When You Reach Me

Things in an Elevator

New Year’s Day was weirdly warm and sunny Sal’s basketball was going strong by about nine in the morning. I sneaked a look down into the alley and saw him running back and forth in just a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He was wearing the watch Louisa had given him for Christmas. She’d come up to show it to us beforehand. It was kind of old-fashioned, with Roman numerals and a leather band, and I hadn’t been sure Sal would like it. But it looked like he did.

Mom was sleeping late. I wrote her a note: I went out. I’ll get you a bagel.

The laughing man wasn’t on the corner—maybe he didn’t work holidays. Belle’s was closed. Everything felt kind of peaceful and sad and deserted.

My feet carried me to school, which was closed, of course. The yard gate was open, and I went in and sat on the jungle gym for a few minutes, letting myself feel how strange it was to be there alone. I was sort of deliberately trying to weird myself out, I think, to get my energy up. To call Annemarie.

Ten days of silence had grown into a question that my brain shouted inside my head: “Is Annemarie even your friend anymore?” There was a pay phone on the corner. I had a dime in my coat.

As I dialed, I noticed someone leaning over the garbage can across the street. When he pulled himself upright I saw it was the laughing man. He stood there with his hands on his hips looking down at the garbage. I quickly turned my back to him, worried that he might recognize me and come over.

The receiver of the pay phone was cold against my ear. Only after it started ringing did it occur to me that if my mother was sleeping, Annemarie’s parents might be sleeping too.

“Yello!” Annemarie’s dad answered the phone. He sounded as if he’d been up for hours, just sitting by the phone and hoping, hoping, hoping it would ring.

“Hi… it’s Miranda—”

“Hi, Miranda! Happy New Year!”

“Hi. I mean, Happy New Year to you too. I was wondering if Annemarie is there.”

“She is! But she’s in the shower. Are you by any chance outside, Miranda? It sounds like you might be at a pay phone.”

“Oh. Yeah, I am, actually.”

“In the neighborhood?”

“Um, yeah. I’m right by school.”

“Well, come on over. I’m pouring you some orange juice right now!”

“Uh, okay.”

“You can surprise Annemarie!”

Would I ever. I walked up the hill, where the sunlight seemed to touch everything like it was a hyper kid running all over a toy store—it bounced off the dirty metal lampposts, the shiny brass awning posts, even the sunglasses of a woman walking her dogs with a cup of coffee in one hand. Everything shined.

“Miss Miranda, Happy New Year!” Annemarie’s doorman was standing just outside the building’s polished doors. He smiled and waved me in.

On the way up, it hit me that it was truly strange to come over here without talking to Annemarie first. But at the exact same time I got nervous about that, I also got this other feeling, which I can only describe as love for Annemarie’s elevator. The wood paneling, the cloth-covered stool in one corner, the little bell that went off every time we passed another floor. It was all so nice and cozy that I thought it would be wonderful to stay inside it forever, or at least to sit down on the little stool and close my eyes for a while. The whole thing was beyond weird. And then the elevator stopped on Annemarie’s floor, and of course I got out, because that’s what people do when the elevator gets to their floor.

Annemarie answered the door in her robe, with wet hair.

“Hi,” I started. “I just called to say Happy New Year, and your dad said—”

She smiled. “Come on in.”

It was the best morning. Annemarie showed me her Christmas presents. She got all kinds of cool art stuff, and we ended up spreading it all over the dining room table and drawing comic strips on this special comic-strip paper that came with stickers for the talking bubbles and the thinking bubbles. And then her mom showed us how to make origami frogs, and I was actually good at it. Meanwhile, her dad kept bringing in these plates of bacon and, for me, French toast strips I could pick up with my hands.

Then Mom called. I had completely forgotten about her. She was frantic, she was angry, and she was coming to get me. Even Annemarie’s dad looked mad.

“Better get your coat on,” he said when I hung up the phone, even though my mom couldn’t possibly get to Annemarie’s apartment that fast. So I waited by the door, overheating in my coat, and Annemarie waited with me.

“So, about what happened at Jimmy’s …,” I said. “You know, I really never meant… what he thought I meant. Not for one second.”

She looked at the floor. “I totally believe you. And I don’t know why I said that thing I said, about… money. It was stupid.”

“It’s okay.” I was so grateful that she had something to apologize for that it didn’t really occur to me to think about how it had actually made me feel. But I have thought about it since then. It didn’t make me feel good.

* * *

We heard the elevator’s ding and I opened Annemarie’s front door before Mom had a chance to ring the bell. I thought I might be able to escape without Annemarie’s parents talking to her.

No such luck. “Jerry?” Mom called out, and Annemarie’s dad came rushing over saying, “Oh, you’re here. I didn’t hear the bell—”

“I’m so sorry about this,” Mom said.

“No, I’m sorry. I had no idea—”

“It’ll never happen again—”

“—always check with you first.”

They cross-talked for a while, then hit one of those natural breaks in the conversation and both turned to look at me.

“Let’s go,” Mom said coldly, and I said, “Thanks for having me,” and Annemarie’s dad smiled at me, but only because he’s the nicest person on earth.

The elevator opened right away, so there was no awkward waiting. On the way down, I knew I should apologize, but I just waited for Mom to jump all over me. Instead she burst into tears.

Which made me cry. So we both cried through the lobby, past the doorman, and out into the sunlight, where we magically stopped. She took a deep breath and looked at me. “I was scared,” she said. “When you didn’t come back, I got really scared. Don’t ever do that again.”

I nodded.

“Okay,” she said. “What now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe a movie?”

So that’s what we did. We went to the movies, and ate candy and popcorn, and held hands for a few minutes on the way home.

The laughing man was at his regular post, doing his kicks into the street. When he saw us he yelled, “Smart kid!” But having Mom there made it different, like walking down the street with a blanket wrapped tight around me.

Richard was leaning up against our building, reading a newspaper.

“Hey!” he said. “We had a plan. Did you forget about me?”

He made a sad face, and Mom said, “Oh, no! How late am I?” and then she looked at me and we both started laughing.

Richard said, “Seriously. Would it kill you to give me a key?” And Mom shrugged and said it was only three-thirty and she didn’t much feel like going upstairs anyway. So we turned around and went to eat at the diner, which was full of people just waking up and having breakfast.