A block of cheese. That’s all that was left after my best friend Patrick Turner was taken. He was taken from his room last night by one of his parent’s employees, Ralph. We all knew it was Ralph after we saw the block of cheddar cheese because he had always some sort of really weird obsession with cheese, no one knew why. I knew we had to find Patrick soon or something bad would happen, but the police said we had to wait. And I hate waiting.
Patrick had been gone for about a day before I realized the cheese Ralph had left was a clue to where they were. I quickly grabbed my phone and called Stefon, one of me and Patrick’s closest friends.

“Hey Jane what’s up?” he asked, I could tell he was trying to act happy after what happened.
“I’m going to look for Patrick,” I said, more confidently then I was feeling, “I think we can find him, do you want to help?”

“Of course I’ll help” he said “I’ll meet you at your house in 20 minutes.”
“Ok, see you soon, bye” I said as I hung up the phone.

While I waited I paced back and forth and thought about all the places that Patrick could be that makes cheese, the only place that I could think of that made cheddar cheese in New York City was the factory near my house. I looked out the window and saw Stefon’s car pull up, I ran outside and got in the car and told him to drive to the factory as fast as he could.

We tried as hard as we could to get into the factory but it was closed for the night and we really didn’t feel like getting arrested for breaking in. “Maybe we should just come back tomorrow.” Stefon said. Both of us were sad when we when we went home that night.
The next morning I decided I would go see Patrick’s parents and see if the police had found anything new. When I got to the house there was a police car in the driveway and I thought that maybe they had found Patrick. I was really excited when I walked in the house. At first all I could hear something in another room. I walked into the living room and looked around, I noticed Mrs. Turner crying hysterically. “We just got a letter from Ralph that says that if we don’t find Patrick by tomorrow, then he will drop him somewhere where we will never find him, unless the Turners pay $2,500.” The policeman explained to me, with no emotion in his voice.
“Well come on then what are you waiting for?” I asked “Let’s go! We have to find him.”
“I’m sorry, but we have no idea where to look, Mr. and Mrs. Turner I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay him.” The policeman said, he started to walk away from us.
“But I think he’s at the cheese factory just a couple blocks from here, maybe you can go look and see if he’s there.” I said, angry that the police would just give up and go on with their lives like nothing had ever happened.
“You have no proof that he is there, so for now just plan on paying him tomorrow, goodbye.” The policeman nodded and left saying nothing else.

Stefon and I met at the factory at 1:00 P.M. “Lets look around and see if we find anything,” He said “I’ll go this way.”
I walked around a bit and found another block of cheese in a small corner of the factory, but this time it was mozzarella. It’s really stupid that he leaves cheese, I thought to myself, I mean come on dude seriously? Cheese? Cant he just leave a simple note like a “normal” person? There was a note attached to the cheese I quickly kneeled down and read it.

Good job but you have to find me, you have one more chance.




-Ralph


I ran to where Stefon was, I probably knocked a few people down on the way, but I didn’t really notice, or care at the time. He read the note and looked around. “Excuse me sir,” he asked one of the men walking by, “is this the only cheese factory around in the area?”
The man thought for a moment and then shook his head no and said “No there’s one about forty-five minutes away from here, but that’s the only other one in the City.”
“Thank you.” Stefon said, and started walking toward his car.
We drove as fast as we could, hoping that the factory would still be open by the time we got there. When we pulled up I noticed that it wasn’t just a factory, it was a building with at least 20 floors, and we had no idea which one Patrick was on. As fast as we could we asked people if they had seen a man and a boy that is about fifteen walk in. They all said no, until we got to the thirteenth floor. A woman said that she saw them go into the storage room, and they never came out.
“Does the room have a back entrance?” I asked, thinking that maybe we could sneak in and get Patrick back.
“Yes, but I don’t know who has the key, I’m sorry.” She answered sympathetically and walked away.
“Well that’s not good,” I said to Stefon “we’ll have to find a way to get in.”

We walked over to the door and found it locked, like we expected. We sat there for a moment, I was about to give up, and Stefon was looking at the lock trying to see if he could pick it. “I think I can pick the lock, were going to have to do it quickly though so no one sees us.”
“Ok, I’ll make sure no one is coming.” I said, giving him one of the clips from my short black hair.
We stood there for about ten minutes, waiting for him to open it seemed like forever, it finally worked and we were able to get inside. It was dark inside the room because there were no windows, just boxes of stuff that no one uses anymore. We looked around for a light switch and when we finally found one it didn’t work.
“Well, you finally found us did you?” said a voice in the dark.
“Where are you?!” Steven said into the darkness.
I looked around in the dark to see if I could find anything to use for defense. There were only old staplers and computers, after a little more looking I found an old baseball bat. I really had no idea where it came from but it was the only thing I could find, so I used it.

As I was walking I tripped over something big “Ouch!”
I picked up the baseball bat and looked around “Who said that?” I asked, scared of who it might be. I was really hoping it was Steve but I already knew it probably wasn’t. “I asked, who said that?!” I said more confidently than I felt.

“Jane, is that you?” I heard some one say, they were near me.
“Patrick?” I looked around but I couldn’t see anything.
“Jane! I think there’s a flashlight next to the chair I’m sitting in” Patrick said, he sounded relieved that he was getting saved.

I crawled around for a little while before I found a flashlight. I turned it on and looked around, I saw Patrick. He was pale and tied to a chair. I looked around a little bit more and saw Steve running to help me untie Patrick. Right as I turned around to make sure that no one was behind me, I saw Ralph. He was standing right behind Steve, just as he was about to grab him I ran over and hit him with the baseball bat. He fell over onto the ground, “Call the police, tell them to come right now,” I said to Steve “I’m going to help Patrick.”

I got all the ropes untied just as the police came into the storage room. As we were telling one of the policemen what happened, the officer that was at the Turner’s house before came up to me, his name was Officer Miller apparently. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before,” he said.
“Its fine,” I replied “I probably wouldn’t have believed myself either, it sounded so weird.” I smiled as I walked to my car to go home to finally get sleep for the first time in 2 days. The next day at school, Patrick, Steven, and I always had people around us talking and asking us questions about what happened. This only lasted for about 2 days, but we didn’t care, all we cared about was that we had Patrick back. We were also glad that everybody would see that we would do anything for each other.