Breadcrumbs Part 4

Everyone was streaming out of the school, and there was no going back for her backpack or her jacket, because she did not need to add missing the bus to her list of crimes. And she didn't particularly want to face anyone in the cla.s.s-never again, really. But certainly not now.

When you throw something at someone else, it's usually not a considered action. Hazel, really, had not thought things through. If Hazel had thought things through, she might have realized that elementary schools do not take kindly to students throwing things at other students, or to them stomping out of cla.s.s, or to completely disappearing in the middle of the day. She might have realized that these activities would result in an inevitable call to her mother, and that her mother, too, would not take kindly to the throwing, stomping, or disappearing, and that when Hazel snuck out of a back door of the building at the end of the day without her backpack, jacket, hat, or mittens and walked around the whole school to head to the buses, her mother would, inevitably, be there waiting for her.

"What were you thinking? Where were you? What happened?" All these words came sputtering out of her mother's mouth at once, but Hazel got the drift.

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? You're sorry? Do you know how worried I was? You just disappear like that? We looked everywhere for you!"

Hazel's heart sank. "I'm sorry," she said again.

Her mother shook her head and grabbed her phone. "I have to call Mr. Yee," she said. "To let him know you haven't been kidnapped. Princ.i.p.als don't really like it when fifth graders disappear in the middle of the day."

As Hazel's insides churned, her mom talked on the phone to the princ.i.p.al. She said "uh-huh" a lot and "I see" and "Yes, I'll take care of it," and Hazel got the distinct feeling that that "it" was she. Her mom hung up, and turning to Hazel, started to put it away.

"Wait. Can we call Jack?" The words burst out of Hazel's mouth.

"What?" This was not one of those whats that was asking What did you say? Or Could you delve deeper so I could better understand your meaning?

"He was hurt. Something hurt him. Something got in his eye. He was hurt really bad and they took him away and I don't know what happened because I didn't follow him and I threw a s...o...b..ll." Tears p.r.i.c.ked in Hazel's eyes.

Her mother's expression softened. "Oh. Is that what this is about?"

Hazel nodded.

"Oh, honey." Her mother sighed. "I'm sorry he got hurt. I really am. That must have been really hard. But . . . he got something in his eye. Is that really worth all this drama?"

Hazel's cheeks went red. It wasn't just that. She couldn't quite say what it was, though.

Her mom sighed and rubbed her forehead. "You're getting older now, and I think it's time to control your imagination a little bit. Because it causes you to act in ways that are not always appropriate. Like throwing things at people."

Hazel blushed. It wasn't like she would throw things at just anyone.

"You could have hurt Tyler, you know. And no matter how upset you are, that's just not okay, do you understand?"

Hazel shrugged. She heard Bobby's voice in her head and wondered why it was she who was not allowed to hurt anyone.

"You have to live in reality sometimes," her mother continued. "Even when it's not fun. And reality is that you go to Lovelace now. This is a different school, and you have to behave a certain way. The reality is that sometimes people we love get hurt and we can't just turn into the Incredible Hulk. "

Hazel looked at the floor. The Incredible Hulk batted .273 with a slugging percentage of .581. He was a disaster in the field, though.

Her mom shook her head and exhaled. The car was quiet, suddenly, and the air was scratchy and thick. "I know it's hard with your dad gone," she said finally. "It's hard for me, too. And I'm trying the best I can. But"-she turned to Hazel-"we need to work together. I can't do this alone. I can't come running to school because you're missing. I can't be getting emails from your teacher all the time about your behavior. Part of being grown up is acting the way you're supposed to act, even if you don't feel like it. Can you be grown up for me?"

Hazel understood. Being grown up meant doing what grown-ups wanted you to do. It meant sacrificing your imagination for rules. It meant sitting quietly in your desk chair while your best friend is helicoptered off for emergency eye surgery. It meant letting people say whatever they wanted to you.

But her mother seemed so tired, and so sad, and it wasn't like Hazel tried to make trouble. She wanted to do well in school and make friends and have her teachers like her and have her mom be happy and proud of her. She just didn't seem to know how.

"I'll try," she said quietly.

"Good," said her mom. "Now, Mr. Yee told me that some things are going to happen at school. You're going to meet with the counselor. We're going to go for evaluations."

"Mrs. Jacobs hates me."

"She doesn't hate you, Hazel. You have to see things from her perspective. She's got a big cla.s.s to manage. She's just trying to do her job, honey. You never know what someone else is going through, right?"

Hazel shrugged.

"Everyone just wants to help you," her mother said.

Hazel stared at the dashboard. Up until this year, n.o.body thought she needed help.

"It will be okay. You've been through a lot, and everyone needs help sometimes. That's all." She touched Hazel gently on the shoulder. "Now. Let's call over to Jack's and see what's going on."

So Hazel's mother called up Jack's home, while Hazel leaned in to listen. It is not an easy thing, to keep yourself from exploding. She could hear the drone of Jack's dad's voice from the receiver but couldn't make out any words. She tugged at her mom's coat and whispered, "Let me talk to Jack," once, and then again. Her mom nodded, and an eternity later she said, "Oh, all right then," and "I'll let her know," and "Thank you very much, Kevin," and then, "Is Jack available to talk?" and finally she stopped talking, and as Hazel reached for the phone, she hung up.

Hazel gaped at her mother.

"He couldn't talk," she said, starting the car. "He was busy."

"Busy? Busy doing what?"

"I don't know. But he's okay. He got gla.s.s in his eye."

"Gla.s.s?" Hazel imagined a shard of gla.s.s the size of a small knife sticking out of Jack's eye.

"Yeah. They can't imagine how it happened. There must have been some in the snow, and . . ." Her eyes traveled to Hazel and then snapped back. "But it wasn't very much, and they got it out."

"But . . . it really hurt him!"

"He's okay now, honey. That's what matters. It wasn't a big deal."

Hazel flushed. "It looked like a big deal!"

"I know. I know."

"Can we go over there?"

Her mother frowned. "I don't know. Mr. Campbell said he was busy."

"He's not too busy to see me." Hazel folded her arms and slumped in her seat. Jack was never "busy." He would never not want to talk to her. They were keeping something from her. Something was wrong.

Of course her mother had to stop at the grocery store on the way home, because it was completely grown up to be worried about how much cereal there was in the house instead of a boy with a gla.s.s knife in his eye. Hazel sat in the front seat while her mom spent a lifetime in the grocery store, barely resisting the urge to punch through the window. It would accomplish nothing but maybe get gla.s.s in her eye, but then at least she might know what Jack was going through.

Hazel burst out of the car when they got home and ran to Jack's front door before her mother could stop her. She still didn't have her jacket. She stood on the doorstep, afraid for a moment to knock, because something was up, something was wrong, because they wouldn't let her talk to him, because she'd let Jack be led off.

But whatever it was, Jack needed her. Now was not the time to stand on doorsteps, heart pounding; it was time to stride through the door and see what awaited on the other side.

So she rang the doorbell. Twice, because that was their signal.

Jack's mom opened the door.

"Oh," said Hazel, again. "Hi."

"h.e.l.lo," said Mrs. Campbell, who seemed like she might fall over with the effort of it. "Where's your jacket?"

Hazel blinked. "I'm . . . fine, Mrs. Campbell." She peered into the house. "Is Jack here?"

"Oh, sure," Mrs. Campbell said, smiling that half-smile she had now, a smile that existed because it was lacking something.

Footsteps, then-a herd of them, as if Jack's accident had caused him to duplicate. And at first Hazel thought he had, because three boys appeared in front of her where she had been expecting one. Hazel stared. Jack was fine, no eye patch, no shard of gla.s.s sticking out of his eye, no permanent disfigurement. Bobby and Tyler surrounded him like guards.

"Oh," Hazel said.

"Oh, hi, Hazel," said Bobby.

Tyler glared and made a show of rubbing the spot on his head where the pencil case had hit him.

Hazel ignored them. "I called you," she said to Jack. "To see how you were. Your dad said you were busy."

"Bobby and Tyler were coming over," Jack said, shrugging.

"I wanted to see how you were," she repeated. So the boys had come over after school to see how he was, and she, his best friend, had sat in the car at the grocery-store parking lot and did not punch through the window. "I'm sorry. But I tried calling and your dad said-"

"Yeah. I was busy."

"Are we going outside, or what?" Bobby asked the other boys. Jack started bouncing up and down on his feet.

Hazel blinked. "Um," she said, looking at Jack. "I think I figured out about the soul-sucker. Someone has to have a power, just like a blocking power. And at first that seems really useless, really small when you consider all the powers in the world. But then it turns out they're the only one who can stop this guy . . ."

Bobby snickered. Tyler snorted. And Jack ran a hand through his brown hair and shook his head.

"Oh, Hazel," he said, "stop being such a baby."

"Come on," said Bobby. "We gotta go!"

"Yeah, let's go," Jack said. "We'll go out the back." And with that they disappeared into the house, leaving Hazel standing in the front hall, alone.

Chapter Five.

The Mirror

Now, the world is more than it seems to be. You know this, of course, because you read stories. You understand that there is the surface and then there are all the things that glimmer and s.h.i.+ft underneath it. And you know that not everyone believes in those things, that there are people-a great many people-who believe the world cannot be any more than what they can see with their eyes.

But we know better.

So we are going to leave Hazel for a moment and step into the glimmering, s.h.i.+fting world. Because there is something there you need to see.

Or rather, someone.

We'll call him Mal, though that is not his real name. His real name has forty-seven syllables, and we have things to do.

Mal looks like nothing you know or can imagine, neither goblin nor troll nor imp nor demon. But neither the goblins nor the trolls nor the imps nor even the demons know what Mal is either. For Mal is not any one of those things, but all of them.

Mal is a goblin. He has green-brown skin, a froglike mouth, and sharp little teeth. Mal is a troll. He is seven feet tall and warty, has terrible breath, and a penchant for hanging out under bridges. Mal is an imp. He has small bat wings, a high-pitched screech of a laugh, and pointy little ears. Mal is a demon. And that means he is up to no good.

But we are not interested in Mal for who he is-and we'll be leaving him soon enough. We are interested in him for what he has done.

If you had encountered Mal just a few days before this story began, you would have found him in very good spirits. For Mal had just invented something delightful-or at least something that he found delightful, which is altogether a different prospect.

On the surface, it looked like an ordinary mirror. It was about the size of a tall man. It was oval shaped, like something you would find covered by a white sheet in an old haunted house. It had a thick frame carved with winged beings crawling and clamoring all over each other. The beings looked like angels at first. It was only when you got close enough that you could see that their faces were like skulls and their eyes were filled with menace.

There was nothing ordinary about that mirror. And if you were the perceptive sort-which of course you are-you would have known it immediately. But if you weren't, you might look in the mirror and think, I did not know that mole was so enormous or Why is my face festering? Or My goodness, I had no idea I was so evil looking. For the mirror took beautiful things and made them ugly, and it took ugly things and made them hideous.

It was most marvelous mischief indeed.

Mal took the mirror around, reflecting everything he could in it, delighting in the transformations he saw. A rose garden looked like piles of boiled spinach. A grove of trees became a charred wasteland. A sparkling lake turned into burbling oil.

And then he decided he would fly it up into the sky, right up to the heavens, to see the sparkling blue earth look like a mean shriveled-up thing.

So Mal took the mirror and flew into the sky. He flew up, up, up.

And something happened.

Something unexpected.

Something fateful.

Mal flew too high, and the mirror began to protest. The mirror creaked, then the mirror cracked.

It shattered into a hundred million pieces in Mal's hands. The pieces caught in the wind and landed all across the earth below. The beings of the hidden earth came out to watch.

And so did the witch.

She had come because of the snow. She could travel from one snowy world to another-to her it was all the same place. She liked heavy snowfalls the best, the kind that blankets the world in white quiet, the kind where the snowflakes are big enough to show their architecture, the kind that, if there is any magic to be had in the world, would make it come out.

She stayed in the woods where all the hidden creatures were, and the trees feared her. She moved through the shadows and kept her eye on the glimmering world outside. She felt the mirror shatter in the sky, she closed her eyes and saw its story spread back into the past, she fell with the tiny shards as they spread over the earth. Some fell to the ground. Some landed in trees, turning the bark black. And one, one landed in the eye of a boy, and she saw it as if she were right there.