Amelia stared at the two words smeared across the wall in front of them:
LET'S PARTY!
"I've heard about this place before," Nick said softly.
Amelia looked around. They were in a large room with walls of cinder concrete. All over the floor were bottles, cans, scraps of newspaper and food wrappers. On the walls, large areas of mold alternated with faded graffiti. LET'S PARTY! was smeared with blood-red paint that had dripped from the bottom edge of the letters almost to the floor. Several dark corridors led in different directions.
"What is this?" Jacob asked.
"The maze," said Tom softly. His voice sounded reverent.
"That's right," Nick confirmed. He and Tom exchanged meaningful looks.
*What is going on here?* Amelia thought. And she asked aloud, "How do you know?"
"A guy I know told us," Nick replied. "Colby said he'd been down here before, but we didn't believe him."
"Most of the time he lies through his teeth," Tom added.
"Anyways, they built these tunnels in the 1950s to protect against nuclear bombs," Nick continued. "They allegedly extended for several miles beneath the entire city. And since the shelters were never used, the whole thing became a kind of party mile. The kids from Oak Park really partied it up down here."
"The maze was really hip," Tom added. "Just because it was off-limits to the corridors. The kids pretended to be stuck down here while the bombs were going off. And on their supposed last night, they were partying like crazy."
Amelia was shivering. Pretty sick. But in a way, it was a pretty weird idea, too. Until now, she'd only partied with her friends back home. A party down here would be much cooler. And a lot... more dangerous.
"I can't imagine nobody coming here anymore," Jacob said sceptically. "I'm surprised you don't feel cool enough to come to party down here, Nick."
Nick's eyes sparkled in the flickering light. "Maybe I'm not cool enough, Jacob."
"We've talked about this before," Tom said with a grin. "But we never found the entrance."
"Yeah. Thanks again, Am." Nick grinned, too.
"You're welcome," she replied. Though her ankle hurt like hell, she could not help smiling. Especially since Nick had given her a new nickname. She could get used to it.
"I don't think this maze was that hard to find," snorted Jacob.
"So you mean nobody's been down here in years?" Amelia asked. Her eyes wandered over the graffiti-covered walls. Against her will, she was fascinated. This was a place that none of her friends from school had ever seen.
"They closed the tunnels a long time ago," Tom explained. "All entrances were blocked off."
"And why?" Amelia wanted to know.
"Something has happened," Nick replied quietly. "Something bad."
Amelia shivered in her cheer uniform. She saw shadows moving across the walls. As if the kids who had been partying down here were still there, still dancing.
"What happened back then?" Amelia kept asking.
"I don't know exactly," Nick replied. "But people died. A lot of people."
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489 words
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Forget the Forgotten
FanfictionAmelia Hawkins was an A+ student and had to be in detention on a Saturday. But when she walked around the dark halls of the school, she enjoyed the thrill. But they don't only discover the secret of the city, but also the secret of Amelia's own twin...
