Turpin, Bahni: ... the exact same smile as me, and his brown skin matched mine. Mom's skin was a little lighter. Now, Marcus was sitting in a prison cell, probably wearing an orange jumpsuit. That's how I imagined people in prison. I bet he didn't smile much there.

I picked up the envelope and rubbed my thumb across the seal, but all of a sudden my fingers stopped working, and I froze in place. I wanted to read it, but I was also terrified of what it might say. He'd committed a terrible crime, what if he'd written something scary? It was only a piece of paper, but the feeling wouldn't go away. I took a deep breath and started to open the envelope again, but then I heard mom come down the stairs. I knew it was mom and not my stepdad, Paul, because she was humming a song, which she did a lot, especially in front of the bathroom mirror when she was putting on makeup. She had a pretty good voice, but she always said it was because of the bathroom acoustics. That was wrong, because my stepdad sometimes sang in the shower, and the acoustics didn't stop him from sounding like a dying coyote.

I quickly tucked the letter into the pocket on the inside of my rain jacket. It wouldn't be a good idea to show mom, I was pretty sure she'd take it away without letting me read it. I hoped she couldn't hear how hard my heart was beating. "I put the gift bags in your room." She said. "Thanks." "Did you have fun today?" She asked. "Your cupcakes came out so pretty." "It was amazing." I told mom, but now I couldn't focus on how amazing it was, not with Marcus's letter taking up so much space in my brain. "This today's mail?" Mom stared at the foyer table where I'd left the rest of it.

"Yep. I grabbed it from the mailbox." "Thanks." But then her eyebrows scrunched together and her shoulders did what they did when she was stressed ... they lifted up toward her ears. She smiled at me, but it was a forced smile, like she wasn't actually happy. She picked up the pile of mail and as she flipped through it, her shoulders slowly returned to their normal position. "I thought Auntie Lillian's card might have come, but I didn't see it." I swallowed hard thinking of the letter that had come. I wondered if I should tell mom about it, but what if it made her mad or upset? She didn't like to talk about Marcus.

Mom smiled at me for real. "It'll come. Anyway, there's one more birthday surprise for you, we're going to order Hawaiian-ish for dinner." I forced myself to smile. Hawaiian-ish was the name I'd given my favorite pizza combo, pineapple and pepperoni, instead of ham. Since my mom and stepdad thought it was gross, we usually only got those toppings on half a pie. "Sounds great." I cleared my throat. "I'm going to go to my room and ... put my gifts away." It was a total lie, but that's not what mom noticed. "You're not going to take your jacket off?" She asked. Marcus's envelope was still in my pocket, right over my heart, which was beating fast. "I'll take it off in my room." I walked away before mom could say anything else. What could Marcus have to say to me? I had to know.

Chapter two.

I shut my bedroom door and opened the envelope. The paper inside was a piece of loose leaf, like what mom would buy to put into my school binders. The words filling the page were written in the same blue handwriting from the front of the envelope, except the print wasn't as neat. I stood in the middle of my bedroom and read the letter from start to finish, and then I read it again. Everything was quiet except for my heartbeat echoing in my eardrums. "To my little tomato, happy birthday. I can't believe you're 12 years old. Wow. Do I sound like a broken record when I say that you're growing up so fast? Do you even know what a broken record is? Everybody used to listen to CDs when I was growing up, but my dad, your grandpa, kept a record player in the corner of the living room. He always says that music sounds better coming from a record player. He might be right."