Adam shook his head. “I don’t have any money with me.”
“Your loss, then.” Francine snatched the candle back.
“So…” Adam looked at the girl. “You don’t have any family?”
Francine’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not going to report me, are you?”
Adam didn’t know what to say. He thought of inviting Francine to stop by his place. The bakery had plenty of leftover bread and pastries, and the place was always warm.
As he was thinking of the best way to bring this up, Francine challenged, “What’s your story?”
“Me?”
“Wandering around New York in the middle of winter without a coat?” Francine crossed her arms. “Let’s hear the story behind that.”
Of course, Adam didn’t know any more than Francine did.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “But I have to get home.”
“You’re lying,” Francine said flatly. She studied him closer. “Although, you’re not a bad actor. A little more practice and you could be like Shirley Temple.” She straightened. “Well, I’ve got sights to see and candles to sell. You know how to get back from here, kid?”
Adam was about to say yes when he noticed a crumpled newspaper on the ground in the alley. For a moment, he stared at the front page of the damp paper in stunned silence. The print date read:
DECEMBER 10, 1935
When he looked up again, Francine was giving him directions on the quickest way to get to the Lower East Side by drawing a map in the snow.
“Just keep heading east till you hit Second Avenue. Avoid this area here—crowded because of all the Christmas shows going on—”
“That newspaper,” interrupted Adam. “Is that newspaper real?”
“What?”
Adam couldn’t speak. His mind raced. He thought of the street signs, the clanging streetcars.
Francine looked at him. “You okay, kid?”
Adam had almost forgotten about the snow globe, which he carried absentmindedly. It suddenly became heavy in his hands, the glass as cold as an ice cube. He peered under the blanket. To his surprise, the snow globe’s cityscape had disappeared. All that was left inside was the snow confetti. The snow globe looked exactly the same as when Adam had first found it in the attic earlier that day.
He held up the snow globe to his face. The snow confetti swirled inside the empty glass. All of a sudden, he was no longer standing in the snowy street but was back in the warm, dry interior of the Biscuit Basket.
Nobody else was there. Outside, crispy autumn leaves rolled across the sun-dappled sidewalks. Adam’s sneakers, however, were dripping with snowy slush. The wooly blanket was still draped around his shoulders.
If you’ve ever shocked yourself with electricity, you’ll agree it’s a very painful experience. That is why people are discouraged from standing outside during thunderstorms, for if lightning does strike you, you’ll be frizzled like a human pancake. The surprise that Adam felt after his sudden trip was comparable to an electric shock, only instead of leaving behind a scorched burn, the experience left him standing motionless in great confusion.
Adam didn’t know how long he stood there afterward. He hardly noticed when Uncle Henry came home; he merely shook his head when his uncle asked if he was feeling ill. Convinced that Adam was worried about the money problems, Uncle Henry made them a pot of his famous rice pudding and told Adam not to fret.
“I got a good deal on the candelabra,” the baker reassured Adam. “If business picks up a little, we shouldn’t have to worry about rent for several months.”
The twelve-year-old still looked troubled, so Uncle Henry sent him to bed early.
That night, Adam couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, and his mind raced endlessly. The mysterious events, the wintery city, and the words of the man in the raincoat played on repeat in his head.
He didn’t know it, but across the city, another person was wide awake at the same time. Like Adam, this individual tossed and turned. Unlike Adam, he kept muttering under his breath in a most ominous fashion, “The snow globe…” But we’ll get back to him a little later.
CHAPTER FIVEPAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE
Some people don’t believe in magic. Others find magic in the most ordinary things.
Baking, for example, is a bit like magic. You take several different ingredients: flour, salt, and baking soda, all of which by themselves taste nasty. Not even a hungry dog likes to lick raw flour or baking soda off the floor.
But after mixing these simple ingredients together, adding a pinch of water, and heating the mixture in the oven, you’ll find these ingredients come together to form something greater than the sum of its parts. You now have warm, delicious bread that not a single person or animal in the world would turn up their noses at—especially not a hungry dog.
After his strange experience with the snow globe, Adam wasn’t sure what he believed. The whole scene in Times Square lingered in his mind, too vivid to be a dream. Francine’s wooly blanket was neatly folded and tucked under his bed. Yet the globe remained blank for the rest of the week—long enough for him to start questioning whether any of it had been real. The first thing Adam did each day was to look at the snow globe, which he kept close on his nightstand. He sped home after school each afternoon to see if the snow globe’s contents changed, and popped in every hour on the dot before bedtime. The last thing Adam did each night before he went to sleep was to check the glass ball again.
It remained empty.
All he knew was that the clue to solving the snow globe’s mysteries lay with the man in the raincoat. He searched the phonebook for J.C. Walsh. There were at least fifty people with the name J. Walsh listed in New York City. The closest he could find to a J.C. Walsh was a “Josefina Charlotte Walsh,” a person who, when he called, sounded to be a woman in her eighties.
No progress there.
He also tried to keep
