When You Reach Me

I just finished reading the book When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. I loved it so much and I would recommend it to anyone. It is a long complicated story and I am going to try to tell the whole thing. Miranda is a twelve year old girl who has a best friend Sal who is a boy. They live in New York City and they try to avoid certain people like The Laughing Man Hobo on the corner of the street Miranda and Sal live on. One day while on their way home Sal got randomly punched by a tough kid named Marcus. Later Marcus told Miranda that he did it because he was mad that his brother was getting beat up and he didn't do anything about it. Marcus is very interested in time travel and believes it is possible. Sal has decided to take a break from being Miranda's friend. All of a sudden strange things are happening to Miranda like the apartment keys have gone missing and her mom's boyfriend's boots were stolen. Miranda recieves three notes in the course of three months. The letters are from an ananamous source. They are telling her that her friend's life and his life are in danger if she doesn't write him a letter about the events that will eventually lead up to something bad that is going to happen to someone she knows.
Miranda has two other friends named Colin and Annemarie. They all get a job at a local sandwhich shop just for fun and they aren't even getting paid. Miranda has a crush on Colin but she doesn't want to tell him because she thinks that Colin likes Annemarie. Miranda was wrong all along. Page 153, "It was dark outside when there was a tap at the door. I sat up on the couch. A tap on the door was strange. Everyone rings our doorbell, except for Louisa, who always knocks her regular knock. I was afraid - your notes had done that to me. Another tap. 'Hello?' I called. Silence. I got up and looked through the peephole. Colin stood there, holding his skateboard in front of him like a shield, 'what's wrong?' He took two steps forward and kind of hovered in front of me for a second, and then he kissed me. And then he stopped and waited. And then I kissed him back. He smiled and ran down the stairs. There are days when everthing changes, and this was one of those days.
A couple weeks later Sal was walking home from school and Miranda was a little far back away from him. She saw Marcus approaching him and realized that he just wanted to apologize for punching Sal. Sal was scared so he started running and Marcus started chasing him. Sal ran out into the road and got hit by a bus and died. Marcus then realized it was his fault that Sal died so in the future when he was an old man he eventually figured out how to build a time machine so he went back in time to when Miranda started recieving the notes. He became The Laughing Man Hobo and gave Miranda the notes so the young Marcus would know what to do when he got older. On the day that Sal died, the Laughing Man Hobo ran out into the street and kicked Sal out of the way so Sal survived and he died. This was very hard for Marcus to watch because he just watched himself get killed in the future.
This seems like a really sad book, but it actually isn't. Both Marcus and Sal get to live their whole lives. I love this book so much. I think everyone in the world should read it.