When You Reach Me

by Rebecca Stead

Release: July 2009
Format: Novel
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Children
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

Miranda has an odd friend named Marcus who knows a lot about time machines, another friend named Sal who has stopped hanging out with her, and a man—not really a friend—who sleeps under the mailbox out front. And then there are those mysterious notes from someone who seems to know quite a lot, but also needs her to write about everything that’s happening in her twelve-year-old life.

— Michael Main

So if they had gotten home five minutes before they left, like those ladies promised they would, then they would have seen themselves get back. Before they left.

DEBUT

When You Reach Me (Wendy Lamb Books, July 2009).

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Circa AD 1970 to 1999: 1978 to 1979
Circa AD 2000 to 2099: Old Marcus is from the 21st century.

Timeline Models

Single Static Timeline: When Marcus tells the problems with A Wrinkle in Time and explains how time travel works, he is talking of a single static timeline.

Time Travel Methods

Unexplained Time Travel Methods

Themes

Causal Loops: For example, one of the notes asks Miranda to tell where the key is to her front door. So she writes this information in her letter, which Marcus reads, which allows him to leave the note that asks her to tell where the key is.
Fix Your Own Past!: Marcus travels through time to prevent Sal from being hit in the street. The interesting thing is that this is what always happens: There is no timeline where Sal actually is hit.
Letters, Texts, Phone Calls, Talking, and Other Direct Communications through Time: Marcus brought the letters through time in his mouth.
Nude Travel: “You said you couldn’t carry anything, and I guess that includes clothes.”
Time Travel Sickness, Injuries, and Mixed-Up Body Parts: “The trip is a difficult one, and I must ask my favors while my mind is sound.”

Real-World Tags

Dick Clark

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From unspecified place and time at an unknown time ⋙ to Upper West Side of NYC, 1978. Multiple trips. Note: “[. . .] they were all you, learning how to get here.”