The World According to Emily James | ✔️

Chapter 7: The Map

Louis settled me in a corner as he dabbed my blooded cheek with a wet cotton swab.

"So what happened down there?" he asked, handing me a blanket.

"Saw Emily's last words," I said, voice cracking. "She's never going to come back."

"That's impossible," Louis shook his head. "She's just probably scared. She'll come back, and everything will return to normal,"

What if it doesn't? My heart asked silently. What if Emily doesn't come back? What if the clues lead to nothing?

"She'll come back," I repeated, trying to calm myself.

"Why don't we explore the trapdoor?" Louis asked, wiping the blood off my cheek. "You know, since Emily was in there before. It was possible she left something there while she did the graffiti sayings on the wall."

Going back to the trapdoor that gave me nightmares didn't sound fun to me at all. But I want to find Emily.

And finding Emily would take a lot of guts.

What if all these hard work lead to nothing?

It will. It has to be.

"Let's take lunch first," said Louis, bringing out sandwiches and cookies. "And we have to let you heal first."

My stomach was grumbling, I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast. So I heartily ate with Louis while he tried to heal my cheek, which was pale from all the blood lost.

After lunch, we went inside the room where the trapdoor was. Louis dropped a stone on top of the trapdoor, which opened and gave a soft splash.

"Just tie this rope around your waist and we'll be fine," Louis explained, handing me a coil of thick rope from the dispenser. I knotted the rope around my waist and went down the trapdoor.

The small bulb was still glowing, showing hints of the graffiti. "You can come down now," I called from the ground as I landed softly. My foot almost hit a rusted nail.

"So that was must've hit me," I whispered, touching my cheek.
Louis immediately went down and landed next to me. He squinted and looked across the room, and he seemed to be reading the graffiti sayings on the wall.

He turned on his phone flashlight. "Just search for something," he told me. "Maybe there's something around here."

I tried to look around, only catching glimpses of pieces of paper and twigs. I was hoping that the papers would form into something, but nothing.
Suddenly I heard an excited squeal.

"Son of a---" Louis said, eyes glimmering under the light. "There's a map! Alice, come see this!"

Curious, I kneeled next to him. There was a map, still looking new, unlike the rest of the stuff around here.

"That could've been from Emily," I noted. "She probably dropped it here on purpose."

I studied it carefully, sitting under the small lightbulb. It was a map of the state, Massachusetts. There was a red star marked on Cape Cod, a long way from here.

"Alice?" came Louis's voice moments later. "What did the map say?"

For the first time, I felt hope. "She's in Cape Cod," I breathed. "Emily James is in Cape Cod."