From the Desk of Zoe Washington(36)

There was an icky feeling in the pit of my stomach when I thought about lying to Grandma, the one person who’d helped me keep writing to Marcus—even talk to him on the phone. But I had to find Susan Thomas. I had to.

All of the lying was wrong, I knew that. But maybe it was okay to do something wrong if you were doing it for the right reason.

I didn’t know how much time I had, how long Grandma would wait before finally telling my parents about my communication with Marcus. All I knew was that I needed to find Susan Thomas fast.

And then I remembered. I wouldn’t have to do this on my own after all.

I picked up my phone and texted Trevor.

Susan Thomas. It was such a simple name, and also a pretty popular one. When I typed it into the search browser, over 150 million results popped up. There were photos of girls and women of all different ages, professional websites, personal blogs, social media pages, and more. When I skimmed through some of the sites, I saw that they were all over the country, and some even lived abroad. Lots of them had brown hair and brown eyes, and many of those Susan Thomases had freckles.

When I changed my search to “Susan Thomas Brookline MA,” the results went down to one million. Which was better, but not good enough.

I was over at Trevor’s house so we could search together. When I’d texted him to ask for his help, he immediately agreed. It was both weird and super familiar to be back in Trevor’s room, which was really neat, as always. His bed was made, and there was a new basketball poster above his desk, plus even more novels on his bookshelf. We sat next to each other at his desk in front of his computer.

“I might never find her.” I frowned at the computer screen. How would I narrow down all of these results to the one Susan Thomas I needed to find?

“We just started looking,” Trevor said. “We’ll find her, even if we have to message every single Susan Thomas.”

“That could take forever.”

Trevor shrugged. “My dad’s always telling me I have all the time in the world to do things.”

“But if Marcus is innocent, he doesn’t have all the time in the world,” I said. “I hate thinking of him in there, surrounded by criminals, if he’s really innocent. He said he has friends there, and not everybody in jail is bad, but I think he was only saying that to make me feel better.”

“Did Marcus say that he remembered anything else?”

I glanced at my journal again. Underneath Susan’s name and physical description, I’d written “students.” “Right! Marcus said he thought she was a teacher, because she said the word ‘students’ when they talked.”

Trevor pulled the keyboard closer. In the search box, he typed in, “Susan Thomas Brookline MA teacher.” Within the top results was the website for Brookline Elementary School.

“Click on that,” I told him.

When he did, a page popped up showing the staff at the school. In the middle of the page was a picture of a Susan Thomas, who was a second-grade teacher. She had brown hair, though it was pretty light, almost blond. Her eyes were definitely brown, though. I couldn’t spot any freckles, but it looked like she was wearing makeup, so maybe she’d covered them up. Marcus had said she was in her thirties back then, so she was probably in her forties now. I couldn’t really tell how old this woman was.

“Maybe that’s her,” I said. “What do you think?”

Trevor shrugged. “She’s a teacher in Brookline, and she pretty much fits the description.”

“Okay!” I smiled. “But wait. Marcus said she was moving. Why do you think she’s still living in Brookline, then?”

“Maybe she just moved to a different house in Brookline,” Trevor said.

I nodded. “That makes sense. This was super easy.”

“We had good clues.”

I nodded, but part of me wondered if it’d been too easy. If Susan Thomas was this easy to find, why didn’t Marcus’s lawyer bother to look for her? Grandma’s theory that he didn’t care what happened to Marcus seemed even more likely.

Susan’s email was listed on the school’s website, next to her bio.

“I guess I’ll send her an email, and see if she remembers Marcus,” I said.

“Good idea,” Trevor said.

I opened up my email in a new browser window and started typing.

From: Zoe Washington

To: Susan Thomas

Subject: Do you know Marcus Johnson?

Dear Ms. Thomas,

I’m looking for someone with your name, who met my dad. It was 13 years ago, and he came to your house in Brookline to buy some stuff at your tag sale. Could that be you?

I attached his picture. Do you recognize him? I really hope you do.

This is really important, so please write back soon.

Sincerely,

Zoe Washington

Marcus’s picture was tucked inside my journal, so I took it out and snapped a photo of it with my phone. It was taken when he was still in high school, so a couple of years before the crime happened, but I thought that it was better than showing Ms. Thomas his mug shot or pictures from the trial. I didn’t want her to see him that way and get it in her head that he was guilty.

I emailed the picture to myself so I could open it on Trevor’s computer. Then I attached it to the email to Susan, read it one more time, and clicked Send.