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.