When (v5) - Rebecca Stead

Dear Jimmy,

We did not take your Fred Flintstone bank. We don’t know who could have taken it (maybe someone came in when you went to the bathroom?).

Can we come back to work?

Signed,

Your employees,

Annemarie, Miranda, and Colin

I put the card in my knapsack so that I could slip it under Jimmy’s door the next morning on my way to school. Then we lay on Annemarie’s rug and planned all the stuff we were going to do over Christmas vacation: Annemarie wanted to start teaching me how to draw, even though I told her I was probably hopeless, and we were going to go to the movies, and her dad even said he would take us ice-skating in Central Park.

I tried not to wonder what Sal would be doing. I figured he’d be playing basketball right up until the first big snow.

Things That Fall Apart

The next morning on my way to school, I pushed our card under Jimmy’s locked door. At lunchtime, Colin, Annemarie, and I walked up to Broadway together. Jimmy was helping a customer, but he saw us through the glass door, made a face, and shook his head no.

“I guess he means it,” Colin said.

We stood there in front of the door for a minute, just in case. When the customer left with his sandwich, Jimmy glanced over at us again. Colin put his hands together under his chin like he was praying and made a puppy-dog face, which was a dumb joke but also pretty cute. Jimmy took a rag and started wiping down the counter, and then he raised one arm and waved us in without looking up.

“So we can come back to work?” Colin asked when we’d all crowded in the door.

Jimmy looked at us. “You’re good kids,” he said, “but you don’t know what you’re doing half the time.”

“We didn’t take the bank!” I started, and he waved at me to be quiet.

“I know. I been thinking about it. You can come back to work.”

“Yay!” Annemarie started clapping. Colin ran around slapping everyone five, including Jimmy, who even smiled.

“But here’s the thing,” Jimmy said after Colin had taken a victory lap behind the counter and through the back room. “Your friend, little Swiss Miss. Don’t let me find her in here again. Ever.”

“Who?” Annemarie said.

“I think he means Julia,” I said.

“You think Julia took the money?” Colin laughed. “Julia needs money like a fish needs a bicycle.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Some things are in the blood. All the money in the world can’t change a person’s blood.”

“What do you mean, ‘blood’?” Annemarie had her hands on her hips. “What blood?”

Jimmy pointed his big finger right at me. “Like you call her, Swiss Miss: hot chocolate.”

“Huh?” Colin looked at me and back to Jimmy. I was just getting it. Annemarie was way ahead of me.

“You … you pig,” she said. “You racist pig.” I had never seen Annemarie angry. She was scary and also obviously about to cry.

Jimmy shrugged. “It’s your life. I’m not having that little thief back in here. You don’t have to come back either.”

“I won’t!” Annemarie shouted, and she banged out the door.

“And that’s not why I call her Swiss Miss!” I said.

Jimmy shrugged again, and I banged out after Annemarie. Colin followed me. We found her crying halfway down the block, walking fast.

She was spitting words: “That. Big. Fat. Jerk. That. Pig. I. Hate. Him.”

Colin looked at me. “I don’t even get what just happened!”

Annemarie whirled around to face us. “He thinks Julia did it because she’s black.”

“No way” Colin said. “He’s crazy.”

Annemarie turned on me then. “Is that your name for her? Swiss Miss?”

“I—no! I said it one time, but I didn’t mean … I meant about how she’s always talking about Switzerland, her watch and the chocolate, and—”

“She is?” Colin asked. “I never heard her talk about Switzerland.”

“If anyone needs the money,” Annemarie said to me coldly, “it’s you, not Julia.”

“Are you serious? I didn’t take the stupid money!”

“Forget it,” she said. “I want to be alone.” And she stomped off toward school.

Colin raised his eyebrows after her and then showed me a rolled-up dollar. “Want to get a slice?”

So we went to the pizza place. But it wasn’t fun. And walking back to school, it occurred to me that Colin might not like me at all. He might just like pizza.

“Tell me something,” I said just before we got to our classroom. “That day the bread count was short by two rolls. Did you take them?”

“Yeah,” Colin said, starting to smile. “I thought it would be … Hey! I didn’t steal Jimmy’s bank, you know!” He looked at me through his bangs with his injured-puppy face.

“I know,” I said quickly. “I know you wouldn’t.”

“The rolls were just for fun,” he said. “But taking the bank would be, you know, stealing.”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t get to talk to Annemarie all the rest of that afternoon. After silent reading period, she went to art and music, and I went to gym and science. And then some of the kindergartners came to our classroom to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

And then it was Christmas vacation.

Christmas Vacation

For three days in a row, the sky was like a dingy white sheet. I thought about calling Annemarie but didn’t. I thought about calling Colin but didn’t. I was right about Sal—he was playing basketball every day, and a couple of times there were the voices of other boys, kids from school. On the third day, I opened our living room window very quietly and watched them running up and down the alley in their knit hats with steam blowing out of their mouths.

Then I sat on the couch and closed my eyes. I pictured the world. I pictured the world millions of years ago, with crazy clouds of gas everywhere, and volcanoes, and the continents bumping into each other and then drifting apart. Okay. Now life begins. It starts in the water, with tiny things, microscopic, and then some get bigger. And one day something crawls out of the water onto land. There are animals, then humans, looking almost all alike. There are tiny differences in color, the shape of the face, the tone of the skin. But basically they are the same. They create shelters, grow food, experiment. They talk; they write things down.

Now fast-forward. The earth is still making loops around the sun. There are humans all over the place, driving in cars and flying in airplanes. And then one day one human tells another human that he doesn’t want to walk to school with her anymore.

“Does it really matter?” I asked myself.

It did.

I tried again. I pictured the world, all pretty blue-green and floating out in space, creatures and forests and deserts and cities. I brought North America into focus, the United States, the East Coast, New York City. Kids are walking down the street toward school. One kid has green suede boots. One has a charge account at Gold’s. One has keys in her pocket.

“Does it really matter?” I asked myself.

It did.

I got up, turned on the television, and tried to think about nothing for a change.

The Second Proof

Mom didn’t have to work on Christmas Eve day. We got a tree and strung popcorn for it, and she had some friends from work over. Richard made some eggnog from a German recipe his grandmother gave him, and they all ended up singing a lot while I wrapped presents in my room. I had bought Mom a pair of earrings, a bottle of purple nail polish with glitter in it, and some striped tights, even though I thought, and I still think, that striped tights look dumb. I got Richard an erasable pen from Gold’s.