Read Online Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu, Erin Mcguire - Free Book Online Page A

chilled to the roots? Or did they feel safe now?
    “Hazel!” snapped Mrs. Jacobs. “What do I have to do to get you to pay attention? You’re supposed to be taking notes. Please get out a pencil. We’ll wait for you.”
    Snickers, whispers, and the hum of impatience from Mrs. Jacobs.
    “Psycho,” hissed Bobby.
    Hazel opened her desk. Her pencil box was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Jacobs cleared her throat.
    “I don’t have anything to write with,” Hazel mumbled. Her skin felt like it was burning from the force of the thirty pairs of eyes fixed on her.
    “I see,” said Mrs. Jacobs. Her mouth tightened, and Hazel heard all of the things she was not saying. “Would someone loan Hazel a pencil, please?”
    Hazel’s skin seared. One moment. Two. Then, next to her, Mikaela leaned over. “Here you go,” she said softly. She blinked and added, “I have highlighters, too, if you need them.”
    Hazel nodded, unable to speak.
    Then, a hiss from behind her. “I don’t know, Tyler, that looks pretty sharp!”
    “Yeah. Be careful, man. Girls with pencils are pretty fierce.”
    Hazel whirled around in her seat to find Tyler’s face had turned red and he was staring intently at the desk in front of him. And then she understood.
    Jack was mad at her for throwing her pencil case at Tyler. It made sense; since she’d come to Lovelace he’d had to negotiate things with them delicately so he didn’t hurt their feelings. Boys were very sensitive. And Jack did it, he did a really good job, he played with her at recess and sat with them on the bus. But then Hazel had to go and embarrass Tyler in front of the whole class. And that put Jack in a really bad position.
    The ice inside her melted away. This she could fix. She would apologize to Jack, and then everything would be okay again.
    Hazel pressed her legs together and tried not to fidget in her chair. She was going to have to survive until recess when she could see Jack. She would apologize, and then she would tell him to go off and play football with the boys, so then everyone would feel better, especially Hazel, because it feels good to apologize, it feels good to do the right thing. Hazel was making good choices!
    Hazel realized her fingers were beating a rapid rhythm on the desk. She covered the offending hand with her other one, took a deep breath, and forced herself to look at Mrs. Jacobs. The teacher had put images of what looked like crystal snowflake ornaments on the overhead projector.
    “Do you see that every single one of them has the same number of sides?” she was saying. “Six, right? This is called—”
    “Hexagonal symmetry!” The words burst out of Hazel’s mouth.
    Mrs. Jacobs blinked. “Very good, Hazel. ‘Hexagon,’ for ‘six-sided,’ and ‘symmetry,’ meaning the sides are exactly the same. A snowflake is mathematically perfect. In the media you’ll see drawings of snowflakes that are eight sided, but you’ll know that this is scientifically inaccurate.” She smiled at the class as if she had given them a great gift. “Now, these photographs of snowflakes were taken by a scientist named Wilson Bentley over a hundred years ago. They called him ‘Snowflake’ Bentley, and he was the one who discovered that no two snowflakes were alike.”
    Mrs. Jacobs began to yammer on about the formation of snowflakes—supercooled droplets, layers of atmosphere, blah blah—which was the same information Hazel had ignored from her mother three days ago. Hazel impatiently drew some snowflakes on her notebook. She was careful to make them eight sided.
    Finally, it was time for recess, and Hazel sprang out of her chair and gathered her things. Outside she darted over to the big slide to wait for Jack.
    Mr. Williams’s class emerged out the back door, and Hazel stood on her tiptoes scanning the faces. He wasn’t there, and wasn’t there, and then he was. Hazel’s heart sped up, and it was all she could do to keep from jumping and waving.
    Jack stopped