Finding Maisie

Finding Maisie: Chapter 9

Finding Maisie

Chapter 9

'Joshua, that's salt!' I yelled at him.

He stared at me and looked taken aback. I hadn't yelled at him before. 'Calm, down. It's just a cake.' He muttered.

Joshua was really getting on my nerves. As he said, it was only a cake. How hard this was it to make one? 'Yes, it may just be a cake but you almost ruined it! Here, pour the sugar in,' I said, putting emphasis on the word sugar.

He just rolled his eyes at me and carried on working. It was Callum's twentieth birthday. I wanted to make it as good as possible seeing as we were both stressed from the treasure hunt, so I was making a cake and Joshua volunteered to help me. Sure, it wasn't much, but I knew Callum would appreciate it.

'What's going on?' Callum asked, standing in the doorway.

I immediately tried to hide the cake mixture from Callum but, as I realised this would look too obvious, I acted casually.

'Nothing, just making pancakes,' I said, turning back round to the mixture.

Callum sat down on the stool next to me and put his fingers in the mixture then put them in his mouth to taste.

'Mm, don't you just love "fake pancake actually birthday cake" mixture?' Callum said, chuckling.

I hit his arm lightly. 'You weren't meant to know!'

'Not my fault. You're meant to be more secretive,' Callum teased.

'Yeah, well... happy birthday, anyway,' I said, giving a quick one-armed hug.

'Thanks, although I'm not really in the mood to celebrate,' Callum muttered.

'Why not?' I asked.

'Er, because we're on a hunt to find Maisie and I just wanna hurry up with that,' he said quickly. He was lying again. What happened yesterday in the house that I so badly couldn't know about?

'Right, okay then,' I snapped. 'Where's the next clue lead then?'

I didn't mean to sound so bitter, I just didn't like Callum keeping secrets from me. But, I could trust him. If I needed to know what he already did then I would find out sooner or later.

'Well I don't know,' Callum said. 'There was nothing in the room with Max and me, so I was kind of hoping you would enlighten me on that one.'

'Nope. If you remember I was too busy being blown up,'' I responded.

'Oh, right. Yeah, sorry,' Callum said. 'But don't worry, I'm sure we'll figure it out.'

'Okay,' I answered. 'But first I wanna show you something.'

I ran into my room and pulled out the letter Maisie wrote to Callum and me. Its hurtful words still were like knives to my heart and I prayed that they held no truth within them. Once I was back in the kitchen I placed it on the table for us all to look at.

'Poppy, didn't I say not to think about that?' Callum said.

'No, look at it.' I pushed the letter over to Callum. 'It doesn't sound right.'

Callum looked at the letter and then back at me, puzzled. 'What do you mean?'

'It doesn't fit together. I mean look at the ending.. "Everything will. All.". It's not proper English, it sounds weird.'

'What... Do you mean like it's a code?' Callum questioned.

'Maybe, but if it was it wouldn't be too complicated so Maisie could be sure we understood it,' I evaluated.