Page 80 of Changing the Playbook
Hazel waves frantically. “SOPHIE! IT’S MOVING! HURRY UP!”
As pure panic transforms Sophie’s features, I touch her shoulder gently. “I’ll go investigate the monster. You find us a spot for lunch.”
Relief floods her face so completely it’s almost comical. “You’re my hero, Mr. Altman.”
Then she rises on her tiptoes and presses her lips to my cheek. The contact shoots straight through me—her mouth soft and warm, and it feels like my skin burns where she touched me. And when it’s over, she hurries off toward a sunny clearing, while I stand, frozen, with my hand halfway to my face.
“WHY ISN’T ANYBODY LISTENING TO ME?” Hazel’s impatience snaps me back to reality. “IT’S GETTING AWAY!”
I jog over to where she’s crouched beside a rotting log, her entire body vibrating with excitement over what appears to be—Jesus Christ—an endless river of insects pouring from the ground. I maintain what feels like a safe distance from the seething mass.
“That’s... definitely something,” I say.
“It’s a whole colony of field ants,” she breathes with reverence. “See how they’re kind of reddish-brown but also black? And they’re medium-sized for ants. Not like carpenter ants, which are huge, or pharaoh ants, which are tiny and yellowish.”
“How do you know all that?”
“From my bug encyclopedia.” She doesn’t look up, completely transfixed by the insect highway. “Did you know there are over twelve thousand different species of ants? And they can lift twenty times their body weight? If I could do that, I could pick up Mrs. Cranston from next door.”
The mental image of tiny Hazel deadlifting an elderly neighbor makes me laugh. “That’s... a very specific application of super-strength.”
“She always gives me those gross butterscotch candies,” Hazel explains with deadly seriousness. “So I’d just relocate her away from the candy bowl.”
“Strategic thinking. I like it.”
“Oh! And fire ants aren’t even real ants. Well, they are, but they’re actually in the wasp family. Isn’t that weird?”
I watch her trace the ant trail with her finger, hovering just above the stream of bodies. There’s something captivating about her complete absence of disgust or fear.
“Who got you the bug encyclopedia?”
“Sophie.” Her voice goes soft. “She got me three different bug books last Christmas, right after Mom got sick.”
“That was nice of her.”
“Yeah.” Hazel pokes experimentally at the dirt near the anthill. “I think she thought books would make me stop being sad.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that. It’s such a Sophie thing to do—trying to fix everything with careful research andpractical solutions while probably ignoring her own feelings entirely.
“Were you sad?”
Hazel shrugs, suddenly looking very small. “Sometimes. But not like Sophie. She’s sad and scared all the time, even when she pretends she’s fine.”
“Sophie’s not?—”
“She is.” Hazel looks up at me with eyes too knowing for eight years. “But I’m not scared of Mom’s MS. I’m not scared of anything.”
There’s such certainty in her voice, such unshakeable faith that everything will work out, that I admire it. And, suddenly, I wish I could bottle it up and give a small dose to Sophie.
“Sophie’s one of the bravest people I know,” I find myself saying.
“Well, duh. She is brave. She’s just also worried about everything.” Hazel’s eye roll could win awards, then she grins. “I wonder if they’d attack if I?—”
“HAZEL! MIKE!” Sophie’s voice carries through the trees. “I found the perfect spot!”
“Coming!” Hazel drops her investigation stick and springs up, then gives me a conspiratorial look. “I’ll come back for the ants later.”
“I’m sure they’re already planning their defense strategy.”
