Breadcrumbs

by Anne Ursu

  She went up to Jack’s classroom and peered through the window. He was there, just as he was supposed to be. She thought at him, as hard as she could. One moment. Two. Three.

  Four. Five.

  He did not turn around.

  Hazel shrank backward.

  She walked into her classroom, breathing ice. Someone mumbled, “Tyler, she’s got a pencil case, duck!” and someone else cackled.

  Hazel flinched. She’d forgotten that part. She crawled into her desk and began to fiddle with the backpack she’d left there the day before, while people whispered around her.

  And then Mrs. Jacobs was standing over her. “Good morning, Hazel,” she said, carefully articulating each word. And then she stopped and stood in silence. She said nothing else, nothing about the day before. An artificial smile spread across her face, and Hazel got the feeling she was supposed to congratulate the teacher on her generosity.

  Hazel looked down and got out her notebook, and Mrs. Jacobs turned away. The bell rang and the teacher began to talk, and Hazel’s brain identified her voice as background noise and moved it to the rear of her consciousness.

  Hazel looked out the window, wondering how many cars she would watch pass by until recess when she saw Jack again.

  What would he say to her? Would he try to explain? Or would he pretend it had never happened? Maybe he didn’t even remember, maybe he’d been in so much shock that he had amnesia. That would explain a lot. Hazel would understand. She’d never even tell him how he’d acted, she’d keep it secret for the rest of her days.

  Her eyes fell on the trees that lined the sidewalk. Ice had colonized them like alien goo. She wondered what they felt. Were they cold underneath all of that, chilled to the roots? Or did they feel safe now?

  “Hazel!” snapped Mrs. Jacobs. “What do I have to do to get you to pay attention? You’re supposed to be taking notes. Please get out a pencil. We’ll wait for you.”

  Snickers, whispers, and the hum of impatience from Mrs. Jacobs.

  “Psycho,” hissed Bobby.

  Hazel opened her desk. Her pencil box was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Jacobs cleared her throat.

  “I don’t have anything to write with,” Hazel mumbled. Her skin felt like it was burning from the force of the thirty pairs of eyes fixed on her.

  “I see,” said Mrs. Jacobs. Her mouth tightened, and Hazel heard all of the things she was not saying. “Would someone loan Hazel a pencil, please?”

  Hazel’s skin seared. One moment. Two. Then, next to her, Mikaela leaned over. “Here you go,” she said softly. She blinked and added, “I have highlighters, too, if you need them.”

  Hazel nodded, unable to speak.

  Then, a hiss from behind her. “I don’t know, Tyler, that looks pretty sharp!”

  “Yeah. Be careful, man. Girls with pencils are pretty fierce.”

  Hazel whirled around in her seat to find Tyler’s face had turned red and he was staring intently at the desk in front of him. And then she understood.

  Jack was mad at her for throwing her pencil case at Tyler. It made sense; since she’d come to Lovelace he’d had to negotiate things with them delicately so he didn’t hurt their feelings. Boys were very sensitive. And Jack did it, he did a really good job, he played with her at recess and sat with them on the bus. But then Hazel had to go and embarrass Tyler in front of the whole class. And that put Jack in a really bad position.

  The ice inside her melted away. This she could fix. She would apologize to Jack, and then everything would be okay again.

  Hazel pressed her legs together and tried not to fidget in her chair. She was going to have to survive until recess when she could see Jack. She would apologize, and then she would tell him to go off and play football with the boys, so then everyone would feel better, especially Hazel, because it feels good to apologize, it feels good to do the right thing. Hazel was making good choices!

  Hazel realized her fingers were beating a rapid rhythm on the desk. She covered the offending hand with her other one, took a deep breath, and forced herself to look at Mrs. Jacobs. The teacher had put images of what looked like crystal snowflake ornaments on the overhead projector.

  “Do you see that every single one of them has the same number of sides?” she was saying. “Six, right? This is called—”

  “Hexagonal symmetry!” The words burst out of Hazel’s mouth.

  Mrs. Jacobs blinked. “Very good, Hazel. ‘Hexagon,’ for ‘six-sided,’ and ‘symmetry,’ meaning the sides are exactly the same. A snowflake is mathematically perfect. In the media you’ll see drawings of snowflakes that are eight sided, but you’ll know that this is scientifically inaccurate.” She smiled at the class as if she had given them a great gift. “Now, these photographs of snowflakes were taken by a scientist named Wilson Bentley over a hundred years ago. They called him ‘Snowflake’ Bentley, and he was the one who discovered that no two snowflakes were alike.”

  Mrs. Jacobs began to yammer on about the formation of snowflakes—supercooled droplets, layers of atmosphere, blah blah—which was the same information Hazel had ignored from her mother three days ago. Hazel impatiently drew some snowflakes on her notebook. She was careful to make them eight sided.

  Finally, it was time for recess, and Hazel sprang out of her chair and gathered her things. Outside she darted over to the big slide to wait for Jack.

  Mr. Williams’s class emerged out the back door, and Hazel stood on her tiptoes scanning the faces. He wasn’t there, and wasn’t there, and then he was. Hazel’s heart sped up, and it was all she could do to keep from jumping and waving.

  Jack stopped and looked around. His eyes passed right over the big slide and Hazel and moved on, stopping at the edge of the fence. A grin spread across his face, and he ran toward the boys that congregated there.

  Hazel squeezed her eyes shut. Of course he wouldn’t come. It was only natural. He was still mad.

  She was not afraid. She marched right over to the boys who were huddled together laughing. She tapped Jack on the shoulder. He turned around and looked at her blankly.

  “Jack,” she said, straightening. “I’m sorry I threw a pencil box at Tyler. It put you in a bad position. I should have thought about you. I was a bad friend and I’m sorry.”

  There! Hazel smiled.

  Jack raised his eyebrows and looked at Tyler. “She threw a pencil box at you?”

  Tyler rolled his eyes. “Yup.”

  “Psy-cho,” Bobby muttered under his breath.

  Jack cocked his head at Hazel. “Why are you apologizing to me?”

  “Oh,” Hazel said. A tendril of something began to rise up in her stomach. “Right.” She turned to look at Tyler. “Tyler, I’m sorry I threw a pencil case at you.”

  Tyler wrinkled up his nose. “All right,” he said.

  Hazel looked back at Jack. The tendril was at her heart now.

  He shrugged at her. “Okay. Well, see ya, Hazel.”

  And then the boys ran off.

  Hazel spent the rest of the day encased in ice. She did not talk to anyone, as you would expect from someone encased in ice. She looked out of the window and understood, now, how the trees felt. Not chilled, not safe, just somehow disconnected from everything.

  Today was a bus day, and she took her seat early and glued her eyes out the window so she did not have to see Jack. She heard him, though, as he approached snickering with the other boys. There was a banging sound and the boys all laughed, and Jack’s laughter was the loudest of all. She kept her eyes where they were, but her foolish heart still sped up thinking he might choose today to sit next to her.

  He did not.

  Hazel bit down hard on her lip and watched the world go by.

  At school she was so good at looking out the window and tuning everything else out. She was a professional, she could teach a class. But not here. Here on the bus the raucous voices of the boys in back slapped against her like an angry sea. In the air around her, Jack laughed, Jack hooted, Jack cackled, Jack s
nickered, Jack was a whole thesaurus entry of glee, and Hazel could only let the waves batter her.

  She had had no idea before that day how long the bus ride was, how slowly the driver moved through the streets. Every stop was a lifetime. The brakes creaked.

  The stop sign on the side of the bus inched its way into place, struggling to push past the uncompromising air. The bus door opened with a hissing psst, like it was telling a secret. The first graders gathered their things, thing at a time, and stumbled by with their tiny little legs. Down the stairs. Out the door. In front of the bus. The blinkers ticked, perpetually. Onto the sidewalk. Psst, the door closed. The stop sign inched its way back, the bus trembled, then plodded down a block or two to do it all again.

  Finally, they got to their block, and with a creak, push, tick tick, psst, it was time for Hazel to get off. She gathered her things with the precision and care of a first grader, but it did not matter. Jack burst through the aisle as if he’d been shot from a cannon and was off the bus and down the sidewalk in a blink. The Revere twins followed. And Hazel picked up her backpack and headed home, alone.

  When Hazel walked in the house, her mom was sitting at the desk. She smiled when she saw her daughter. “Oh, honey, I just—”

  And Hazel started to cry.

  “What’s wrong? Hazel, sweetie—”

  Her mother’s face looked stricken, as if seeing her daughter this way was the worst thing that could possibly happen, and Hazel could do nothing but tell her the truth.

  “Jack isn’t talking to me,” she said.

  Mrs. Anderson led Hazel to the couch and sat down next to her. “What do you mean? Did you guys have a fight?”

  “No!” Hazel exclaimed, wiping her eyes. “He just stopped talking to me! He was mean.”

  “Oh, baby,” her mom said, her voice cracking a little. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Something’s wrong.” Hazel said. “He wouldn’t just do that. He’s my best friend.”

  “Oh, Hazel.” Her mother shook her head. “You know, this is so hard. It’s one of the really hard things about growing up. Sometimes your friends change.”

  “What?”

  “Well, sometimes when you get older you grow apart.”

  Hazel straightened and stared at her mother. “Overnight?”

  Mrs. Anderson shrugged. “Maybe. You guys have been two peas in a pod for so long. Maybe Jack decided he needs to have some friends who are boys. It’s natural for someone Jack’s age.”

  “But . . . ” Hazel said, “he has friends who are boys. He just likes me better.”

  Her mom gazed at her, lips pressed together, and Hazel could hear all the things she was not letting herself say. “Haze, dear,” she said finally, “Jack’s going through a lot, you know. It’s got to be so hard for him.”

  “Yeah, but . . .” But that’s why he needed her.

  “You just wait and see what happens. If he’s a true friend, he’ll come back.”

  “He is a true friend!” Hazel mentally stomped her foot.

  “Well, good.” She stroked Hazel’s shoulder. “And in the meantime you can make other friends. We’re going to the Briggses’ tomorrow, remember? You had fun with Adelaide, didn’t you?”

  Hazel felt the tears come again, and she put her head in her hands.

  “Oh, sweetie,” her mom said, hugging her. “This happens. I’m so sorry it happened to you.”

  And Hazel could see that she was sorry. She meant everything she said. But her mom didn’t know. She didn’t really know Jack. Jack was her best friend. He wasn’t going to leave her because he was going through a lot. And he was not going to grow out of her overnight like she was an old puffy purple jacket.

  It didn’t make any sense at all.

  Chapter Seven

  The Witch

  Once upon a time, there was a boy named Jack who lived in a small house on a place mat of a yard. He lived with his father, who held the whole house on his back, and his mother, whose eyes registered nothing when they looked at him. He was made of superheroes and castles and baseball, but sometimes he had trouble remembering that. One day the snow transformed the world around him into a different kind of place, and two days after that he got a piece of an enchanted mirror in his eye. The mirror went right to his heart. And then he changed.

  But Jack didn’t know anything was wrong. He felt suddenly wonderful, as if all the energies of the world were surging through him, as if he knew precisely what he was made of. He could barely get through the school day with his body crackling like it did. At the end of the day he bounded on the bus with his friends, brain and body abuzz with something like he had never felt before. And as he headed down the aisle, he felt the bus would not be able to go fast enough for him, no matter how hard it tried, and what he should have been doing was flying through the winter sky.

  Instead, he tripped on a third grader’s backpack.

  “Smooth!” yelled Tyler as Jack stumbled.

  “I meant to do that!” Jack yelled back. “And it was awesome!”

  The third grader eyed Jack warily and inched his backpack out of the path. Jack grinned at him and winked. No one had anything to fear from him.

  “What are we doing today?” Rico asked as the bus pulled out of the lot.

  “We gotta go sledding!” Jack said.

  Jack wasn’t going to be inside, not today. All he wanted to do was be in the snow. At recess they’d made snow forts and had snowball fights and Jack was a master—his fort was bigger and thicker than everyone else’s, and his snowballs seemed to have targeting computers on them. He got hit a lot, too, but he was a superhero and the snow just fueled his powers. He was the Snow Man, and he could be either hero or villain, Indomitable or Abominable. Both sides wanted him for his amazing powers—and neither wanted the other to have him. What would Jack choose?

  “Yeah,” said Tyler. “Bobby and Kai want to come. Kai’s got a new sled, supposed to be super fast.”

  “Not as fast as me!” Rico said.

  “Whatever,” said Jack. “I’ll beat any of you.”

  The boys agreed to meet at the sledding hill in an hour. Jack had to go home first because his father had made him promise he’d call right after school. Jack thought he was making a big deal about nothing. He barely remembered the accident. He had been at recess, he knew that much, and then something got in his eye. And then there was pain shooting from his eye to his chest. He remembered that part like you’d remember a story someone told to you once, like you might nod in sympathy but it wasn’t like it happened to you.

  He got to ride in an ambulance, though they didn’t turn the sirens on. And then he was in the emergency room and there were doctors and at some point the pain just stopped, though he didn’t remember if that was because they gave him something or not. And then he was home and the boys came over and it was like nothing had ever hurt him in his entire life or ever would.

  It had taken him about fifteen minutes to do his homework that night. He only did the math and ignored everything else. Because the math he suddenly understood instinctively, like a truth. Fractions were like baseball statistics, three hits out of ten is .300 or 3/10. It was perfect.

  Jack had trouble sitting still in school the next morning. He wanted to shout all the answers out, to explain to everyone what he now understood. But he didn’t even have the words for it; he could just see it: 1/4 is .25 is 25 out of 100.

  So Jack did problems in his head all day. A player who had 516 at-bats in a year would need 206 hits to bat .400. A catcher might have 100 fewer at bats, and would need 166 hits.

  After the school bus dropped him off, he ran home and fixed himself a peanut-butter sandwich. And then another one. As he was eating the second, his mom wandered in the kitchen.

  “You’re home.”

  He put his sandwich down. “Yeah.”

  “How’s your eye?”

  “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  Silence. Then: “Are you going out?”
r />   “Yeah. I’m going sledding.”

  “All right.”

  Jack looked sideways at his mother. Her pants were gross. Her hair was like a homeless person’s. Her eyes were dead. Something flared up inside him, and he exhaled and shook his head. He saw something pass over her face.

  “I gotta go,” he muttered. And ran out the door.

  He felt suddenly like he could not breathe, like the air no longer wanted anything to do with him. He went to the garage to get his sled. It looked beat up and flimsy. It was not good enough.

  Jack dragged his sled around the corner and down the ten long blocks to the good park. The sky was touched with purple now, and the snow shone brightly against the dark background. The air smelled of cold. Everything was quiet, the only sound the crunching of Jack’s boots and the soft drag of the sled. The noise he made assaulted his ears.

  There was no one at the hill when he got there. The park was silent. Jack dragged his sled up to the top of the steep hill. He wasn’t supposed to sled by himself, but no one was there to notice. And the trees in the wood behind the hill loomed so watchfully that it seemed he was not alone.

  He placed his sled on the top of the hill, sat down on it, and pushed himself off. Down, down the hill he went, buffered by the cool breeze. He leaned back and went faster and faster. The sled reached the bottom of the hill and flew several more feet before skidding out. It was not fast enough. Jack carried the sled back up the hill.

  This time he lay on his stomach, head first. He was absolutely not supposed to do it this way. But the trees wouldn’t tell. And he pushed himself off and felt as if he were really flying now.

  Still, it was not enough. He could not do it.

  He dragged the sled back up and was surprised to realize that it had started snowing. He stood and watched the flakes descend around him. They touched down gently on the dark trees in the wood, and Jack found himself taking a step closer. And another.

  The snowflakes landed on him like a blessing. Like they saw him and welcomed him. He could see them, too, every perfect symmetrical bit of them. They were icy assurances, proof that there was an order to things. You could crawl into the center of one and understand everything.