When You Reach Me

Invisible Things

The next time I saw Marcus, I was absolutely sure he would remember me. I was in the main office, because Mr. Tompkin had sent me down to pick up some mimeographs.

“Why you kids need diagrams of the water system is beyond me,” Wheelie said as she handed them to me from her chair.

“They’re for Main Street,” I told her. “We’re trying to make working hydrants.”

“Well, that may be the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, waving me away.

I love the smell of new copies. Mom says I have an attraction to dangerous smells, her main example being the fact that I love to stand in a warm cloud of dry-cleaner exhaust and take deep breaths. There is something very food-but-not-food about the smell of dry-cleaner exhaust. She always pulls me away and says that she’s sure in ten years we’ll find out that it causes horrible diseases.

I was walking back toward the stairs, quietly inhaling the smell of the thirty-two freshly copied diagrams of the New York City water system, when Marcus came out of the stairwell reading a book.

“Hey,” I said, but he walked right by me, past the main office, and around the corner to where the dentist’s office is.

Back in class, I passed out the diagrams like Mr. Tompkin asked me to. I accidentally ripped Julia’s before I gave it to her, and accidentally crumpled it a little too. Alice Evans was squirming in her chair like she was doing a hula dance. I rolled my eyes. No wonder she was the only sixth grader who had to bring an extra set of clothes to school.