From the Desk of Zoe Washington

by Janae Marks

  Guilt weighed down on me. It wasn’t Grandma’s fault that I went behind her back to find Professor Thomas. And I was glad she let me keep writing to Marcus, since my life was better with him in it. But now Grandma felt bad. A huge lump formed in the back of my throat.

  “I’m sorry that I lied to you, but I had no choice. I had to go see Professor Thomas, and I’m glad I did, because she remembers him. She remembers meeting Marcus!”

  “She does?” Grandma asked, and I could see on her face that I’d caught her attention. “On the day Lucy was killed?”

  “I think so. She didn’t remember him at first, but she emailed me after I left her office. I need to call her back right now.” I reached behind me and removed my phone from between the couch cushions.

  Grandma sighed. “I can’t let you do that. You can ask your mom when she gets here.” She put her hand out. “Give me your phone.”

  I gripped it harder. “But she won’t let me, I know it. Please, you have to help me.”

  “I’ve helped you enough.” Grandma got up and stood in front of me. “The phone, Zoe.”

  “This is so unfair!” I yelled. I could feel my voice breaking. “If you really cared about me, you’d help me!”

  Grandma pursed her lips and shook her head slightly.

  “Ugh! I hate you!” I shouted. Right away, I wished I hadn’t said it, but I was too angry to take it back.

  She looked at me in disbelief, and then said, her voice quieter, “The phone.”

  I handed it to her and crossed my arms.

  Grandma sat back down and I fumed silently. Then I heard Mom’s car pull into our driveway. My stomach dropped.

  Mom’s heels clip-clopped against the porch steps and she opened the front door. Her mouth was set in a straight line as she focused her glare at me. I held my breath. I’d never seen her so angry.

  I wiped my eyes and braced myself for her to start yelling at me, but before she could get a word out, Grandma started talking.

  “Natalie, before you talk to Zoe, I have to confess something,” she told Mom as she stood up from her seat, dropping my phone on the chair. I thought about jumping up to grab it but stopped myself, knowing it would only make things worse.

  Mom glanced at her, shaking her head in confusion. “Can’t it wait?”

  “It has to do with why Zoe got in a cab this afternoon, so I think you should know.” Grandma still didn’t know about the T ride we’d taken, but I wasn’t about to mention it.

  Mom huffed in frustration. “Okay, what is it?”

  Grandma took a deep breath. “For the past couple of months, I’ve helped Zoe send letters to Marcus. Now, before you—”

  “You what?” Mom yelled, looking back and forth between Grandma and me. I kept my mouth shut.

  “You had no right!” Mom said to Grandma.

  Grandma crossed her arms. “A daughter should be able to know her father, even if he is in prison.”

  “Father.” Mom laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Now, listen. You never gave him a chance to be a dad to Zoe.”

  “As if you don’t know why!” Mom said, lifting her hands in the air. “I mean, seriously, Mom.”

  I sat there watching them argue, not sure what else to do. At least Grandma hadn’t mentioned that I actually spoke on the phone with Marcus. Twice.

  “I know what Marcus is in prison for,” Grandma said. “I never would’ve let him do anything to hurt Zoe. I read the letters he sent, and they were harmless.”

  Mom took a deep breath. “Let me get this straight. You went behind my back and gave Marcus’s address in prison to Zoe?” she asked Grandma.

  “He wrote to me first,” I jumped in, my voice small. “He sent me a letter on my birthday, and I wrote him back. Grandma didn’t find out until after I got his second letter.”

  Mom’s eyes bulged as she faced me. “You found that letter?”

  “Wait,” I said. “Did you know he was going to send one?”

  “I hoped he wouldn’t,” Mom said. “When I didn’t see it in the mail, I thought he finally stopped. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that you found it. And you lied to me about writing to him! After I told you I didn’t want you to.” She was yelling now.

  I went over her words in my head again. She knew that Marcus was going to send me a letter? I couldn’t believe it.

  “You’re the reason I never got any of Marcus’s other letters?” I asked.

  “I told you, I don’t want you communicating with him.”

  “What did you do with them?” I asked. “I want to see them.”

  “They’re gone,” Mom said, matter of fact.

  “What?” I screeched. “Those were my letters.”

  “Watch your tone, Zoe,” Mom said.

  I ignored her. “Did you read them? What did they say?” I asked.

  Mom shook her head. “I didn’t read them.”

  Anger flashed through me as I imagined a bunch of unopened letters from Marcus sitting in a landfill somewhere, covered in trash. Now I’d never get to read them, and it was all my mom’s fault. How could she be so selfish? How could she have lied to me this whole time?

  I opened my mouth again, to demand more answers, but before I could say anything else, the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Mom’s face twisted in annoyance as she went to open the door.

  “Patricia. Hi,” she said. Trevor’s mom.

  “Hi, Natalie,” Patricia said. “I brought Trevor over to apologize for his part in whatever happened today. Also, he wouldn’t tell me the whole story, so I hope Zoe will fill in the blanks.”

  “Come on in,” Mom said, and then Patricia and Trevor walked into the living room. He looked at me with worry in his eyes before sitting down on the other side of the couch. I put on my best “I’m sorry” face, hoping he understood. I was the one who’d gotten us into this mess.

  “I still don’t understand what happened either,” Mom said, glaring at Grandma before her gaze landed on me. “Zoe, I’m only going to ask you one time, and you better tell the truth. What were you two doing in a cab?”

  “It was my fault,” I said. “I made Trevor go to Harvard Square with me.”

  Mom’s face scrunched up even more. “Why?”

  “Marcus is innocent!” The words burst out of my mouth, and then without meaning to, I started to cry again. “He’s not a murderer. He didn’t do it! There’s a woman who works at Harvard who says she remembers seeing him when the crime happened.” I didn’t know for sure yet if that was true—if Professor Thomas really saw Marcus during the crime. All I knew was that she recognized him, but everything inside of me hoped it was true—that he really was innocent.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Trevor staring at me, his face twisted in confusion.

  I turned to him. “I tried to tell you in the car. Professor Thomas emailed me to say she remembers Marcus.”

  My mother looked like she didn’t know how to begin to respond. “Zoe, I don’t know where you got this information, but Marcus is not innocent of murder. He’s in prison right now because he’s guilty.”

  “No!” I got up and grabbed my phone from the armchair. I opened my mail app and the email from Professor Thomas. “Here, call her. Her name is Susan Thomas. Marcus’s lawyer never looked for her, but I did. I found her, and she remembers him. Call her and she’ll tell you what happened.”

  Mom took the phone from me, and for a moment, I was filled with relief when I thought that she was going to call Professor Thomas back and learn the truth.

  But that’s not what she did. My phone chimed as she turned it off. “Absolutely not. You are grounded until further notice. No phone and no computer.”

  “But—”

  “And you can forget about auditioning for that Food Network show.”

  “What?” I asked, my eyes filling with fresh tears. “You can’t!”

  “I can,” Mom said.

  Patricia sa
id, “C’mon, Trevor. I need to get ready for work. I’ll talk to you about your punishment later. I’m thinking no basketball for a while.”

  Trevor groaned and didn’t look at me before following his mom back into their own house.

  Mom made me go to my room, where she took away my computer. Then she went back to the living room with Grandma. I stood next to my door and listened to them argue.

  “Natalie,” I heard Grandma say when Mom got back to the living room. “I understand why you’re mad, but—”

  “I don’t want to hear anything else,” Mom said. “I’m so angry, I can’t even look at you. You should just go home.”

  “Okay,” Grandma said. “I hope that once you’ve calmed down, you see that I was trying to do the right thing.”

  I imagined Mom rolling her eyes.

  “But before I go,” Grandma said, “I should also tell you that I let Zoe talk to Marcus on the phone.”

  No, I thought. Don’t tell her that!

  “You what?” Mom screamed, her volume reaching a new decibel. “How could you be so irresponsible?”

  “You can’t tell me you believe Marcus is guilty of murder. This is Marcus, the boy you used to love. I know he broke your heart, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve to know his own daughter.”

  “If you ever, ever go behind my back like that again,” Mom said slowly, “I will not let you see Zoe anymore. Do you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Grandma said. “And I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” Mom said. “Now, please just go.”

  When I heard the front door open and close, I shut my bedroom door and sat down on my bed. All I could think about was how Mom would never let me find out what Professor Thomas remembered about Marcus. Or get Marcus’s letter back from her.

  The truth was right there waiting for me, but it still felt so impossibly far away.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  That night, I slept terribly. I dreamed of Marcus sitting alone in his prison cell at the end of a long hallway. I tried to run to him, but every time I got close, the hallway would stretch out even longer and I’d have to start running all over again.

  I also dreamed that I was able to call Professor Thomas, but when she told me she remembered Marcus, it was from the news, from when he was convicted of murder. In the dream, Professor Thomas kept laughing at me and saying things like, “Of course he’s guilty, silly girl.” Lincoln and Sean even showed up out of nowhere and joined in the laughter.

  I woke up early the next morning in a cold sweat.

  Grandma came by as usual before Mom and Dad left for work. I stayed in my room when she arrived, but from what I could hear, Dad was the only one who said goodbye to her on his way out.

  Maya was going to be home that weekend, but it wasn’t like I’d get to see her while I was grounded. I wondered how bad Trevor’s punishment ended up. If his mom was really going to make him quit basketball, he must’ve been really sad. I knew how he felt. I’d been so sure that my parents would let me audition for Kids Bake Challenge!, since I’d worked so hard at Ari’s Cakes all summer. But I could forget about that now. It wasn’t fair.

  I thought of Professor Thomas waiting for me to write or call back. She probably wondered what was taking me so long. I worried that she’d throw away the letter if I didn’t get back to her soon.

  I lay in bed most of the day, reading and writing in my journal. I reread all of Marcus’s letters that I still had, and wrote him letters that I wasn’t sure I’d get to mail anytime soon. Maybe ever. First, I wrote all about finding his alibi witness, and that Professor Thomas actually remembered him. I also wrote about getting in trouble with my parents, and how Mom admitted she’d thrown away his past letters.

  In another letter, I wrote about myself. I told him about Hawaiian-ish pizza, asking him if he also liked pepperoni with pineapples. I told him about the only time I’d broken a bone, when I let Trevor convince me that skateboarding down our porch steps was a good idea a few years earlier. I’d broken my left wrist. I wrote about my favorite things to bake, describing all of the recipes in detail.

  Except for letting me know that she made me a sandwich for lunch, Grandma left me alone.

  On Monday morning, I got ready for the last day of my internship. It was Labor Day, so both of my parents had the day off from work.

  “Are you ready to go?” I asked Dad when he was by himself in the kitchen.

  “Sorry, kiddo,” Dad said. “No internship today, because you’re still grounded. We didn’t want to inconvenience Ariana, but Mom talked to her yesterday, and she said they’ll be fine without your help today.”

  “What? That’s not fair,” I mumbled under my breath before going back to my room and putting my pajama pants back on. I wondered if Ariana was selling a special Labor Day cupcake. If the shop was as crowded as it’d been on the Fourth of July. If I’d ever get to share my cereal cupcakes with her.

  The next day was my first day of seventh grade.

  In the morning, I was in the living room filling my backpack with the new notebooks Mom bought for me over the weekend when Trevor’s storm door creaked open and shut. I glanced out the window to find Trevor already walking down the porch steps, wearing a Medford Middle School Basketball T-shirt and jeans.

  I threw my lunch bag into my backpack, zipped it up, and slipped on my sneakers. I shouted, “Going to the bus!” so Mom and Dad knew I was leaving. Then I ran outside to catch up with Trevor a couple houses down. “Trevor,” I said. “Wait up.”

  He stopped walking and glanced back at me. “Hey.”

  “I’ve been dying to talk to you. How are you?” I nodded toward his shirt. “Did your mom make you quit the team?”

  He glanced down at his shirt and shook his head. “No. I mean, the season hasn’t started yet. Hopefully Mom will forget by the time it does.”

  “That’s lucky.”

  “Well, I was supposed to go to a few Celtics games, but now they’re giving the tickets to my uncle and cousins,” Trevor said.

  “I’m sorry. It’s totally my fault.”

  “Nah, it’s okay,” he said. “I wanted to help you, and it was worth it.”

  “So you don’t hate me for getting you in trouble?” I asked.

  “No! I mean, it sucked getting caught, but I’m glad I could help you learn the truth about Marcus. Going to Harvard was pretty fun, too. Definitely the most exciting thing I got to do all summer.”

  I had to smile. “Same here.”

  “Did you get your parents to call Professor Thomas?” he asked.

  I frowned. “No. And I still don’t have my phone or computer back.”

  “That stinks. But maybe your parents will change their minds,” Trevor said.

  “Doesn’t seem like that’s gonna happen. Mom’s still so mad.”

  We got to our bus stop, and a couple minutes later, the bus pulled up and we got on.

  “Zooo-eeeee!” Maya grinned and waved her arms at me from our usual spot in the middle of the bus. Her thick brown hair was in a French braid, and she’d gotten new red glasses.

  “Maya! Hi!” I sat down next to her, and she slammed me with a hug. I smiled as I hugged her back, my first real smile since I’d been grounded.

  “I missed you,” she said.

  “Missed you too,” I said.

  She elbowed me. “Why didn’t you answer any of my texts this weekend?”

  “I couldn’t. Mom took my phone away.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Long story,” I said. “I have so much to tell you.”

  “I have sooo much to tell you, too.”

  I glanced up to see where Trevor had gone. He was sitting in an empty seat a couple of rows ahead of us. “Trevor,” I called out, and he turned around. I pointed to the empty seat across from mine, and then moved my backpack over to it. “Do you care?” I asked Maya.

  “Fine with me,” Maya said.

  I waved Trevor over and let him into the seat next to me.<
br />
  “I was gonna play my Mario game but . . . ,” Trevor began.

  “No phone?” I finished, and Trevor nodded. “That’s okay. You can hang out with us.”

  He smiled.

  The next bus stop would’ve been where Jasmine and her twin brother got on. But they were all the way in Maryland.

  “Have you heard from Jasmine?” I asked Maya.

  “Yeah, she sent us a text last night,” Maya said. “She says she misses us and she starts at her new school today.”

  School wouldn’t be the same without Jasmine, but I was so happy to be here with Maya and Trevor. I couldn’t wait to tell Maya all about Marcus and the Harvard adventure, but that could wait until lunch, when we had more time.

  “Oh! I have something for you,” Maya said, reaching into her backpack. She pulled out a package of assorted Ghirardelli chocolate and passed it to me. “I got it from their shop in San Francisco.”

  “Thanks!” I said, opening the package. It was never too early for chocolate. But before I took one for myself, I held the package out to Trevor, who had been watching me carefully. “I know you want some.”

  His eyes lit up as he took a few pieces for himself, immediately opening one and stuffing it into his mouth.

  I ate a piece of chocolate too. It was nice to be surrounded by my friends again.

  But then I thought about Marcus, sitting alone in his prison cell, and my stomach churned.

  “You know what, you can have these,” I told Trevor and handed him the rest of the chocolates.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  “Hey, Zo,” Dad said as he poked his head into my room a couple of days later, while I was doing French homework.

  The clock on my wall said it was only four o’clock. “What are you doing home so early?” I asked.

  “We have something to talk to you about.”

  “We?”

  Dad opened the door wider and he, Mom, and Grandma walked into my room. What was Mom doing home early, too? They all stood in a line in front of me, and I braced myself for yelling, or more punishment, or something else equally terrible. Then I noticed Mom seemed upset—her eyes were slightly red, and her mascara was smeared. Had she been crying?