From the Desk of Zoe Washington(4)

“I hope you like your present, Zoe.” Patricia pointed to the wrapped rectangle on the coffee table. “We should get going. I have the night shift.” She was a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital and was already wearing her pale-blue scrubs. Her pressed hair was in a neat bun on top of her head.

Mom gave me a look that meant, What do you say?

Right. “Thank you,” I said, looking only at Patricia.

She smiled and said goodbye, and Trevor followed her out without another word.

I was about to head back to my room when Dad said, “Let’s see what Trevor got you.”

I didn’t care what Trevor got me. But Mom and Dad were staring at me, waiting for me to open the gift, so I sat down on the couch and unwrapped it.

It was a cookbook. But not any cookbook. The new one by Ruby Willow, the thirteen-year-old pastry chef I was obsessed with. She’d won a kid baking competition on the Food Network. My dream.

I grinned as I flipped through the pages, which had pictures to go along with the recipes. S’more brownies. Fried Oreos. Peanut butter and jelly macarons. Yum!

“Isn’t she that chef you like?” Mom asked.

“You told them to get this, right?” I asked her.

Mom shook her head. “Actually, your dad and I were going to get it for you, but then Trish called and asked if it’d be a good gift idea. She said Trevor suggested it.”

“Oh,” I said. It was probably before I stopped talking to him. Whatever. I wouldn’t let that stop me from enjoying the cookbook. “I’m going to my room now.”

I was done thinking about Trevor. Marcus’s letter was way more important.





Chapter Four


I sat on the porch steps with my earbuds in while Butternut napped in a patch of sun at my feet. It was the best kind of summer morning—not too hot, not too sunny, and not too many mosquitoes out to bite me. Our dead-end street was quiet. The only person I could see around was our older neighbor across the street, who was watering the hydrangea bushes lining his front yard with a hose.

I was listening to Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” which I’d downloaded the night before. I had heard it before, though I wasn’t sure when. Maybe Mom had played it at some point, or it was in the background of a movie. How weird that it reminded Marcus of me. We were complete strangers.

If Marcus was such a monster, why would he like listening to Stevie Wonder? Stevie’s music was so upbeat and happy. It didn’t add up. Maybe Marcus was lying to me. It was hard to tell.

I decided to write him back, just this once. Maybe I could get some answers—why he did what he did. Whether he cared at all that I was going to be born. Was he writing to me now because he felt guilty?

On my lap was a journal Jasmine got me for my birthday, which had a Z made of flowers on the cover, and a purple pen. Tucked into the back of the journal was Marcus’s letter, which I’d read a hundred more times. I decided to write a draft of a letter back to Marcus in the journal. Getting the words out could help me figure out how I felt and what I really wanted to know from him.

Before I could start, I heard the creak of a storm door opening and closing behind me. It woke Butternut up, and he ran to the top step to see who was coming outside. I didn’t have to turn around to know it wasn’t my door that had opened—it was Trevor’s. His was the only door that creaked like that. Trevor’s parents had left earlier, so either Trevor or his older brother, Simon, had come outside.

I glanced back. Just my luck: it was Trevor. If it was last summer, I would’ve been excited to hear him come out. It’d mean the start of one of our adventures.

But not anymore. I hoped he was on his way out so he wouldn’t hang around. He was probably going to spend all summer with the basketball guys.

Butternut ran over to Trevor, and his collar jingled as he jumped up Trevor’s leg, asking to be pet. Butternut didn’t care that Trevor and I were in a fight. I wished he would give Trevor the cold shoulder, too.

Instead of leaving, Trevor sat down on the other side of the steps and took a book out of his cargo shorts pocket—The Golden Compass. From his other pocket, he took out a red sports drink and a small bottle of sunblock, which his mom always insisted he wear during the summer.

Butternut flopped back into a sunny patch on the steps between the two of us.

I tried to ignore Trevor and go back to my journal. But I could see him out of the corner of my eye. He was acting like everything was normal, like this was a regular Sunday with us hanging out together on the porch, playing go fish or spit. Right then, he was squirting big globs of sunblock onto his hands and rubbing it into his brown skin until the white lotion disappeared. The scent—a mix of chemicals and coconut—filled the air.

“Do you have to be out here right now?” I took my earbuds out for a second and put my journal down on the step.

Trevor looked up from his book. “It’s my porch, too. I’m on my side.”

Trevor’s family lived in the left side of the house. He was currently sitting on the left side of the wooden porch steps. As if to make his point, he scooted even closer to the left railing until he touched it.

I didn’t have a good argument, so I scooted even farther to the right of the porch steps. I put my earbuds back in and raised the volume a little more, letting Stevie Wonder’s singing voice fill my ears.