When You Reach Me

Things You Keep in a Box

So Mom got the postcard today. It says Congratulations in big curly letters, and at the very top is the address of Studio TV-15 on West 58th Street. After three years of trying, she has actually made it. She's going to be a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid, which is hosted by Dick Clark.

On the postcard there's a list of things to bring. She needs some extra clothes in case she wins and makes it to another show, where they pretend it's the next day even though they really tape five in one afternoon. Barrettes are optional, but she should definitely bring some with her. Unlike me, Mom has glossy red hair that bounces around and might obstruct America's view of her small freckled face.

And then there's the date she's supposed to show up, scrawled in blue pen on a line at the bottom of the card: April 27, 1979. Just like you said.

I check the box under my bed, which is where I've kept your notes these past few months. There it is, in your tiny handwriting: April 27th: Studio TV-15, the words all jerky-looking, like you wrote them on the subway. Your last "proof."

I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you're gone and there's no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It's all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.

Things That Go Missing

Mom has swiped a big paper calendar from work and Scotch-taped the month of April to the kitchen wall. She used a fat green marker, also swiped from work, to draw a pyramid on April 27, with dollar signs and exclamation points all around it.

She went out and bought a fancy egg timer that can accurately measure a half minute. They don't have fancy egg timers in the supply closet at her office.

April twenty-seventh is also Richard's birthday. Mom wonders if that's a good omen. Richard is Mom's boyfriend. He and I are going to help Mom practice every single night, which is why I'm sitting at my desk instead of watching after-school TV, which is a birthright of every latchkey child. "Latchkey child" is a name for a kid with keys who hangs out alone after school until a grown-up gets home to make dinner. Mom hates that expression. She says it reminds her of dungeons, and must have been invented by someone strict and awful with an unlimited child-care budget. "Probably someone German," she says, glaring at Richard, who is German but not strict or awful.

It's possible. In Germany, Richard says, I would be one of the Schlusselkinder, which means "key children."

"You're lucky," he tells me. "Keys are power. Some of us have to come knocking." It's true that he doesn't have a key. Well, he has a key to his apartment, but not to ours.

Richard looks the way I picture guys on sailboats--tall, blond, and very tucked-in, even on weekends. Or maybe I picture guys on sailboats that way because Richard loves to sail. His legs are very long, and they don't really fit under our kitchen table, so he has to sit kind of sideways, with his knees pointing out toward the hall. He looks especially big next to Mom, who's short and so tiny she has to buy her belts in the kids' department and make an extra hole in her watchband so it won't fall off her ar

Share your thoughts on the When You Reach Me ebook with other internet viewers!

Title of ebook: When You Reach Me
Reading level: ages 9 to 14
ISBN: 9780375892691
parent-ISBN: 9780385737425
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Pages: 208
Published: 07-2009
Released online for download: 07-14-2009
Author of eBook: Stead, Rebecca

Format

Encrypted

Sku

ISBN

File size

Security

Printing

Copying

Read aloud

Devices

eReader

Yes

7770721172

9780375892691

156 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download reader

Mobipocket

Yes

9780375892691

238 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirements

Download reader

ePub

Yes

0375892699

9780375892691

1837 KB

n/a

Not allowed

No

Sys Requirments

Download Digital Editions

When You Reach Me

Chapter One

Things You Keep in a Box

So Mom got the postcard today. It says Congratulations in big curly letters, and at the very top is the address of Studio TV-15 on West 58th Street. After three years of trying, she has actually made it. She's going to be a contestant on The $20,000 Pyramid, which is hosted by Dick Clark.

On the postcard there's a list of things to bring. She needs some extra clothes in case she wins and makes it to another show, where they pretend it's the next day even though they really tape five in one afternoon. Barrettes are optional, but she should definitely bring some with her. Unlike me, Mom has glossy red hair that bounces around and might obstruct America's view of her small freckled face.

And then there's the date she's supposed to show up, scrawled in blue pen on a line at the bottom of the card: April 27, 1979. Just like you said.

I check the box under my bed, which is where I've kept your notes these past few months. There it is, in your tiny handwriting: April 27th: Studio TV-15, the words all jerky-looking, like you wrote them on the subway. Your last "proof."

I still thi ... read full excerpt from: When You Reach Me ebook

Other Rebecca Stead ebooks:

receive alert on new Rebecca Stead ebooks

First Light

Peter is thrilled to join his parents on an expedition to Greenland, where his father studies global warming. Peter will get to skip school, drive a dogsled, and–finally...more

Best price: $6.04

Top eBooks in "Childrens - Family"

If I Stay

by Forman, Gayle

In a single moment, everything changes. Seventeenyear- old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall riding along the snow-wet Oregon road with her family. Then, ...more

Best price: $15.81

What Would Joey Do?

by Gantos, Jack

"Do my parents seem unusual to you?" When his dad roars into town, the sparks fly between Joey Pigza's long-separated parents. His ailing grandmother is certain that all the...more

Best price: $13.97

One Crazy Summer

by Williams-Garcia, Rita

eleven-year-old Delphine has it together. even though her mother, Cecile, abandoned her and her younger sisters, Vonetta and Fern, seven years ago. even though her father and ...more

Best price: $9.72

Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man

by Sobol, Donald

Leroy Brown, aka encyclopedia Brown, is Idaville neighborhood's ten-year-old star detective. With an uncanny knack for trivia, he solves mysteries for the neighborhood kids ...more

Best price: $4.65

Hot Hand: Mike Lupica's Comeback Kids

by Lupica, Mike

It's simple. All Billy Raynor wants to do is shoot. After all, he is one of the best shooters in the league. But with his dad as his coach, and his parents newly separated, ...more

Best price: $6.51

Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective

by Sobol, Donald

Leroy Brown, aka encyclopedia Brown, is Idaville neighborhood's ten-year-old star detective. With an uncanny knack for trivia, he solves mysteries for the neighborhood kids ...more

Best price: $4.65

Other Childrens Fiction eBooks Categories

Science Fiction, Fantasy & Magic (828)

Childrens Fiction General (2106)

Action & Adventure (742)

Horror & Ghost Stories (276)

Mysteries, Espionage & Detective (482)

Classics (93)

Romance (147)

Humorous Stories (256)

Social Situations (1051)

Girls/Women (347)