Free When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

slow down. I knew what he was doing. He was looking for a way out. Should he pretend he needed to cross the street all of a sudden? That he had just remembered something he needed to buy at Belle’s? But it was a little late for that—Marcus was almost in front of him.
    I could have called out to Sal at that moment. It would have been easy. He would have had an excuse to turn around and start walking away from Marcus. And then Marcus might have stopped to talk to me for a minute, and Sal would have seen that it was all okay. He could have dropped his fear of Marcus right then and there. I’ve thought about this a lot, because I realize it would have changed everything that happened later.
    Instead I watched. And what Sal did was squat down and pretend to tie his shoe. It was a plea for mercy. Dropping to tie your shoe was an I-can’t-fight, I-can’t-run, I-bow-down-before-you sort of a move. Plus, just in case some hitting did occur, it protected important body parts. I kept walking while Sal crouched there on the sidewalk and Marcus walked right by without even noticing him. And then Marcus walked right by me.

Things Left Behind
    “Guess what?” Annemarie said when I called her at home that night to see if she was okay. “Someone left a rose on our doormat.”
    “For you?”
    “I don’t know… maybe.” Of course it was for her. Who else would it be for?
    “Was there anything with it? A card?”
    “No. Just the rose.” Her voice sounded all thin and excited. “Weird, huh? I wonder—”
    “Hey, can I ask you something? Are you not supposed to eat bread?”
    She was quiet.
    “It’s not a big deal, just that Julia said—”
    “No,” she interrupted. “It is sort of a big deal. I should have told you. I have epilepsy—”
    “Oh.”
    “—and I’m not supposed to eat bread or starches. It’s this crazy diet my dad read about, but it actually works. I’m usually fine. People don’t even really know I have it, because for years I’ve hardly had any seizures at all.”
    “Is that what happened today?
    “Yeah. I sort of took a break from my diet. It’s been nice, working at Jimmy’s with you guys, eating whatever I want and not having anyone look at me funny or lecture me.”
    Someone had lectured her, though. Julia had.
    “You can still work at Jimmy’s,” I said. “Just don’t eat his crummy food.”
    She laughed. “I know. Actually, my dad makes me a lunch every day. I’ve been throwing it in the garbage on the way to school. He’s pretty mad.”
    That was hard to imagine.
    “Anyway, my mother found this rose on our doormat when she got home from work. It’s like this really perfect-looking rose. Weird, huh?”
    I let her talk about it a little more, about who might have left it, and why. I knew she wanted me to say that Colin probably did it, but I just couldn’t make myself say the words.

The Third Note
    The next morning was the first really cold day of December.
    “You need the jacket with the hood,” Mom rasped from her bed. Her voice never sounded normal until after coffee. “Look in the front closet.” She seemed to think that it was really helpful to lie in bed, listening to the radio and calling out weather reports. I couldn’t help thinking about how, in my book, Meg’s mother had French toast waiting for Meg in the morning. She was a single mom too, with Meg’s dad being held prisoner halfway across the universe.
    I found the coat, still streaked with gray from last year’s dirty snow, and put it on. A little stiff, but it seemed to fit okay.
    “Where are my gloves?” I called.
    “No idea. Sorry.”
    “Can I take some money?”
    “Coat pocket.”
    I felt around in her coat and found a five-dollar bill and three singles in one pocket and her striped scarf rolled up in the other. I grabbed the singles and the scarf.
    “Bye!”
    The laughing man was still asleep with his head under the mailbox. He had found some cardboard to put underneath him. Still, he must