When (v5): Rebecca Stead

“Oh, twelve,” Belle said. “Plenty of time for boyfriends, then. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

“Start what from the beginning?”

“The story. Tell me the story. From the beginning.”

So I started telling her the story of my book, not reading it to her, just telling her about it, starting with the first scene, where Meg wakes up at night, afraid of a thunderstorm.

While she listened, Belle made me a turkey sandwich and gave me about ten chewable vitamin Cs because she thought I sounded nasal. When she went to the bathroom, I sneaked a little bunch of grapes, which I love but can’t ever have, because Mom doesn’t like the way the grape pickers are treated in California and she refuses to buy them.

* * *

When she finally got there, Mom hugged Belle and told her, “I owe you,” like I was some repulsive burden instead of the person who had very helpfully unpacked three boxes of green bananas and scoured the refrigerated section for expired dairy items. Then Mom bought a box of strawberries, even though I know she thinks Belle’s strawberries are overpriced and not very good. She calls them SSO’s, which stands for “strawberry-shaped objects.”

“Where did Robbie B. get the dumb idea that anyone would name her own daughter after a murderer?” Mom asked. Our building was still half a block away, but her key was already in her hand. Mom doesn’t like to fumble around in front of the building looking like a target for muggers.

“Not a murderer,” I said. “A kidnapper. Robbie B.’s dad is a prosecutor. He says the Miranda warnings were named for a guy named Mr. Miranda who committed some horrible crime. Is that true?”

“Technically? Maybe. The Miranda warnings are essential, you know. People need to know that they have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. What kind of justice system would we have without—”

“‘Maybe’ meaning ‘yes’?”

“—and then there’s Shakespeare. He invented the name Miranda, you know, for The Tempest.”

It made perfect sense now that I thought about it: Mom wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer—she started law school and almost finished her first year, but then I was born and she had to quit. Now she’s a paralegal, except she works at a really small law office where she has to be the receptionist and the secretary too. Richard is one of the lawyers. They do a lot of free work for poor people, sometimes even for criminals. But I never dreamed she would name me after one.

Mom unlocked the lobby door, which is iron and glass and must weigh three hundred pounds, and she pushed hard to swing it open, her heels slipping on the tile floor. When we were inside, she leaned against the other side of the door until she heard the click that means the lock has caught. When the door swings shut by itself, it usually doesn’t lock, which drives Mom nuts and is one of the things the landlord won’t fix.

“So? Was he a kidnapper or not?” I punched the button for the elevator.

“Okay, you win,” Mom said. “I named you after a monster, Mira. I’m sorry. If you don’t like your name, you are welcome to change it.”

That was so Mom. She didn’t understand that a person gets attached to a person’s name, that something like this might come as a shock.

Upstairs, she threw her coat on a kitchen chair, filled the spaghetti pot with water, and put it on to boil. She was wearing an orange turtleneck and a denim skirt with purple and black striped tights.

“Nice tights,” I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I’m not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.

She leaned against the sink and flipped through the mail. “You already hassled me about the tights this morning, Mira.”

“Oh.” She was usually still in bed when I left for school, so I didn’t get to appreciate her outfit until she got home from work. “Nice nail polish, then.” Her nails were electric blue. She must have done them at her desk that day.

She rolled her eyes. “Are you mad about waiting at Belle’s? I was super busy—I couldn’t just leave.”

“No. I like it at Belle’s.” I wondered whether she’d done her nails before, after, or during her super busy afternoon.

“You could have gone to Sal’s, you know.” Sal and his mom, Louisa, live in the apartment below ours. Sal used to be my best friend.

“I said I like it at Belle’s.”

“Still. I think we should hide a key in the fire hose, for the next time.”

So after dinner we hid our spare key inside the nozzle of the dusty, folded-up fire hose in the stairwell. The hose is all cracked-looking and about a hundred years old, and Mom always says that if there’s an actual fire it will be of no use whatsoever and we’ll have to jump out the window into the neighbor’s garden. It’s a good thing we live on the second floor.

You asked me to mention the key. If I ever do decide to write your letter, which I probably won’t, this is the story I would tell you.

The Speed Round

There are two parts to The $20,000 Pyramid . Mom calls the first part the speed round because it’s all about speed. Contestants try to make their celebrity partners guess seven common words by giving clues. So if the first word is “fork,” a contestant might say, “You use this to put food in your mouth—not a spoon but a…”

If he has a brain, which Mom says he might not, the celebrity partner will say “Fork!” and then there’ll be a ding and the next word will show up on a little hidden screen. Each team gets thirty seconds for seven words.

Then the little screens swivel around, and it’s the celebrities’ turn to give the clues and the contestants’ turn to guess. Another seven words, another thirty seconds. Then the screens swivel back, and the contestants give the clues again.

There are a possible twenty-one points in the speed round, and a perfect score earns a cash bonus of twenty-one hundred dollars. But the most important thing is just to beat the other team, because the team that wins the speed round goes to the Winner’s Circle, and the Winner’s Circle is where the big money is.

* * *

There isn’t a lot of time for practice tonight because it’s tenant-meeting night. Once a month, the neighbors sit in our living room and complain while Mom takes notes in shorthand. Most people don’t bother to come. It’s always the old folks, who don’t get asked to go many places and are mad that there isn’t more heat. Sal’s mom, Louisa, works in a nursing home, and she says old people can never get enough heat.

After the meetings, during which Mr. Nunzi has usually burned a new hole in our couch with his cigarette, Mom always writes a letter to the landlord and sends a copy to some city agency that’s supposed to care whether we have hot water, if the lobby door locks, and that the elevator keeps getting stuck between floors. But nothing ever changes.

Our doorbell is going to start ringing any minute. Mom is running through a few speed rounds with Richard while I make lemonade from frozen concentrate and open the Oreos.

Louisa knocks her regular knock and I answer the door with the plate of cookies. She takes an Oreo and sighs. She’s wearing jeans with her white nurse shoes, which she kicks off by the door. She hates these meetings but comes out of loyalty to Mom. And someone has to watch Mr. Nunzi’s cigarette to make sure he doesn’t accidentally set our apartment on fire.

“Lemonade?” I ask. I refuse to play waitress during Mom’s get-togethers, but I’ll pour Louisa a drink anytime.

“Lemonade sounds lovely.” She follows me to the kitchen.

Just as I put the glass in her hand, the doorbell buzzes for about a minute straight. Why, why, why do they have to hold the button down forever?