Page 33 of Love, Magic and Misfortune
Contemplating what to do next, Violet took a breath and glanced around. A book would be too thick. Paper, too thin. She walked over to Jasper’s desk, looking over the surface. He had a couple thick folders in an upright organizer. Perfect. She removed the contents for good measure, laying them on the desk so that she could return them later, then walked back over to the mouse trapped underneath the trash bin.
Once there, she rested on her knees, only lifting the makeshift cage enough to slide the folder underneath. “Step onto the folder, little guy. Or girl?” When she felt the weight of the mouse on top, she slowly tipped the bin so that the mouse needed to crawl to the bottom. With the bin upright, she removed the folder, peering inside to get a closer look.
It was so small—smoky gray in color and with a starburst of white whiskers coming from its little snout. Dark marble eyes, roundish ears standing alert… and it was shivering in the corner of the wastebasket. Curled into itself like a furry little ball as it peeked up at her. Violet wasn’t into rodents, but something about this little creature’s visible terror made her heart ache.
“I’m not going to hurt you, but you shouldn’t be in here.” Violet stood, stepping toward the coffee table. “Little field mice belong outside in the orchard. I know it’s cold, but you need to burrow into a tree trunk or something.”
She set the basket on the table, then made quick work of replacing Jasper’s folder. Grabbing the bin, she walked back out into the hall and toward the kitchen. She stepped through the door to the dark garden, knelt down and gently tipped the bin so that the mouse could escape. Violet expected it to scurry off, happy and grateful to have been spared from any harm (or at least running away in terror). But in an odd turn, it just sat there, upright and on its back legs. Its tiny front paws curled as it looked up at her, lifting its snout and still shivering. She tilted her head.
“Hey… this is the part where you scurry off.” The mouse settled down on all fours, then tried to move past her and back into the house. Violet turned and quickly pulled the cracked door all the way closed to block it.
“Seriously? I’m being kind to you.Go.”
The mouse paused again before turning. It looked back at her once, then hopped off the small step and scurried out into the dead brush of the garden. When she lost track of it, she stood and shook her head.
How strange. Could it have been someone’s pet? She didn’t think Jasper had a pet mouse. If he did, surely he would have mentioned it by now. Had she just released Jasper’s secret pet mouse?
“It’s just a field mouse…”
Within ten minutes, she’d cleaned up the trash, stopped in the kitchen on her way out to grab a handful of Jasper’s blueberries and deposited them in a small pile on the back step before leaving Laurent House.
She’d done a nice thing in humanely removing the mouse. That was agooddeed and she’d tell her friend that he needed to set some kind of friendly traps later on to help with the problem. Because, obviously, mice running around a person’s house was a problem…
But as she drove home, she felt weird about it. Sad, somehow. She couldn’t pinpoint why.
16
Then
“Where’s Jasper?”
Violet looked up. She’d been staring down at her arm in its sling as she sat motionless on the playground swing. “What?”
“I said,where is Jasper?” Freddie stared at her with searing blue eyes. They were only nine, but he was already so much taller than her—taller than everyone in their class. He towered over her like a mean giant, as if it was her fault that Jasper hadn’t been coming to school lately. Actually, Freddie probably did blame her. He hated her.
Violet rocked her heels against the grass, making the swing move in a gentle motion. Having just one functioning arm made it difficult to enjoy such an activity. “I don’t know… He’s sick.”
“Sick how?” Freddie demanded. “Why isn’t he coming to school?”
“I don’t know—”
“You’re hisbest friend,aren’t you? Shouldn’t you know? What good are you if you just sit here with your stupid curly hair and your stupid broken arm not knowing anything—”
“Just leave me alone.” Violet jumped to her feet, turned and marched away from Freddie.
“Wait—come back!”
She shook her head and kept walking. Violet didn’t know what was going on, and when she’d tried to take matters into her own hands to find out the truth, she’d stupidly fallen from a tree. She’d broken her arm, gotten yelled at by her Gram (who forbade her from ever climbing another tree again) and she hadn’t really discovered anything at all in the process.
It was a big mess. Her arm hurt and her heart hurt, and she was the loneliest she’d ever been.
When Violet reached her usual spot behind the school house, she plopped down onto the cold grass, resting her back against the brick wall. She was thinking that this was the part when Jasper usually came around the corner to sit with her. He’d talk to her and say something interesting to distract her and make her genuinely curious. Then they’d laugh, because they were always laughing.
But he wasn’t coming. Violet knew that. The emptiness of it made her stomach hurt. She drew her knees up and rested her good arm on top so that she could put her head down. She took a deep breath, and then she cried. Even after the school bell rang to mark the end of recess, she didn’t move. She just stayed there, all alone.
17
Now
