Breadcrumbs

by Anne Ursu

  And, of course, as soon as she sat down she heard a voice hissing behind her.

  “Hazel, you’re late!” Tyler whispered, voice full of fake concern. “You know, you really should try to get to school on time.”

  She turned to glare at him. He and Bobby were both snickering. “You guys are big goons,” she hissed back.

  “Goons?” said Susan. Next to her, Molly laughed. The girls glanced at each other, and it seemed Hazel’s shocking uncoolness was the thing that would finally bring the two of them back together.

  Hazel looked at her desk. They’re stupid, Jack would say. They’re babies. Ignore them. Who cares what they think? In her head, she peered through the glass window of Mr. Williams’s class, Jack waggled his eyebrows, and she grinned.

  Mrs. Jacobs began to talk, and soon everyone was ignoring Hazel in favor of taking notes on prepositions or percentages, so Hazel turned her attention where it most felt at home—out the window, letting Mrs. Jacobs’s voice recede into the background with everything else.

  The windows to their classroom looked out onto the street, and across to some apartments and a big pet-

  grooming place. Her class at her old school looked out on a small patch of woods, and Hazel had always thought that there was something magical about them, that it was the sort of place she and Jack were supposed to go into together. They would bring breadcrumbs, and they would cross through the line of trees to see what awaited them.

  There was nothing magical at all about the things outside the window in Mrs. Jacobs’s room, but it was still more interesting than the things happening in it.

  And then, the drone of Mrs. Jacobs’s voice stopped midsentence—and who knows, maybe that sentence was You then move the decimal point two places, like so, or else Say it with me: aboard, above, about, across, around—and Hazel heard a sound like something deflating. It was a sound she was familiar with. She turned her head reluctantly to the front of the room.

  “Hazel Anderson,” said Mrs. Jacobs, who was the thing that had deflated, “would you sit still?”

  Somebody sniggered. From somewhere in the back of the room someone else sneered, “Yeah, Hazel,” which was not the greatest insult ever, but one thing Hazel had learned at her new school was when it comes to insults it’s the thought that counts.

  Mrs. Jacobs looked at her with weary eyes, and Hazel froze. She was still like the snow-covered morning. She did not even breathe, at least very much. She was going to listen, she was going to try, because she was not a little kid anymore, because it was her job to sit still and listen to the teacher and we all have to do our jobs in this world, even if we don’t like them very much.

  “That’s better, Hazel,” said Mrs. Jacobs.

  Another snigger.

  Hazel felt her cheeks burn. She just could not seem to do things right. It would be so much easier if Jack were in her class. At least then there would be one part of the room where she belonged.

  Her mother said it would be a good chance to make new friends. And she’d tried. The first day of school she’d gone right up to the other kids and started talking to them and they’d looked at her like she was offering to welcome them to the Lollipop Guild. She had not known until this year that she was different from everyone else. When they had drama, she was the only girl who volunteered for roles in the skits. When they had art, she was the only one who painted Hogwarts. When they did writing, she was the only one who made up stories about girls with magic swords and great destinies.

  She felt like she was from a different planet than her schoolmates, and maybe it was true. Hazel had been adopted when she was a baby. Her parents said they flew a long way to take her home with them because they loved her so much they would travel the galaxy to get her. They could have meant that literally.

  On Lovelace Parents’ Night, four weeks into the school year—which had been more than enough time for Hazel to realize that she was different—she’d walked into the classroom with her mother, and people looked. They looked from her to her mother and back to her. And Hazel, for the first time, saw what they saw. Her mother was white with blue eyes and light brown hair. Hazel had straight black hair, odd big brown eyes, and dark brown skin. People looked, and Hazel looked, too, and when she looked she realized that everyone else came in matching sets of one kind or another.

  Hazel stood there, un-matching, and she thought, Ah, this is it, I see now.

  But then Susan walked in with her parents. On Culture Day, Susan had stood before the class and wrote her Chinese name on the board and spoke of folding paper into birds and dragons dancing down the street. Hazel wondered at this girl who had not only a great variety of shoes, but culture, too. It was the sort of thing Hazel was supposed to have. Mrs. Jacobs had even asked her, the day before, if she would have anything to share for the class. But Hazel only had beat-up sneakers.

  Susan was from China, but, as Hazel learned that night, her parents were not. Susan did not match. Hazel stared at the girl and her pale, proud parents, stared so long that Susan noticed. The girl turned and stared back, quizzically, a little accusing and a little fearful, as if to ask, Is there something on my face or are you just a spaz?

  Hazel needed to explain, she needed to say something, because maybe Susan didn’t realize it, maybe Susan thought she was alone, too. This was the sort of thing she knew she was not supposed to do, that it was not quite appropriate, and yet she could not help herself. She walked over to Susan and grabbed her shoulder.

  “You’re like me,” Hazel whispered.

  Susan gave her a look that clearly said, I do not know what you think you are saying, but I am nothing like you.

  Hazel dropped her hand and slunk away.

  So it wasn’t that, either.

  She still didn’t know why she didn’t fit. And she’d given up trying to figure it out.

  Chapter Two

  Fairy Tales

  When it was finally time for recess, Hazel burst out of her seat and flew to her jacket, accidentally bumping into Mikaela with such force she sent a pink highlighter clattering down the hallway. Hazel ran past the doorway where Mrs. Jacobs stood, and out onto the white fields where Mr. Williams’s class already roamed in their winter puffiness.

  The snow had stopped coming down now. But the ground was thick with it, and half the fifth graders of Lovelace Elementary hurled themselves into it while the other half lifted their feet in and out of it warily, like they were treading on some hostile alien moon.

  And there was Jack, waiting for her by the big slide, as he almost always was. Every few days he’d go play capture the flag or football with Bobby and Tyler and the other boys to keep them from getting sulky. Hazel was okay with that. She’d sit and read. He’d always come back.

  “Hey,” he said, grinning as she ran to him. “Have you recovered from my devious snowball attack?”

  “Didn’t even feel it!” chirped Hazel. “Got to work on your arm strength!”

  “Not me,” said Jack, molding a snowball in his hands. “You’re pitching today.”

  He didn’t have to say anything else. Hazel took the snowball and moved back.

  Jack had moved in next door when she was six. She liked him right away because he replaced the girl who’d lived there before, a four-year-old who was always trying to convince Hazel to come to her tea parties, where no talking was allowed. Plus he was wearing an eye patch. Hazel’s six-year-old self was sorely disappointed when she found out that he didn’t actually need one, but she quickly learned it was the wearing one that really mattered. This was a secret truth about the world, one they both understood.

  Jack was the only person she knew with an imagination, at least a real one. The only tea parties he’d have were ones in Wonderland, or the Arctic, or in the darkest reaches of space. He was the only person who saw things for what they could be instead of just what they were. He saw what lived beyond the edges of the things your eyes took in. And though they eventually grew out of Wonderland Arctic space-people
tea parties, that essential thing remained the same. Hazel fit with Jack.

  Today they were playing superhero baseball, which was a variation Jack had invented on the theory that super-heroes, too, needed organized sports. The trick was they had to hide their superpowers, which is hard when you are so awesome at baseball.

  Hazel was pitching snowballs, trying to keep her fastball from breaking a hole in the space-time continuum, while Jack hit the ball and jogged stiffly around the bases, pretending he ran like a man who had not been bitten by a radioactive mosquito.

  “I got a new character for you,” Jack said, whiffing at a snowball with his stick.

  “You do?” Hazel let her arm fall to her side and took a step forward. “Can I see?” Jack was the best artist in the whole fifth grade. He’d been drawing ever since Hazel knew him, and for his birthday last year she’d gotten him this big fancy black sketchbook. He’d been using it to make up superheroes recently. Eventually he was going to make his own comic book. And Hazel was the only one who knew anything about it.

  “Naw. Not outside. I’ll show you on the bus. I was going to show you this morning, but you were too busy recovering from my snowball assault to get to the bus stop on time.”

  “Cool,” Hazel said. “Can you tell me anything?”

  “This one’s a bad guy,” Jack said. “They’re more fun, you know?”

  “What’s he do?”

  “I’ll tell you later! Come on, are you pitching or what?”

  “Sorry,” Hazel said, taking a step back. “I’m going to throw a superhero curve, now.”

  “Yeah, I gotta learn to hit the curve if I’m going to be a baseball player when I grow up.”

  This was new. “What about comic books?”

  “That, too. I can do both. You can’t play baseball forever. I’m going to hit nine hundred home runs and get into the Hall of Fame.”

  “Nine hundred home runs? Is that a lot?”

  Jack’s eyes widened. “Is that a lot? No one’s ever done that before. Not even guys who cheated! Or I could hit .400 a couple of times; that would do the trick. I’m going to be a great-hitting catcher like Joe Mauer.”

  Hazel just nodded and packed snowballs. She liked baseball, but Jack had the statistics of every player memorized, and that just was not good conversation in her opinion. Jack had even made imaginary stats for the superhero game. Batman, oddly, had a lot of strikeouts.

  Hazel wound up and pitched, and Jack smacked the snowball with the stick. It exploded into a jillion pieces. “Oops! Super strength!” Jack said, wiping the snow off his face.

  Hazel lobbed a snowball at him. “Superhero baseball turns evil!” she called.

  “Are you guys going out?”

  Hazel whirled around. Mikaela and Molly were standing just behind her.

  “Are you guys going out?” Molly repeated, her voice low and conspiratorial. She looked from Hazel to Jack, the snowballs to the stick, and raised her eyebrows.

  At Lovelace Elementary, boys and girls who were together were “going out.” At her old school they were just “going” or “going with,” but at that point it wasn’t something people actually did, just talked about a lot. Then it was okay for boys and girls to hang out together, but here none of the rest of the girls and boys did unless they were together, in which case they stood near each other, sometimes.

  Someone asked Hazel this every once in a while, and she thought sometimes she should say yes, and then everyone would think she was the sort of person someone might like to go with, and that would be something. But she didn’t want anyone to think it, not really. Jack was her best friend. And there was a time when everyone understood that, but they didn’t anymore, because apparently when you get to be a certain age you’re just supposed to wake up one morning and not want to be best friends with your best friend anymore, just because he’s a boy and you don’t have a messenger bag.

  Hazel cast a glance at Jack, who was looking at her questioningly, his superhero bat dangling at his side, and then she straightened and tossed her black hair.

  “Molly,” she said, “you’re a goon.”

  From the superhero batter’s box came the sound of Jack cracking up. Hazel smiled. The girls’ faces were identical masks of affront—because it was certainly bad enough to be called names when you were just innocently trying to be obnoxious, but far worse to be called something that, just an hour earlier, you had specifically established as dorky. They shook their heads, and then turned and walked away.

  Thwack.

  “Jack!” Hazel shouted, grabbing her shoulder where the snowball had hit.

  The bell rang. Jack and Hazel fell in next to each other as they moved their way back into school, just a little separate from everyone else.

  “So, you want to go sledding after school?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah!” said Hazel. “But you gotta show me your drawing first.”

  “Promise,” said Jack. “On the bus.”

  Hazel felt her heart lift. Jack usually sat in the back with the boys.

  It wasn’t until Hazel walked out of school and saw her mother’s car parked across the street that she remembered that she wasn’t going to be riding on the bus at all today. She had forgotten all about the plans her mother had made for her, had placed them in the box in her mind where things like Take out the trash and Do the dishes used to go, back when it was okay to forget about those things.

  “Jack, I forgot. Mom’s making me go with her somewhere. I can’t go sledding.”

  Jack frowned. “Bummer.”

  “Yeah,” Hazel said, eyeing him. He would never come out and say that he didn’t want to go home, but she knew. “Can we go tomorrow?”

  “Cool,” said Jack.

  They said good-bye, and Hazel grumbled her way to the car.

  “Hi, dear!” her mother said brightly. “How was your day?”

  Well, Tyler called her Crazy Hazy again and she was really late and Mrs. Jacobs wrote something in her book and people sniggered at her and you can’t say “goon” and Molly’s going to hate her now and she didn’t get to ride home on the bus with Jack to make it all okay and he wanted to go sledding with her so he didn’t have to go home and she’s abandoning him even though she’s his best friend and isn’t supposed to do that ever ever ever.

  “Okay,” Hazel said.

  Hazel could sense the familiar feeling of her mother’s eyes on her. She looked ahead impassively. “Well, you’ll have fun with Adelaide today,” her mother said.

  Hazel sighed. She used to play with Adelaide when they were little. There were pictures of the two of them splashing around the Linden Hills kiddie pool in matching arm floaties. But the Briggses left the country for four years, and when they came back neither girl wore floaties anymore. Adelaide liked making bead jewelry and putting nail polish on dolls. Hazel was into pirates. There was no compromise to be had.

  “I haven’t seen her in two years,” Hazel said.

  “Give her a chance, Hazel.”

  Hazel looked at the dashboard. Her mom didn’t understand. She was perfectly willing to give everyone and everything a chance. It’s just no one wanted to give her one.

  They drove over to the Briggses’ house slowly. The snow had stopped falling, but cars still inched carefully along the unplowed streets. Hazel’s mom drove their car like it was an emotionally unstable bear.

  The Briggses lived far from the blocks made up of rows of single-story houses plopped on top of place-mat yards where Hazel lived. There was nothing uneasy about the houses along this drive. They wore their second and third stories with assurance. No one had to dream up shutters and window boxes and trim, or porches and turrets and wide curving staircases. The snow covered the houses here, too—but where in Hazel’s neighborhood it let the ordinary borrow magic from it, these houses seemed to be lending their power to the snow.

  The Briggses lived on one of the lakes that lay in the heart of the city like a chain of jewels. There was an ice rink on it, compl
ete with hockey boards and lights and a warming house, and as Hazel peered out her car window she saw families in matched sets sailing around the rink. She must have been the only girl in all of Minneapolis who did not know how to skate.

  The Briggses’ house perched on top of a small hill across from the lake, its red brick glowing against the white snow. It looked the size of Hazel’s house and Jack’s and one or two more put together. It made Hazel’s look like a toy built from a cheap kit.

  “Ready?” asked her mother as they parked.

  “Sure,” said Hazel.

  The big dark-wood front door had an iron knocker on it, the kind you’d expect Dracula to have, and Hazel tried to reach up for it. Her mom rested a hand on her shoulder. “It’s just decoration,” she whispered, pressing the doorbell.

  And then Adelaide’s mother was opening the door, and she smiled at Hazel, and Hazel was struck by how easy a thing it seemed for her to do. “Hazel!” she said. “You’re all grown up! Come on in. Adie will be so happy to see you!”

  Hazel took a breath before she entered, because it seemed like the sort of thing you should do. Inside, the house was all color and brightness and matching sets, the kind that had furniture that was just for decoration. And the smell . . .

  “Elizabeth?” her mother asked. “Are you making . . . cookies?”

  “Not me,” Adelaide’s mom said. She led them into the kitchen where Adelaide sat at a table, tapping a pencil against a notebook.

  Hazel hadn’t seen Adelaide in two years. Her dark hair had curled up and now hung around her face in tantalizing sproings. She had magenta horn-rimmed glasses that were probably very cool, though Hazel was no arbiter of such things. The kitchen around her, which was as big as Hazel’s living room, looked like the sort of kitchen you see on TV, all matching and gleamy. Like Adelaide.

  “Hi,” Hazel said.

  “Hi!” Adelaide said, gleaming. “I was just doing math homework.” She motioned to the textbook in front of her. “I’ve got so much.”