When You Reach Me

Things You Realize

It was 1979—a new year, a new decade, almost, but school was still just school. Jay Stringer was still a genius, music assemblies were still boring, and Alice Evans was still too shy to admit when she had to go to the bathroom. The fourth grade’s violin performance had only just started, and already Alice was squirming in her seat next to me. Jay was on my other side, somehow reading a book while listening to the world’s worst music.

I located Sal’s blond head a few rows ahead on my right. I stared at the back of it for a while, trying to see if I could make him turn around with the sheer power of my brain waves, but it was hard to concentrate with Alice doing a Mexican hat dance in her chair. I tried to make a face at Annemarie, who was on the other side of Alice, but Annemarie seemed fully absorbed by the music. She’s extremely non-judgmental that way. So I went back to looking at Sal.

Directly in front of me was Julia. She was obviously as bored as I was—her head kept bobbing around. And then she turned and looked at Annemarie. I glanced over and saw that Annemarie’s eyes were still on the stage. Julia watched Annemarie. And I watched Julia watching Annemarie. And what I saw were eyes that were sixty-percent-cacao chocolate, a face that was café au lait, and an expression that was so familiar it made my whole body ring like a bell. Julia’s look was my look. My looking at Sal.

And suddenly I knew three things:

First, it was Julia who had left the rose for Annemarie.

Second, Julia cared about Annemarie, but Annemarie didn’t see it. Because I was standing in the way.

Third, Alice Evans was about to pee in her pants.

I turned to Alice. “Hey,” I said, “I have to go to the bathroom. Be my partner?”

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that when I asked Alice Evans to be my bathroom partner. I wasn’t one of the girls who tortured her on purpose, but I had never lifted a finger to help her before, or even spent one minute being nice to her.

She stopped squirming and looked at me suspiciously. “You have to go?” she said. “Really?”

“Yeah.” And in that moment, I wanted nothing as much as I wanted Alice to feel safe with me. “Really.”

I leaned forward in my seat and waved my arm up and down so that Mr. Tompkin turned to look at me from his seat at the end of the row, and I spoke over the laps of Jay Stringer and Colin, who were sitting between us.

“I have to go to the bathroom.” These words felt like some kind of sacrifice, a precious offering to the universe. I didn’t know why, but Julia’s look had given me this total determination to get Alice Evans to the bathroom before she wet herself.

“Now?” Mr. Tompkin whispered.

“Please!”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine.”

Mr. Tompkin tilted his knees to one side to let us pass, and Jay Stringer and Colin put their heads together and then Jay laughed. My mind processed that—if Jay was the one who’d laughed, then Colin was the one who’d made the joke. A joke about me, maybe. I grabbed Alice’s hand and pulled her after me. And then we were running up the aisle.