Breadcrumbs Read Free Page B

pitching today.”
    He didn’t have to say anything else. Hazel took the snowball and moved back.
    Jack had moved in next door when she was six. She liked him right away because he replaced the girl who’d lived there before, a four-year-old who was always trying to convince Hazel to come to her tea parties, where no talking was allowed. Plus he was wearing an eye patch. Hazel’s six-year-old self was sorely disappointed when she found out that he didn’t actually need one, but she quickly learned it was the wearing one that really mattered. This was a secret truth about the world, one they both understood.
    Jack was the only person she knew with an imagination, at least a real one. The only tea parties he’d have were ones in Wonderland, or the Arctic, or in the darkest reaches of space. He was the only person who saw things for what they could be instead of just what they were. He saw what lived beyond the edges of the things your eyes took in. And though they eventually grew out of Wonderland Arctic space-people tea parties, that essential thing remained the same. Hazel fit with Jack.
    Today they were playing superhero baseball, which was a variation Jack had invented on the theory that super-heroes, too, needed organized sports. The trick was they had to hide their superpowers, which is hard when you are so awesome at baseball.
    Hazel was pitching snowballs, trying to keep her fastball from breaking a hole in the space-time continuum, while Jack hit the ball and jogged stiffly around the bases, pretending he ran like a man who had not been bitten by a radioactive mosquito.
    “I got a new character for you,” Jack said, whiffing at a snowball with his stick.
    “You do?” Hazel let her arm fall to her side and took a step forward. “Can I see?” Jack was the best artist in the whole fifth grade. He’d been drawing ever since Hazel knew him, and for his birthday last year she’d gotten him this big fancy black sketchbook. He’d been using it to make up superheroes recently. Eventually he was going to make his own comic book. And Hazel was the only one who knew anything about it.
    “Naw. Not outside. I’ll show you on the bus. I was going to show you this morning, but you were too busy recovering from my snowball assault to get to the bus stop on time.”
    “Cool,” Hazel said. “Can you tell me anything?”
    “This one’s a bad guy,” Jack said. “They’re more fun, you know?”
    “What’s he do?”
    “I’ll tell you later! Come on, are you pitching or what?”
    “Sorry,” Hazel said, taking a step back. “I’m going to throw a superhero curve, now.”
    “Yeah, I gotta learn to hit the curve if I’m going to be a baseball player when I grow up.”
    This was new. “What about comic books?”
    “That, too. I can do both. You can’t play baseball forever. I’m going to hit nine hundred home runs and get into the Hall of Fame.”
    “Nine hundred home runs? Is that a lot?”
    Jack’s eyes widened. “Is that a lot? No one’s ever done that before. Not even guys who cheated! Or I could hit .400 a couple of times; that would do the trick. I’m going to be a great-hitting catcher like Joe Mauer.”
    Hazel just nodded and packed snowballs. She liked baseball, but Jack had the statistics of every player memorized, and that just was not good conversation in her opinion. Jack had even made imaginary stats for the superhero game. Batman, oddly, had a lot of strikeouts.
    Hazel wound up and pitched, and Jack smacked the snowball with the stick. It exploded into a jillion pieces. “Oops! Super strength!” Jack said, wiping the snow off his face.
    Hazel lobbed a snowball at him. “Superhero baseball turns evil !” she called.
    “Are you guys going out?”
    Hazel whirled around. Mikaela and Molly were standing just behind her.
    “Are you guys going out?” Molly repeated, her voice low and conspiratorial. She looked from Hazel to Jack, the snowballs to the stick, and raised her eyebrows.
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