Waiting for Unicorns Read Online Free

are important!”
    â€œWell, if you don’t get all of your important things picked up before dinner, I’ll take care of them myself.”
    â€œYou mean throw them away.”
    She folded her arms across her chest, which was all the answer I needed. Mom was generally pretty understanding when it came to my collections. She had some herself, but when things started sprawling over into places they didn’t belong, she got rid of them.
    â€œTal, you don’t even need these things.” She picked up an old plastic Easter egg full of Scrabble tiles, and a broken compass. “Why are you saving these?”
    â€œThose are from the time I got bingo.” I nodded at the Scrabble tiles. “They’re lucky! I played every tile on one turn.”
    She rolled them around in the palm of her hand. “And what was the word?”
    â€œMoraine.”
    â€œMoraine?”
    â€œYeah. The stuff that’s left behind when a glacier melts.”
    She sighed, then dropped the tiles into my hand, like my answer had just given them meaning. “And the compass?”
    I shrugged. “It used to point north.”
    â€œBut Tal, it’s broken. The needle just spins.”
    â€œI know. But it used to work. And that counts for something, right?” She shook her head like she thought I was a little crazy and handed me the compass. Sometimes she just didn’t understand.

    After Mom died, Dad and I moved out of our house to a smaller apartment. There just wasn’t enough room to take everything with me, so I’d thrown a lot of my stuff away. I didn’t need it. It was just clutter, really. Things that reminded me of other things. And some of them I didn’t want to remember anymore. But I saved the Scrabble tiles and the compass.
    At the time, I remember being surprised by how easily my entire life fit into boxes, and now, as Dad unloaded one carton of our lives after another, that same feeling washed over me again. Our entire life had been reduced to a load small enough for one man to carry.
    My name was written across my boxes in permanent marker, and I picked one up, being careful to knock the snow from my boots before carrying it into the house. It felt nice, having my own familiar things back.
    Sura held the door for us as we traipsed in and out, making small talk with Dad. I knew she knew about Mom, though she never actually said anything. You can always tell when people are trying not to talk about something. Their voices are too bright and don’t match their words. But I’m glad she didn’t ask us how we were. People asked that all the time, expecting it to be an easy question to answer, but I never knew what to say, so I usually just kept quiet.
    While Dad and Sura chatted, I climbed up and down the stairs in this strange new place, each box held tight against my chest. When I had carried everything up to my room, I began peeling back the tape and opening them up.
    Clothes and blankets came first, followed by shoes and the red wool hat my neighbor had made for me. I pulled that hat on and tugged it down over my ears before digging back into the rest of the boxes.
    Books and photographs were next. There were photographs of school friends, of Dad and me at the state fair, him, me, and Mom standing in front of our old house. And there was one of Mom looking over her shoulder, laughing as she walked away from the camera. I picked up that picture, studying it.
    Everyone said I looked like her. I had her same wide-set eyes and turned-up nose, and I liked that. Our hair was the same, too—long and brown and straight. When I was little, I wore it short—bobbed at my chin. But it was long now, partly because Mom was the one who used to trim it for me, and partly because I wanted to look like her as much as I could. I wanted to hold onto her every time I looked in the mirror. But sometimes, when I saw my mom’s face looking back at me, I wondered what else