Breadcrumbs

by Anne Ursu

  When her lips touched his skin, he sucked in an involuntary, desperate breath and a weight slammed into his chest. His body seized up as a great shudder overtook him, and somewhere in his young mind he knew it was like death.

  And then in a blink everything at his center was at peace, and he could not remember if any of it had happened at all. It would have been a strange thing to happen. He smiled at the witch, who ran a cool hand across his cheek and gave him one more kiss.

  “Now you may have no more kisses,” the witch said, “or I’ll kiss you to death!”

  And they drove on. He felt the cold less and less, and everything else, too. He did not know if they were still in the forest or flying through the sky. They were both, somehow. He remembered, distantly, the life he had before this. It seemed a funny sort of thing, like a joke with a forgotten punch line.

  By the time they came to her palace, he felt nothing at all.

  Chapter Ten

  Slush

  Hazel spent the rest of the weekend glancing out the window, but she never saw any signs of life at Jack’s house. His mother always kept the shades drawn now, so Hazel could see nothing inside. She never heard his garage door open or the car go out. The house seemed as dark and closed up as Jack was.

  When Hazel woke up on Monday morning, dread slammed into her like a oncoming truck. She did not want to go to school. She considered pretending to be sick, but her mom would never buy it. Hazel could see the whole conversation play out in her head—I know it’s hard, honey, but sometimes we have to do hard things in life. Even if she were actually sick, her mother wouldn’t believe her. She could be seriously ill, she could be doubled over with an exploded appendix, and her mother would say that sometimes we have to do hard things in life and that she had to face Jack eventually anyway, so she might as well do it with an exploded appendix.

  At least Jack wasn’t in her class. What seemed a tragedy in the beginning of the year was now a blessing. She would just go through the rest of the year not talking to anyone. She could read during recess, that would be okay. She had a lot of books to read. It would just be like she was a leper, and leprosy really wasn’t so bad once you made it part of your routine.

  She couldn’t get out of school, but there was one thing she absolutely could not face this morning. So as soon as her mother entered the kitchen that morning, Hazel asked:

  “Mom? Will you drive me to school today?”

  “Why? . . . Oh.” Her face fell. “Honey, I just can’t. I’m so sorry, I have a call.” She squeezed Hazel’s shoulder. “I know it’s going to be hard, but you have to face Jack sometime. It might as well be today. And . . . you can sit with someone else on the bus! You can show him you don’t need him.”

  Hazel did not understand. Her mom kept going on and on about how this kind of thing happens all the time. But apparently it had never happened to her.

  “Okay. Thanks, Mom.”

  So Hazel lingered by the front door as long as she possibly could, then, after some nudging from her mother, trudged out to the bus stop. She kept her eyes straight ahead as she passed Jack’s house. A wraith struck her with its death-touched blade and the poison caused her heart to go cold. She could feel nothing, and above all she absolutely could not cry. She could not cry.

  It had gotten warmer overnight. The street was shiny and cars kicked up chunks of gray muck. The snow was half-slush, and what had been pristine and white was now slimy and depressing.

  She approached the bus stop with her eyes focused on the ground ahead of her, because footprints were very interesting and should be studied closely. But Jack wasn’t there. The Revere twins stood alone together, poking each other as usual. Hazel moved to the edge of the sidewalk and concentrated on the odd effects of her wraith-poisoned heart.

  Hazel waited for the crunch-slosh of Jack’s approach, marveling at the coldness at her center. And the bright yellow bus came around the corner, and Jack still had not come. She could not help looking down the street to see if his blue-clad form was running toward them, but there was no one there.

  “Where’s Tweedledum?” asked the bus driver as she walked on.

  “I don’t know,” she replied.

  Hazel went back and sat in her seat in the middle of the bus and got out her book.

  Maybe he didn’t want to see her, either.

  Having a cloud of venomous coldness where her heart used to be changed everything for Hazel. When she walked into Mrs. Jacobs’s class she surveyed her fellow students with impassive interest. Her eyes fell on Tyler and Bobby, and she did not blush and turn away or menace them with school supplies. She just eyed them coolly, as if they were nothing to her, as if their nothingness surprised and slightly repelled her.

  Bobby was smirking at her, she noted, and she deduced that it was a smirk of victory. And Tyler—Tyler had another expression on his face altogether. He was staring at her intently, his brown eyes wide, his eyebrows locked, his lips smooshed together. He looked like he was trying to decide something, and the process was a bit painful.

  Hazel cocked her head at him quizzically. He sighed, shook his head slightly, and turned back to Bobby.

  She had no trouble paying attention to Mrs. Jacobs that morning. Her eyes never wandered out the window to the slushy world beyond. Everything the teacher said seemed to make sense and be very relevant to the world around her—sentences needed to be diagrammed and fractions must be multiplied and the mysteries of the earth could be explained by an endless cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation. School was very easy, it turned out, if you just disconnected your heart.

  The clock ticked on dispassionately. When it was time for recess Hazel got up slowly and carefully put on her outdoor things and filed out in an orderly fashion with the rest of her class. She took up position in a discrete corner of the playground, which she calculated was the best place to observe the door without being seen.

  The big slide looked lonely, she noted.

  She watched Mr. Williams’s class file out of the school, looking for Jack’s form. She would see where he went, and then go the opposite direction. It was a good plan, the sort of plan you can make when you are thinking with your head and not your dissolved heart. That is the thing with curses—they seem like a bad thing at first, but then sometimes you realize you can’t live without them.

  And then the whole class was out, and Jack wasn’t there. How curious, Hazel thought. How odd. The facts, as Hazel had observed them, were that Jack was not on the bus, was not at his desk, and was not at recess. The logical conclusion was that Jack was not in school today.

  Hazel’s eyes traveled across the playground and landed on the crew of boys. They were already running around, pushing each other into the slush. All except one—Tyler was staring at the quiet doorway, just as she had been.

  His head turned slowly and his eyes met hers. He looked at her for three blinks, and then turned away.

  Curious.

  At lunch, Hazel sat in a corner, stirring her macaroni and cheese with her fork and studying the people around her. They had a tendency to congregate in pairs and groups. For instance, at the next table over from her sat Molly and Susan, whispering to each other and giggling. They were two, like Hazel and Jack used to be. At the other end of the table was a trio of fourth-grade girls—one in orange, one in green, one in yellow, like the vegetable medley on their trays. They were three, and Hazel wondered what would happen if a big hand came and plucked one of them away. Would the other two be able to go on as before, nodding every once in a while to the ghost of the third, or would the sudden change in gravity cause the other two to just float away?

  “Hazel?”

  Hazel turned around. Mikaela was standing behind her, holding her tray. Her Jell-O cubes quivered uncertainly.

  “Yes?” Hazel responded, in the way that you do.

  “Um”—Mikaela looked around—“Jack’s not here today?”

  Ah. Mikaela had not taken the time to observe the facts. T
his is the sort of thing that leads to stupid questions. “No, he’s not.”

  She frowned. “I didn’t think so. Is he okay?”

  Hazel frowned back. “I really don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have the information.”

  “Oh,” said Mikaela. “Because it seemed like he really got hurt on Friday.”

  “It did,” agreed Hazel.

  “Well, um, I hope he’s okay.”

  Hazel blinked. It occurred to her that Mikaela was being nice to her. She did not know how to react, for when your heart has been poisoned and someone picks a dandelion for you—because it is bright and yellow and you seem like you could use something like that—all you can do is contemplate the funny ways of weeds.

  Mikaela glanced at the empty seat next to Hazel, then at Hazel. The Jell-O jiggled. “Can I sit with you?”

  “Oh. Sure.”

  Mikaela put her tray down and settled in next to her. She did not stick green beans in her nose as Jack would have done, but Hazel did not really expect her to.

  “I guess they’re friends again,” she said, pointing to Molly and Susan.

  “That’s what the facts seem to indicate,” Hazel said.

  Mikaela blinked at her, and then looked back at the other table. “It’s hard to keep track sometimes.”

  Hazel nodded, as if she knew what the girl meant.

  Mikaela asked a few more questions about Jack and Hazel responded, as people do. There was a boyish yelping from a few tables away, and Mikaela’s eyes darted over there and then back. Hazel’s eyes followed. Mikaela saw and leaned into Hazel.

  “You know Bobby’s a jerk, right?”

  She looked like she wanted an answer, and so Hazel nodded. She did know. The facts indicated that, too.

  “You shouldn’t listen to him. I mean, what he said yesterday. You know.”

  Hazel knew.

  “It’s funny. We used to play all the time together, like in kindergarten and stuff.”

  “Oh,” said Hazel. “What happened?”

  Mikaela tilted her head for a moment and then shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

  Just then Susan’s voice called Mikaela’s name from the next table. Hazel watched as Mikaela looked up.

  Susan beckoned. “Come eat with us!”

  Mikaela blinked at her and looked at Hazel.

  “It’s okay,” said Hazel. “I was just about finished.”

  “Okay. ’Bye, Hazel.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Mikaela got up and moved over to join Susan and Molly. The two became three, and Hazel carefully studied the shift in gravity.

  When she got back to her classroom, Mrs. Jacobs stopped her. “The counselor’s office sent up a note,” she said. “You have an appointment tomorrow morning, during recess.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Hazel.

  Mrs. Jacobs regarded her. “You’re very welcome, Hazel.”

  They had art class that afternoon. The walls of the room were lined with galleries from each grade, and on the fifth-grade wall two of Jack’s pieces were at the very top. At one time, this had made Hazel very proud.

  Their art teacher was named Ms. Blum, though in her head Hazel had always called her Mrs. Which, because she wore weird baggy clothes and seemed like the sort of person who might tesser in some dark and stormy night. It seemed now an odd thing to think.

  Ms. Blum was introducing their new project, speaking, as she always did, with grand hand gestures that Hazel used to find dramatic but now made her fear for the jars of paint.

  “I’ve noticed,” said Ms. Blum, her hands in the air, “that we’ve all been spending time making art about things we know. But you don’t have to just make a picture of something you know, something real. So for our next project I want you to show me a place that isn’t real, something you make up.”

  Hazel frowned along with the rest of the class.

  One of the girls raised her hand. “Like . . . pretend?”

  “Yes,” said Ms. Blum. “This is what artists do all the time. They, like, pretend. They don’t have to just show the world as it is. You can use art to express something. . . . Think of an emotion or an idea and make a place that evokes that idea.”

  Hazel stared at the paint-splotted table in front of her. There was a time when she would have loved this assignment, when she had a thousand made-up places at her fingertips just waiting for someone to ask to see them. But now she could think of nothing. There were so many real places in the world, and they had so much weight to them. There were front hallways and bus stops and the space on the other side of classroom doors. There were lonely big slides and microscopically out of line desks and lunch tables that survived gravity shifts. How could anyone ever make something up?

  She moved to the supply table with the rest of the class, able to see nothing but the world as it was.

  She took a piece of plain white paper and stared at it. It was an empty, inhospitable thing. Hazel exhaled. And then she remembered Jack’s sketch.

  Hazel drew a tiny fort in the middle of the page—an austere palace framed by four tall turrets. In Hazel’s hands they looked a little like deformed lollipops. Then she drew a long line coming out from either side of the palace, stretching out across the landscape of the paper.

  Hazel felt the presence of the teacher behind her.

  “That’s your sketch?” Ms. Blum asked.

  Hazel nodded. The thing with not being able to draw very well is you didn’t have to spend any time at it.

  “What colors are you going to use?” Ms. Blum motioned to the paint wall.

  “Just white,” said Hazel.

  The teacher stared at the drawing, and then gave Hazel a searching look.

  “This is different for you,” she said.

  “It’s a fort,” Hazel explained. “No one can ever find you there.”

  “That’s very interesting, Hazel,” the teacher finally said.

  “Thank you, Ms. Blum,” said Hazel.

  A second-grade girl sat next to Hazel on the bus and started showing her her sticker collection. The boys were already in the back, but there was no Jack there, either. Hazel wondered what had happened to him. Maybe Jack was pretending to be sick. But that wasn’t logical—it wasn’t like Jack was upset. He was completely happy to be a total jerk.

  Maybe his father had kept him home for the day, just to be safe. His father worried a lot more, now.

  It was possible that he was actually sick. Maybe he got hurt worse than anyone knew. And no one was telling her. She had no information at all. He could be in the hospital hooked up to tubes and beeping things with people in scrubs standing over him whispering dramatically and scribbling on clipboards, and she would have no idea, no one would tell her. Maybe she should go visit him, maybe he needed her, maybe when he saw her the beeping would get stronger and Jack would sit up in bed and the doctors would gasp and scribble about the miracle before their eyes.

  The poison lifted. Her heart breathed free. And—

  “Are you okay?” the second grader asked, closing her sticker album.

  Hazel swallowed and turned to stare out the window at the slushy gray real world.

  On the way from the bus stop, Hazel walked by Jack’s house slowly. She tried to sneak glances at the front windows while at the same time making a show of looking straight ahead. It was not easy.

  And then, from behind her, the sound of a car. Hazel turned. The red station wagon was pulling up in the driveway. Hazel felt a wave rise up inside of her and crash. Jack’s parents got out of the car and began to walk toward the house. No Jack.

  Hazel took a deep breath and called out, “Mr. and Mrs. Campbell?”

  They turned around. Mr. Campbell had his hand lightly on his wife’s back. Hazel didn’t even know she ever left the house.

  “Um, is Jack okay? He wasn’t in school. And—”

  And what? And he was mean.

  And, that.

  Jack’s mother gave her a hazy smile. Something about it
made Hazel’s stomach rotate a few degrees. She seemed more human, but still somehow wrong, like they’d gotten the souls mixed up and put the wrong one back inside her.

  “Oh, yes,” Mr. Campbell said. “He’s just fine.”

  “Oh.”

  What did Hazel expect? He went temporarily insane and we took him to a doctor and he got a pill and now he’s better and wants to see you?

  “He’s just gone away for a while,” Mrs. Campbell added.

  Hazel blinked. “What?”

  “He’s gone to live with his dear elderly aunt Bernice,” she said, voice gaining strength. “She needs help, you see. He’s doing just fine, and we needn’t worry.”

  She smiled at Hazel again, and both parents turned and disappeared into the house.

  Chapter Eleven

  Magical Thinking

  Hazel stood staring at the doorstep where Jack’s parents had been. Maybe they would come out, tell her it was all a big joke, tell her Jack would be out in a minute, tell her everything was going to go back to normal.

  But they didn’t.

  Hazel replayed the words Mrs. Campbell had spoken, trying to find the sense in them. But there wasn’t any.

  Her mother agreed. “I didn’t even know he had an elderly aunt,” she said, after Hazel told her what had happened.

  “Me neither,” said Hazel.

  “Maybe she means great-aunt. But why would they send Jack? I mean, what about school?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hazel.

  “And it’s not like he’s particularly qualified for elder care. I mean, he’s eleven. What do they expect him to do, teach her to play Zombie Assault?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hazel, shifting a little. She was beginning to feel like it was her fault.

  “Weird.” Her mom shook her head. “They have to be making it up. But why wouldn’t they make up something believable? I mean, his elderly aunt is named Bernice.” She shook her head again. “And Mrs. Campbell told you this? How did she seem?”