The Boy Who Believed In Unicorns

A Curious conversation between a sister and her brother.

I entered his room that morning and was shocked by the changes that took place in one night. He threw all the posters with self-help quotes and the photographs of Tyler Josh, his favourite musician and replaced them with sketches and drawings of unicorns. I found this absurdly weird because the most heated arguments between Adam and Me revolved around unicorns. Adam was of the opinion that Unicorns were lame and nonexistent, I thought otherwise.

 

My mind was playing an episode of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" in itself and the 'contestant' was not in his room. I sat on his bed, waiting for him to come so that I can start shooting my questions at him like darts.

As soon as I got a little comfortable, I started hearing Adam's voice go, "Eve, where are you? Are you in there?" However, I didn't reply at first since I was busy trying to figure out the answers to my own questions. His voice grew louder with each passing second and the next I know, he was sitting on the bed beside me, wearing that same old pair of pajamas.

 

I was just about to speak but he interrupted me and said, "I know what you're thinking. I'll clear out the confusion."

 

He didn't let me utter anything else and started narrating a story while I sat there in confusion.

 

"So the other day, me and a couple of my friends from high school were strolling down the streets for a super boring project.

We had talk to 50 people and ask them to fill up a questionnaire each about the state of infrastructure in our city. I was keeping the fiftieth questionnaire in the folder when one of my friends, Abel, suggested that if everyone was hungry, we could all go and have some pizza. Since we were starving, Victor and I readily agreed and I called for a cab. But then I saw Able and Victor walking away from the taxi. I gestured them to ask what they were up to, to which Abel said they were going in the opposite direction. I wanted to ask them if I could tag along but decided against it when I saw them turn around and walk away. I had never felt more miserable and left out."

 

After narrating the story, Adam started smiling but it was more like a forced smile than a natural one. Being the ignorant person that I had been, I was still thinking about the unicorns on the wall.

 

"How is this story related to these unicorns?", I asked him.

"It was never supposed to be.", He replied, his smile now vanishing.

My curiosity was at its zenith now.

I shouted out of anger and regretted it the very next second, "HOW COME YOU STARTED BELIEVING IN UNICORNS? THEY ARE LAME AND DON'T EXIST, DO THEY?"

"Neither do I, yet every morning you talk to me as if these incidents have taken place in my life and not yours.", he replied calmly.

 

I had never felt more ashamed in the past seven years. It was seven years ago when my brother fell victim to a car accident and seven years later, I still wasn't used to it yet.