Grades 6–7
NarrativeWritingThere was a dare in the abandoned school, but it went wrong.
Hi, I’m Janelle, and my friends are Steven, Jocelyn, Lili, Diego, Alvin, Enoc, Eli, Yajahira, Aalyah, Maribel, Dorian, and Richard. Eli and Steven were going to be the ones doing the dare. The abandoned school was called Buena Vista Horace Mann.
“Do I really have to do it?” my friends asked.
“Yes, you have to,” I responded.
My friends and I were planning what Eli and Steven could do for the dare. We gave them forty dollars to buy what they needed.
They bought some chips, sandwiches, water, and Lunchables. Also, there was a rumor that Buena Vista Horace Mann used to be a hospital, so it was haunted and scary. I believed that, but I knew it wasn’t true because how could a school that supposedly used to be a hospital be haunted? I thought that that would be impossible. It got to be nighttime and we all met at the school. We had all the snacks and everything ready. Steven and Eli went into the school and started to look for a place where they felt safe. The dare was to try and stay in the school for at least the whole night, and if they did we would go to Six Flags. They found a safe place to stay, but they were also thinking about exploring the school.
They explored the school and when they did, they heard a very loud scream. It sounded like a girl screaming, “Help! Please, help! I’m dying!”
They started running because it sounded close to them. It made them more scared because the bathrooms were supposedly even more haunted than the school. If it was a hospital, that was one of the patient’s rooms where they died. It had happened to other patients in the same room, or that was one of the other rumors.
Then they heard another scream that sounded a little farther from where they were. They started running again, as fast as they could to their safe place. Once they got to their safe place they saw that some of their stuff was gone. They started to get even more scared because first, they heard two yells for help, and when they got to their safe place, some of their stuff was gone, like it was scattered all over the place.
They got hungry and they started to eat some food, but not all of it because some of it was gone.
“Hey, Steven, I’m starting to get scared. What else could happen?” Eli said.
“Eli, it’s okay. We’re not going to die, it’s only some of our stuff missing, Eli. We’re okay, as long as we at least have food and water to eat and drink we’re good,” Steven said, exhausted from running and out of breath.
They finished eating and then again they heard a big BOOM!
They started running and yelled as loud as they could.
They heard, “Help, help please, I’m in danger!”
They found somewhere to hide and hid there. My friends and I heard them too. We started running as fast as we could to go look for them, but we couldn’t find them because they were hiding. We all went everywhere and separated to go looking for them. Richard, Alvin, Diego, Enoc, and Dorian found only Eli. He had something all over him, and they didn’t know what happened to him. Steven, Yajahira, Maribel, Jocelyn, Lili, Aalyah, and Eli all went missing and they never came back . . .
Until Janelle, Enoc, Richard, Alvin, Diego, and Dorian all heard a little girl singing, “Ring around the rosie, pockets full of posies, ashes ashes, we all fall down.”
Everyone heard it and started running, and then they all bumped into a clown. They screamed and ran. The clown was chasing them, then the clown caught Richard. Everyone else escaped.
Then everyone saw a bright light that looked like an exit to get out of the school. They ran to it but then . . .
They all ran into the door, but the clown had tricked them with an outside background and a bright flashlight. They all got caught. Everyone got scared and wanted to escape at the same time, so Enoc made a plan. He whispered it to everyone, everyone agreed on the plan. The plan was for Dorian to say, “La Llorona!” because clowns were supposed to be scary people, but they were scared of La Llorona.
That didn’t make sense, but I got why they were scared. Anyway, back to the plan.
When Dorian yelled, “La Llorona!” the clown was going to run away and we were going to escape. Diego was going to whisper to Dorian when he was ready to cut the ropes. Then Dorian was going to yell and everyone was going to escape through the window.
“Dorian, I’m done cutting the rope. Yell it,” Diego said.
So Dorian said, “LA LLORONA!” The clown ran so far away we didn’t even see where he went. Then Diego untied everyone’s rope and we all escaped through the window.
From the 826 Valencia publication You Shouldn’t Believe Everything They Tell You
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