From the Desk of Zoe Washington(33)

“How are you?” he asked.

“I’m okay. How are you?”

“Really good now that I’m talking to you. You’re making my day. No, my month.”

I smiled, and Grandma gave me a look as if to say, “Everything good?” I nodded at her, and Grandma smiled back.

“I’ve been listening to the Little Tomato playlist a lot,” I told him. “The Jill Scott song has been stuck in my head for the last couple of days.”

“That’s great,” Marcus said.

“I’m going to make your macaroni and cheese recipe,” I told him. “Thanks for sharing it.”

“I know you’ll do a good job making it,” he said.

“It’s too bad I can’t send you some in the mail,” I said.

Marcus laughed.

“I wish you could send me a picture of you,” I said. “I have one from when you were in high school, but I want to know what you look like now.”

“You have a picture of me?” Marcus asked. “Which one?”

“It’s you at a Celtics game, wearing one of their sweatshirts.”

Marcus laughed again. “I know exactly which picture you’re talking about. Your mom used to have it in a frame. She gave me the tickets as a surprise for my birthday. The Celtics won, too. It was amazing.”

It was hard to imagine Mom being happy with Marcus, knowing how she felt about him now.

We were silent for a moment, and I wondered if Marcus was thinking about Mom.

“Well, anyway,” Marcus said. “I don’t think I look that different now—just older. Bigger. I was kind of scrawny back then. And I have to shave more now.”

In my mind, I tried to replace the image of Marcus that I knew with the one he described. I wished I could see him in real life.

I was about to ask him if he got to watch any basketball in prison, but then I heard shouting in the background.

“Time to get off,” someone yelled.

“What was that?” I asked, suddenly feeling scared for Marcus. If he was innocent, then he was surrounded by criminals. Unless there were other innocent people in his prison with him. It was still hard to wrap my head around it.

“Zoe, I have to go.” Marcus sounded rushed all of a sudden—and sad. “I’m really sorry, but it’s time for me to get off the phone.”

“You can’t go yet,” I said. “We only started talking.”

Then I remembered. I didn’t ask him about his alibi witness! I didn’t want to wait to ask him in another letter. I needed more time on our call.

“I’m sorry. Those are the rules. We’ll talk again, I promise,” he said.

“Wait. Can you call me again tomorrow, same time? Please?” I said the words as fast as I could.

“Okay, I’ll try my best. Goodbye, my Little Tomato.”

“Okay. Bye,” I said, but Marcus was already gone. There was a click as the call ended.

I put the phone down on the coffee table and looked up at Grandma.

“He said he might call me again tomorrow,” I said, the words rushing from my mouth. “I hope that’s okay. I needed more time.”

Grandma nodded, her smile warm. “That’s fine.”

I hoped nothing prevented Marcus from calling me back.





Chapter Twenty-Two


To help pass the time while I waited for Marcus’s second call the next day, I brought my macaroni and cheese ingredients to Grandma’s house so we could make Marcus’s recipe together for lunch.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” I told Grandma. “I’m only good with sweet stuff.”

Grandma smiled. “That’s why there’s a recipe. You follow steps just like with baking. Here, let me see it.”

I handed her Marcus’s letter, which had the recipe on the back.

“Why don’t you start grating the cheese?” Grandma asked. “I’ll put a pot of water on to boil and preheat the oven.”

“Okay.”

Grandma took out a cheese grater and I got to work on the huge block of mild cheddar cheese. After that I grated the sharp cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses. By the time I was done with all that grating, my right arm felt like rubber.

The next steps were easy. As the pasta cooked, Grandma and I made the cheese sauce by adding the grated cheeses to milk and heavy cream in a pot. We added some seasonings, like salt, pepper, and paprika, and mixed it all together.

“Let’s taste the sauce to make sure the seasonings are right,” Grandma told me.

We dipped spoons into the mixture and tasted it.

“What do you think?” Grandma asked.

“Maybe more paprika?” I said. “I’m not sure I taste a lot of spice.” What I tasted was a whole lot of cheese.

“Sounds good to me,” Grandma said, and I shook a little more paprika into the mixture.

Marcus’s recipe said to add a couple of eggs next, so we did that.

When the timer went off for the pasta, I went for the colander, but Grandma stopped me.

“You should always taste the pasta first, to make sure it’s ready.” She used a spoon to scoop a few macaroni noodles out of the pot. She blew on them, and then popped one in her mouth and handed me the other. It tasted pretty good to me.