Breadcrumbs Read Online Free PDF

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. Campbell. She was wearing the same light-blue tee shirt and black yoga pants that she’d been in the last time Hazel saw her, but they were now faded and frayed. She was much thinner now, and surrounded by shadows. Her eyes were all wrong. They were like the eyes of the animals at the natural history museum, who were hollowed out and stuffed and posed and placed in some habitat and made to look like they were still alive. “You want Jack.”
    “Yes. Please,” said Hazel.
    “He was getting dressed. My husband’s in the shower.”
    “Okay,” said Hazel.
    Mrs. Campbell blinked down at her. “It’s nice to see you, Hazel,” she said, and she stretched her face into a smile that held nothing. She looked like someone had severed her dæmon.
    And then Jack appeared in the doorway next to her. “Mom, what are you doing?” He looked from her to Hazel. Hazel looked at the ground.
    “The doorbell rang.”
    “I know, but . . . you should go sit down.”
    There was something about Jack, something subdued about his very appearance, as if he had dampened his own hue so as not to contrast with his mother’s too brightly.
    “Okay.” She nodded at Jack and faded off.
    “Let me get my stuff,” Jack muttered. “Wait there.”
    There had been a time, not so long ago, when Jack had had a mom and Hazel had had a dad—that is, a real mom, the sort who did things besides sit in a beat-up easy chair and watch twenty-four-hour news networks and stare blankly at the world, and a real dad, the sort who lived with you or at least came to see you once in a while. Then one day Hazel did not have a dad anymore, because hers had left. And a couple days after that Jack had showed up on her doorstep and handed her his most prized possession, a baseball signed by Joe Mauer. Hazel had stared at it as if he’d just handed her his still-beating heart. “You should keep it,” he had said.
    “But . . . why?”
    And he’d looked at her, almost bewildered, then said, “It’s a Joe Mauer signed baseball,” as if that was all that needed to be said. So Hazel took it, and she kept it on her bookshelf, and sometimes she looked at it and said to herself, That is a Joe Mauer signed baseball , and she understood.
    Then one day Hazel went over to Jack’s house to find his mom in the easy chair, except she wasn’t there at all. It was like someone had snuck into their house in the middle of the night and stolen his mother. Except they’d forgotten to take her body.
    And it wasn’t too long after that that Hazel’s mother sat her down and explained that Jack’s mom was sad, that