From the Desk of Zoe Washington(6)

Part of me wants to know more about you, but I don’t know what to ask you, what to ask someone in prison. What I really want to know is why you did what you did.

I was happy with it so far—except for that last line. I wanted to know why Marcus committed his crime, but I was scared to ask. Scared of the answer. He didn’t seem like a bad person in his letter, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t one.

I decided to cross that line out. Maybe if I sent another letter, I’d ask him then, when I felt ready for whatever answer he had to give.

Part of me wants to know more about you, but I don’t know what to ask you, what to ask someone in prison. What I really want to know is why you did what you did.

Also, why did you call me Little Tomato?

Sincerely,

Zoe

In my desk drawer, there was a box of stationery that my grandmother had given me for my eleventh birthday. I didn’t usually send letters to people, so I’d never used it before. But now it was exactly what I needed. I took out a sheet of the stationery—it was fancy white paper with one dark purple line going around the perimeter. On the top in script were the words:

From the Desk of Zoe Washington

The pretty paper made me feel more grown-up, like I knew what I was doing.

With my journal open beside me, I rewrote my letter on the stationery in my neatest print. This was really happening.

When I was done, I wrote Marcus’s prison address on the envelope. I wondered how far away it was, so I did a quick search on my computer. Less than an hour drive, but I hadn’t been to that part of Massachusetts before. I sealed the letter and went to grab a stamp from the junk drawer in the kitchen.

The next morning, I waited for my parents to leave for work, then got ready to head to the blue mailbox at the corner of our street. I didn’t want to leave Marcus’s letter in the mailbox at our house and risk my parents seeing it. But before I could step onto the porch, I heard familiar voices: Trevor and his basketball friends, Lincoln and Sean. I went to the living room and glanced out the window. They were standing at the bottom of the porch steps, talking and laughing about something. Trevor dribbled a basketball while Lincoln and Sean held on to their bikes. They weren’t even wearing helmets!

My hands balled into fists.

Please leave. I waited for Trevor to get his bike and ride away with them. But they didn’t leave. Instead they all went to the driveway to play basketball.

What do I do? I could go outside through the back door, but I was pretty sure they’d still see me. After what happened, after what they’d said about me, I didn’t want to face those boys.

Would I be stuck inside my house all summer, forced to listen to their voices and laughter echoing throughout my own house?

I went back to my room to wait. I cleaned it up a little and unpacked my school backpack. I smiled when I pulled out the notebook I shared with Jasmine and Maya. It was one of those black-and-white marble composition notebooks, but we’d covered the front and back with pictures and quotes we’d found online. My favorites were the quote that said, “Dance like nobody’s watching,” and this adorable picture of otters holding hands. We used the notebook to write notes to each other. After each of us wrote a note, we’d pass it to the next person, who’d pass it to the third person, and we’d do that over and over all year long. Passing notes wasn’t allowed in class, but nobody realized we were writing notes when we wrote them in a regular notebook.

I flipped through and read a few pages, laughing at our inside jokes and missing those girls even more. Maybe I could start a new summer notebook, and we could mail it around to each other—like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, but different. But Maya probably couldn’t mail something so big from camp. And Jasmine was gone for good now. Next year, I wouldn’t be able to write notes to her at all. Would Maya and I even make another notebook without her?

Forget it.

Instead, I sent a message to our group text, knowing Maya wouldn’t see it until she was done with camp, and Jasmine’s grandma made Jasmine keep her phone off most of the time.

Me: Just unpacked our notebook from this year. I miss you guys already!!!

My heart hurt. Who knew if we’d even text as a group anymore once school started up again.

I put the notebook in my desk drawer with the others, and then spun around in my chair a few times until I got dizzy. Then my eyes landed on the Ruby Willow cookbook sitting on my nightstand. I got up and lay across my bed, leaning on my pillow with the cookbook in front of me.

Ruby was on the cover wearing a white chef’s coat and hat, with her blond hair in her signature side braid. She had the biggest smile, and held up a plate with three fruit tarts on it. The strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries looked so fresh, the vibrant colors popped off the page. I wished I could reach into the picture to taste them.

I flipped to Ruby’s bio in the back of the book, even though I already knew everything about her baking career—how she used to bake all the time with her mom, and then became a contestant on the Food Network’s Kids Bake Challenge! She hadn’t been a front-runner the whole time. A boy named Frankie won a few of the earlier challenges, so everyone expected him to win the whole competition. Not me. I didn’t like him very much. Even during the challenge that the kids complained about the most—where they had to make a six-layer rainbow cake—he kept bragging about how he’d made rainbow cakes a million times at home, and it would be a “piece of cake.” He thought he was so funny.