This is Me Trying ⭑ Rafe Cameron

twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE
[12]
song: under the moon by foster the people

"It's in here." Cassie says, after leading everyone up the stairs and into the dining room, where only moments prior she had pealed off a piece of wallpaper to reveal what could've only been a map.

Carla and Renfield followed slowly behind, as he helped her up the stairs, but Rafe entered the room soon after Cassie. He looked at her suspiciously, as if trying to understand her new role in all of this, before stepping over to the peeled piece of wallpaper and eyeing it.

"Is this what you were looking for?" Rafe asks, lazily gesturing to it.

Carla's eyes narrow on it as she takes a step closer, her crutches clanging against the wooden, creaky floors below them. She glances at Cassie, then back to the wall.

Cassie looks up at Rafe, "Can I—" she starts, gesturing towards it, but he was already nodding her on to continue. Cassie continues peeling the wallpaper off from earlier, tearing away while puffs of dust began to cloud around her.

Carla gasps. "Yes! That's it! That's it!" She says, while beginning to frantically tear at it too.

Cassie had stepped back, now. Letting Carla, Renfield and Rafe tear the rest of it off while she watched. More and more drawings appeared behind the wallpaper, old, and faded, but still clear enough to make out.

"This is it." Carla laughed excitedly, as she let a large chunk of wallpaper fall to her feet. She turned around and looked at Cassie, shaking her head as if in disbelief. "Thank you." She said sincerely, putting her hands to her heart.

Cassie wasn't sure what she felt. Whether she should be helping this woman was still up in the air. But it was too late now, as they'd already begun the process of tearing off the entire room's wallpaper.

"This is incredible. How did you find this?!" Carla asks, after moving on to the second wall.

Cassie was still just watching, not sure if she felt comfortable helping these people tear up the room. She swallowed before speaking, then shrugged. "I don't know— I just stumbled across it earlier and—" she glanced over to Rafe, who had stopped to listen to her speak, and it made her heart drop to glance over and find his eyes already on her. She looked away. "I don't know." She laughed quietly.

Finally, she had felt herself beginning to fit in to what everyone else had been on for so long now. She'd discovered a piece of a puzzle, and while she didn't understand it fully just yet, to be the one who found it made her feel good. Made her feel like she was actually apart of something, a needed asset.

Rafe took off a hung picture on the wall and leaned it against the table, before Renfield tore at the last bit of the wall, a loud scraping noise echoing through the room as the paper ripped off the wall.

"A church." Renfield points out, gesturing to the bit of painting that revealed a small white church.

Carla smiled. "We finally found it."

Rafe shook his head, confused. "Wh- found what?"

Carla kept her eyes glued on the church. "It's buried at the foot of the angel. That's what he said. That's— it has to be buried there. At that church."