“On the ring,” I said.
“Yes! All the diamonds exist at once!” He looked triumphant. “So if you jump backward, you are at that moment—you are in that picture—and you always were there, you always will be there, even if you don’t know it yet.”
I didn’t understand a word of it. And I couldn’t feel my feet. “Forget it,” I said. “The whole thing is making me crazy.”
He nodded like he felt sorry for me and my stupid brain. “I think that’s probably because of your common sense. You can’t accept the idea of arriving before you leave, the idea that every moment is happening at the same time, that it’s us who are moving—”
Enough was enough. I cut him off. “Why did you hit Sal?” I asked.
“Who?” He looked completely mystified, as if I had just changed the subject from something very normal to something completely insane, instead of the other way around.
“My friend Sal. You punched him in the stomach for no reason. In front of the garage. And then you hit him in the face.”
He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right. But no—there was a reason.”
“That’s bull. I know he never did a thing to you.” I’d started to really shiver, even with my hands stuffed in my pockets and Mom’s scarf wrapped around my head.
“I did hit him for a reason,” he said. “What you’re talking about is a justification. I’m not saying it was the right thing to do. I’m just saying I did it for a reason. My own stupid reason.”
I stared at him. “So what was the reason?”
He looked down and shrugged. “Same reason I do most things. I wanted to see what would happen.”
“What do you mean, ‘what would happen’? His nose started bleeding, that’s what happened! And he almost threw up.”
“Besides that, besides the ordinary things.” He tapped the toe of one shoe on the sidewalk. “It was dumb. Really, really dumb.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“And did anything happen? Besides the ordinary things?”
He shook his head. “No—not that I could tell.”
I was going to tell him that he was wrong, that other things had happened, like Sal closing the door in my face that afternoon and never opening it again, but at that moment I noticed the laughing man coming down the block behind us. I’d never seen him near school before. He was bent forward, mumbling and watching his feet, with his eyes on the garbage can right next to Marcus.
The laughing man didn’t notice us standing there until he was practically on top of Marcus. When he finally looked up, he cursed, twisted away, and took off in the other direction, sprinting like he was running a race.
We watched him rush all the way back to Broadway and disappear around the corner.
“That was weird,” I said.
“Yeah,” Marcus agreed. “And it’s the second time it’s happened.”
The First Proof
“What did I tell you?” Jimmy said at lunch that same day, happily slapping the counter with both hands. “They never think you’ll actually count the bread. Never in a million years would they think you’d count!” The bread order had come up two rolls short. I’d counted it twice to make sure.
Jimmy swaggered over to the phone with a huge smile on his face.
“You just made his day,” Colin whispered. “Maybe his whole week.” He was folding slices of ham and laying them out neatly on little squares of waxed paper.
I watched Colin’s fingers as they picked up each piece of ham—he didn’t just smack them in half like I saw Jimmy do. Colin sort of bent each slice into a pretty fan shape. Once I started watching, I couldn’t stop. It was hypnotizing, somehow.
“I talked to Annemarie last night,” I said. “I think she’s coming back to school tomorrow.”
Colin nodded. “Good.” It was hard to imagine him sneaking around and leaving a rose on anyone’s doormat, but I guess boys will surprise you sometimes.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “you know what? I’m sick of cheese-and-lettuce sandwiches.” He glanced guiltily at Jimmy, who was still on the phone talking about his missing rolls. “Want to go get a slice of pizza?”
We acted like everything was normal, making our sandwiches and wrapping them up like we planned to eat them at school. And then we ran to the pizza place down the block. It was crazy, but we felt like we were doing something wrong. We rushed back to school stuffing pizza into our mouths and crouching down low when we passed Jimmy’s window so he couldn’t see us. Somehow we became so completely hysterical that we were still having what Mom calls fits of helpless laughter when we got to school.
We must have sort of burst into the classroom, because everyone looked up from their silent reading to stare at us. Julia rolled her eyes.
“You’re late again,” Mr. Tompkin said. And then the whole feeling dissolved and we went to find our books.
I sat with my book open on my desk, thinking about the note in my coat pocket: 3 p.m. today: Colin’s knapsack. Your first “proof.” I had to get a look inside Colin’s bag, to find whatever would—or wouldn’t—be waiting for me.
At three on the dot, I went to the coat closet and grabbed my knapsack to go home. Colin’s was just a few hooks away. I could hear him talking to Jay Stringer in the back of the room, near Main Street. Julia was standing with them, trying again to convince Jay about her stupid tinfoil UFO and how it was going to fly up and down the street on a stupid invisible wire. She still hadn’t gotten her project approved.
I reached over and unzipped Colin’s bag. There was his denim-covered binder stuffed with falling-out papers, a paperback, and the cheese sandwich he hadn’t eaten at lunch, soaking through its paper and smelling like pickles. Nothing unusual.
I felt around the bottom of the bag and touched some keys on a ring, resting in a pile of dirt, or maybe crushed leaves. I tipped the bag toward the light and saw that it wasn’t a pile of dirt—it was a pile of crumbs. Bread crumbs.
I patted the back of the bag, felt a lump, reached behind his binder, and pulled out two of Jimmy’s rolls. They were flaking all over the place. Colin must have grabbed them straight out of the delivery bag when nobody was looking.
Things You Give Away
I dropped the rolls back into Colin’s bag, pulled my coat on, threw my knapsack over one shoulder, and took the stairs two at a time. There was a mob of kids outside like always, pushing and laughing and standing around talking, even though it was still freezing and had started to rain. I took a minute to look for Sal, like I always do. No sign of him. I wound Mom’s scarf around my ears, turned north, and started walking up the hill to Annemarie’s.
It didn’t make sense. Not that Colin had taken the rolls—in fact, that was just the kind of thing I expected from Colin. But my brain was yelling all kinds of other questions at me: How could anyone possibly have known that Colin would take the rolls? And when had the note been put in my coat pocket? It didn’t occur to me that you could have left it there the same day you put the first note in my library book about the squirrel village. I didn’t get that at all, until much later.
And why me? I jumped a gutter full of rainwater and took the last steps to Annemarie’s building. Why was I the one getting notes? Why did I have to do something about whatever bad thing was going to happen? I didn’t even understand what I was supposed to do! Write a letter about something that hadn’t happened yet?