Anne Ursu - Breadcrumbs

Chapter One
Snowfall

I t snowed right before Jack stopped talking to Hazel, fluffy white flakes big enough to show their crystal architecture, like perfect geometric poems. It was the sort of snow that transforms the world around it into a different kind of place. You know what its likewhen you wake up to find everything white and soft and quiet, when you run outside and your breath suddenly appears before you in a smoky poof, when you wonder for a moment if the world in which you woke up is not the same one that you went to bed in the night before. Things like that happen, at least in the stories you read. It was the sort of snowfall that, if there were any magic to be had in the world, would make it come out.

And magic did come out.

But not the kind you were expecting.

That morning, Hazel Anderson ran out of her small house in her white socks and green thermal pajamas. She leapt over the threshold of the house onto the front stoop where she stood, ignoring the snow biting at her ankles, to take in the white street. Everything was pristine. No cars had yet left their tracks to sully the road. The small squares of lawn that lay in front of each of the houses like perfectly aligned placemats seemed to stretch beyond the boundaries of their chain-link fences and join together as one great field of white. A thick blanket of snow covered each roof as if to warm and protect the house underneath.

All was quiet. The sun was just beginning to peek out over the horizon. The air smelled crisp and expectant. Snowflakes danced in the awakening sky, touching down softly on Hazels long black hair.

Hazel sucked in her breath involuntarily, bringing in a blast of cold.

Something stirred inside her, some urge to plunge into the new white world and see what it had to offer. It was like shed walked out of a dusty old wardrobe and found Narnia.

Hazel stuck her index finger out into the sky. A snowflake accepted her invitation, and she felt a momentary pinprick of cold on the pad of her bare finger. She gazed at the snowflake, considering its delicate structure. Inside it was another universe, and maybe if she figured out the right way to ask, someone would let her in.

Hazel jumped as her mothers voice came from behind her. Come inside, she said, youll freeze!

Look at the snow! Hazel said, turning to show her glimmering prize.

Her mom nodded from the doorway. Its amazing when you can see the patterns like that. Look at it. See the six sides? Its called hexagonal symmetry. A snowflake is made

People were always doing this sort of thing to Hazel. Nobody could accept that she did not want to hear about gaseous balls and layers of atmosphere and refracted light and tiny building blocks of life. The truth of things was always much more mundane than what she could imagine, and she did not understand why people always wanted to replace the marvelous things in her head with this miserable heap of youre-a-fifth-grader-now facts.

And then Hazels mother said something brisk about getting her inside and something funny about someone calling child protection, followed quickly by a practical warning about getting to school on time and not making things worse there, and then Hazel saw her moms head suddenly snap to the right, saw her eyes widen and her mouth open and heard some sound creak out, but before Hazel could make sense of it all, she felt something hit the middle of her back with a thwack .

Ouch.

Hazel yelped and whirled around. There, on the front step of the house next door was a brown-haired, freckled boy packing another snowball and smiling evilly.

A grin broke out on Hazels face. Jack! she hollered, and bent down to gather some snow.

No you dont, said her mom, shooting a glance at the house next door. She reached over the threshold and placed her hand on Hazels back to guide her back into the house.

Ill get you later, Hazel called to Jack as she disappeared inside.

Just try it! Jack called back, cackling.

Hazels mom closed the front door with a sigh. Look at you. What were you thinking?

Hazel looked down. She had clumps of snow hanging off her pajama legs. As she moved her head, snowflakes fell off of her hair. She seemed to be shivering, though she had not noticed the cold until now.

Come on. You better get dressed. Youll be late.

She was late. Hazel walked out the front door, bundled sensibly now in her green jacket and knit gloves and red boots, to see the yellow school bus disappearing into the distance, its wide tracks scarring the snow-covered street, its puffing black smoke trespassing against the white sky. She blinked and looked toward the front window of her house where her mothers form was already seated at the desk on the other side. Now she felt the snows bite against her ankles like a bad memory.

Chewing on her lip, Hazel unlocked the front door and went back into the house. Her mom looked up at her and let out a nearly imperceptible exhale.

Im sorry, Hazel said.

Ill get my keys, her mother said.

In a few moments, their small white car was bursting out of the garage onto the thickly blanketed driveway. And then there was a crunching from the back tires, and they were stopped.

The car groaned. Her mother swore. The wheels spun, one moment, twothe car lurched forward and backward, and her mother swore even more colorfully, and then they were free.

It was a twenty-block drive to school, fourteen of them down a two-lane one-way street. As they moved toward school, the houses became bolder, sprouting second stories that stood uneasily in their rickety wooden frames. Hazel used to want a house like thissomething beat-up and possibly haunted, with a dumbwaiter for passing messages, with hidden compartments that contained mysterious old booksbut then she would not live next to Jack anymore, and that was not worth all the secret passages in the world.

The snow was coming down harder now, and Hazels mother leaned forward in her seat as she drove, as if to will the car through it all. Shiny SUVs charged through the snow, whizzing past Hazel and the other small cars that crept along like scared animals.

Hazels mom started pressing down on the brake long before they got to the big intersection where they were to turn leftthe one with the gas station that Hazel and Jack biked to in the summers to spend their allowance on Popsicles and push-ups; where the bakery with the birthday cakes used to be before it became another gas station; where the burger place that her dad always took her to after T-ball games had been before it was replaced by the fast- food Mexican place that her mother said made everything taste like plastic and sadnessbut that didnt stop them from skidding when they hit the patch of ice just in front of it. The car began to spin to the right, her mother wrenched the wheel and pumped her foot furiously on the brake, a horn bleated behind them, and from everywhere around them came a polyphony of screeching tires.

Hazel yelped a little, and the car skidded into the busy intersection and stopped. A car swerved around them, and another, before someone finally stopped and waved them ahead. Her mom sucked in her breath, then straightened the car and joined the slow-moving group in the far lane. Hazel did not think this was the time to tell her she was, technically, running a red light.

Ah, this car, her mom said, to no one in particular.