Rebecca Stead

by When You Reach Me (v5)

  “Okay.”

  I exhaled a big white cloud. “I won’t get to last Wednesday until after I leave, right? I mean, I won’t know if I’m really going to get there until I actually get there.”

  “Right. In your experience, you won’t know if you’re going to get there until after you leave. I mean, unless you remember seeing yourself, on the street or something. Or we could ask the ticket guy at the theater.” He was serious.

  “What?”

  “At the movie theater. Which one are you planning to go to? Because we could ask the ticket guy if you were there. Then we’ll know whether or not you’re going to get there.”

  “But I haven’t left yet! I haven’t even built the time machine.”

  “So? It doesn’t matter when you leave. It’s just whether or not you get there that matters. Wait, I take that back. It does matter when you leave. Because if you don’t leave for fifty years, even if you were there, the ticket guy probably won’t recognize you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, let’s say you finish your time machine in fifty years. You’d be—”

  “Sixty-two,” I said. We were across the street from school, waiting for the green light. I could see kids coming from every direction, all bundled up in hats and scarves.

  “Okay, so let’s say you’re sixty-two, and you climb into your machine and go back to last Wednesday, December whatever, 1978. You go to the movie theater. The ticket guy would see a sixty-two-year-old woman, right?”

  “Right,” I said. So far everything made sense.

  “So if we went over to the theater today and asked him whether he saw you there last Wednesday, he’d say no. Because his common sense would tell him that you can’t be that sixty-two-year-old woman, and she can’t be you. Get it?”

  I shook my head. “If we asked today, he couldn’t have seen me anyway. I wouldn’t have been there yet. Because I haven’t gone back yet.”

  “Duh,” said a voice behind us. “It’s really not all that complicated.”

  I whirled around and saw Julia in a long coat. She was standing right behind us waiting for the light.

  Marcus ignored her and looked at me. “Are you still worrying about that book? About the kids, and seeing themselves land in the broccoli?”

  I said nothing. I wasn’t going to have Julia hear any more of this conversation.

  “Think of it like this,” Marcus said, oblivious to the look she was giving us. “Time isn’t a line stretching out in front of us, going in one direction. It’s—well, time is just a construct, actually—”

  “Look,” Julia said, cutting him off. “If you really need to know what he means, I’ll explain it to you.”

  This should be good, I thought. Julia is going to explain the nature of time.

  I turned around and looked at her. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  She pulled off one of her gloves—they were these beautiful, fuzzy, pale yellow gloves—and she yanked a ring from her finger. “I think of it like this,” she said, holding up the ring. It was gold, studded all the way around with—

  “Are those diamonds?” I said.

  “Diamond chips.” She shrugged. “Look. It’s like every moment in time is a diamond sitting on this ring. Pretend the ring is really big, with diamonds all around, and each diamond is one moment. Got it?”

  Marcus was silent, just looking at her.

  I laughed. “Time is a diamond ring!” I said. “That explains everything. Thanks.”

  “Would you shut up and listen? If you figured out a way to bring yourself to another time, probably through some sort of teleportation—you’d be somehow re-creating your atoms, really, not physically moving them, I’m guessing; that would be tricky….”

  “Can we not worry about that part right now?” I said. “I’m freezing.” We were still standing across the street from school, even though the light had changed once already and then gone back to red.

  “Okay. Put it this way—we’re kind of jumping from diamond to diamond, like in cartoons where someone is running on a barrel, trying to stay on top. We have to keep moving—there’s no choice.”

  “Now we’re in a cartoon, on a barrel?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “Okay, forget that. Let’s stick with the ring.” She held it up again. “Let’s say we’re here.” She put her fingernail on one diamond chip. “And we figure out a way to jump all the way back to here.” She pointed to another one, a few chips away. “It wouldn’t matter where we came from. If we’re on that chip, we’re at that moment. It doesn’t matter whether we came from the chip behind it, or ten chips ahead of it. If we’re there, we’re there. Get it?”

  “No. I don’t get it, because what you’re saying makes absolutely no—”

  “I do,” Marcus said quietly. “I get it. I know what she means.”

  “Thank you!” Julia said. “I’m glad someone here has a brain.” And she stomped off through the red light while Marcus stared after her.

  I turned to him. “So you’re saying this diamond chip is just sitting there minding its own business, and then suddenly a bunch of kids land in the diamond chip’s broccoli patch—”

  Marcus’s face lit up. “Stop—I see your problem! You’re thinking that time exists on the diamonds themselves. It doesn’t. Each moment—each diamond—is like a snapshot.”

  “A snapshot of what?”

  “Of everything, everywhere! There’s no time in a picture, right? It’s the jumping, from one diamond to the next, that we call time, but like I said, time doesn’t really exist. Like that girl just said, a diamond is a moment, and all the diamonds on the ring are happening at the same time. It’s like having a drawer full of pictures.”

  “On the ring,” I said.

  “Yes! All the diamonds exist at once!” He looked triumphant. “So if you jump backward, you are at that moment—you are in that picture—and you always were there, you always will be there, even if you don’t know it yet.”

  I didn’t understand a word of it. And I couldn’t feel my feet. “Forget it,” I said. “The whole thing is making me crazy.”

  He nodded like he felt sorry for me and my stupid brain. “I think that’s probably because of your common sense. You can’t accept the idea of arriving before you leave, the idea that every moment is happening at the same time, that it’s us who are moving—”

  Enough was enough. I cut him off. “Why did you hit Sal?” I asked.

  “Who?” He looked completely mystified, as if I had just changed the subject from something very normal to something completely insane, instead of the other way around.

  “My friend Sal. You punched him in the stomach for no reason. In front of the garage. And then you hit him in the face.”

  He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. But no—there was a reason.”

  “That’s bull. I know he never did a thing to you.” I’d started to really shiver, even with my hands stuffed in my pockets and Mom’s scarf wrapped around my head.

  “I did hit him for a reason,” he said. “What you’re talking about is a justification. I’m not saying it was the right thing to do. I’m just saying I did it for a reason. My own stupid reason.”

  I stared at him. “So what was the reason?”

  He looked down and shrugged. “Same reason I do most things. I wanted to see what would happen.”

  “What do you mean, ‘what would happen’? His nose started bleeding, that’s what happened! And he almost threw up.”

  “Besides that, besides the ordinary things.” He tapped the toe of one shoe on the sidewalk. “It was dumb. Really, really dumb.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And did anything happen? Besides the ordinary things?”

  He shook his head. “No—not that I could tell.”

  I was going to tell him that he was wrong, that other things had happened, like Sal closing the door in my face that afternoon and never opening it again, but at that
moment I noticed the laughing man coming down the block behind us. I’d never seen him near school before. He was bent forward, mumbling and watching his feet, with his eyes on the garbage can right next to Marcus.

  The laughing man didn’t notice us standing there until he was practically on top of Marcus. When he finally looked up, he cursed, twisted away, and took off in the other direction, sprinting like he was running a race.

  We watched him rush all the way back to Broadway and disappear around the corner.

  “That was weird,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Marcus agreed. “And it’s the second time it’s happened.”

  The First Proof

  “What did I tell you?” Jimmy said at lunch that same day, happily slapping the counter with both hands. “They never think you’ll actually count the bread. Never in a million years would they think you’d count!” The bread order had come up two rolls short. I’d counted it twice to make sure.

  Jimmy swaggered over to the phone with a huge smile on his face.

  “You just made his day,” Colin whispered. “Maybe his whole week.” He was folding slices of ham and laying them out neatly on little squares of waxed paper.

  I watched Colin’s fingers as they picked up each piece of ham—he didn’t just smack them in half like I saw Jimmy do. Colin sort of bent each slice into a pretty fan shape. Once I started watching, I couldn’t stop. It was hypnotizing, somehow.

  “I talked to Annemarie last night,” I said. “I think she’s coming back to school tomorrow.”

  Colin nodded. “Good.” It was hard to imagine him sneaking around and leaving a rose on anyone’s doormat, but I guess boys will surprise you sometimes.

  “Hey,” he said suddenly, “you know what? I’m sick of cheese-and-lettuce sandwiches.” He glanced guiltily at Jimmy, who was still on the phone talking about his missing rolls. “Want to go get a slice of pizza?”

  We acted like everything was normal, making our sandwiches and wrapping them up like we planned to eat them at school. And then we ran to the pizza place down the block. It was crazy, but we felt like we were doing something wrong. We rushed back to school stuffing pizza into our mouths and crouching down low when we passed Jimmy’s window so he couldn’t see us. Somehow we became so completely hysterical that we were still having what Mom calls fits of helpless laughter when we got to school.

  We must have sort of burst into the classroom, because everyone looked up from their silent reading to stare at us. Julia rolled her eyes.

  “You’re late again,” Mr. Tompkin said. And then the whole feeling dissolved and we went to find our books.

  I sat with my book open on my desk, thinking about the note in my coat pocket: 3 p.m. today: Colin’s knapsack. Your first “proof.” I had to get a look inside Colin’s bag, to find whatever would—or wouldn’t—be waiting for me.

  At three on the dot, I went to the coat closet and grabbed my knapsack to go home. Colin’s was just a few hooks away. I could hear him talking to Jay Stringer in the back of the room, near Main Street. Julia was standing with them, trying again to convince Jay about her stupid tinfoil UFO and how it was going to fly up and down the street on a stupid invisible wire. She still hadn’t gotten her project approved.

  I reached over and unzipped Colin’s bag. There was his denim-covered binder stuffed with falling-out papers, a paperback, and the cheese sandwich he hadn’t eaten at lunch, soaking through its paper and smelling like pickles. Nothing unusual.

  I felt around the bottom of the bag and touched some keys on a ring, resting in a pile of dirt, or maybe crushed leaves. I tipped the bag toward the light and saw that it wasn’t a pile of dirt—it was a pile of crumbs. Bread crumbs.

  I patted the back of the bag, felt a lump, reached behind his binder, and pulled out two of Jimmy’s rolls. They were flaking all over the place. Colin must have grabbed them straight out of the delivery bag when nobody was looking.

  Things You Give Away

  I dropped the rolls back into Colin’s bag, pulled my coat on, threw my knapsack over one shoulder, and took the stairs two at a time. There was a mob of kids outside like always, pushing and laughing and standing around talking, even though it was still freezing and had started to rain. I took a minute to look for Sal, like I always do. No sign of him. I wound Mom’s scarf around my ears, turned north, and started walking up the hill to Annemarie’s.

  It didn’t make sense. Not that Colin had taken the rolls—in fact, that was just the kind of thing I expected from Colin. But my brain was yelling all kinds of other questions at me: How could anyone possibly have known that Colin would take the rolls? And when had the note been put in my coat pocket? It didn’t occur to me that you could have left it there the same day you put the first note in my library book about the squirrel village. I didn’t get that at all, until much later.

  And why me? I jumped a gutter full of rainwater and took the last steps to Annemarie’s building. Why was I the one getting notes? Why did I have to do something about whatever bad thing was going to happen? I didn’t even understand what I was supposed to do! Write a letter about something that hadn’t happened yet?

  “Miranda,” my brain said. “Nothing is going to happen. Someone is playing with you.” But what if my brain was wrong? What if someone’s life really needed saving? What if it wasn’t a game?

  Annemarie’s doorman waved me in. Upstairs, her father answered the door with an unlit cigar in his mouth and asked me whether I wanted some cold noodles with sesame sauce.

  “Uh, no thanks.”

  “Fizzy lemonade, then?” He helped me tug my wet coat off—the lining was all stuck to my sweater.

  So I walked into Annemarie’s room balancing my lemonade and an ice water for her, along with a dish of almonds that her father had somehow warmed up. Warm almonds sounds kind of yuck, but in reality they taste pretty good.

  Annemarie was still in her nightgown, but she looked normal. “My dad won’t stop feeding me,” she said, taking a handful of nuts. “And he won’t let me get dressed. He says pajamas are good for the soul. Isn’t that so dumb?”

  I sat on the edge of her bed. “Is that the rose?” It was on her bedside table in a tiny silver vase, just the kind of thing they would have at Annemarie’s house.

  She nodded and looked at it. The rose was perfect—just opening, like a picture in a magazine.

  “I tried to draw it,” Annemarie said. She held out a little spiral pad of heavy white paper. She’d sketched the rose in dark pencil, over and over.

  “Wow,” I said. “I didn’t know you could draw like that.”

  She flipped the pad closed. “My dad shows me tricks sometimes. There are a lot of tricks to drawing. I can show you.”

  But I knew I could never draw like that, for the same reason I couldn’t do Jimmy’s V-cut or get my Main Street diagrams to look good.

  “Hey,” I said, “maybe your dad left you the rose.”

  “Maybe.” She frowned, and I felt a little piece of myself light up. “He says he didn’t, though.”

  “But it would explain how the person got upstairs, why the doorman didn’t buzz you.” I could feel my lips making a smile. “Your dad is so nice. It has to be him.”

  I was miserable, sitting on the edge of her bed in that puddle of meanness. But I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want Annemarie’s rose to be from Colin. Maybe I couldn’t stand for her to have so many people, and to be able to draw and cut bread on top of that. Maybe I wanted Colin for myself.

  Annemarie’s dad stuck his head through the doorway. “Anybody need a refill?”

  “No thanks,” I said, even though my glass was empty and my back teeth were packed with chewed nuts. “I have to go.”

  “Stay for five more minutes,” he said. “I put your coat in the dryer.”

  So I had to sit there, thirsty, and then I had to put on my dry, warm, but still-dirty coat and take the elevator down to Annemarie’s lobby, where the lamps glowed yellow and the doorman remembered my
name. It had stopped raining.

  It was too cold for the boys to hang around in front of the garage. There was hardly anyone out on the street at all.

  The light in Belle’s window looked friendly in the late-afternoon gloom, and I thought of going in. I had been telling Belle the story of my book, a little bit here and a little bit there. I’d told her how Meg helped her father escape, and I’d described the first battle with IT, which is this giant, evil brain that wants to control everyone. I knew Belle would give me some vitamin Cs and maybe a paper cup of hot chocolate, but it was getting late and I didn’t want to have to walk down our block in the complete dark, so I decided to keep going.

  At first I thought the laughing man wasn’t on the corner, but then I saw him sitting on the wet curb, leaning against the mailbox and just watching me walk toward him. For one second there was something familiar about him, and I noticed for the first time how old he looked. I thought about what Louisa had said, about how old people can’t get enough heat. Maybe I felt sorry for him. Maybe he reminded me of Mr. Nunzi from upstairs. Or maybe I wanted to do something good, to make up for being kind of a jerk to Annemarie, even if she didn’t really know it. Anyway, I spoke to him.

  “Hey,” I said, opening my bag. “You want a sandwich?” I still had the cheese sandwich I hadn’t eaten at lunch. I held it out. “It’s cheese and tomato.”

  “Is it on a hard roll?” He sounded tired. “I can’t eat hard bread. Bad teeth.”

  “It isn’t hard,” I said. It was one of my best V-cuts ever, probably a little soggy now with the juice from the tomato soaking into the bread all afternoon.

  He reached up with one hand, and I put the sandwich in it.

  “What was the burn scale today?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, pretending I knew what he was talking about. “I didn’t have a chance to, um, check.”

  “Rain is no protection,” he said, looking at the sandwich in his hand. “They should have had the dome up.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I said.

  He looked up at me, and suddenly he seemed familiar again. It was something about the way his eyes took me in. He said, “I’m an old man, and she’s gone now. So don’t worry, okay?”