“I know,” I said quickly. “I know you wouldn’t.”
“The rolls were just for fun,” he said. “But taking the bank would be, you know, stealing.”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t get to talk to Annemarie all the rest of that afternoon. After silent reading period, she went to art and music, and I went to gym and science. And then some of the kindergartners came to our classroom to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
And then it was Christmas vacation.
Christmas Vacation
For three days in a row, the sky was like a dingy white sheet. I thought about calling Annemarie but didn’t. I thought about calling Colin but didn’t. I was right about Sal—he was playing basketball every day, and a couple of times there were the voices of other boys, kids from school. On the third day, I opened our living room window very quietly and watched them running up and down the alley in their knit hats with steam blowing out of their mouths.
Then I sat on the couch and closed my eyes. I pictured the world. I pictured the world millions of years ago, with crazy clouds of gas everywhere, and volcanoes, and the continents bumping into each other and then drifting apart. Okay. Now life begins. It starts in the water, with tiny things, microscopic, and then some get bigger. And one day something crawls out of the water onto land. There are animals, then humans, looking almost all alike. There are tiny differences in color, the shape of the face, the tone of the skin. But basically they are the same. They create shelters, grow food, experiment. They talk; they write things down.
Now fast-forward. The earth is still making loops around the sun. There are humans all over the place, driving in cars and flying in airplanes. And then one day one human tells another human that he doesn’t want to walk to school with her anymore.
“Does it really matter?” I asked myself.
It did.
I tried again. I pictured the world, all pretty blue-green and floating out in space, creatures and forests and deserts and cities. I brought North America into focus, the United States, the East Coast, New York City. Kids are walking down the street toward school. One kid has green suede boots. One has a charge account at Gold’s. One has keys in her pocket.
“Does it really matter?” I asked myself.
It did.
I got up, turned on the television, and tried to think about nothing for a change.
The Second Proof
Mom didn’t have to work on Christmas Eve day. We got a tree and strung popcorn for it, and she had some friends from work over. Richard made some eggnog from a German recipe his grandmother gave him, and they all ended up singing a lot while I wrapped presents in my room. I had bought Mom a pair of earrings, a bottle of purple nail polish with glitter in it, and some striped tights, even though I thought, and I still think, that striped tights look dumb. I got Richard an erasable pen from Gold’s.
On Christmas morning, we opened presents first thing after Mom made coffee, like always. I got some good stuff: a beaded bracelet, a portable radio, a fancy journal to write in with clouds on the cover, a sweater, and a tin of these really crispy ginger cookies I love from a bakery near Mom and Richard’s office.
We were just about to move on to pancakes when Richard handed me a hard, rectangular package that had to be a book.
“Let me guess,” I said. “A book?” I wondered if it would be the kind with a spunky girl on the cover.
“Very funny. Open it.”
It was a book. Actually, it was my book. But this was a hardcover one, with a different picture on the front. I read the title out loud: “A Wrinkle in Time.” And then I smiled at Richard.
“It’s a first edition,” Richard said.
“Richard!” Mom burst out. “You shouldn’t have.” This made me guess that first editions are expensive.
“Read what’s inside,” he said. “I had the author sign it for you.”
I opened the front cover. The writing was big and swoopy beautiful. Nothing like yours.
Miranda,
Tesser well.
Madeleine L’Engle
Christmas Day: Tesser well. Your second proof.
It wasn’t a game, I realized. Holding that book in my hands, I finally believed that whoever wrote me those notes actually knew about things before they happened. Somehow.
As soon as Richard and Mom went to make the pancakes, I ran to my room and took all your notes out of the box under my bed.
I am coming to save your friend’s life, and my own.
Coming from where? I asked myself. Coming from when? I was beginning to believe that someone I cared about was in real danger, but I still didn’t know who it was, and I still didn’t know how to help.
I looked at the second note: I know you have shared my first note. I ask you not to share the others. Please. I do not ask this for myself.
That was the worst part: I was alone.
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.