One day I was reading in my bed when my mom told me to clean my brother’s and my room. I usually stuff it all under my bed, but my bed was kind of full so I decided to put it in my closet. When I was putting everything in my closet, I accidentally dropped my locket inside the closet.

When I went to go get it the next morning, it was missing. My brother was playing in our room.

”You wanna help me find my locket?” I asked him. He nodded. As we looked, he went inside my closet.

I hollered, “EDWARD!”

But no one responded. Then I heard a squeaky noise coming from the floor of my closet. So I stepped inside. But then, I wasn’t in my closet anymore!

I was inside of a world and there were flowers everywhere. There were a bunch of fairies flying over my head. And my brother called, “Maya! Maya!” I went looking for my brother and I saw him hiding behind a tree.

“Why are you hiding?” I asked him.

He told me he was playing hide-and-go-seek with a talking mouse. At first I thought it was his imagination when I heard the squeaky noise again, except it sounded more like a word. The voice said, “I found you, Edward!” And Edward stepped out of hiding.

“This is my sister,” he said.

The mouse said, “Hello, my sister.”

And I said, “I’m not your sister and I have a name, you know.”

“Then what is your name?” the mouse asked.

“Maya,” I replied. “And what is your name?”

The mouse said, “Sir Squeaks!”

I asked him where we were.

He said, “You are in the world of Jellybean.”

“Do you have a king or something?” I asked.

“Yes, King Jellybean.”

Then we heard horns playing. Then there were a bunch of trolls guarding a carriage and out of the carriage came a jellybean! And Sir Squeaks bowed. So Edward followed him. I didn’t know what to do, so I asked the jellybean who he was.

“I am King Jellybean the Third!”

And then I said, “Are you the king of this place?”

“Yes, everyone should know this! Are you new here?”

“Yeah. Me and my brother came through a closet.”

“That is rather unusual,” he said.

“I thought the same thing,” I said.

King Jellybean said, “You think like me. Would you like to come with me in my carriage to have royal dinner?”

When we got to the palace I was amazed! There were tons of jellybeans walking through the hall, waving. There were white tall pillars. It smelled of cherry jellybeans. I met the king’s wife, Queen Jellybean the Third, and his son Baby Jellybean the Third and so many more! It was hard to remember names and NOT to eat them and I took a bite out of Uncle Jellybean the Fifteenth. King Jellybean said, “Well, maybe it is best that you leave.”

I wandered around Jellybean Land. I ran into Sir Squeaks.

“Hey, Sir Squeaks,” I said.

“Hi Maya. Did you see Edward?”

“No. I told YOU to watch him.”
“Yeah… about that… when we were playing hide and seek, all I heard was, ‘Ooo, shiny!’ and poof, gone.”

I yelled at him.

He told me he was sorry and said I could come home with him and tomorrow we could look for Edward.

When we got to Sir Squeaks house, there was a little mouse woman in a dress, a little mouse baby in a crib, and two mice children playing on the floor.

Sir Squeaks said, “Honey, can you prepare the guest bed? A friend of mine is staying over for the night.”

It was hard to get inside of their small crack in the wall but eventually, I got in. Their bed was very hard to sleep in, but I managed.

The next morning, me and Sir Squeaks decided what we would do. I recommended that we go to the police. But Sir Squeaks said there was no police. He suggested that we put up signs. But then we decided that we would look for him ourselves. When we left the small crack in the wall, we checked the cafe and asked a few random creatures if they had seen Edward. But when we got to a particular creature (a cat), Sir Squeaks was too afraid to talk to her. So I asked her alone. She said she had seen him chasing her friend’s ball over by the playground. So we looked in the playground.

We met a dog there who said he saw Edward go to the King’s house to look for a girl called Maya. So we immediately left for the castle. It was awkward for me to see the torn, spitted-up Uncle Duke. But the King let us look in the castle for him. We met a maid who said he went to explore the dungeon. When we got down there, a prisoner said, “I saw him. But he left. And I know where he went, but I’ll only tell you if you help me escape.”

Me and Sir Squeaks talked it over and we decided to help him escape. We found a stool in the kitchen and helped push him up the bar, but he fell. So we met a guard and sneakily took the key from him and unlocked the door. He showed us the schoolhouse where he saw Edward come in. When we checked inside, the teacher told us Edward was eating lunch. When we got in the lunchroom we saw Edward and Edward screamed, “Maya!” and we hugged. Then Sir Squeaks took us back to where he met us and we said goodbye to Sir Squeaks and entered the space that we came through in and poofed back in my closet.

My brother and I told my parents that we were playing a game. Sometimes we came back to Jellybean Land, but not for too long. We made new friends, but then one day my mom said that we were gonna move. I was nervous because that means I wouldn’t get to see them. Before the day that we moved I said goodbye to my friends in Jellybean Land. One day when I left, I went into my new closet and imagined myself back in Jellybean Land, and then, once again, I heard the squeaky noise and then I really was in Jellybean Land! Sir Squeaks told me that, “Jellybean Land keeps traveling to different closets, and you might not see me again,” but when I left I was in a different closet. Thank goodness no one lived there! I went home and I told Edward and we were both sad, but we always remembered Jellybean Land.

THE END