Rebecca Stead - When You Reach Me

To Sean, Jack, and Eli,
champions of inappropriate laughter, fierce love,
and extremely deep questions

Things You Keep in a Box

So Mom got the postcard today. It says Congratulations in big curly letters, and at the very top is the address of Studio TV-15 on West 58th Street. After three years of trying, she has actually made it. Shes going to be a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid , which is hosted by Dick Clark.

On the postcard theres a list of things to bring. She needs some extra clothes in case she wins and makes it to another show, where they pretend its the next day even though they really tape five in one afternoon. Barrettes are optional, but she should definitely bring some with her. Unlike me, Mom has glossy red hair that bounces around and might obstruct Americas view of her small freckled face.

And then theres the date shes supposed to show up, scrawled in blue pen on a line at the bottom of the card: April 27, 1979 . Just like you said.

I check the box under my bed, which is where Ive kept your notes these past few months. There it is, in your tiny handwriting: April 27th: Studio TV-15 , the words all jerky-looking, like you wrote them on the subway Your last proof.

I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though youre gone and theres no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. Its all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.

Things That Go Missing

Mom has swiped a big paper calendar from work and Scotch-taped the month of April to the kitchen wall. She used a fat green marker, also swiped from work, to draw a pyramid on April 27, with dollar signs and exclamation points all around it. She went out and bought a fancy egg timer that can accurately measure a half minute. They dont have fancy egg timers in the supply closet at her office.

April twenty-seventh is also Richards birthday. Mom wonders if thats a good omen. Richard is Moms boyfriend. He and I are going to help Mom practice every single night, which is why Im sitting at my desk instead of watching after-school TV, which is a birthright of every latchkey child. Latchkey child is a name for a kid with keys who hangs out alone after school until a grown-up gets home to make dinner. Mom hates that expression. She says it reminds her of dungeons, and must have been invented by someone strict and awful with an unlimited child-care budget. Probably someone German, she says, glaring at Richard, who is German but not strict or awful.

Its possible. In Germany, Richard says, I would be one of the Schlsselkinder , which means key children.

Youre lucky, he tells me. Keys are power. Some of us have to come knocking. Its true that he doesnt have a key. Well, he has a key to his apartment, but not to ours.

Richard looks the way I picture guys on sailboatstall, blond, and very tucked-in, even on weekends. Or maybe I picture guys on sailboats that way because Richard loves to sail. His legs are very long, and they dont really fit under our kitchen table, so he has to sit kind of sideways, with his knees pointing out toward the hall. He looks especially big next to Mom, whos short and so tiny she has to buy her belts in the kids department and make an extra hole in her watchband so it wont fall off her arm.

Mom calls Richard Mr. Perfect because of how he looks and how he knows everything. And every time she calls him Mr. Perfect, Richard taps his right knee. He does that because his right leg is shorter than his left one. All his right-foot shoes have two-inch platforms nailed to the bottom so that his legs match. In bare feet, he limps a little.

You should be grateful for that leg, Mom tells him. Its the only reason we let you come around. Richard has been coming around for almost two years now.

* * *

We have exactly twenty-one days to get Mom ready for the game show. So instead of watching television, Im copying words for her practice session tonight. I write each word on one of the white index cards Mom swiped from work. When I have seven words, I bind the cards together with a rubber band she also swiped from work.

I hear Moms key in the door and flip over my word piles so she cant peek.

Miranda? She clomps down the hallshes on a clog kick latelyand sticks her head in my room. Are you starving? I thought wed hold dinner for Richard.

I can wait. The truth is Ive just eaten an entire bag of Cheez Doodles. After-school junk food is another fundamental right of the latchkey child. Im sure this is true in Germany, too.

Youre sure youre not hungry? Want me to cut up an apple for you?

Whats a kind of German junk food? I ask her. Wiener crispies?

She stares at me. I have no idea. Why do you ask?

No reason.

Do you want the apple or not?

No, and get out of hereIm doing the words for later.

Great. She smiles and reaches into her coat pocket. Catch. She lobs something toward me, and I grab what turns out to be a bundle of brand-new markers in rainbow colors, held together with a fat rubber band. She clomps back toward the kitchen.

Richard and I figured out a while ago that the more stuff Mom swipes from the office supply closet, the more shes hating work. I look at the markers for a second and then get back to my word piles.

Mom has to win this money.

Things You Hide

I was named after a criminal. Mom says thats a dramatic way of looking at things, but sometimes the truth is dramatic.

The name Miranda stands for peoples rights, she said last fall, when I was upset because Robbie B. had told me during gym that I was named after a kidnapper.

I had left my keys at school and waited two and a half hours at Belles Market on Amsterdam Avenue for Mom to get home from work. I didnt mind the waiting so much. I helped Belle out around the store for a while. And I had my book, of course.

Still reading that same book? Belle asked, once I had settled into my folding chair next to the cash register to read. Its looking pretty beat-up.

Im not still reading it, I told her. Im reading it again. I had probably read it a hundred times, which was why it looked so beat-up.

Okay, Belle said, so lets hear something about this book. Whats the first line? I never judge a book by the cover, she said. I judge by the first line.

I knew the first line of my book without even looking. It was a dark and stormy night, I said.

She nodded. Classic. I like that. Whats the story about?

I thought for a second. Its about a girl named Megher dad is missing, and she goes on this trip to another planet to save him.

And? Does she have a boyfriend?

Sort of, I said. But thats not really the point.

How old is she?

Twelve. The truth is that my book doesnt say how old Meg is, but I am twelve, so she feels twelve to me. When I first got the book I was eleven, and she felt eleven.

Oh, twelve, Belle said. Plenty of time for boyfriends, then. Why dont you start from the beginning?

Start what from the beginning?

The story. Tell me the story. From the beginning.

So I started telling her the story of my book, not reading it to her, just telling her about it, starting with the first scene, where Meg wakes up at night, afraid of a thunderstorm.

While she listened, Belle made me a turkey sandwich and gave me about ten chewable vitamin Cs because she thought I sounded nasal. When she went to the bathroom, I sneaked a little bunch of grapes, which I love but cant ever have, because Mom doesnt like the way the grape pickers are treated in California and she refuses to buy them.