By: Annabelle Ma

It was a seemingly normal school day in a small suburban town in Indiana called Kensington. I, Anya Plimwood, was preparing for school. As an early riser, I usually walk to school at 7 am and arrive there at 8. But that day, I needed to arrive a lot earlier, at 4 am, to meet my friend Elise there.

Once I arrived, I ran to the mango tree where Elise and I agreed to meet. As I turned the corner, I hoped that Elise was there. Thinking that I was too early, I peeked at my phone to check the time.

Dang it! I thought. It’s already 4:30. Could Elise have initiated the plan without me? I had tried to spam her with texts multiple times, but she wasn’t responding to any of them.

I stood by the mango tree and waited and waited; minute after minute passed until a full hour was wasted. At that point, I thought, “Y’know what, I’m going to do it without her.”

A few weeks before that, Elise and I had both noticed that there was something fishy about one of the books in Mrs. Lugo’s room called Magic Royalty. We had been closely inspecting that book and finding interesting things about it. For example, we found a bookmark that we couldn’t take out on page 592, and on page 348, the book shone with a special glow.

We came up with a possible theory about this book and we were supposed to test them today by sneaking into the school. Our theory is that we could teleport into the book. The bright page, page 384, will indicate the year 384 where something special happened while the bookmark, on page 592 will indicate the current time the book is taking place. We hadn’t planned EXACTLY what we were going to do, but we knew that we needed to find the book to brainstorm ideas on how to teleport into it and figure out the truth about the story.

Originally, our plan required a partnership. One person will distract the school janitor while the other steals the keys out of his pocket to open the school building. But clearly, I couldn’t use that plan anymore. Also, the janitor is already in the building, so there is no hope of stealing his keys.

Is there a possible solution for this? I thought hopelessly.

I thought and thought until some students started arriving to school.

Band! I suddenly realized. These kids are coming for band practice before school! I could sneak in with them!

While I walked through the open doors effortlessly, I came across a teacher checking that everyone was in band. I immediately jerked awake.

What should I do? I thought. My mind was telling me to run away, but then I would cause I scene. Before I knew it, Mr. Bernard was standing right in front of me, a big, intimidating figure.

“You’re in band, right?” Mr. Bernard asked. This was the question I feared the most. I searched through my mind for possible answer, but it was completely blank.

“Uhhhhhh….” I said for a few seconds. “I… I… need to use the restroom,”

“Oh, right that way,” Mr. Bernard said while pointing to the right.

Yes! My mind silently cheered.

Obviously, I wasn’t going to use the restroom, so I headed to Mrs. Lugo’s classroom where Elise and I were supposed to meet.

As I approached the room, I noticed that the lights were off and there was a black hooded figure in the room. It was inspecting a book closely, as if it was trying to figure out something about it.

“Elise? Is this you?” I whispered as my voice echoed across the room.

“Ahh!” the figure shrieked. The voice was very high-pitched and it didn’t sound like Elise’s voice at all.

“Reveal yourself!” I said, summoning up my courage.

Slowly, the figure unveiled his hood. A familiar form with bright green eyes and blond hair appeared.

“Nathan!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same question,” Nathan replied.

“Well, I’m trying to figure out something about the book Magic Royalty. How about you?” I hoped that he wouldn’t tell the teachers that I wase sneaking into the school.

“Uh… same for me,” he said.

As we both told each other our plan in mind, we realized that our ideas were almost the same!

“How about we work together on this?” I suggested.

“Hm… that’s a good idea!”

Soon we started reading the book, page after page, until we reached the page with the bookmark on it. So far, the book was very lively with interesting things happening in every chapter.

The book seemed to be about a boy and a girl going on a mission to fight off the evil monster attacking the Earth. On their way there, they face many of the monster’s traps like bombs, snakes, and guns. On the last page I read, the two characters were looking for a piece of treasure on a deserted beach.

But when I looked at my phone to check the time, it was already 7:40—that meant we had to hurry!

“We need to hurry up now, Nathan!” I warned. “We only have 10 minutes before people start coming into this classroom!”

“We should probably just stop reading the book and start to brainstorm ideas,” Nathan suggested.

“But I feel like we need the book to brainstorm the ideas!” I countered.

We never actually concluded what to do, so I flipped to the next page of the book while Nathan sat next to me to brainstorm ideas.

Unexpectedly, when I turned the page, it was blank and there was a quill in between the two pages.

“Look what I found!” I exclaimed. “It’s a quill!”

“Really?” Nathan ran over to see. “Maybe you’re supposed to write with it.”

Because I also had the same idea, I started to write on the page. Suddenly, I felt some pressure from the book trying to pull us in as if a black hole was attempting to suck us in to the book! My head was moving all over the place just like a frightening roller coaster. At the same time, I was tumbling back and forth doing flips all over the place. All of these actions happened all at once, making me feel like all of the muscles in my body were involuntary.

“AHHHHHH!!!”

Nathan and I screamed in unison. I closed my eyes hoping that this wouldn’t be the end of my life.

But that pain didn’t last long. Once I felt land under my feet, I felt a bit calmer. My surroundings were what I was concerned about. We were in the middle of a beach that no one was on. Could this have been a coincidence or did we just teleport into the book?

Here I am now, writing about how tragic my life has been throughout the past 24 hours. Nathan and I have barely been able to live because there weren’t many resources here. Our only hope was to catch some fish from the sea, but we didn’t have a fishing rod to do that.

Just a few hours ago, we heard a loud booming voice that shocked us: “Hah! You want to visit my palace! Guess you’ll never be able to do that because you can’t even find the treasure!”

An ominous feeling rose in my chest. Could we be the people on the mission?