When You Reach Me

Back in October after Sal gets punched, Miranda begins walking home alone and encounters Marcus, the boy who punched her friend. When she comes upon Marcus on the sidewalk, Miranda uses her strategy of asking him the time to avoid confrontation. Marcus doesn’t have a watch, but he is able to tell Miranda the time based on where the sun stands in relation to a building. Miranda is impressed, but she feels guilty for chatting with the boy who punched her friend. The interaction is enough to make Miranda forget about the laughing man, who she observes sleeping with his head underneath the mailbox on the corner.

Sal begins playing basketball every day after getting punched. He talks to Miranda less and less, and Miranda wonders if he is mad at her. She finally asks him whether he still wants to be friends, and he says no.

Meanwhile, classmates Julia and Annemarie have a falling out, leaving Annemarie and Miranda to gravitate towards one another in the absence of their usual best friends.

Miranda and Annemarie go to lunch together, and Annemarie invites Miranda to her house after school. Miranda is relieved to have an afternoon away from listening to the sound of Sal’s basketball in the courtyard of their apartment.

Miranda notices many differences between her lifestyle and Annemarie’s when she visits her new friend’s home. Annemarie’s apartment building has a doorman, her bedroom is nicely decorated, and her father works from home. Annemarie’s father is welcoming and kind, bringing the girls small snacks. The mustard served with tiny sausages makes Miranda’s lips burn, but “it was worth it” she muses (38). Annemarie’s dad serves apple cider to Miranda while Annemarie gets only water. Miranda notices but doesn’t ask any questions, enjoying her spot on the soft rug with her snacks.

Miranda’s mother has gotten very good in her practice for the speed round of The $20,000 Pyramid. The second part of the game show is “The Winner’s Circle” and follows a different format; contestants and celebrities guess themed categories instead of single words. Miranda and Richard rehearse everything down to Dick Clark’s lines to prepare Miranda’s mother. Unlike her quick, perfect performances in rehearsals for the speed round, Miranda’s mother struggles to finish the second round in time. Miranda, her mother, and Richard are silent. With only two weeks left to prepare, Miranda’s mother can only complete four out of the six categories in the second round.

Miranda’s class is working on a Main Street project in which students create plans for parts of a model city. Proposals are reviewed and approved by a student Planning Board before students then build their models. Miranda volunteers to be an office monitor and leaves the classroom. When she arrives at the office, her task is to deliver notifications to students with dentist appointments. This is the first time Miranda realizes there is a dentist office within her school for students without insurance or access to a dentist. One of the students on Miranda’s list is Marcus Heilbroner, who turns out to be the boy who punched Sal.

Marcus carries a math book that seems more advanced than others Miranda has seen at school, and he acts as though he doesn’t remember Miranda from the day he punched Sal or from the day he told her the time. Marcus recognizes Miranda’s favorite book and tells her, “Some people think it’s possible, you know” referring to time travel (49). Marcus and Miranda debate the logic of time travel as experienced by the characters in A Wrinkle in Time. They agree on the principle that time travel happens in the story, but they disagree on the specifics of the logic in the plotline. Miranda insists that “the end can’t happen before the beginning,” to which Marcus replies, “Why can’t it?” (51). Their conversation comes to a polite end when it’s Marcus’s turn for the dentist and Miranda has to walk younger students back to their classrooms.

Colin, a boy from Miranda’s class, impulsively asks the local sandwich shop owner for a job. Colin, Miranda, and Annemarie are hired to work at Jimmy’s sandwich shop during lunch period in exchange for cheese sandwiches and soda.

Jimmy warns the kids not to touch his Fred Flintstone piggy bank. Annemarie describes him as “nice-weird, not creepy-weird” (55), but Miranda has her doubts. The three classmates get accustomed to their new lunch routine of preparing sandwiches and bringing their free lunch back to school in time to eat during class, a habit that annoys Julia because she despises the smell of pickles in Colin’s sandwich.

Miranda arrives home one Friday to discover her apartment door unlocked. She becomes nervous that she’s not alone in the apartment, so she goes downstairs to Sal’s, but he is cold towards her and doesn’t invite her inside. When Miranda’s mother returns home, they discover that the spare key they had left in the firehose is missing. They search the house together and can’t find anything missing. This was Friday afternoon, and Miranda finds the first mysterious note on Monday morning.

Miranda discovers a note sticking out of her library book while packing for school on Monday morning. The note is “written in tiny words on a little square of stiff paper that felt like it had once gotten wet” (60). The note is not signed, but it asks Miranda to do two things: write a letter and mention the location of her house key.

Miranda shows the note to her mother and they both get scared. They change the locks to the apartment door. Miranda’s mother points out that the note is addressed simply to “M” and that could be a number of people, not necessarily Miranda. She also points out that the request to mention where the key is makes no sense, telling Miranda, “Someone with the key wouldn’t have to ask where the key is” (61). Miranda admits that the logic is backwards, but “somewhere in my head a tiny bell started ringing” (61) that she doesn’t even notice at first.