When (v5) - Rebecca Stead

She doesn’t mean that it’s a real veil. And it isn’t about magic, or some idea that maybe God is looking right at you, or an angel is sitting next to you, or anything like that. Mom doesn’t think in those ways. It’s just her way of saying that most of the time, people get distracted by little stuff and ignore the big stuff. To play in the Winner’s Circle, Mom has to get herself in a certain frame of mind. She says it’s sort of like lifting one little corner of her veil, enough to see more than usual but not so much that she gets totally distracted by life, death, and the beauty of it all. She has to open her mind, she says, so that when the clues start coming, she can see the thread that joins them. Of course, if her celebrity is as dumb as a bag of hair, it’s hopeless.

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. Like maybe you.

Things You Count

Right before Thanksgiving, Colin and Annemarie were behind the counter weighing a slimy heap of sliced turkey into quarter-pound piles separated by pieces of waxed paper. Jimmy said they should do a whole week’s worth.

“Won’t it go bad?” Annemarie asked.

“Nah. Stuff’s full of preservatives.”

Colin licked his lips and said, “Yum, yum. Chemical turkey.”

“Shut it,” Jimmy said.

For once, I was happy to be counting the rolls.

Now that he had us, Jimmy seemed to have nothing to do. He sat on one of the stools bolted to the floor in front of the big front window and watched me with his arms crossed over his chest, his hands tucked under his yellow-stained armpits. He had already rejected my V-cut for the day—it was waiting for me on a tray behind Annemarie, getting dry as usual. Luckily, Jimmy didn’t limit our use of may onnaise.

“Lookie,” Jimmy said, pointing his chin toward the window. “There goes one of your little friends.”

On the other side of the street, Julia was walking alone, wearing her orange suede knapsack and an orange suede headband that matched. Matching suede knapsacks and headbands were probably all the rage in Switzerland, I thought.

“You mean Swiss Miss?” I grabbed two rolls and dropped them into the bag at my feet. “She’s not my friend. Not even close.”

He smiled slowly. “Swiss Miss. That’s a good one.” He stared outside for another minute and then stood up. “You’re funny, you know that?”

I shrugged, still counting, but happy. A compliment from Jimmy was a rare thing. When I finished, I folded the top of the bag and lugged it to its spot behind the counter. Jimmy had disappeared into the back. Annemarie was giggling at something Colin had said.

Ever since our foreheads had touched, looking at Colin made me feel strange. But good-strange, not creepy-strange.

“Eighty!” I called out to Jimmy. Right on the nose.

“Better luck next time!” he yelled back.

Colin looked at me and grinned, causing my stomach to sort of float inside my body. “He’s dying for the bread order to come up short, you know. You should throw a roll in the trash one day, just to make him happy.”

“Don’t listen to him, Miranda,” Annemarie said. “He’s just trying to get you in trouble again.”

But while she was talking to me, she was looking at Colin, and her expression was funny, as if her stomach might be floating too.

Messy Things

Annemarie and I stopped in the fourth-floor bathroom before going back to class after lunch. She said she wanted to wash her hands again after all that turkey.

“Today was fun,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror and combing her hair with her fingers. “I wish we got more than forty minutes for lunch.”

“I hate counting bread,” I said. “It’s boring.”

She laughed. “At least your hands don’t smell like chemical turkey.”

At least you get to goof around behind the counter with Colin, I thought. I’m always running to the store, cleaning up some gunk, or stuck talking to Mr. Yellow Stains.

“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m starving.”

Julia was standing right outside our classroom, almost as if she was waiting for us.

“Oh, no!” She sighed deeply and pointed at Annemarie’s arm. “Oh, Annemarie, your turquoise sweater. It’s your favorite. Poor you!”

And Mom thought I was dramatic.

Annemarie looked down at the hem of her sweater, which had some mustard on it. I had no idea it was her favorite.

“It’ll come out,” Annemarie said. “My dad will get it out.”

Julia leaned against the wall and adjusted her headband. “What I don’t understand is why you’re working at all. It’s not like you need the money.” Here she stopped to glance at me. “And no offense, but that place is kind of disgusting. I saw a roach there once.”

“I like it there,” Annemarie said. “It’s actually pretty fun.”

“That guy who works there is gross.”

“He’s not gross!” I said. “And he doesn’t”—I made air quotes—“‘work there.’ He owns the store.”

“We don’t get paid,” Annemarie said softly. “It’s just the sandwiches.”

“And sodas,” I said, waving my Sprite.

“Right,” Julia said, talking just to Annemarie, as if I didn’t exist. “Like you’re supposed to be eating sandwiches and drinking soda.”

Annemarie’s face folded up a little. “It’s fine.”

“Fine,” Julia said. “Forget it.”

Mr. Tompkin came to the door. “Why aren’t you three inside? Silent reading period started five minutes ago.”

As we walked in behind Julia, I whispered to Annemarie, “No wonder you don’t want to be friends with her anymore. She’s so rude to you.”

For a second Annemarie didn’t say anything. Then she mumbled, “Yeah, sometimes,” and we separated to go to our desks.

Mr. Tompkin had left a book on my desk. He was always trying to get me to read something new. This one had a picture of a spunky-looking girl on the cover, and some buildings behind her. I pushed the spunky girl aside, pulled my book out of my desk, and opened it randomly to see where I would land.

Meg was on the planet Camazotz where all these little boys are in front of their matching houses, bouncing their matching balls. All the balls hit the ground at exactly the same moment, every time. Then all the boys turn at the same second and go back into their identical houses. Except for this one boy. He’s outside all alone, and his ball rolls into the street, and then his mother comes out looking all nervous and carries him into the house.

I was thinking about how much Mr. Tompkin would hate the idea of a place where all the houses look exactly the same when something stung me hard behind the ear. I jerked my head up and saw Julia laughing silently over her book. I looked down on the floor and saw the rubber band she had shot at me. At my head.

I’d thought we were just irritating each other, but I was wrong. This was war.

Invisible Things

The next time I saw Marcus, I was absolutely sure he would remember me. I was in the main office, because Mr. Tompkin had sent me down to pick up some mimeographs.

“Why you kids need diagrams of the water system is beyond me,” Wheelie said as she handed them to me from her chair.

“They’re for Main Street,” I told her. “We’re trying to make working hydrants.”

“Well, that may be the silliest thing I’ve ever heard,” she said, waving me away.

I love the smell of new copies. Mom says I have an attraction to dangerous smells, her main example being the fact that I love to stand in a warm cloud of dry-cleaner exhaust and take deep breaths. There is something very food-but-not-food about the smell of dry-cleaner exhaust. She always pulls me away and says that she’s sure in ten years we’ll find out that it causes horrible diseases.