The Purple Beanie

8th Grade

Bree was confused beyond belief. The first day of eighth grade was tomorrow, and Conner Bailey had disappeared in the middle of the last school year for a few weeks. The school had told everyone that the Bailey twins had chicken pox and that was why they couldn't come to school, but Bree knew some things that disproved this claim.

First of all, chicken pox never lasted that long, and for both of them to have had it at the same time was a little strange. Second of all, Conner Bailey had been acting strangely during the week before his absence. Bree had tried asking around to get more information about the twins, but everyone either ignored her, came up with snarky little remarks about how it was none of her business, or wasn't interested at all. The only people she knew who cared about the mystery of the Bailey twins was the reading club.

The reading club consisted of four members - Mindy, Cindy, Lindy, and Wendy. They were all the most annoying people Bree had ever met. The four girls had been inseparable ever since their class had participated in a rhyming game in the first grade.

Mindy was the self-proclaimed "leader" of the group. She had brown hair that she always wore in pigtails and big brown eyes. Cindy had a mouthful of braces and was the loudest, next to Mindy. Lindy was African American and was so tall that she towered over all the teachers in their school. Wendy was Japanese and had the largest eyes Bree had ever seen on a human. She was painfully shy and didn't seem to know how to speak.

The reading club were pretty obnoxious, in Bree's opinion. One day, when Bree was checking out a few books in the school library, she had seen the reading club spying on Conner's sister, Alex Bailey. She was, strangely, hugging books and desperately whispering to herself, saying things like "please take me back" and "I want to go back". Bree didn't think spying on innocent people was okay, but she was just as determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Bailey twins as the reading club was.

The girls had loudly asked Bree if she knew anything they didn't know about the Bailey twins, but it had turned out that she didn't. In fact, Bree had been rather impressed by the girls' detective skills. They had known just about everything she did about the mystery.

When Conner had come back at around the end of the year, he had told people that "he was glad to be back" like he had been to war or something. But what was even stranger was that he had told everyone that his sister, Alex, had moved with their grandmother to Vermont to attend a gifted school. That wasn't impossible, but it just didn't make that much sense to Bree.

It wasn't just because of the mystery of Conner's absence, though. It was also because Bree had actually missed having Conner around. She had missed the strange, magical aura that always seemed to appear whenever Conner did, his funny humor, and his stories. They had never been meant for her, of course, but every time she had TA'd for Ms. York, she had missed seeing his fairy tales in the pile along with everyone else's stories. She still secretly read his story on her phone from time to time, just to remind her of him. 

Wait, what? Since when had Bree's interest in Conner's stories turned into interest in Conner himself?

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Conner was ecstatic. He had just finished defeating the evil Enchantress in the Land of Stories with Alex in an epic adventure. He had safely brought his mother, Charlotte, and his stepfather, Bob, home. But something was missing.

Alex had decided to stay and live in the Land of Stories with all the other magical friends they had made because she knew that was where she belonged. Conner understood that, and he fully supported his sister, but he was feeling lost and sad nevertheless. The Bailey twins had been together all their lives, and they were like two peas in a pod. They had never been separated like this before. Conner knew that he might never see Alex again, since the portal to the Land of Stories was closed, maybe permanently. He loved the Land of Stories with all his heart, but he knew deep down that the Otherworld, as the people in the Land of Stories called it, was where he belonged.