When You Reach Me

Things You Hide

I was named after a criminal. Mom says that’s a dramatic way of looking at things, but sometimes the truth is dramatic.

“The name Miranda stands for people’s rights,” she said last fall, when I was upset because Robbie B. had told me during gym that I was named after a kidnapper.

I had left my keys at school and waited two and a half hours at Belle’s Market on Amsterdam Avenue for Mom to get home from work. I didn’t mind the waiting so much. I helped Belle out around the store for a while. And I had my book, of course.

“Still reading that same book?” Belle asked, once I had settled into my folding chair next to the cash register to read. “It’s looking pretty beat-up.”

“I’m not still reading it,” I told her. “I’m reading it again.” I had probably read it a hundred times, which was why it looked so beat-up.

“Okay,” Belle said, “so let’s hear something about this book. What’s the first line? I never judge a book by the cover,” she said. “I judge by the first line.”

I knew the first line of my book without even looking. “It was a dark and stormy night,” I said.

She nodded. “Classic. I like that. What’s the story about?”

I thought for a second. “It’s about a girl named Meg—her dad is missing, and she goes on this trip to another planet to save him.”

“And? Does she have a boyfriend?”

“Sort of,” I said. “But that’s not really the point.”

“How old is she?”

“Twelve.” The truth is that my book doesn’t say how old Meg is, but I am twelve, so she feels twelve to me. When I first got the book I was eleven, and she felt eleven.

“Oh, twelve,” Belle said. “Plenty of time for boyfriends, then. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Start what from the beginning?”

“The story. Tell me the story. From the beginning.”

So I started telling her the story of my book, not reading it to her, just telling her about it, starting with the first scene, where Meg wakes up at night, afraid of a thunderstorm.

While she listened, Belle made me a turkey sandwich and gave me about ten chewable vitamin Cs because she thought I sounded nasal. When she went to the bathroom, I sneaked a little bunch of grapes, which I love but can’t ever have, because Mom doesn’t like the way the grape pickers are treated in California and she refuses to buy them.

* * *

When she finally got there, Mom hugged Belle and told her, “I owe you,” like I was some repulsive burden instead of the person who had very helpfully unpacked three boxes of green bananas and scoured the refrigerated section for expired dairy items. Then Mom bought a box of strawberries, even though I know she thinks Belle’s strawberries are overpriced and not very good. She calls them SSO’s, which stands for “strawberry-shaped objects.”

“Where did Robbie B. get the dumb idea that anyone would name her own daughter after a murderer?” Mom asked. Our building was still half a block away, but her key was already in her hand. Mom doesn’t like to fumble around in front of the building looking like a target for muggers.

“Not a murderer,” I said. “A kidnapper. Robbie B.’s dad is a prosecutor. He says the Miranda warnings were named for a guy named Mr. Miranda who committed some horrible crime. Is that true?”

“Technically? Maybe. The Miranda warnings are essential, you know. People need to know that they have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. What kind of justice system would we have without—”

“‘Maybe’ meaning ‘yes’?”

“—and then there’s Shakespeare. He invented the name Miranda, you know, for The Tempest.”

It made perfect sense now that I thought about it: Mom wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer—she started law school and almost finished her first year, but then I was born and she had to quit. Now she’s a paralegal, except she works at a really small law office where she has to be the receptionist and the secretary too. Richard is one of the lawyers. They do a lot of free work for poor people, sometimes even for criminals. But I never dreamed she would name me after one.

Mom unlocked the lobby door, which is iron and glass and must weigh three hundred pounds, and she pushed hard to swing it open, her heels slipping on the tile floor. When we were inside, she leaned against the other side of the door until she heard the click that means the lock has caught. When the door swings shut by itself, it usually doesn’t lock, which drives Mom nuts and is one of the things the landlord won’t fix.

“So? Was he a kidnapper or not?” I punched the button for the elevator.

“Okay, you win,” Mom said. “I named you after a monster, Mira. I’m sorry. If you don’t like your name, you are welcome to change it.”

That was so Mom. She didn’t understand that a person gets attached to a person’s name, that something like this might come as a shock.

Upstairs, she threw her coat on a kitchen chair, filled the spaghetti pot with water, and put it on to boil. She was wearing an orange turtleneck and a denim skirt with purple and black striped tights.

“Nice tights,” I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I’m not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.

She leaned against the sink and flipped through the mail. “You already hassled me about the tights this morning, Mira.”

“Oh.” She was usually still in bed when I left for school, so I didn’t get to appreciate her outfit until she got home from work. “Nice nail polish, then.” Her nails were electric blue. She must have done them at her desk that day.

She rolled her eyes. “Are you mad about waiting at Belle’s? I was super busy—I couldn’t just leave.”

“No. I like it at Belle’s.” I wondered whether she’d done her nails before, after, or during her super busy afternoon.

“You could have gone to Sal’s, you know.” Sal and his mom, Louisa, live in the apartment below ours. Sal used to be my best friend.

“I said I like it at Belle’s.”

“Still. I think we should hide a key in the fire hose, for the next time.”

So after dinner we hid our spare key inside the nozzle of the dusty, folded-up fire hose in the stairwell. The hose is all cracked-looking and about a hundred years old, and Mom always says that if there’s an actual fire it will be of no use whatsoever and we’ll have to jump out the window into the neighbor’s garden. It’s a good thing we live on the second floor.

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.