This is what happened first according to Evie:
My cousins and I are staying with Nana and Gramps for a week while our parents are on a trip. They’re twelve-year-old twins and a year-and-a-half older than me. They think they know a ton more than I do, and there’s no convincing them otherwise. Dad said this would be like going to camp. I’ve been to camp. This is not camp. It is boring, and all Leo and Ian want to do is play baseball or Mind Craft and not with girls!
Here’s the thing. I picked up one of Dad’s books in his old room this morning. As soon as I turned the page to the third chapter, an old stained piece of paper fell out. It was a map, so worn and frayed, that I thought it would crumble in my hand. The strangest part was, the map started with a door to a tunnel in the basement of this house. Awesome, chocolate pudding, how cool is that?
I immediately found my cousins in the living room.
“It’s a fake,” Leo said. He led us downstairs so he could prove it. “See, there are no trap doors anywhere.”
“But it’s in the cedar closet.” I showed them the map again.
“Yeah,” Ian said, “But do you want to clean up the mess in there so that we can look? This is a waste of time.” He started up the stairs and Leo followed.
“Stop–don’t you even want to try to see what’s in there? This could be a treasure map. Ever think of that?”
“There’s no tunnel to any treasure,” Leo answered, “Only a ton of old dusty boxes. Besides, if there was such a tunnel, our mom or your dad would have found it when they were kids. Don’t you think we would have heard about it?”
“Like about a million times,” Ian added. “You dad probably made that map for a school project. The only treasure in the cedar closet is dirty moldy clothes and old bank records.”
“Bank records?” I said, but they weren’t the least bit interested. I caught up to them on the steps and waved the map in front of them.
“No,” they said in unison.
I had to do something fast to convince them. It said on the map that the tunnel led to the Red Mill. If I could convince them that there was such a place, maybe they’d listen to me. I ran to my room and got out my iPad. Leo and Ian were already sitting at the kitchen table and eating cereal by the time I got back. I sat down and googled the Red Mill.
Leo and Ian’s eyes were glued to the screen. “See,” Leo smirked when the results popped up. “It’s mostly restaurants and places in New York and New Jersey. There’s nothing in Minnesota.”
Ian looked at the map one more time. “You can keep looking stuff up if you want, but it’s a waste of time.
I took another look at the map myself. Two trapdoors were marked on the creamy stained paper. One opened up to a crawl space under the basement and through the garden. The other end of the tunnel was inside the Red Mill.
There had to be something about this place online. I stared at the iPad screen and then I got it. It was obvious. I googled: Red Mill in Edina, Minnesota. A site popped up immediately. The Red Mill had been built on Minnehaha Creek over a hundred and fifty years ago. According to the map, the tunnel was only three or four inches long. How far away could that be in real distance? Egad, super-duper!
Just as I was considering that, Nana came into the kitchen. Gramps was behind her carrying a few grocery bags from the store. Before they could even say hello, I asked, “Where’s Browndale Ave?”
“A mile or so north of here–on 50th, across from the country club,” Gramps said, “Why?”
I put the map in my pocket. Once I was alone in my room, I studied it for clues. It was marked with thick black old fashioned brush strokes and ink smudges in a few places. Under the picture of the pretty little mill on the stream, my dad had written down the address in his unmistakable handwriting. The whole thing was weird. There were drawings and labels added at different times. Even the picture of this house seemed to be newer than the drawing of the mill. Still, the blue ink used to draw the house was far more faded than Dad’s chicken scratch under the mill. There were so many clues, but I couldn’t figure out what they meant. It was as if there was a secret riddle hidden inside the map itself.
I was pretty sure that if my grandparents knew about a tunnel, they would have closed it up a long time ago. And as Leo said, we would have heard about it. If my grandparents didn’t know about it, Dad must have kept it a secret. Either way, my certainty about the tunnel had not faltered. I was more convinced by the moment that there was an adventure in store for us, if we only could get started. Forget the trapdoor in the cedar closet. Why not walk right to the source? A quick walk to the country club would take no time–no time at all.
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