Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [10]
“Marty,” Adelaide’s mother warned, “you’ll give them nightmares.”
“Come on, Lizzie.” He shook his head dismissively. “Kids can handle a lot more than you think they can. It’s when they get to be grown up that you have to start worrying.”
Adelaide smiled smugly at Hazel, and it was the sort of smile that invited her to smile smugly back. Which she did.
“So, did you have fun?” her mom asked as they drove off.
She did. “It was okay,” Hazel said.
“We can go over to Adelaide’s any time you want. I don’t get to see Elizabeth much. It’s nice for me. Maybe on the weekends?”
“Maybe,” Hazel said. Weekends were for her and Jack. She needed to be there if he needed her.
They drove home on newly plowed streets, which their little car tackled eagerly. Hazel stared out of the window and watched the houses shrink and thought of villains and snow globes and what it would be like to be trapped inside.
When they pulled into the driveway, Hazel cast a glance over to Jack’s house. It was dark. She wondered if he’d been able to make plans, if he was still out, or if he was home in his room, drawing or reading comic books or making up superhero baseball stats, with the shades drawn and the door closed. She wished he had a place to put all his funny-looking things.
Her heart panged. She was supposed to be with him, not eating tube cookies and speaking in fairy tales. She was his best friend. She would do better. Tomorrow.
Chapter Three
Spaces
The snow started up again just as Hazel was going to sleep that night. It seemed innocuous, a soft coda to the storm of the morning. There was no way to tell that over the course of the night the sky would try to bury the city.
Hazel woke up to her mother’s knock on the door and a gentle whisper, “You don’t have to get up. School’s canceled.”
The sky did not bury the city, but it came close enough. The street outside Hazel’s house looked like it might only be traversable by tauntaun. “Eighteen inches overnight,” her mom told her when she came down for breakfast. “I’ve never seen it come down like that. I hope there was nothing you were dying to do at school today.”
Hazel knew her mother really meant I hope there is something you were dying to do at school today, that you are learning to love it there, and if you are not learning to love it there, can you please try harder? Because her mom seemed to think it was the sort of thing Hazel could choose to do, like she could choose to understand the rules when they weren’t even written in her language, like she could choose to make herself fit when she was so clearly shaped all wrong. She shrugged.
“Are you going to be okay by yourself?” her mom added, nodding toward her desk. “I’ve got—”
“Sure,” Hazel said. “I’ll go over to Jack’s.”
Her mother tilted her head. “Haze,” she said slowly, “maybe it’s better if Jack comes over here? Maybe you guys shouldn’t—”
“Oh.” Hazel shifted. “I think we’re going sledding.”
“Okay, good. And can you shovel the driveway for me today?”
“Sure.”
“Thanks. Hey, um”—she leaned in to Hazel—”how’s Jack doing these days? With everything.”
“Okay, I think.”
“Okay.”
After breakfast, Hazel got on her boots and stepped outside. The snow was almost up to her knees, and she had to lift her legs up to move through it, first one then the other—like she was trying to walk through butter.
There were no footprints outside of Jack’s house. No one had tried to venture out yet. Hazel picked her way to the Campbells’ front doorstep and rang their bell twice, their special ring. And waited. And waited. Just when she decided everyone must have slept in, the door opened. “Jack!” Hazel said, or was about to say when the word evaporated from her mouth. Standing in the doorway was someone she was not expecting to see at all: Jack’s mom.
“Hello, Hazel,” Mrs. Campbell said.
“Oh,” said Hazel, shifting. “Hi.”
It had been several weeks since Hazel had even laid eyes on Mrs.