Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [20]
“You don’t have a jacket!” she exclaimed.
“I left it at school, remember?”
“Oh, Hazel.” She shook her head. “You’re shivering. 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 glass 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 basement 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