Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [31]
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