When You Reach Me

Miranda thinks about calling Annemarie and Colin but doesn’t. She can hear Sal playing basketball outside every day now that school is out for winter break. She thinks about the complexity of the world and wonders whether one human no longer being friends with another really matters in the grand scheme of things. She also thinks about the differences between herself and her friends, such as the simple difference that Annemarie doesn’t have to carry her house keys. She wonders whether these differences matter. Ultimately, Miranda decides these small details—one person deciding not to walk home with another, one person having to carry house keys while a friend doesn’t—do matter.

On Christmas morning, Richard gives Miranda a copy of her favorite book A Wrinkle in Time signed by the author with the message, “Miranda, Tesser well, Madeleine L’Engle” (135). Seeing this message on Christmas day as promised in a previous mysterious note triggers a moment of realization for Miranda: “I finally believed that whoever wrote me those notes actually knew about things before they happened” (135). She begins to worry that someone close to her really is in danger, but she doesn’t know how to help. The worst part of the situation is facing the challenge alone.

Miranda leaves a note for her mother on New Year’s morning and takes a walk through the oddly warm and quiet neighborhood. It has been ten days since her fallout with Annemarie, and Miranda finally decides to call her friend from a payphone. Annemarie’s father picks up the phone and cheerfully invites Miranda over for orange juice. For a brief moment in Annemarie’s elevator, Miranda feels cozy, but she quickly brings herself back to face the reality of reconnecting with her friend.

Annemarie greets Miranda warmly and shares her Christmas presents while her parents bring the girls fancy snacks and teach them how to make origami frogs. Miranda loses track of the time until her own mother calls, panicked at Miranda’s long absence. While waiting for her mother to pick her up, Miranda explains to Annemarie that she hadn’t meant what Jimmy assumed about her nickname for Julia. The two girls make up and Miranda heads home with her mother. Richard is waiting outside their apartment building when they arrive home, still without a key.

School is back in session and the students are gathered for an assembly. Miranda observes the classmates around her— “Sal’s blond head a few rows ahead” and Annemarie “fully absorbed by the music” (143)—and notices Julia watching Annemarie the same way she watches Sal. Miranda realizes that it was Julia who left the rose for Annemarie, and that Julia cares deeply about Annemarie. She also realizes that Alice, another girl from her class, really needs to use the restroom, but she’s too embarrassed to ask for a hall pass. Miranda decides to help Alice by asking her to be her own bathroom partner. Pretending that she has to use the restroom, Miranda paves the way for Alice to quickly leave for the restroom without embarrassment.

While Alice is in the bathroom, Miranda dashes to the office and asks for a piece of paper and writes a quick note: “TRUCE” (147). She meets up with Alice again outside the bathroom, happy to have helped her classmate: “People seemed to like the new me” (147). When the girls return to the assembly, Miranda drops the truce note in Julia’s lap.

Sal and Colin are becoming friends, too, and Miranda feels left out when the two boys walk home together without her. She stops in Belle’s shop and is shocked to learn that the laughing man has been visiting and paying for his sandwich and banana with carefully folded two-dollar bills. Miranda immediately thinks the laughing man must have stolen Jimmy’s Fred Flintstone bank. When Miranda leaves Belle’s shop, the laughing man is on the corner “shaking his fist at the sky and kicking his legs out into the traffic rushing up Amsterdam Avenue” (151).

At the apartment, Colin and Sal are still in the lobby. Colin invites Miranda to try his skateboard, then invites himself to see Miranda’s home, missing the awkward vibe between Miranda and Sal. Miranda lies about her mother being sick so she can get home without Colin. Inside her apartment, she has a brief phone conversation with Julia about planning a flourless cake for Annemarie’s birthday.

Later that evening, Miranda gets nervous when someone knocks on the door. It’s Colin, “holding his skateboard in front of him like a shield, looking not exactly like himself” (153). When Miranda opens the door, Colin hesitates before stepping forward and kissing her, then he smiles and runs back down the stairs.

At Julia’s house, Miranda and Julia make a special cake for Annemarie’s birthday. Although Julia’s mother is home, she does not make an appearance because she’s meditating in her closet and cannot be disturbed, so Julia and Miranda are left to make the cake with minimal guidance from Miranda’s mother over the phone.

Despite Julia’s fancy bedroom full of “ruffled curtains, ruffled bedspread, [and] lots of ruffled pillows” (155), Miranda realizes that she and Julia “probably spent our afternoons the same exact way” (156) alone after school while their mothers are busy. Julia also has a copy of A Wrinkle in Time and likes reading about outer space. She likes jewelry and nice clothing, too, and thoughtfully describes Miranda’s hair color as caramel.

Miranda carefully recounts “the part about what happened on the corner” (157) step by step. She describes walking home alone after school and seeing Sal break into a run after Marcus comes outside. Marcus chases after Sal, yelling at him to wait. Miranda notices the laughing man on the corner and “something next to the laughing man, like an old movie that flickered for just a few seconds and then went out” (158). Sal continues running away from Marcus and runs into the busy street as a fast-moving truck approaches. Suddenly, just as the truck is about to hit Sal, the laughing man kicks Sal out of the way. The truck hits the laughing man, but Sal is saved.

Belle, the local shopkeeper, arrives at the scene and guides the shocked Miranda away from the laughing man’s body. As people attend to Sal, Miranda looks down to see Richard’s “black shoe with a two-inch platform nailed to the bottom” and everything starts to spin (161). Miranda closes her eyes, and when she opens them again, she sees four words scratched into the blue mailbox on the corner: “Book, Bag, Pocket, Shoe” (161). She realizes that she’s discovered mysterious notes inside a book, inside a bag of bread, and inside a coat pocket. She looks at Richard’s shoe at her feet—“The shoe that had been stolen from our apartment” (161)—and finds the fourth note instructing her, “This is the story I need you to tell. This and everything that has led up to it” (162). Miranda realizes that the laughing man has saved Sal’s life, and that the laughing man is the one who has been writing the mysterious notes asking her to tell this very story.