Editor’s note: Young Writers Project, a Vermont nonprofit dedicated to helping students write well, will be sharing several exceptional pieces of best student work each week at VTDigger.org for special display over the weekend. We hope you appreciate the young writers’ viewpoints, imagination and experiences. Please let us know what you think.
Hadley Murphy of Charlotte Central School writes about the quintessential camp experience – the scary creature in the night! Hadley wrote this piece as a seventh-grader last spring to share with her class in a story-telling segment.
Creature at Camp
By Hadley Murphy,
an eighth-grader to be at Charlotte Central School.
Just after roasting marshmallows, we were getting into our tents. I was extremely tired after riding my bike all day. I was about to fall asleep when I heard a dribble, dribble and then a big boom … crack! It was a thunderstorm.
We all tried to jump out of our tents, except my tent zipper was stuck. I pulled; it didn’t budge. I pulled again – nothing. I pulled one more time, and it finally broke open.
We rushed out of our tent; we were the last ones out. We were running in the pouring rain, trying to get to shelter.
It was 10 at night, and we couldn’t see a thing. I suddenly felt that my body was getting in front of my feet, and the next thing I knew I was in the mud.
Then we heard an “Oww!” Maddie had run into a tree. Next, we heard a loud thud! Kit had tripped into a pothole. Things were not looking too good for us.
We started running again, and we were almost there. I could see the door. I could almost feel the dryness inside. One more step … and then something sprang out of the bushes right in front of the door. We jumped back. It was a sly creature, with big sharp teeth and it was enormous.
“What is that?” Kit said.
“I have absolutely no idea,” I replied nervously.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” Maddie screamed.
She was running around in circles. The creature didn’t like that! It hissed and showed its teeth, then followed her.
Kit and I slowly backed away, careful not to scream.
Slowly, the creature started crawling towards us. It was coming closer and closer.
I was just about to scream when I heard someone’s voice. It was a counselor’s.
She said, “What’s going on out there?”
We both just screamed and she came out. She shined a flashlight on the creature and it turned out to be just a raccoon. We all calmed down and went inside.
About YWP
YWP publishes about 1,000 students’ work each year here, in 19 newspapers across Vermont and in parts of New Hampshire and on Vermont Public Radio. It runs an online teen writing community, youngwritersproject.org, which has only one rule: be respectful. It works with teachers in 63 schools who use YWP’s unique, free digital classroom platform and provides many with ongoing professional development mentoring and other teacher training. And it is developing NxN, a writing center at its Burlington headquarters. For more, go to youngwritersproject.org or ywpschools.net.
If you are a youth or you know a youth who is passionate about something and works hard at it, be it building models or flying or playing the drums or climbing cliffs, please contact Geoffrey Gevalt at ggevalt@youngwritersproject.org and tell him something about the youth and how to get in touch with her or him.
