by Jon Herrera
arose familiar buildings that were part of the University of Saint Martin. To the right of the field, there was an enormous parking lot.
“What’s the matter?” Jake said.
“We can’t be here if we’ve been going north this entire time,” Will said. “There is just more woods to the north and eventually a lake. To get to the school you have turn west at some point.”
“Huh,” Jake said. “That’s weird.”
“Really weird,” Emma said.
“Impossible,” said Will. He looked at his watch and then turned them around to head back on home. “We’re doing something wrong,” he said.
“Yeah,” Emma said, nodding. “I have another idea though. But I need to get some things. I’ll do it tomorrow after school.”
“What are you going to do?” Jake said.
“We’re going to get organized.”
The next day after school, when the bus dropped her off, Emma walked up The Hill to the University of Saint Martin. It was hot and sunny, and the road was busy.
On her way up The Hill, Emma passed university students who were walking both to and from the school. The journey didn’t take her as long this time as it had in the rain and soon she was under the shade of the building housing the geography department. At that time of day, there was plenty of commotion in the hallways and she received more than few odd looks and smiles. She was out of place, being only eleven and small for her age on top of it.
Her destination was on the second floor of the building. In the middle of the hallway, there was a doorway that was flanked by rows of big windows. Above the door, there was a sign that read, “Map Library.” She peeked inside and saw that there were maybe a dozen students sitting in a study area and a few more were moving about in between the shelves and cabinets where the maps were kept. There was a desk next to the door and an elderly woman was sitting in front of it typing on a keyboard and looking at a computer screen. When Emma walked in, she waved and smiled at the woman. The woman cocked an eyebrow in response and then went back to her typing.
Emma had been to the Map Library before. At one point she’d had an obsession with maps and her father had indulged it by taking her there and showing her how to find the ones that were interesting. The maps Emma liked the most were the old ones that were sometimes incorrect about certain details.
Today she was looking for an accurate map. Local maps were on a shelf in the middle of the room and Emma made her way to it. There was a crowd gathered around it as two students poked through the map collection. One of them, a boy who was wearing thick glasses, found what he was looking for and removed a book from the shelf. He walked past the crowd and sat at one of the tables. Another student, one of those who were waiting, took the boy’s place at the shelf.
Emma approached the boy with the glasses and asked him what was happening. He informed her that they were all first year geography students and that they were working on an assignment. She decided to try to squeeze through the crowd rather than wait for them to finish. Her size proved an advantage in this as most of the students got out of the way of the small girl.
It didn’t take long for her to find what she was looking for. She slid a big binder out of the shelf and went to a table and spread it open. In the binder there a number maps of the area surrounding the university. She paged through it until she found a map that consisted of stitched-together aerial photographs. The map showed the entirety of Glenridge Forest. She took the map out of the binder, walked to one of the photocopiers at the back of the room, put in a quarter, and copied it onto two pages.
She put page back into the binder and the binder back on the shelf before she left the Map Library. The woman behind the front desk cocked her eyebrow at her again.
Out in the hallway, she turned to go back to the stairs but then she heard someone call her name. She turned left and right and saw that halfway down the hall, coming toward her, was Lucy Leroux.
“Hey, Emma!” Lucy said when she reached her. She leaned down to look at her at eye level. Her pink headphones were hanging around her neck. Emma could see now that they had stickers of black skulls on them.
“Hello, snitch,” Emma said.
“What?”
“You told on me.”
They were in the middle of the hallway and they were blocking the flow of traffic so Lucy motioned for them to go sit on one of the benches next to the wall. They did so and Emma put her backpack on the ground, still holding onto the new map.
“What do you mean I told on you?”
“You told my dad that I was at the mall. I got in trouble.”
“I didn’t realize you’d get in trouble. I’m really sorry. I thought he knew.”
Emma studied her face and decided that she was telling the truth. She nodded.
“What’d you got there?” Lucy said.
“A map,” Emma said.
“Oh? A map for what?”
“The forest. We’re looking for someone.”
Lucy asked to see the map and Emma handed the pages to her.
“Are these photocopies? Where did you get these?”
Emma pointed back to the Map Library. “From there,” she said. “Didn’t you know about it?”
Lucy shook her head. “I’m in biology,” she said. “Who are you looking for? Why do you need a map?”
“You have lots of questions, you know?”
“Yeah,” Lucy said, seeming a little embarrassed.
“It’s okay. I’m just saying.” Emma took the pages back and put them into her backpack. “My friend’s dad is missing and he disappeared in the forest. We’re searching for him. I’m going to plan it all out.”
“Is that safe?”
“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Emma said, nodding.
“What’s your plan?”
Emma took the pages out of her backpack again. She pointed out where the Paigely site was located and the point where they normally entered the forest, the intersection of Belle and Lockhart.
“We want to keep track of places we’ve searched already,” Emma said. “So we’re going to mark the trees, but I’ll also be marking the areas on the map.”
“You’re so smart,” Lucy said. “But isn’t it going to be hard to use the map from the ground when you’re in the forest? This is from way up.”
“Yeah,” Emma said. “That’s a big problem but you can use landmarks.” She pointed out a clearing here and an unusually tall tree there. “That way you can at least get close. Doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“Wow,” Lucy said. “You’ve thought of a lot.”
“My dad taught me a bunch,” Emma said.
“Your dad! I was actually on my way to see him!” She took out her cell phone and checked the time. “Damn it. So late. I gotta run, Emma.”
They both stood up and said goodbye. Lucy ran down the hall toward the physics department. Emma picked up her backpack and made her way back outside through the thinning crowd.
Emma spent the remainder of the afternoon in her bedroom, cutting ribbons out of a couple of old dresses. She came out for dinner and to do homework but the rest of the time she spent cutting away carefully with a pair of old silver scissors. The ribbons were approximately the length of her forearm and the width of her index and middle fingers put together.
When the ribbons were ready, she placed them inside a shopping bag.
In math class the next day, Miss Robins’ lesson was about measuring and calculating the areas of parallelograms and triangles. Emma was still far ahead of the class and she’d figured out all about the subject on her own. For this reason, when the lesson was over and it came time to solve problems from their workbooks, Emma had nothing to do. She could work farther ahead but she decided instead to use that time to refine the search system that she had come up with.
She reached into her bag and brought out the aerial photographs of Glenridge Forest. The two pages were now taped together neatly into one continuous map. She took a purple marker and set about marking t
he features of the area that stood out and that would be easy to find from the ground.
“Emma!” Miss Robins said. She was walking around between the rows of desks, checking on the progress of their work. She paused by Emma’s desk and looked down at what she was doing. “What is all this?”
“It’s a map, Miss Robins,” Emma said.
“I can see that, Emma, but why aren’t you working on your math?”
“I finished it already,” she said. She took her workbook from her desk and handed it to the teacher. Miss Robins gave her a skeptical look but checked it over anyway. Emma glanced over at Jake and he gave her a questioning tilt of his head. She shrugged to him.
“I guess you did finish it,” Miss Robins said after a moment. “Well, I can’t have you playing games in class even if you’re done. Please put that game away. You can work ahead in the book.”
“But it’s not a game,” Emma said.
“No buts, Emma. Put it away now.”
Miss Robins glanced at the Strike Board and Emma decided that she'd better play it safe. She put the map away and took her math workbook back as Miss Robins handed it to her.
By the time class was over, Emma was starting to worry that she was going to run out of work to do very soon.
Over the next few days, ribbons started to appear on the trees of Glenridge Forest. They spread out from the point closest to the intersection of Belle Street and Lockhart Road, and moved out in a northerly fashion. There were blue ribbons and red ribbons and they were tied into neat bows onto the lowest branches. Just as this was happening, as if in