When You Reach Me

by Rebecca Stead

“What do you mean, they lied? They never lied.” I was getting annoyed. The truth is that 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.

“I think of it like this,” she said, holding up the ring. It was gold, studded all the way around with— “Are those diamonds?” I said. “Diamond chips.” She shrugged. “Look. It’s like every moment in time is a diamond sitting on this ring. Pretend the ring is really big, with diamonds all around, and each diamond is one moment. Got it?”

“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—”

“Well, it’s simple to love someone,” she said. “But it’s hard to know when you need to say it out loud.” For some reason that made me want to cry.

I am jumping up and down because at the very moment Dick Clark said the word “Go,” it was like an invisible hand reached out and snatched away my veil. And for almost a minute, I understood everything. When that veil isn’t hanging down right in front of a person’s face, a minute is long enough to realize a lot of things.