From the Desk of Zoe Washington(19)

What if Marcus was telling me the truth? He said he wouldn’t lie to me. Did innocent people end up in prison?

No. That was ridiculous. Marcus had to be lying. I had to forget about him and his letters.

I stuffed the crumpled ball back in the bottom of my bag. Then I wiped everything else dry on my apron and closed my backpack, bringing my water bottle back with me into the kitchen.

Ariana handed me another cupcake when I returned to the table.

I took a bite and focused on comparing it to the others I’d tasted. So far, cupcake number two was still my winner. We all tried the rest of the cupcake batches and agreed. The second cupcake was the best, and it’d be on the menu this fall, topped with honey cinnamon frosting.

“That was awesome,” I told Ariana as everyone else got back to work. “Do you come up with new flavors a lot?”

“We try to add a few new ones each season.”

I thought of how cool it would be to come up with my own recipe. I’d only ever baked using other people’s recipes. But if I got onto Kids Bake Challenge! I’d have to bake from my own memory.

I should come up with my own new cupcake flavor. If Ariana liked it, maybe she’d add it to her menu. She’d definitely give me a positive evaluation at the end of this internship if I gave her a new flavor recipe—and I could use it for my Kids Bake Challenge! audition. Maybe Ariana would even let me film my audition video in the shop’s kitchen.

For the next half hour, Ariana had me go through a shipment of strawberries and pick out all of the rotten ones. It was super boring compared to taste-testing cupcakes, but I didn’t mind too much. I started imagining possible cupcake recipes, listing all sorts of random ingredients in my head. Kumquats. Rhubarb. Cranberries. Hazelnuts. Kiwi.

This wouldn’t be easy, but I couldn’t wait to get started.





Chapter Thirteen


I was searching for more ingredients and cupcake inspiration pictures on my computer when Grandma knocked on my bedroom door and peeked inside. “I have to return my book to the library,” she said. “Do you want to come and get something?”

“Okay. I can look at the cookbooks.” I grabbed my backpack and threw my journal inside.

When we walked into the library fifteen minutes later, Grandma said, “I’m going to see what’s new in the mystery section. Want to meet back here in an hour?”

“Sounds good.” I gave her a quick wave and walked to the cookbook section, which was on the main floor. I’d stood in front of those shelves so many times before. I pulled a few baking cookbooks down and sat at a table to flip through them. The recipes all sounded really good. Now I wanted to make peanut butter banana pudding and “Everything but the Kitchen Sink” cookies filled with crushed-up pretzels, chocolate chips, toffee bits, and nuts. But seeing pictures and descriptions of completed recipes wasn’t helping me think of new ones. Maybe I needed to walk around the supermarket instead.

I carefully put the cookbooks back on the shelf and checked the time on my phone. I still had forty-five minutes before I had to meet Grandma.

I could start writing a letter back to Marcus, since I had my journal with me. But I still didn’t know how to respond to his last letter.

An idea came to me. My sixth-grade social studies teacher once instructed us to use only library books to complete one of our projects. We couldn’t use the internet at all. It was the first time I’d used only the library to research something. Dad ended up helping me.

I walked to the information desk.

“Excuse me?” I asked the librarian, who was staring down at something. When she looked up, I realized she wasn’t an actual librarian. Or at least, she didn’t seem old enough to be one. She was white with wavy brown hair, and she wore a gray Smith College T-shirt. Maybe she was still a college student, working at the library for the summer.

She glanced up at me, and then said, “Children’s floor is down the stairs to your right.”

“I know that,” I said. “I’m looking for books about crimes.”

“The children’s librarian downstairs can help you with that.”

“I’m not looking for children’s books,” I said, a little more forcefully. “I want the grown-up books about crimes.”

For a second, she looked like she was about to question why a middle schooler wanted to look at adult crime books. “Fiction or nonfiction?”

“Uh, nonfiction,” I said.

“That’s upstairs.” She turned to a laminated map of the library on the desk in front of her. “The true crime section is to the right. The criminal law section is behind it.”

“Thank you!” I turned toward the stairs and forced myself not to run all the way up them.

When I got upstairs, I realized I’d never stepped foot on that floor before. But as the girl had said, the true crime section was to the right. I walked into the stacks, not really knowing what book I was looking for. What I wanted to know was if it was really possible for an innocent person to go to prison. I had no idea if the answer to that was in a book, but there was only one way to find out.

People were scattered around the nonfiction floor of the library, some looking through books and others sitting at tables reading. It was very quiet, much quieter than the main floor and children’s floor. Everyone seemed very serious. Nobody was in the true crime section, which was a relief. I didn’t want any adults questioning why I was there.