From the Desk of Zoe Washington

by Janae Marks

  I’m sorry that I’m in here instead of out there with you. I’m sorry that you’ve had to deal with a father in prison. If I could go back and somehow fix it, I would.

  I want to end this letter on a happier note. You asked what else I like to do. When I was your age, besides basketball, I played a lot of video games. I was also into drawing. I would draw the characters from my favorite games and cartoons. I used to think I was pretty good, but I stopped in high school when basketball started taking up all of my free time.

  You know what else? I liked to cook! I used to help my mom all the time with her recipes, which were passed down to her from her mom. Even now, I get to cook some. My job here in prison is working in the kitchen. My favorite part is chopping the vegetables. I get in the zone and it’s pretty relaxing. I never baked much, but it’s great that you love baking. When you get on that show and win, I want a signed copy of your cookbook, okay? I hope one day I get to taste one of your recipes.

  As for my family, I do have one sibling—a brother who’s five years older than me. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two daughters, and my parents moved down there to be closer to them. Unfortunately, my relationship with them isn’t the same now that I’m in prison. I really hope that changes someday.

  Here’s another song for your playlist. I like all kinds of music, but my favorite has to be R&B. It reminds me of when I was growing up. Look up “Water Runs Dry,” by Boyz II Men. That song brings back some good memories.

  Please give your grandmother a big hug for me. And tell her to give you one for me too. :)

  Love,

  Marcus

  Chapter Twelve

  I sat on the edge of my bed and clutched Marcus’s letter between my fingers.

  He said he was innocent. Just thinking the words made me dizzy. He couldn’t possibly be innocent if he’d been in prison my whole life. Mom would’ve told me if he was. That meant she must’ve been right about Marcus all along. He was a liar.

  If he was lying about this, he was probably lying about everything else, and I’d fallen for it. How could I let myself believe a convict I’d never met?

  I scanned the letter again to make sure I hadn’t read it wrong. His a’s looked a lot like mine. I hadn’t noticed that before. But the words were the same—Marcus really said he was innocent.

  A mix of disappointment and anger shot through me. I crumpled up the letter and threw it in the trash, spinning away from it in my desk chair.

  But what if Mom or Dad found it when they took the garbage out? I took the letter out again and stuffed it into the bottom of my backpack instead.

  It wasn’t raining when Dad and I left for Ari’s Cakes on Monday morning, but by the time he dropped me off, it was pouring. Sheets of water rolled down the cobblestone streets of Beacon Hill, and the sidewalks were filled with people holding umbrellas.

  Dad frowned as he twisted around to check his back seat. “I don’t see an umbrella. I’m sorry. You want to run in?”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Bye, Dad.”

  “Bye, kiddo.”

  I jumped out of the car and sprinted to the shop. It was only a quarter of a block, but by the time I walked inside, my T-shirt had big water drops all over it, and my right sock and sneaker were drenched from accidentally stepping into a big puddle.

  I stopped at the bathroom to wring the water out of my sock, and then grabbed my apron from the closet in the kitchen.

  “Morning, Zoe.” Ariana waved me over. “Come see what we’re working on.”

  I joined her at the metal table in the middle of the room. Vincent, Rosa, Liz, and Corey were also standing around the table, staring at six cupcake pans that looked like they’d just come out of the oven. The cupcakes were similar in color to gingerbread and had a similar spicy smell. None of them were frosted. Each pan had a small strip of blue tape on its edge with different writing in Sharpie. The pan right in front of me said “20 minutes, 1/2c fig,” and the one next to it said “18 minutes, 1c fig.”

  “So, Zoe,” Ariana said. “Vincent and I have been working on a new flavor for the shop, using a new ingredient for us—figs. These are fig-spiced cupcakes. If we like how they turned out, we’ll roll them out this fall.”

  “Cool!” I imagined what fig-spiced cupcakes might taste like. Tangy and sweet at the same time. “That sounds really yummy.”

  “Hopefully they taste yummy, too,” Ariana said. “We baked six batches. We wanted to test out three different baking times to see which one gives us the best cupcake texture. And we also baked different amount of fig pieces into the batches, so we can see which ones taste the best.”

  “Did you use a recipe?” I asked.

  Vincent scoffed. “The only recipes I use are in here.” He pointed to his head, which was covered with a blue bandanna.

  Ariana said, “We modified our spice cake recipe. That’s why we have to taste all of these cupcakes to see if the new flavor works.”

  I nodded. I had no idea this was how pastry chefs came up with new flavors, but I liked the sound of it.

  Vincent pressed down on a couple of cupcakes with the back of his finger. “I think they’re cool enough now.”

  “Great.” Ariana pointed to the first pan. “We baked these for eighteen minutes, and used more fig pieces. Dig in.”

  I grabbed a cupcake and took a bite. The cake itself was really good, very moist, but there was maybe too much fig. I looked around the table and everyone looked like they were chewing very seriously.

  “Too much fig,” Corey said.

  Liz nodded. “And the cake’s a little underbaked.”

  Vincent just frowned.

  “I agree,” Ariana said. “Let’s try the ones with less fig that we baked for twenty minutes.”

  We each grabbed one of those. One bite and I could tell it was way better than the first one. I finished the whole thing.

  “It’s very good,” Rosa said. “Right texture. Right amount of fig.”

  “I’m diggin’ this one,” Corey said.

  Vincent stayed quiet as he chewed, but he nodded like he was impressed with himself.

  “I agree,” Ariana said, smiling. “Let’s try the others, to make sure this is our winner.”

  While everyone grabbed the next cupcake, I ran to my backpack, which I’d left inside the supply closet with the aprons, to get my bottle of water. When I reached inside the bag, it felt wet from the rain. I dumped everything from my backpack onto the floor. It wasn’t a lot—my wallet, phone, journal, lip balm . . . and Marcus’s letter. It was still a crumpled ball of loose-leaf paper, now with a water stain. I stared at it for a second, and the word “innocent” popped into my head.

  What if Marcus was telling me the truth? He said he wouldn’t lie to me. Did innocent people end up in prison?

  No. That was ridiculous. Marcus had to be lying. I had to forget about him and his letters.

  I stuffed the crumpled ball back in the bottom of my bag. Then I wiped everything else dry on my apron and closed my backpack, bringing my water bottle back with me into the kitchen.

  Ariana handed me another cupcake when I returned to the table.

  I took a bite and focused on comparing it to the others I’d tasted. So far, cupcake number two was still my winner. We all tried the rest of the cupcake batches and agreed. The second cupcake was the best, and it’d be on the menu this fall, topped with honey cinnamon frosting.

  “That was awesome,” I told Ariana as everyone else got back to work. “Do you come up with new flavors a lot?”

  “We try to add a few new ones each season.”

  I thought of how cool it would be to come up with my own recipe. I’d only ever baked using other people’s recipes. But if I got onto Kids Bake Challenge! I’d have to bake from my own memory.

  I should come up with my own new cupcake flavor. If Ariana liked it, maybe she’d add it to her menu. She’d definitely give me a positive evaluation at the end of this internship if I gave her a new flavor recipe�
��and I could use it for my Kids Bake Challenge! audition. Maybe Ariana would even let me film my audition video in the shop’s kitchen.

  For the next half hour, Ariana had me go through a shipment of strawberries and pick out all of the rotten ones. It was super boring compared to taste-testing cupcakes, but I didn’t mind too much. I started imagining possible cupcake recipes, listing all sorts of random ingredients in my head. Kumquats. Rhubarb. Cranberries. Hazelnuts. Kiwi.

  This wouldn’t be easy, but I couldn’t wait to get started.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was searching for more ingredients and cupcake inspiration pictures on my computer when Grandma knocked on my bedroom door and peeked inside. “I have to return my book to the library,” she said. “Do you want to come and get something?”

  “Okay. I can look at the cookbooks.” I grabbed my backpack and threw my journal inside.

  When we walked into the library fifteen minutes later, Grandma said, “I’m going to see what’s new in the mystery section. Want to meet back here in an hour?”

  “Sounds good.” I gave her a quick wave and walked to the cookbook section, which was on the main floor. I’d stood in front of those shelves so many times before. I pulled a few baking cookbooks down and sat at a table to flip through them. The recipes all sounded really good. Now I wanted to make peanut butter banana pudding and “Everything but the Kitchen Sink” cookies filled with crushed-up pretzels, chocolate chips, toffee bits, and nuts. But seeing pictures and descriptions of completed recipes wasn’t helping me think of new ones. Maybe I needed to walk around the supermarket instead.

  I carefully put the cookbooks back on the shelf and checked the time on my phone. I still had forty-five minutes before I had to meet Grandma.

  I could start writing a letter back to Marcus, since I had my journal with me. But I still didn’t know how to respond to his last letter.

  An idea came to me. My sixth-grade social studies teacher once instructed us to use only library books to complete one of our projects. We couldn’t use the internet at all. It was the first time I’d used only the library to research something. Dad ended up helping me.

  I walked to the information desk.

  “Excuse me?” I asked the librarian, who was staring down at something. When she looked up, I realized she wasn’t an actual librarian. Or at least, she didn’t seem old enough to be one. She was white with wavy brown hair, and she wore a gray Smith College T-shirt. Maybe she was still a college student, working at the library for the summer.

  She glanced up at me, and then said, “Children’s floor is down the stairs to your right.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I’m looking for books about crimes.”

  “The children’s librarian downstairs can help you with that.”

  “I’m not looking for children’s books,” I said, a little more forcefully. “I want the grown-up books about crimes.”

  For a second, she looked like she was about to question why a middle schooler wanted to look at adult crime books. “Fiction or nonfiction?”

  “Uh, nonfiction,” I said.

  “That’s upstairs.” She turned to a laminated map of the library on the desk in front of her. “The true crime section is to the right. The criminal law section is behind it.”

  “Thank you!” I turned toward the stairs and forced myself not to run all the way up them.

  When I got upstairs, I realized I’d never stepped foot on that floor before. But as the girl had said, the true crime section was to the right. I walked into the stacks, not really knowing what book I was looking for. What I wanted to know was if it was really possible for an innocent person to go to prison. I had no idea if the answer to that was in a book, but there was only one way to find out.

  People were scattered around the nonfiction floor of the library, some looking through books and others sitting at tables reading. It was very quiet, much quieter than the main floor and children’s floor. Everyone seemed very serious. Nobody was in the true crime section, which was a relief. I didn’t want any adults questioning why I was there.

  I walked up and down the shelves, staring at book titles until my eyes blurred. There were a bunch of books on serial killers—not at all what I was looking for. I started to worry I wouldn’t find what I needed and was about to give up. But finally, at the end of the row, one book’s title caught my eye. It was called The Wrongfully Convicted. The cover had a grid of square photos, like an online photo album, but each picture showed a different person’s face looking at the camera. They were all men, and most of them were Black. Like Marcus. I slipped it off the shelf and carried it to a nearby empty table.

  I sat down and cracked open the book, reading through the table of contents. Then I skimmed the introduction, which was written by some lawyer guy. He worked for an organization called the Innocence Project, which he explained helped innocent people get out of prison.

  Did this mean Marcus could be telling the truth? If that kind of organization existed, then innocent people must go to prison. I couldn’t believe it.

  The rest of the chapters were about different cases, so I turned to the first one and started to read.

  It described how one man went to prison for armed robbery, but more than one person said they saw him somewhere else, not at the crime scene. He didn’t actually commit the crime. Still, in the end, the jury didn’t believe his side of the story. He was sentenced to prison for twenty years. He had to leave his family, a wife and two kids.

  He had an alibi like Marcus. But he still went to prison.

  I read on. Years later, the man wrote a letter to the Innocence Project, and they agreed to help him. They got DNA evidence from the crime scene tested again, and the results showed it didn’t belong to this guy. He really was innocent. The Innocence Project got him out of prison.

  “Wow,” I said out loud before remembering I was in the quietest room ever. I flipped through the rest of the book, where there were at least a dozen other stories like that one, of people who had spent years in prison until the Innocence Project took on their cases and helped them get out. Now they were all free.

  There was a page in the book with graphs and numbers. It showed how many people the Innocence Project helped get out of prison, which was in the hundreds. I couldn’t believe that many innocent people were convicted. I stared at another chart that showed the different races of the people the Innocence Project helped. Most of them were Black.

  Of course. I knew about the Black Lives Matter movement, how Black people all over the country were getting shot by police for no good reason. If those police officers weren’t going to jail, then it made sense that the whole prison system was messed up. I never thought about whether prisons had the wrong people before. I assumed that if you committed a crime, you got the punishment you deserved, and innocent people would always be proven innocent. Apparently not.

  I opened my journal and wrote down the name of the book. I couldn’t take it home; I didn’t want one more thing to hide from my parents. But I had to be able to look it up again later. Underneath the book’s title, I wrote down “the Innocence Project.” I needed to research them more.

  I was about to get up to use a computer when somebody sat down at the table across from me. It must have been one of the other grown-ups on the floor, and I kept my head down as I figured out how to explain what I was doing there. But when I looked up, it wasn’t a grown-up staring at me.

  It was Trevor.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Whatcha reading?” Trevor asked, smiling.

  “Shhh! What are you doing here?” I looked past Trevor, but thankfully, he wasn’t with either of his parents.

  “I was gonna ask you the same thing,” he said. “Simon dropped me off at the library so I could return my book and get another one. When I walked in, I saw you come up the stairs. I thought it was weird, since the kids’ books and cookbooks are downstairs.”

  “So you followed me.” Why did he keep butting
his head where it didn’t belong?

  “No,” Trevor said. “I went down to the kids’ floor first, and got my book.” He held up the book he’d chosen—Ghost, by Jason Reynolds. “And then I came up here to find you. Are you hiding from someone?”

  “Who would I be hiding from?” I asked, as if it was the most ridiculous question ever. I closed The Wrongfully Convicted, ready to get up and away from Trevor.

  He shrugged. “I dunno. It’s weird that you’re up here.” Then he caught a glimpse of the book on the table. As he stared at it, his face twisted in confusion. I could almost see the wheels in his brain turning. “Wait, does this have something to do with your dad in prison?”

  “Um . . .” I stalled. I didn’t want to talk to Trevor. I wasn’t sure I could trust him. But I was dying to talk about what I’d just learned. And he did already know about Marcus . . .

  “Does it?” Trevor asked again.

  Just like that, the story started spilling out of me. I told Trevor about everything between Marcus’s first letter arriving on my birthday up until the letter where Marcus said he was innocent. It was like my brain short-circuited and I forgot who I was talking to, that I was still mad at Trevor. I was so caught up in how excited I was to have found information that showed Marcus could be telling the truth.

  “Wow.” Trevor looked at me in awe. “I can’t believe you’ve been writing to your birth dad in prison. In secret.”

  I looked at him and realized what I’d just done. “I shouldn’t have told you all that.” Panic started to balloon in my chest. “You can’t tell anyone what I said. Promise.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “You didn’t promise,” I said. “I mean it. You can’t tell anyone. It’s really important.”

  Trevor’s face became serious. “I promise.” And then he looked at me funny. “Since when are you a rebel?”