Breadcrumbs - Anne Ursu [36]
“Hazel Anderson?”
Hazel pulled her hand back. A small man with round glasses, big cheeks, and a ring of thin brown-gray hair was looking at her as if she were doing something very peculiar. He looked like a chipmunk.
If Jack were here, Hazel would tell him about the chipmunk counselor, and he would draw a cartoon of a chipmunk with big glasses behind a desk and the chipmunk would say, “I’m so sorry, Hazel, but you’re nuts.”
Mr. Lewis welcomed her into his office and sat down behind a big desk. He motioned Hazel into one of the yellow armchairs in front of the desk. She sat down, clutching her backpack to herself.
The window on the other side of his desk looked out on the playground. Hazel had to will herself to look at the chipmunk man and not the thick, winter-white sky.
Mr. Lewis had a file on his desk, and Hazel knew that that file represented her, that when she became a hollowed-out thing this file would seem to be the sum total of her existence on the planet. And there would be no one around to tell anyone any different.
“So, do you know why you’re here?” Mr. Lewis asked, eyes blinking rapidly behind his glasses.
She didn’t, particularly, but she knew that some questions were best answered untruthfully.
“I threw a pencil case,” she said.
“At one of your classmates.”
“Yes.”
“Do you often find yourself feeling angry?”
Hazel crossed her arms. She felt like she was being poked. “Everyone does,” she said quietly.
“Everyone gets angry, Hazel. Not everyone throws things at people.”
It was the whole point, wasn’t it? Hazel was not like everyone else. She was surprised that that wasn’t in the file.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
Hazel shifted. “I was upset. My friend had gotten hurt.”
“You’ve been here a few months now. Do you feel like you’re fitting in here, Hazel?”
Hazel squirmed. She did not know how she was supposed to survive things like this anymore.
Mr. Lewis flipped through her file and kept asking her questions, and she knew what the notes in the file said just as surely as if she was reading them herself. This is what would be left of Hazel Anderson once her whole body hollowed out, the empty shell of her cracked, and the pieces flew to the winds: Hazel has anger issues. She has trouble following rules. She does not pay attention. She has an overactive imagination. She has trouble making friends. She does not fit, not anywhere.
She felt like a bird that someone was preparing to stuff and put on the mantel. He would have small dinner parties and show off his new wonder, and the guests would marvel that her dull eyes once contained life, and he would carefully describe to them the process of taking out her insides, piece by piece, and the very odd quality her heart had when you held it up to the light.
And then the questions were done, and Mr. Lewis closed the file and leaned into her, rodent-y eyes squinting. “Hazel. You’re a smart girl. May I speak frankly?”
He looked at her like he genuinely expected an answer.
“Okay.”
“A lot has happened to you this year. The change in schools. The upheaval in your family. But you’re eleven now. I think you can take control.”
“Okay.”
“And maybe there are things you need help with. We want to look at the attention issues, certainly. And the mood issues. We’re going to figure out what you need. And you can take ownership. For instance, we could draw up a plan, and if you needed to put yourself in time-out, you could.”
“Time-out?”
“Yes. You know. If you find yourself feeling angry in class. You could just leave the classroom. A time-out.”
“Oh.” Everyone else wanted Hazel to be more grown up, now the counselor was giving her a time out.
“So here’s what’s going to happen now. I’m going to make some referrals. There are a couple of different avenues I want to pursue. We should have a meeting with your mother. We’re all going to be partners here.”
He said this like it was a good thing,