"When You Reach Me" (4) by Rebecca Stead Quiz

Answer: Truce

She fetches the slip while Alice is in the bathroom. There's not much time before she has to go back to escort her new friend to assembly, so she simply writes one word--followed by her phone number. The note's for Julia, as Miranda feels guilty for not being nicer to the other girl.

At first, Alice thinks Miranda left her--possibly like others who'd only pretended to be nice to her--but is relieved to find she hasn't: '"I thought you abandoned me" Alice was standing in front of the bathroom looking all wounded. "Me?" I said. "No way." She smiled. People seemed to like the new me.'

Answer: The Laughing Man

The Laughing Man is the "crazy guy" who lives under a mailbox around the corner on Miranda's street.

The bank is a Fred Flintstone bank full of two-dollar bills that belongs to a local store owner named Jimmy. Miranda, Annemarie and Colin used to work for Jimmy, cutting sandwiches. When the bank disappears, Jimmy overreacts and fires the three "good kids." He later agrees to rehire them if their classmate, Julia, is forever banned from the store. Annemarie storms out, saying, "He thinks Julia did it because she's black."

In "Things That Turn Upside Down," Miranda goes to Belle's Market after school. She's feeling down because her former best friend, Sal, is hanging out with Colin.

Belle is glad to see Miranda, and asks to here more about the girl's favorite book, "A Wrinkle in Time." After a brief summary, Belle tells Miranda about "the weirdest thing:"

'"You see that guy out there?" She pointed through her front window and across the street to where the laughing man was pacing back and forth on my corner, doing his kicks... She lifted the plastic tray out of the register drawer, and I looked in. It was full of two-dollar bills. Wavy, bent-looking two-dollar bils. "A couple weeks ago, that guy out there starts coming in every day to get a butter-on-white and a banana, and he always pays with these two-dollar bills... He gives them to me all folded up into triangles, if you can believe it. The first time, I didn't even think it was real money. I started telling the guy to get lost!"'

Answer: False

She actually goes to Julia's. The cake, which is made without flour, is for Annemarie's birthday.

Julia called Miranda in "Things That Turn Upside Down." In the next chapter, they make a "practice cake." Or, rather, they mix the ingredients together--Miranda's mother makes them promise they'll only light the stove when Julia's mother's in the room to supervise them.

Answer: False

It is actually the Laughing Man who gets hit.

After school, Miranda is wondering what she can get Annemarie for her birthday, when she notices one of the "bully kids" at the garage punch Sal "in the chest--not very hard, but Sal stumbled back a few steps."

Miranda lists 47 separate points in this chapter in order to clarify things in her mind.

After the boy punched her friend, Sal got back up and began walking home. When he saw Marcus coming out of the garage toward him, he took off running.

In an earlier chapter, Marcus slugged Sal in the stomach and face "to see what would happen." Miranda can't fathom why he'd do such a thing, and apparently she's not the only one (right after he hits Sal, one of the boys Marcus hangs out with demands to know why he did what he did).

Sal takes off into the middle of the street, unaware that a speeding truck is bearing down on him.

While Miranda and Marcus watch helplessly, watching the truck get closer and closer, 'Suddenly, the Laughing Man was in the street, his right leg flying out in a mighty kick... Sal flew backward and hit the ground hard.'

The truck driver finally put on the brakes and knelt down next to Sal, willing the boy alive. 'I heard Sal cry out, and looked up... On the other side of the street I saw Marcus, still hunched over the curb and crying hard. I could see him shaking. Behind him stood the boys from the garage, so still and silent that they looked like a picture of themselves.'

Miranda realizes that the author of the cryptic notes she'd received was the Laughing Man, and that he'd just died "to save the life of your friend, and my own."

Answer: A broken arm and three broken ribs

From the text, it looks like Louisa, Sal's mother, is already at her son's bedside. Miranda's mother later joins her, while Richard stays home with Miranda.

In "The Last Note," Miranda tells the reader that "I ran to where Sal was lying very still with his arm tucked underneath him in a way that was not right."

Back in "Difficult Things," Miranda is on her bed thinking when her mother joins her:

'"Sal is going to be fine, she whispered, putting one arm around me. "The tests are done. He'll probably be home in the morning." I didn't say anything. I was afraid that if I spoke, I would tell her too much--I would tell her about the notes... the two-dollar bills, everything. And I thought that if I did tell her, somehow Sal might not be okay anymore.'

Answer: "I thought we talked about everything"

The other choices are Sal's remarks.

In this chapter, Miranda and Sal get to talk for about twenty minutes, which is the most he can stay awake at one time, as the medication he's on for pain makes him drowsy.

Up to this point, she's been of the opinion they were no longer friends. Instead, he was distancing himself in order that they both could make new ones.

Answer: Marcus

Miranda's waiting in the office when two policemen show up. 'Wheelie looked up from her typewriter. "May I help you?" "There a Marcus Heilbroner enrolled here?" Her face stayed blank. "I believe there might be. But the principal isn't in right now and--" "That's okay. We just need a word with Marcus Heilbroner. Seems he likes to chase kids into the street, and we need to have a word with him about that."'

Fearing her friend is abuot to be arrested, Miranda asks to use the phone. When the office secretary refuses, she runs to the dentist's office and uses his phone to call her mother:

'"I need help," I said. "The police are at school and I think a kid is going to get arrested. A friend." "But--all the lawyers are in court," she told me. I started to cry. "Can you come, Mom? Right now?" "Me?" she said. And then, "Yes. I'm coming."'

Miranda fills the dentist in, and he sends her up to Marcus's class to get him. Sometime after they're all locked in the dentist's office, the police officers get there. The dentist attempts to stall for time until Miranda's mother can arrive. While they wait, Marcus and Miranda talk in hushed whispers. Then her Mom gets there, and ushers the police officers back to the principal's office.

Later, Miranda's Mom goes back down to the dentist's:

"Let's try to figure this mess out. Who wants to talk first?"

Answer: Belle

The book tells us "she'd seen the whole thing from her store window and thought that Marcus had chased Sal into the street on purpose."

Miranda's mother straightened out the whole mess, "and by the following week, the police had dropped the whole thing..."

In the same chapter, Miranda went to Annemarie's birthday party, which had "two cakes, an awful one that Julia and I made for her and a really good one her dad made."

In other news, "Sal's cast came off and he started playing basketball in the alley again."

Answer: Yes

The day she is to appear on TV, April 27, she is really nervous. Miranda, Sal, Louisa and Richard all go to give her support, and watch from the "audience section."

Louisa appears to be just as nervous, if not more, than her friend, rambling on and on about the "big day" and how good Dick Clark looks.

Miranda's really proud of her mother and the celebrity she's teamed with:

'The speed round is a thing of beauty. Mom gets seven words out of seven every time, and wins the cash bonus. Her celebrity is not as dumb as a bag of hair... The other contestant is good, but his celebrity speaks too slowly and says the word *bat* while giving clues for the word *batter*, an amateur mistake.'

Answer: "Life is stupid"

This is the point where everything clicks into place. She now understands what Marcus was attempting to explain about time travel. And she finally understands the notes, beginning with the one that said "I am coming back to save the life of your friend, and my own." Also the last one, which tells her to "deliver your letter by hand." This is the narrative of her experiences, which she hasn't even been certain until now she would write, because she just couldn't wrap her mind around any of it.