Waiting for Unicorns Read Free

math, there were enough bears for every person to have one. And some people could have two.
    The bears are always there, but they don’t wander into Churchill very much until bear season begins in October, when they come in off the tundra and wait at the edge of Hudson Bay for ice to form. Then they head out on the floes to hunt seals. I knew this because that’s what Churchill’s official website said about the matter, and I’d read as much as I could. Just to be certain I was prepared. Being prepared is sort of important, if you think about it. The more prepared you are for things, the less chance they have of surprising you. Or scaring you. Or breaking your heart.
    But no amount of preparation could have helped me feel ready for the actual sight of a real, live
nanuq.
Dad and I were on our way to the airport to pick up our boxes, snug in an old Suburban we’d found to handle the icy roads and snow, when a big white polar bear strolled lazily across the road, pausing to study us. Dad slowed down to a full stop. I tightened my fingers around the edges of my seat as my heart started jumping around in my chest.
    â€œTal, look at her! She’s beautiful.
Beautiful!
”
    Tall and almost lanky, she seemed cool and indifferent. She might as well have owned that road. Her face was long and narrow, and her eyes seemed very dark and tiny against all that white fur. She was impressive and
terrible,
that’s what she was. But Dad would have been disappointed if I didn’t look excited.
    â€œUh-huh. Beautiful,” I said, chewing on the ends of my hair.
    Until then, the closest I’d ever been to a polar bear was at the zoo in Massachusetts. I’d watched an old bear named Bjorn swim around his glass-walled enclosure, and I’d pressed my hands to the glass, measuring their size against the bear’s paws, surprised to find myself so small.
    As I sat beside Dad, and as that big white bear examined me from the other side of the windshield, I felt that same smallness and fear creep back in. I tried to ignore what I’d learned—that a polar bear can run up to twenty-five miles per hour—fast enough to catch our Suburban before we could really pick up any speed. Not that it would actually chase us down the road or anything. Still, Dad’s reassuring hand on my shoulder was nice, and the rifle stashed under the seat made me a tiny bit braver. That gun was one of the first things Dad had picked up once we arrived in Churchill, along with the Suburban. Even before we got groceries or anything. It was for emergencies. We were prepared.

    Our cardboard boxes were waiting for us, neatly stacked in the airport’s cargo terminal, and a bittersweet, homesick feeling rolled around in the pit of my stomach at the sight of them. Our handwriting was familiar, reminding me of their contents. But the boxes seemed out of place, as if they’d time-traveled—small, square packages full of home, way out here on the edge of the Arctic.
    Dad and I were quiet as we drove away from the airport. He must have been thinking about Mom, because at one point he reached over and tugged on my ear, like she used to do. It bugged me.
    â€œI’m all right you know,” I said, leaning my head back against the seat, out of his reach. He just nodded.
    Sometimes I thought I could fool him—thought I could pretend hard enough to convince both of us. Over the last few months, we’d grown so busy trying to convince each other that we were all right—that we were doing okay without her—that now there was this space the exact size of Mom standing between us. And no amount of pretending could fill it.
    There’d always been a kind of space between Dad and me, maybe because he was away so much. But now that Mom was gone, that space seemed like a dangerous thing. What if it got bigger? Losing Mom was bad enough. I didn’t want to lose my dad, too. I wasn’t even sure if he felt