Breadcrumbs Part 5

"Oh," said the witch, placing a long finger on her cheek. "This should be interesting."

Chapter Six.

Castoffs

Hazel walked in the front door of her house, trailing snow behind her. Her feet were soaked in their sneakers, and she was s.h.i.+vering underneath her thin s.h.i.+rt. She didn't really care.

Her mom was already at her desk in the living room doing work. She looked up as her daughter walked in.

"You don't have a jacket!" she exclaimed.

"I left it at school, remember?"

"Oh, Hazel." She shook her head. "You're s.h.i.+vering. Come in and get warm. Wasn't Jack home?"

Hazel looked at the ground. "He . . . he had Bobby and Tyler over." There. That was true.

"Oh," her mom said. It was an Oh with a question attached.

"Yeah," Hazel added quickly. "They were gonna go sledding and, you know"-she gestured to her jacketless body-"I don't have my stuff."

Her mother perked up. "Well, that was sensible of you, Haze. You're making good choices."

Hazel grimaced. In books a good choice is choosing to go fight the dragon. In Hazel's life, it's not going sledding because you left your boots at school.

And, of course, she hadn't made that choice at all. In real life you don't get to make choices. You're just not invited.

"Do you need the desk to do your homework?" her mother said, motioning in front of her.

"Um . . . " Even if she wanted to, Hazel could not do her homework because it was all still in her backpack in Mrs. Jacobs's room. It didn't matter. They were already going to send her to the school counselor. She was already a problem, she might as well start acting like it.

"No. I don't."

"Honey"-her mother tilted her head-"are you all right?"

Hazel shrugged. "Sure." She looked away so her mom wouldn't see the lie on her face, then excused herself and went into her room, closing the door behind her.

She lay down on the bed, moving her pile of stuffed animals aside. She reached over to grab one of them, but Jack's words rang in her head. Stop being such a baby. Her hand retracted, and she wrapped her arms around her chest and hugged herself.

There was a Nithling in her stomach, chomping away at everything around it. Tears filled her eyes, and she squeezed them away. She was not a baby. She was Hazel, and Jack was her best friend. Why would he act like that?

In the back of her mind she heard Adelaide's uncle's voice: Why? That's the question.

There was a reason. People don't just change like that. Jack wouldn't be mean to her. He just wasn't himself. He could have been in shock, still. She would be in shock, too, if she'd gotten gla.s.s in her eye. Maybe they'd given him some medication that made him weird. That happened all the time. Or maybe he was trying to keep her out of his house, like there was some kind of secret there, something bad, and he was trying to keep her safe, and he was sorry he had to do it like that but he had to keep her out for her own protection and that was the only way to do it. He'd explain tomorrow. He'd explain and apologize. She just had to wait.

Hazel woke up the next morning and the monster in her stomach immediately chomped down. Everything clenched up, and two moments later she remembered why.

She went to her window to find that ice had covered the world. The street in front of her glimmered menacingly. Huge icicles hung down from the rows of houses like spikes. The trees looked as if they had been mummified. Ice coated Hazel's window, and she wondered if the whole house was encased in it. They would open the front door only to find a foot-thick wall blocking them from everything beyond it. They'd peer at the world beyond but would only be able to see blurs and splotches, and soon they would forget what it was like to see things for what they were.

Hazel looked over at Jack's house. She didn't know what she was expecting to see, maybe a banner hanging from the window reading I'M SORRY, HAZEL. I DIDN'T MEAN IT.

That would have been the best thing.

But it wasn't there.

She left her room, feeling a little like she was crossing a moat-except the alligators were all inside her, snapping away.

She had breakfast, then her mom emerged from the bas.e.m.e.nt holding something puffy and purple. "I found your old jacket. Good thing I didn't give it away yet."

Hazel stared. The jacket shone. "I can't wear that."

"Why not? I know it's small. It was small last year."

"It's too . . . " Hazel shook her head. Babyish, she thought.

"You loved this two years ago," her mom said with a little smile. "I can't let you freeze to death, honey. It's just for the morning."

Soon Hazel was dressed in her third-grade jacket. It went down to her mid-waist, and her wrists stuck out. She looked like a puffy purple pauper. Her mom then produced a hot pink hat with purple stars embroidered on it and sparkly silver strands in the puff on top, and hot pink mittens to match. Hazel could only dress herself slowly in her own brightly hued humiliation. She tried to put on the glittery boots her mother gave her but couldn't get her feet into them.

She looked up at her mom. Her mom closed her eyes. "All right," she said. "I'll drive you."

Even the half of her that was desperate to see Jack at the bus stop, to hear his explanation, to get as quickly as possible to the moment when everything was all right again, did not want to do so dressed like a spastic eight-year-old's birthday hat.

"Thanks, Mom," she muttered.

Hazel had always felt invisible when she walked into school alone, and she thought that that was the worst way you could possibly feel. That was before she'd turned into a walking purple and pink glitter marshmallow. All she could do was keep her head down and count the steps to the school, while her mother watched out the car window, not understanding that freezing to death would be better than this.

Just in front of the entrance to the school, her sneakered foot landed on a patch of ice. Her back slammed against the ground. Hazel lay there as elementary school students gathered around her, and it seemed that not even the third graders were dressed as ridiculously as she was.

Hazel slowly picked herself up and headed into the school, her body now feeling as beat up as her heart. As soon as she crossed through the front door, she shed herself of the accoutrements of her absurdity, and had to fight the urge to dump them behind a wastebasket. Her sneakers were soaked from the snow. Her jeans were wet from the encounter with the ice. She felt like slush.

She walked through the hallways alone. She had done this before, but there was always the idea of Jack, a ghost of him that grinned as it accompanied her.

She wondered if people could hear the pounding of her heart, if the monstrous thrumming caused the kindergartners in their cla.s.sroom to look around wide-eyed with fear as she pa.s.sed, if the before-school-care kids in the music room unwittingly began to shake their maracas in time with it, if soon the very walls of the building would shake with it.

She went up to Jack's cla.s.sroom 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 cla.s.sroom, 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 pa.s.s 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 embarra.s.s Tyler in front of the whole cla.s.s. 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 c.o.c.ked 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 cla.s.s. 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 snickered, Jack was a whole thesaurus entry of glee, and Hazel could only let the waves batter her.