When You Reach Me

April 27 is exactly 21 days away. Miranda makes index cards to help her mother practice for The $20,000 Pyramid. Miranda’s mom steals office supplies—including a large calendar, markers, index cards—from work to prepare for the game show.

Richard, who has been dating Miranda’s mom for two years, shares Miranda’s observation that, “the more stuff Mom swipes from the office supply closet, the more she’s hating work” (6). Miranda’s mom calls Richard Mr. Perfect because he looks like a yacht model, seems to know everything, and is always calm. Richard is not perfect, though—his right leg is two inches shorter than his left, leading him to wear special shoes with “two-inch platforms nailed to the bottom so that his legs match” (4). Any time Richard wants to remind Miranda’s mother that he’s not perfect, he quietly taps his right knee.

Miranda forgets her house keys at school and stays at the local market on Amsterdam Avenue. Belle, the owner of the small market, lets Miranda help with small tasks around the market and keeps her engaged in a conversation about her favorite book, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. Miranda reads her favorite book over and over, leaving her copy “looking pretty beat-up” (7). When she arrives after work, Miranda’s mother asks why she didn’t just go to her friend Sal’s house.

Miranda confesses to the reader that “Sal used to be my best friend” without offering an explanation (11). Miranda and her mother decide to leave a spare key in the fire hose in their apartment stairwell. The chapter ends with Miranda addressing an unknown reader directly: “You asked me to mention the key. If I ever do decide to write your letter, which I probably won’t, this is the story I would tell you” (11).

The narrator provides an overview of the rules of The $20,000 Pyramid and how cash prizes can be won. Contestants are paired with celebrities, and they take turns trying to guess common words by giving one another clues. Contestants must successfully complete the first round (called the speed round) to proceed to the Winner’s Circle which is “where the big money is” (12). Miranda’s mother takes an evening off from practicing for the game show to lead the monthly tenant meeting, where she diligently takes notes on resident complaints and sends them to the landlord.

Sal’s mom Luisa is a regular at tenant meetings. She and Miranda’s mother are both unwed and met in the apartment lobby on the day Miranda’s mother moved in. This was also the day Miranda met Sal almost twelve years ago when they were both babies.

An apparently homeless man began showing up at Miranda’s corner around the beginning of the school year. After Sal and Miranda have a falling out in their friendship, Miranda must walk past the man on the corner by herself. Kids in the neighborhood call the man Quack, Quakers, or Kicker “because he used to do these sudden kicks into the street” (16). Miranda’s mother refers to him as the laughing man.

The laughing man scares Miranda and Sal with his erratic behavior and his mumbled chanting of “bookbag, pocketshoe, bookbag, pocketshoe” (18). Miranda asks Richard, her mother’s boyfriend, about the laughing man’s antics and mumblings, but there is no clear answer for anything he does.

Luisa takes notes on each day’s episode of The $20,000 Pyramid at work and gives them to Miranda to prepare study cards for her mother. Miranda is supposed to be doing her homework while her mother and Richard practice for the game show, but instead she is tying knots, a skill Richard taught her. Miranda is trying to solve a problem: “I have no idea what you expect from me” she tells an unknown listener (20). The note Miranda received months earlier asked her to tell “the story of what happened and everything that led up to it” (20), but she is unsure of where to start, so she decides to open her story with the day Sal got punched.

Miranda tells the story of walking home with Sal in the fall. It’s October and Miranda is carrying a poster she made at school on the topic of yawning. As Miranda and Sal approach a group of rowdy boys, one of the boys steps away from the group and punches Sal in the stomach for no apparent reason. Miranda doesn’t know the boy who punches Sal. As the boy walks away, Miranda helps Sal to his feet and walks him home. Sal goes straight to his apartment when they reach the building and closes the door on Miranda. She reflects on this day as the end of her friendship with Sal.

Miranda has a list of four rules from her mother to get home safely, such as having her key ready before reaching the front door and not letting people see that she has money. Miranda has her own trick if she feels afraid of someone while walking in the city: She turns directly to the stranger and asks, “Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?” (25) Miranda explains that this question disarms people and lets them know she isn’t wearing a watch. Her trick has worked so far, and Miranda has “discovered that most people I’m afraid of are actually very friendly” (26).