When You Reach Me

Things You Wish For

“Miranda?” Mom calls from the kitchen. “We need you to keep time. This egg-timer ticking is driving me crazy.”

So I watch the second hand of the kitchen clock while Richard feeds Mom clues. Then Mom gives the clues while Richard guesses.

“Can I play?” I ask after about five rounds.

“Sure. Richard, you keep time for a while.” Mom stretches and peels off her purple sweatshirt. As it goes over her head, her hair falls free of the collar and bounces down around her shoulders. As usual, this makes me curse my nonexistent dad, who must be to blame for my hair, which is straight, brown, and just kind of there. I blame this stupid flat brown hair on my father, but otherwise I don’t hold any grudges against him.

In my book, Meg is looking for her father. When she finally gets to Camazotz, which is a planet somewhere near the Big Dipper where he’s being held prisoner, this evil man with red eyes asks her why she wants him, and she says, “Didn’t you ever have a father yourself? You don’t want him for a reason. You want him because he’s your father.”

So I figure it’s because I never had a father that I don’t want one now A person can’t miss something she never had.

Richard is looking at the kitchen clock, waiting for the second hand to get to the twelve. “Okay, get ready—go!”

I look down at the first card. “Um, this is something you spread on toast,” I say.

“Butter!” Mom yells.

Next card. “You drink a milk shake with this, you suck through it.”

“A straw!” Mom yells.

Next. “It’s leather and it holds your pants up!”

“A belt!”

“It’s sweet—you drink it in winter, after you go sledding!”

“Hot chocolate!”

It’s good to play, to think of nothing but the next word and to have Mom think of nothing but the next words out of my mouth. We fly through the pack of seven words.

“You’re good at this,” Mom says when we finish with five seconds to spare.

I’m smiling. “I really think you’re going to win,” I tell her.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she warns. “This is just the speed round. The speed round is the easy part.”

* * *

The truth is that our hopes are already up. Our wish list is stuck to the fridge with a magnet Mom stole from work:

Trip to China

Good camera for trip to China

Wall-to-wall carpeting for Miranda’s room

New TV

And Richard has scribbled Sailboat at the bottom, though it’s hard to imagine where we would park it.

That’s the official list, anyway. Richard and I have our own secret plan for the money, if Mom wins it.