From the Desk of Zoe Washington(44)

“Yeah, but what if I show her the picture and she says she’s never seen him before?” The idea alone made my eyes water with tears. I blinked to make them go away.

Trevor looked like he wasn’t sure what to say. “It’ll be okay.”

“I don’t want Marcus to be guilty. I don’t want him to be a murderer. He doesn’t have to be my dad—Paul’s my dad—but I still want him to be my friend. But not if he’s really a lying monster.”

Trevor nodded. “You don’t know anything yet. Professor Thomas might remember him.”

“I hope so.” I smiled and wiped my eyes. “How much more time do we have before her class gets out?”

Trevor peered at his watch and then jumped to his feet. “Only five more minutes.”

“Oh.” I stood up, still holding my uneaten sandwich. I took a couple of quick bites to quiet my still-grumbling stomach and chased them down with another swig of water. I put the rest of our food back inside my backpack. “Let’s go inside and find her classroom. It’s room 215.”

We walked inside the building and were blasted with cold air-conditioning. “This way,” I said once I spotted the staircase.

We walked up to the second floor and found our way to room 215. The door was closed, but there was a small window on it. I took a deep breath. This was it.

My whole body shook as I walked up to the window and peeked inside. There was a woman at the front of the room, standing in front of a chalkboard that had a bunch of math equations on it. It may as well have been in another language. I counted the students and reached the number ten. They sat at desks, taking notes as the teacher spoke.

As I stared at the woman, something in my brain told me that she seemed younger than the picture we’d seen online. And her hair was shorter.

Trevor came up behind me and peered into the window himself. “Is that her?” he asked. “She looks different.”

I started to panic. “Are we sure this is the right room?” I moved away from the door and put my backpack on the hallway floor. I took out my journal and flipped open to the page where I’d written down the details of Professor Thomas’s class. It said it right there—Sever Hall, room 215, from 12:00 to 1:30 on Thursdays, starting that same day. We were definitely in the right place.

“Class is ending,” Trevor said. “They’re putting their notebooks away and stuff.”

My heart sped up. “What do we do?”

Before Trevor had the chance to answer, the door swung open and a few students filed out. And the next thing I knew, Trevor was walking inside the classroom.





Chapter Twenty-Nine


“What are you doing?” I hissed at Trevor, but he was already gone. I threw my journal back into my backpack and followed him into the classroom. Trevor was walking up to the teacher—who, now that I was closer, I realized couldn’t possibly be Professor Thomas. This person looked only a few years older than the students who’d just walked out of the room. There’s no way she was in her thirties when she had a tag sale twelve years earlier.

I wanted to throw up. We’d made it all the way out to Harvard Square without our parents, and we still may not have found the person we were looking for.

“Hi,” Trevor said to the teacher. “Is this Professor Thomas’s class?”

The teacher, who was busy putting her laptop and folders into her messenger bag, looked up, surprised to see a twelve-year-old boy standing in front of her, and me a few feet behind watching the two of them.

“Uh, yes,” she said.

“Are you Professor Thomas?” Trevor asked.

She laughed, as if Trevor had asked the funniest question ever. “No. I’m her TA.”

“TA?” Trevor asked.

“Teaching assistant. Professor Thomas had to leave a little early today, so I taught the rest of class.”

My chest filled with a huge bubble of disappointment. We’d failed. My one shot to find her, and she wasn’t there.

“Are you looking for her for some reason?” the TA asked, wrinkling her eyebrows at Trevor.

“Yes,” Trevor said. “Do you know where she is?”

“She had an important phone call. I think she went back to her office for it.”

“Where’s that?” Trevor asked.

“The math department is in the science building,” the TA said. “Her office is on the third floor, to the right of the stairs. Her name’s on the door.”

I glanced up at the clock in the classroom. We only had twenty minutes before we had to head home, and now we had to go to a whole other building to talk to Professor Thomas—if she was even there at all.

“Thanks!” Trevor told the TA, and then he turned to me.

“There isn’t enough time,” I said, about to start crying again. Harvard’s campus was big, and I had no idea where the science building was, or how long it’d take to walk there.

“If we run, there is.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the classroom. “Let’s go!”

He was right. There was still a chance—we could still find Professor Thomas. Adrenaline burst through me as we raced back down the stairs of Sever Hall and back outside. Once we were on the quad again, Trevor asked for my campus map, which I’d forgotten all about. I pulled it out of my backpack and he scanned it for a second.