo to relate the 'adventure' of the blackout. The day started out as ordinary as every other day; I probably would have even forgotten about the unicorn if it just stayed that way.

" We were all in the clusters and all of the sudden, lights out. All of the computers just went dead and it was pitch black, because we were in the basement," Anna's hair was still dripping wet, so she tied it up into the ponytail to protect her tank top as we walked. " Then everyone started hooting and yelling. We couldn't leave the room because we couldn't see a thing. It was pretty whacked. Everyone took out their cell phones to light the way." Anna liked to talk a lot. She was not what one would call beautiful, but she looked very amiable and was the type of person that one grows more comfortable with as time passes. She is very animated, very energetic and extroverted, wiser than she appears but at the same time truly silly. Over all, very cheerful, and very pleasant to be around, even when she chatters endlessly about something relatively boring.
I was not really listening, since my own 'adventure' had been far more interesting, whether it was a hallucination or not. I was thinking it had been a little too real to be a mere hallucination, unless the stress of orgo and biochemistry really did dry my brains out.

We arrived in orgo; so far everything was normal, which was, in reality, bad enough. First of all, orgo is infamous enough for its lack of sense. Add that to our professor, who at first glance was a very reasonable, good-natured man in his forties that college students should love–if only. He must understand the pain of being a parent because while we get to drop two test scores out of four (not including the final), he is an experienced enough professor that he knows he is good and therefore does not give us that wonderful college boost of curving grades. This would not have been a problem, if his first test, reputedly the easiest, had a class average of a 72.

In college, especially one like mine, which is filled with either work-hard nerds or downright geniuses…that is not very good.

" Alright class," He called out to everyone so the room would quiet down, " I hope most of you know that there is a test this Friday, if not now you know," Actually he announced it last Monday, but there were still some people who did not know. Figures this is college. " We are going to cover all the way up to Fischer projections; everything on the last exam could potentially be on this exam." There are very few things college students hate more than cumulative exams. " Today we will wrap up on Fischer projections; on Wednesday we will be doing a review session, so if you want to miss out on the review session and sleep in you may, I won't take it personally," Laughter, since it was expected, " In any case, let's begin!"

Love how the professor does it with such flare. ' I will screw you over this Friday. Alright, here we go!'

" Study Wednesday at six?" One of my friends, Bill, an Indian guy whose real, legal name he refused to reveal, came up to me after lecture. " Your place?"

" Sure." I shrugged. I had planned on studying then anyway. It was the reason I did not have that block of time for the assignment I had been working on last night. " How about both Wednesday and Thursday?"

" Sure. But I don't have time on Thursday until after nine."

" We'll do most of our studying on Wednesday and Thursday's just review." I replied, thinking that it meant I only had two hours for collaborative studying. Which was alright; I planned on studying on my own as well.
See, I have a life. Even if it is a boring one, it is still hectic in its own way. I really did not need any more complications.

Halfway out of lecture someone called my cell phone. I picked it up. It was Andreas.

" Why didn't you wake me up?" He demanded. He was actually asking why I did not call him, as he was on campus while I was ten minutes away. " I slept through orgo!" Andreas seems to think that somehow I was responsible for him this way.

" Sorry." I replied absently. There was no reasoning with him. Good heavens, if I actually had to add waking Andreas at eight in the morning to the list of all the other things I have to do everyday…not happening.

" You were supposed to call me!"

" By that time," I had used this argument many times to no avail, " You would have been late."

" Better late than never! What did we go over? Is it on the test?"

" Yes."

He swore. " This is all your fault, Mimi!"

" Relax." I scowled, while Bill stood there silently laughing. Bill is very annoying, and he and Andreas did not get along. " I took notes. Besides, it's all posted on the website."

" Ugh!" Andreas continued to rant. " It's still better to actually be there!"

" Are you coming to biochem or not?" I asked. " I need to go there too." And I started walking, with Bill following me.

" I'm coming! I'm coming!"

" Well get going. I'll see you later."

" Gotta love Andy. He's just so...so funny." Bill said that twice more. " Why do you put up with him, Milan?"

" I don't know," I said dryly. Actually, I was more puzzled about why I put up with Bill. Bill was actually much more of a jerk. Andreas was just annoying, but Bill was actually mean, which, among college acquaintances, does not usually get much worse, " Same reason I put up with you, I suppose."

Bill was the type of person who likes abuse. The more I insult him the more he wants to hang out with me. It is an endless cycle, because the more he hangs out with me the more I feel like insulting him.

" I'll see you later?" Anna called to me; she had another class.

" Sure." I waved. " Wednesday and Thursday, study?" Since I realized Bill had asked me and not her.

" Yeah, that will do." She went over her week in her head for a moment. " Yep. Bye Mimi!"

" So wait," Bill started, with an expression of amusement to mask his dismay, " What have I ever done to you?"

" Nothing." I conceded, but added mentally, Only because you couldn't. When it came to matching wits, we were both New Yorkers and I instinctively knew which buttons to push, as could be seen just earlier. He was no match for me. " You've been the epitome of a gentleman." I added sarcastically.

Bill had no response to this (his wit could not catch up) and we were in front of the biochemistry classroom anyway, so the subject was dropped.
Still nothing strange about the day.

Andreas joined us two minutes before the professor started lecture. This professor is one of those bad professors that you wish you could hate. At least I do. For one thing, he stutters like mad, yet he really really tries. You can tell, because every lecture he tries something new to improve himself, but that stuttering and forgetfulness simply gets in the way. So in addition to our deceptively strict organic chemistry professor, I have to deal with this guy. If I wanted adventure I would be out of my mind–just following this guy would have taken God in his most punctual form, and said God would probably have written “ Thou shalt not stutter if thou art a college professor” into the eleventh commandment before this guy even finished his sentence. Do I need unicorns in my life? I do not need unicorns in my life.

I spent the entire lecture doodling, hoping that if I go back I would know where in the textbook to search for what I was supposed to learn that day; the textbooks usually cover twice the amount of material we needed to know and it is hard to search through to clarify the important topics. Just in case this was not clear enough the various times I mentioned before, I am a very busy person. Andreas snored next to me and half the class was doing something else, like I was. We were all relieved when class was over.

I had break after biochem, which I normally use as lunch, because Anna also has break during this time. Andreas and Bill both have class, so they went off, and I called Anna to ask her which of the cafeterias to meet.

She had a nasty cut on her finger.

" It was a chair." She explained, scowling deeply. " It was bleeding like crazy and it stung. Egh."

" Ouch." I remarked sympathetically, taking her hand. The wound sealed before our eyes.

We must have stared at her finger for a good three minutes in complete silence.

" Did I imagine that?" I asked her.

" No it actually happened." Anna confirmed. Then, " I didn't know you could do that."

" I can't."

" But you just did!"

After a few more exchanges of this nature I confessed to her what happened to me last night.

" Unicorns were said to heal, you know." Anna told me after a pause.

We later discovered that unicorns were not said to heal exactly, but they were symbols of purity and light, and no matter what ancient folklore had to say, apparently this unicorn transferred its powers to me, and one of them was healing.

" This sort of thing is impossible." I insisted. " It doesn't make any sense."

" Maybe we should look at that fan of yours?"

So we dropped lunch and hurried back to the apartment. I showed her the fan. There was nothing out of ordinary about the fan; it had feathers, it had a stick with which to hold, it does not smell or feel funny. It should be a perfectly normal fan.

" I got nothing for you." Anna told me. " But you just healed me. Did you feel anything at all?"

Of course not. I was too busy being dumbfounded at what I saw.

" You just defied all laws of science. Or, you're a mutant." Anna cocked an eyebrow. " That's pretty neat though, if this goes on. Maybe that unicorn will come back tonight."

" Sure." I said stupidly. Quite honestly I was not sure if I wanted to see another unicorn. I wanted life to be simple during college. No drama, except those of other people. No trouble I caused. This does not qualify as simple.

It was with sheer will that I managed to pay attention in the rest of my classes that day. I am sure most people would be thrilled to suddenly acquire the power to heal. I remember wishing unicorns were real, when I was young, and was more than ready to believe it if I ever saw one. Well, now that I am full-blown nineteen, and learning that doing one's best does not always lead to success, some administrations cheat their employees/students with a smile, and good news does not always end well, I was reluctant to believe having powers of any sort was necessarily a good thing. I will concede that there are worthy people out there, and Anna was one of them, because she whispered not a word of what freakishly happened that day to anyone. Nor did she mention anything about my sudden power to glow when we went to bed that night (the unicorn did not appear again), though she did complain (of course she would. I would too) and realized that I could cause things to glow (or turn invisible, but we did not figure that part out until morning.)

That did not mean that I was able to do it very well. I guess that ended up being the catch to all this.

" We can work on your control." Anna said that night, after I stopped trying to get everything to stop glowing. The lighting had not been very perceptible, or troublesome. Yet.

" How exactly are we supposed to do that?' I asked.

" Don't know. We'll figure something out." Anna replied. " It's pretty neat. Don't you agree?"

Of course I did. This kind of thing does not happen to just anyone.

" Mimi, the unicorn girl!"

" That's pushing it." I stopped her. " Go to sleep, you crazy Russian."

How we managed to fall asleep after a day like that is beyond me, but we managed, and that is what matters in the end.