“Look!” he cried out, pointing to the mark. They all rushed over, Kylie letting out a huge sigh of relief at the sight of it. There, spray painted on the ground, was a neon-green circle, small but noticeable.

“Okay, so we definitely didn’t see this before,” Kylie said, looking ahead down the path with the circle. “Oh look, there’s another circle down there! I think we need to just follow the dots at this point. Thank goodness. I was really starting to freak out there.”

The friends eagerly followed the dots on the ground, which eventually lead them to a larger clearing in the weeds, shaped like a big square. For the first time in a long time they were able to stand as a group instead of in a straight line, and Matt felt like he could breathe again, even if only in this enclosed space. In the center of the clearing there was a treasure box.

“Yes!” Kylie cried out, rushing over to the treasure box with the others. “This must mean that we beat the labyrinth!”

“What’s inside?” Miguel asked as Kylie fumbled to open it. “Another clue, maybe? The location of Elephant and Nacho?”

The box clicked open to reveal three pieces of folded paper, labeled One, Two, and Three. With shaking hands, Kylie opened the paper that was labeled One. Inside there was a strange, grid-like sketch, showing lines and rows and boxes. Matt’s heart skipped a beat when he noticed the red writing that dominated the top of the paper:

What is Kylie Dao afraid of?

“It’s a map,” Kylie whispered. “A map of the labyrinth, I think.”

“A map is a good thing, right?” Miguel asked, confused. “Why is it asking what you’re afraid of?”

“Because there’s only one thing in this world I’m afraid of,” Kylie admitted, her voice much smaller than it usually was. “Getting lost.”

Matt remembered the suffocating feeling of winding through the narrow paths of the maze until they found the clearing with the treasure box. He remembered how panicked Kylie had started to become when they thought that they might be getting lost.

“We’re going to get out of here,” Matt told Kylie, leaning down to put his hand on her shoulder. “I promise. And if all else fails, we can always scream until the others hear us. We could follow their voices to get out of here.”

“You’re right.” Kylie stood up with purpose, her posture strong, and opened the other two pieces of paper to check them before doing anything else. They were both identical copies of the first map, but each one had a different potential escape route traced in different colors. The first map’s escape route was outlined in blue, the second one was red, and the third was green.

“One of these is the real way to escape,” Kylie said, looking between them. “The other two are fakes.”