When You Reach Me

Julia rudely informs Miranda that Annemarie has epilepsy, and all the bread she’s been eating at the sandwich shop is not on her approved diet. Julia also confronts Miranda for how she treats her: “You’ve been giving me dirty looks since like third grade! Are you going to pretend you haven’t?” (93) The confrontation makes Miranda uncomfortable, and she’s happy when Julia’s watch falls off her wrist and cracks. She expects Julia to scream, but Julia calmly puts the watch in her pocket and observes, “This whole day just stinks” before walking away (93).

Miranda walks behind Sal on the way home. She no longer tries to catch up with him to walk together because “he would only look at his sneakers and not talk” (93). When Marcus comes out of his building and begins walking towards Sal, Sal kneels down as though he’s tying his shoe. Miranda explains, “Dropping to tie your shoe was an I-can’t-fight, I-can’t-run, I-bow-down-before-you sort of move. Plus, just in case some hitting did occur, it protected important body parts” (94). Miranda is surprised to see Sal submit to Marcus in this way, and Marcus walks past Sal before walking past Miranda.

Annemarie is excited when someone leaves a rose on her doorstep, but Miranda quickly turns the conversation to Annemarie’s epilepsy. Annemarie explains that she’s not supposed to eat bread or starches, and that her father prepares special meals for her that usually keeps her feeling fine. Miranda encourages Annemarie to keep working at Jimmy’s with her and Colin, “Just don’t eat his crummy food” (96). Since working at the sandwich shop, Annemarie has been leaving the special lunch that her dad prepares for her in the garbage on the way to school and indulging in cheese sandwiches from work instead.

Annemarie turns the conversation back to the mysterious rose left on her doorstep. Miranda can tell that Annemarie wants to hear that the rose is probably from Colin, but she can’t bring herself to say it.

It’s the first really cold day of December. On her way to school, Miranda reaches into her coat pocket and discovers another mysterious note. This note offers three signals of things to come (98):

3 p.m. today: Colin’s knapsack.

Christmas Day: Tesser well.

April 27th: Studio TV-15.

The third note also explains yawns: “They cool the brain by bringing air high into the nasal passage, which has the effect of increasing alertness” (98).

Miranda is unsure of what the reference to Colin’s knapsack might mean, but she understands that “to tesser” is another reference to A Wrinkle in Time and it means to travel. April 27 happens to be Richard’s birthday. It is also the date Miranda’s mother is scheduled to be on The $20,000 Pyramid, although Miranda acknowledges that she didn’t know this back in December. She reads the note over and over again. When Marcus comes out of his building, this time he acknowledges Miranda and walks along next to her.

Miranda and Marcus discuss the logic of time travel along their walk to school. Marcus explains to Miranda that if someone travels far enough through time, people won’t recognize them upon arrival; if a sixty-two-year-old Miranda were to visit from the future, nobody would recognize the old woman as Miranda because they only know the twelve-year-old Miranda.

Julia joins the conversation as they continue walking and offers her own explanation of time travel using her ring to demonstrate the concept of hopping from one point in time to another. Marcus silently looks at Julia, finally noticing her. Miranda doesn’t understand Julia’s attempts to explain time travel and becomes frustrated, but Marcus gets it, saying quietly, “I know what she means” (104). Julia, exasperated with Miranda’s inability to understand her explanations, is grateful that “someone here has a brain” (104) and stomps away leaving Marcus to further explain concepts of time travel to Miranda.

Miranda asks Marcus why he hit Sal. Marcus doesn’t know what Miranda is talking about, and Miranda must tell him who Sal is, “as if I had just changed the subject from something very normal to something completely insane, instead of the other way around” (105). Marcus suddenly remembers and explains there was a reason for him hitting Sal: “Same reason I do most things. I wanted to see what would happen” (105). Miranda doesn’t understand, but she and Marcus are interrupted when the laughing man arrives. When he sees Marcus, he takes off running. Marcus tells Miranda it’s the second time they’ve had such an interaction.

The same day at lunch period, Jimmy is excited to discover that the bread order is short by two rolls. “They never think you’ll actually count the bread,” he tells the kids, although Miranda knows she counted it twice already to be sure that everything was in order (107). While Jimmy is calling the bread delivery service about the missing rolls, Colin invites Miranda to have pizza together instead of their daily cheese sandwich from the shop.

Miranda remembers the first proof from the latest note: “3 p.m. today, Colin’s knapsack” (108) and at 3:00 p.m. on the dot she approaches the class coat closet to get her own bag. Colin is distracted talking with classmates, so Miranda takes a look in Colin’s knapsack where she finds the two missing bread rolls from Jimmy’s shop.

Miranda drops the stolen rolls back into Colin’s bag and leaves school. She waits a moment for Sal like she always does, then turns and begins walking to Annemarie’s house. She isn’t surprised that Colin has stolen the bread rolls, “in fact, that was just the kind of thing I expected from Colin” (110), but she’s distracted with thoughts of the note that had warned her to look inside Colin’s knapsack at that moment. Miranda wonders, “How could anyone possibly have known that Colin would take the rolls?” (110).

When she arrives at Annemarie’s, Miranda is miserable and acts out towards Annemarie. She suggests it was Annemarie’s father left the mystery rose instead of Colin. On her way home, Miranda encounters the laughing man sitting against the mailbox on the corner. Miranda notices for a fleeting moment that “there was something familiar about him” and for the first time sees how old he appears (113). Miranda reaches into her bag and offers the laughing man her sandwich. The laughing man asks whether the sandwich is on a hard roll, as he can’t eat hard bread due to his bad teeth. He accepts the sandwich from Miranda and asks her what the day’s burn scale was. Miranda pretends she understands and says she isn’t sure. The laughing man suddenly looks familiar again and tells Miranda, “I’m an old man, and she’s gone now. So don’t worry, okay?” and Miranda replies, “I won’t” (114), even though she thinks the man is talking nonsense.

Miranda’s mother is upset that Miranda has initiated contact with the laughing man because this goes against the basic safety rules she has given Miranda for living in New York City. Richard wants to marry Miranda’s mom, which makes Miranda feel happy, but her mother doesn’t know whether marrying Richard is right for them, which is why she still hasn’t given him a key to their apartment. She feels stuck, “like I’m afraid to take any steps, in case they’re the wrong ones” (117). As her mother goes to make spaghetti for dinner (yet again), Miranda realizes they are stuck “in a lot of ways” (117).

Annemarie comes to spend the night at Miranda’s house for the first time. Miranda is rude to her mother about the state of their apartment, and her mother leaves her to prepare for her friend’s arrival on her own. As she gets the cot ready for Annemarie, Miranda thinks back to her friendship with Sal and the numerous times Sal tried to spend the night on that same cot in her room but always left in the middle of the night because he felt homesick.

Just before Annemarie and her father come into the apartment, Miranda has a moment of realization: “The truth was that Mom saw it too: the peeling paint, the cigarette butts on the stairs, everything” (120). She doesn’t apologize for having spoken to her mother so harshly, though.

Annemarie’s father brings prepared foods for her special diet, all wrapped up nicely with curly and colorful ribbons. Annemarie likes Miranda’s mom because she treats her like a real person rather than a baby, and Miranda reflects that she wouldn’t mind having a parent treat her the way Annemarie’s father does. In the morning, Miranda is relieved that Annemarie is still there. Miranda’s mom is awake making bacon omelets for the girls. Miranda wants to hug her mother for the effort she’s made, but she doesn’t.

With two days left until Christmas break, the three friends are fired from Jimmy’s sandwich shop. Someone has stolen Jimmy’s bank full of two-dollar bills, and he suspects his young employees. Annemarie suggests writing a letter to Jimmy to ask for their jobs back. Miranda and Colin agree, and the three friends write a simple letter to Jimmy assuring him that they didn’t take his bank, and asking if they may return to work.

Jimmy lets the kids come back to work, but their return is short-lived when they realize that Jimmy is racist. Jimmy suspects that Julia has stolen his bank, and he tells the kids, “Your friend, little Swiss Miss. Don’t let me find her in here again” (129). Colin points out that Julia has no need to steal money, but Jimmy insists that “some things are in the blood” (129), at which point Annemarie realizes that Jimmy is referring to Julia’s race. Annemarie becomes furious and calls Jimmy a racist pig, but it takes Miranda a few moments to realize that Jimmy is profiling Julia because she is Black. When she does make the connection, Miranda insists, “That’s not why I call her Swiss Miss” (130), appalled that she had misunderstood the connection Jimmy felt with her over the nickname for Julia. Colin still doesn’t understand what has happened, but he joins the girls in walking out on Jimmy. Annemarie explains to Colin, “He thinks Julia did it because she’s black” (130). Annemarie then turns on Miranda for having called Julia Swiss Miss. When Miranda tries to explain that the nickname is based on Julia’s global travels, not her race, Annemarie points out that Miranda is the one who would need Jimmy’s money more than anyone else.

Annemarie storms away and Colin and Miranda go for pizza together, but it isn’t fun, and Miranda realizes that Colin might just like pizza, not necessarily her. She asks Colin about stealing the rolls from Jimmy’s shop, and Colin confesses, but he swears that he didn’t take Jimmy’s bank. Miranda believes him, and Christmas vacation comes with the end of the school day.