Free When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead Page B

Wednesday, December whatever, 1978. You go to the movie theater. The ticket guy would see a sixty-two-year-old woman, right?”
    “Right,” I said. So far everything made sense.
    “So if we went over to the theater today and asked him whether he saw you there last Wednesday, he’d say no. Because his common sense would tell him that you can’t be that sixty-two-year-old woman, and she can’t be you. Get it?”
    I shook my head. “If we asked today , he couldn’t have seen me anyway. I wouldn’t have been there yet. Because I haven’t gone back yet.”
    “Duh,” said a voice behind us. “It’s really not all that complicated.”
    I whirled around and saw Julia in a long coat. She was standing right behind us waiting for the light.
    Marcus ignored her and looked at me. “Are you still worrying about that book? About the kids, and seeing themselves land in the broccoli?”
    I said nothing. I wasn’t going to have Julia hear any more of this conversation.
    “Think of it like this,” Marcus said, oblivious to the look she was giving us. “Time isn’t a line stretching out in front of us, going in one direction. It’s—well, time is just a construct, actually—”
    “Look,” Julia said, cutting him off. “If you really need to know what he means, I’ll explain it to you.”
    This should be good, I thought. Julia is going to explain the nature of time.
    I turned around and looked at her. “Fine. Go ahead.”
    She pulled off one of her gloves—they were these beautiful, fuzzy, pale yellow gloves—and she yanked a ring from her finger. “I think of it like this,” she said, holding up the ring. It was gold, studded all the way around with—
    “Are those diamonds?” I said.
    “Diamond chips.” She shrugged. “Look. It’s like every moment in time is a diamond sitting on this ring. Pretend the ring is really big, with diamonds all around, and each diamond is one moment. Got it?”
    Marcus was silent, just looking at her.
    I laughed. “Time is a diamond ring!” I said. “That explains everything. Thanks.”
    “Would you shut up and listen? If you figured out a way to bring yourself to another time, probably through some sort of teleportation—you’d be somehow re-creating your atoms, really, not physically moving them, I’m guessing; that would be tricky….”
    “Can we not worry about that part right now?” I said. “I’m freezing.” We were still standing across the street from school, even though the light had changed once already and then gone back to red.
    “Okay. Put it this way—we’re kind of jumping from diamond to diamond, like in cartoons where someone is running on a barrel, trying to stay on top. We have to keep moving—there’s no choice.”
    “Now we’re in a cartoon, on a barrel?”
    She sighed and shook her head. “Okay, forget that. Let’s stick with the ring.” She held it up again. “Let’s say we’re here.” She put her fingernail on one diamond chip. “And we figure out a way to jump all the way back to here.” She pointed to another one, a few chips away. “It wouldn’t matter where we came from. If we’re on that chip, we’re at that moment. It doesn’t matter whether we came from the chip behind it, or ten chips ahead of it. If we’re there, we’re there. Get it?”
    “No. I don’t get it, because what you’re saying makes absolutely no—”
    “I do,” Marcus said quietly. “I get it. I know what she means.”
    “Thank you!” Julia said. “I’m glad someone here has a brain.” And she stomped off through the red light while Marcus stared after her.
    I turned to him. “So you’re saying this diamond chip is just sitting there minding its own business, and then suddenly a bunch of kids land in the diamond chip’s broccoli patch— ”
    Marcus’s face lit up. “Stop—I see your problem! You’re thinking that time exists on the diamonds themselves. It doesn’t. Each moment—each diamond—is like a snapshot.”
    “A