When You Reach Me

by Rebecca Stead

But we have the same bathroom floor—these white hexagonal tiles. If I look at them long enough, I can see all kinds of patterns in those hexagons: lines, arrows, even flowers. They kind of shift into these different pictures. It’s the sort of thing a person would never try to explain to anyone else, but once, when we were little, I told Sal about it, and then we went into his bathroom to stare at the floor together.

I felt my face go hot and actually thought I might cry. Sometimes when I’m caught off guard I cry at almost nothing.

I hate to think about other people reading my book. It’s like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed.

But sometimes our veils are pushed away for a few moments, like there’s a wind blowing it from our faces. And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love. But mostly we are happy not to. Some people learn to lift the veil themselves. Then they don’t have to depend on the wind anymore.

I’ve thought a lot about those veils. I wonder if, every once in a while, someone is born without one. Someone who sees the big stuff all the time.

There is something very food-but-not-food about the smell of dry-cleaner exhaust.

Some feeling had started in my stomach and was traveling up to my face, and I knew that when it got there I would turn bright red and hear the ocean, which is what happens when I get put on the spot. If I don’t cry, I turn red and hear the ocean. It’s a lose-lose situation.

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.

Trying to forget really doesn’t work. In fact, it’s pretty much the same as remembering.