Story building
These stories were written by HFC members during our creative writing class called Story Building. It is a team effort, where every member of the group contributes to the final product. Enjoy!
CAT FIGHT!
AUGUST 11, 2020
Today, my mom and I went to the animal shelter. At the shelter, there were two kittens to look at, and they were both beautiful. It was hard to choose between them, so we took both home. We named them Abby and Bob. Abby is yellow and brown like a Siamese cat, and Bob is a yellow and orange tabby cat. Bob is a medium cat, and Abby is a small cat. Abby’s meow is high-pitched, and Bob’s is low-pitched. Abby and Bob are both slow cats, because they are still kittens and haven’t gotten their growth yet. Abby is a feisty cat, and Bob is very affectionate, almost like a dog.
The kittens got along at the shelter, but when we got them home they didn’t get along! They didn’t like their cat food, so they got angry at each other. Abby and Bob were making loud noises and hissing. They also did the kind of meowing that kittens do to each other when they aren’t getting along. So, we locked Bob in the basement, and Abby in my bedroom for the night. Abby and Bob didn’t like being locked up, and got more angry. Bob hissed really loud, and Abby scratched on everything in the room. Abby ruined all the furniture, and it was annoying to be around with all the loud hissing.
Bob was in the basement doing a word search puzzle and chewing on a chew-toy shaped like a phone. We decided to play with Abby to distract her from scratching the furniture, and it worked! We played with a rope. Mom got really mad that Abby was scratching everything, so we went to PetSmart to get a cat scratcher, a cat tower, and a lot of cat toys. When we came home, Abby loved it!
We decided to put Abby and Bob back in the same room to see if they got along. We decided that if they didn’t, we would spray them with water to keep them from fighting, and separate them again. They still didn’t get along, so we had to spray them with the water, but we bought cat toys and cat scratchers to keep them occupied. The toys and scratchers worked to keep them busy. Abby and Bob stayed in their own rooms, and liked being by themselves more.
Just then, a big crack of thunder sounded outside the window! The cats went in every direction; their fur stood on end, and they hid and wouldn’t come out. We knew they were in the house, but we didn’t know where! We had to search for the cats, so we had to check the kitchen, basement, bedroom, dining room, and everywhere. We remembered we had a cat monitor so that we could know where the cats are at all times. With the cat monitor we found one cat in the basement hiding behind a pile of clothes, and the other hiding underneath the bed in the bedroom. We were really happy that we had cat monitors, so we didn’t have to search all around the house again. Abby and Bob were still afraid of the thunder, and they wouldn’t leave their hiding spots. We gave them cat treats to try to get them to come out, and Abby and Bob came out to get their treats. After they came out to get their treats , they both went underneath the bed. They were still too scared to stay out.
It was dinner time for the kittens, so we decided to lure them out for dinner by wearing a cheese mask, being funny, and making animal noises like a horse. It worked! The cats came out of their hiding places, ate dinner, and stayed out. After dinner Bob and Abby went outside on the walled-in patio. On the patio there was a bench, and when my mom and I went inside for ten minutes and came back out, the cats were snuggled up together on the bench. They didn’t like being inside together, but they liked being outside together. We decided we would take Abby and Bob on walks, so we bought them harnesses and leashes. They didn’t like it at first, but after a while they liked it when they got used to being on a leash.
THE COOKING DISASTER
JULY 28, 2020
Linnea has had a passion for cooking since she was a little girl. She brought her love to life by making videos of her cooking homemade meals and posting them on YouTube twice a week. She never would have expected to become famous, but she somehow managed to. She enjoyed her food and she was getting ready to have fitness at five o’clock. If she’s not hungry, she can wait until after fitness. She then got a phone call that she got invited to go on the Disney cooking show. Her whole family got to go on the show. She is very happy; maybe a little nervous. They send her an email of what she needs to make for the episode. They want her to make something tiered cupcake themed- princess related, an original design.
She will use many different princesses, putting each of their faces on the cupcakes! It will be two tiers, four regular sized cupcakes total. She starts mixing everything together and puts all the ingredients together. She has to make them into the cupcake sizes. She will then stick them in the oven. While the cupcakes are in the oven, she must start cleaning the bowl that she used. Before she could clean the bowl, she lost it! She has to now get a new bowl. She can either buy a bowl online or put a mask on to go to Goodwill or ARC Value Village. She will look at the bowls online first. She finds a KitchenAid, which she realizes will be faster than a bowl. She decides to use her Amazon Prime account to have it shipped in a few hours. It only takes an hour to arrive.
She is now going to unwrap her new KitchenAid and use it to make more cupcakes and to make the frosting. Rainbow frosting, to be exact. She realizes she forgot her apron! She now has to figure out what to wear, so that she doesn’t mess up her outfit. She decides to go to Goodwill and get an apron. She finds one, all rainbow colored. Someone tie-dyed it and didn’t want it anymore. She left the cupcakes in the oven too long. They got burnt! She tried to make another mix, but she realized she didn’t have enough to make two tiers, so she had to get more cupcake mix. She goes on Amazon Prime, but realized when they shipped it an hour later, it wasn’t even cupcake related!
She decides to go to the store, with her mask on. She finds everything she needs. She makes the cupcakes again, and they turn out right this time. She now has to put the cupcakes in the oven again, and she set a timer for two minutes. After two minutes, she opened it and found they smelled delicious. And they were no longer burned! She takes the cupcakes out of the oven, but before she frosts them, she has to let them cool.
While she lets them cool, she cleans up the kitchen, and she vacuums it. She puts the cupcakes back in the oven when they are all cool. She thinks they are not done enough. They are now good to go, cooling on the counter. They can be frosted. She will now eat the cupcakes with her family. These weren’t good enough. She and her family love the cupcakes. They taste like pop tarts! She decides that the fame of the internet has gone to her head, so she calls the show and cancels the next morning. Plus, she didn’t want to do it virtually, anyway. She watches “Nailed It” instead. She decides that is good enough for her.
A FOREVER FRIENDSHIP
JULY 21, 2020
It is finally family weekend at my sister’s college. She goes to the University of Minnesota, which is close to my house, so my family decided that just I would go and visit my sister, Kara. As I am walking up to her dorm, I see this large, fluffy dog that does not have a collar. The first time I saw this dog it was outside of my sister’s dorm, when we went to go look around the college, we noticed it was following us.
When we went into the dorm area, it just waited outside. My sister went out first and it waited until I came out, then it followed me. I gave the dog treats, I thought maybe he would stop following me then. The dog was making some new friends, and the dog loves to follow us because we treat them nice. We looked for some dog toys to play with. We played with the dog in Kara’s dorm, the dog liked playing with us! The dog liked wooden toys. The dog needed Kara to give him some water in the dorm, to keep him hydrated in the heat.
We move our playing outside, and a few hours of playing with a wooden ball, all of a sudden, the ball went into the forest. Surprisingly the dog did not bark, he just went into the forest and pointed with its paw. He was beckoning me, and I had to answer the call. The dog led me to a trail close by, and we followed it. The trail led to a river!
I decided to name the dog, “Bark” because he liked wooden toys. I looked around the beautiful river by the trail, and Bark still wanted me to follow. He wasn't pointing across the river, he wanted to follow the river’s edge. I tried to get him to come back with me, but he pointed his tail and paw straight where he wanted to go.
We started following him along the river. I ran into a crocodile! It was in the river, and we had to cross the river, but the crocodile wouldn’t let us. We had to cross because there was a slimy plant blocking the trail. We put a piece of cardboard across the river and walked on it to cross. When we stepped onto it, the cardboard broke! We had to think of something else. We grabbed a log and put it down across the river. The log was strong enough, and we got across the river. Bark led us into a hut, inside there were dog toys and other things. The hut was where Bark lived!
Bark brought us to his house to play outside and live there with him. Two steps away from the hut, we found dangerous snakes and spiders! We didn’t like the snakes and spiders. We decided to spray the snakes and spiders with bug spray to make them leave. Just then somebody with a net jumped out, we found out it was a poacher! These were rare breeds of snakes and spiders and they wanted to take all of them, for curing Sickle Cell anemia. They wanted to suck out all of their venom, so the snakes and spiders couldn’t defend themselves anymore. Then, they would detoxify it and use it in medicine. We didn’t know what to do. The poacher caught the snakes and spiders and took them away.
Back in the hut, we decided to cook dinner. We cooked dog food, and we didn’t know what to think of it. It was alright, but not the best. We didn’t want to live with Bark forever in the hut. We decided to go back home, and left Bark at the hut. Bark felt very sad and cried. We decided we would go back and visit him at the hut. We would visit him once a year.
We weren’t too sad to leave, we really liked Bark and his hut, but didn’t like the food. We decided that, next year, we’ll bring human food for ourselves. We would visit him for two weeks once a year, and camp out. Every year, we would grill out, camp, and be with Bark. We all enjoyed it. We called an animal conservation group to safely extract the rare snakes and spiders from the poacher’s grasp.
BIRTHDAY POWERS
JULY 14, 2020
I woke up at 8 am today, just like every other day. I walk downstairs to get breakfast, say hi to my grandmother, and then notice there is a sign on the door that says, “Happy birthday Isabel!” My grandma made me a birthday cake, with really dark icing, that said, “I developed special powers from the moon”. I went to ask my grandma what the message meant.
Grandma explained to me that I have special powers that will give me a lot of energy, mind reading, flying, invisibility, and time travel. Grandma thinks that I will get in trouble with these new powers. I decided to try throwing thunderbolts and got myself into trouble like grandma thought I would. I hit a tree with a thunderbolt, and it fell down on grandma’s car!
Grandma got very upset at me and said that she was thinking of calling the police. She yelled at me, “How could you do that?” I trembled; I had never heard my grandma get this angry at me before. I had always been a good kid and I really hadn’t broken the rules. Grandma said that she would take control of my powers from now on, using a smartphone app. With the app, she could tell where I was and how much power I used.
Grandma was at the park to take a walk, to think of how she is going to use this app. She came to a decision about how to limit my powers. Grandma came home and said to me, “You can only do one power, and when you get really good at that one power and not cause trouble, you can get another power until all your powers are back. The first power you’re going to get is mind reading.”
I think, it’s cool that I have this power because I can read grandma’s mind, and if she doesn’t want me to, I can still do it. At first, mind reading is really weird, but I get better as I do it. I started to read grandma’s mind to know what she was going to do. I got so good at it that grandma finally thought I was too good. She talked to me about it, she said “It’s time to keep the powers hidden.”
I thought, That’s not a good idea. I tell Grandma, and she says to me, “Listen to me and listen to me well, I used to have powers and it didn’t end well for me. I ended up getting them taken away by nature once when I expelled too much energy. I don’t want the same to happen to you. I just monitor the powers now; I don’t have them anymore.” Grandma explained that I am still young and naive, and I don’t know the difference between risk and reward.
I decided I wasn’t going to listen to my grandma, I ignored her and moved on. I decided to take all of my powers back at once. I used a dark power on my friends, and they got hurt.
A MAGICAL FRIENDSHIP
JUNE 23, 2020
Lisa and Matt have been friends since elementary school, and they went to summer camp every summer together. They made a campfire, and they were roasting some s’mores. They were in Hastings, Minnesota. They like to go swimming, boating, singing, and hiking together. Every summer they go to camp for two weeks.
This time, they go hiking in the woods and they run into a wolf! The wolves are quite ferocious, snapping at their heels. They manage to injure one of the wolves with a stick, and so the pack stays behind to take care of them. They get away from the wolves. On the hike, they see abnormally large and tall trees. They stop and take pictures of the trees. Suddenly, one of the trees says, “Can you turn off the brightness on your camera? It’s too bright, and it hurts our feelings!” Lisa and Matt laugh at first, but they are scared. They wonder who is talking to them? They say “Oh, trees can’t talk!” The tree says, “Yes I can! I'm a magical tree, and I know everything that happens on earth! Because I’ve been planted in so many different places.”
This conversation didn’t turn out very well, because the tree was growing roots and having problems with it; the tree wanted to grow green grass and soy plants instead of new roots. So, the tree was standing upright and they were about to discuss with the other trees what happens next. While the trees are doing their own thing, Lisa and Matt get bored and move on. They make it back to their campsite safely. When they get back to camp, they tell the counselors what happened on the hike. The counselors say, “Don’t go on a hike by yourselves! You broke the rules.” The counselors believed their story.
Then camp ended, and they had to go back home. Matt and Lisa keep in touch with each other, but they won’t get to see each other after camp. Matt and Lisa are talking over skype, about a week after camp, and Matt suddenly goes quiet. Matt is usually a very bubbly person, so Lisa knows that something is wrong. Matt slowly and painfully tells her that he has to move to Wyoming for his dad’s work promotion, and he doesn’t have a say in the matter because he’s still a minor. Lisa finds an excuse to go and hangs up. She needs time to process this.
Lisa thinks they will never see each other again, because Matt is moving too far away. Lisa lives in California, far away from Wyoming. Matt is sad about moving away. Matt won’t be able to go to the same summer camp as Lisa, he’ll have to go to a different camp. Matt decides to write to Lisa from Wyoming, as a pen pal, so they can write to each other back and forth and stay in contact with each other. Now Matt is not sad anymore, he gets to see his friend in writing, and they are excited to see each other again someday. For now, they have to wait.
Lisa goes back to camp in the summer, and she is a little bit sad because Matt is not there. She found herself on the same path that they were hiking on last year. Lisa is on the path and runs into the two talking trees from before. They ask her why she is so sad, and she says, “Because Matt is gone, and we don’t get to see each other anymore hardly.” The tree said, “Do you want to be with him for always?” They call on the wolf, and the wolf goes to see Matt to make sure that’s what he wants too. The trees say, “But we get to become you, and you can become us to be together!”
In Wyoming, Matt says, “That could work, but there’s one thing you should know, I don’t think it’s a very good idea.” He thinks that if somebody is taking the tree’s spot, they’d stay like that forever! Matt doesn’t want to stay as a tree forever because he’s afraid he could fall down, or worse, get chopped down! Matt thinks the trees are being selfish for asking. He wants to chop the trees down and get emancipated from his parents to move back near Lisa. But then, he realizes those trees might have been human at one point too!
Matt and Lisa agree to be trees for five years, so that they can help other people along the path. When they are trees, a magical gust of wind blows past their leaves. They realize, if their leaves fall off they will have to be trees forever! They think that those other trees were con artists. Matt and Lisa decide to trick someone else into taking their place as trees. Eventually, they find two people to trick, and become human again! Matt asks Lisa to go with him to Wyoming, and she says yes. They move to Wyoming together.
THE FUEL DILEMA
JUNE 16, 2020
It is just another day as flight attendants for Mickey and Minnie. Today they are flying from their home city of San Francisco to the beautiful New York City. Mickey and Minnie are cousins, and they found out they are going to have the same job as each other! They had no idea what would happen that day. As flight attendants, they hand out pop and snacks if people want them. They also keep the flight safe for the passengers.
Mickey and Minnie packed some clothes for the trip, and went to work in their cars. On the way to work, the road is empty, but it still takes them a long time to get to work. They have fun on the way, they’re excited to go to work. Mickey and Minnie like their job as flight attendants, they get good money and they get to go somewhere. They get to help passengers and have conversations with them. At the airport Mickey and Minnie take their bags to the check in, both are excited to make some extra money today! When they hear they will be going to New York on their flight today, they are excited.
They know that they have to get on the plane early so that they can get everything ready to go. That way they can better serve the people and their needs. They make sure that all the food and drinks are ready to go, and they make sure that they can play the prerecorded audio of the flight safety instructions. The passengers get loaded on. After they got ready to explain how to put on the Oxygen masks in case of emergency, the flight attendants wear life jackets to explain procedures about underwater emergencies.
Some of the passengers don’t want to follow the rules, if they break too many rules the flight attendants might have to yell at them to get off the plane or be quiet. There is a baby crying on the plane, and nobody likes the sound. One passenger keeps yelling, saying “There shouldn’t be any babies on planes!” The flight attendants say, “If you’re not behaving, we’ll have to turn around the plane!” The passengers decide to behave. The passenger doesn’t stop telling the baby to be quiet, so Mickey and Minnie gave them three warnings. If they don’t listen after the fourth warning, they have to go back to San Francisco.
The captain asks Mickey and Minnie to meet them at the flight attendant station. Then the captain tells Mickey and Minnie that the plane is running out of fuel! Mickey and Minnie are scared when they hear that. The captain asks them to calm down the passengers. Mickey and Minnie are still worried. They hand out peanuts and drinks to the passengers and warn them that there will be a detour on the flight. The passengers don’t like that, and they’re feeling a little scared. The passengers are not following the rules. Mickey says, “Don’t be scared.”
Just then, the plane hits a bit of turbulence and they realize that the jet engines are going to be crashing any second! They tell everyone to remain calm and, in their seats, they also go over the water safety rules again; because they are over the ocean. The lights in the plane go out, and they tell the passengers they have to fix the lights. The plane is rocking, but people are still calm. Mickey and Minnie are doing a great job! The plane is going down, so they get the inflatable raft ready and preparing to jump on it. The raft comes out really fast. The passengers are all scared, they’re falling from so far up! They’re running out of breath from being so far up.
Before they all jumped, the captain sent out a SOS message. When they jump out, they all get on the big raft and wait for someone to show up to help. Mickey and Minnie counted everybody, and there was one person missing! Everyone had to look around. When they found the person, he was underwater, he was trying to swim and couldn’t. Minnie swam, saved him, and brought him to the nearby shore. It was the man who was complaining about the baby! They got help and went to the city nearest to where they crashed. Mickey and Minnie went to a hotel, they are tired of carrying the bags and decide to take a rest. Mickey thought that the adventure was fun, but Minnie does not want to do it again.
AN UNFORGETTABLE VACATION
JUNE 9, 2020
Sarah and Sonja have been talking about going to South America for a vacation for a long time. They start planning the trip and they get everything planned. They buy their plane tickets, they rent the car they need, and they get their lodging ready. They go to the airport, go through security, and get onto the airplane. The runway is flat and long for the takeoff. They go fast in the sky, but the ride is still long. To pass the time, they have snacks. Sonya orders a snack unknowingly containing peanut butter, but she’s allergic to peanut butter and gets sick. She barfs into a barf bag and feels much better.
They arrive in Brazil and one of the bags is missing with one of the girl’s clothes in it! They have to go through the jungle and around the city to get new clothes. They meet a guide who said he knows everything about the jungles in South America, so they go with him. They go into the jungle.
They have to use a compass because it is too hot and their technology overheats and won’t work. It taken Sonya, Sarah, and the guide three hours to get to the jungle from the airport. They have jet lag and sometimes jet lag makes you do crazy stuff. They are tired and it is hot. Sarah starts showing signs of heat stroke, and both girls are disoriented.
Once they have a bit of time to recover and find the city, the tour guide starts taking them around, looking for some stores for Sonya. They go to a shop to find new clothes to buy. They find some girls’ and men’s clothing in the shop, and it works perfectly for Sonja. Afterward, they look for food to pack up for the rest of the trip. They find bars and other things they like to pack.
They continue into the jungle and the girls lose their tour guide. Sarah and Sonya go to have some fun swinging on the vines in the jungle and are having so much fun that they don't even realize their tour guide is gone. Sarah suggests that they should go searching, so they decide to go out and look for him. They can’t find him, so they keep searching and searching!
They start looking around and they go deeper into the jungle. They find a small village and ask if anybody knows or has seen their tour guide. One of the village residents says she saw the tour guide recently! She tells Sarah and Sonya directions to find him.
On their way, they have to go through a dark, scary cave with lots of stalagmites and stalactites. There are bats and spider webs. They have to travel through the unknown cave for 50 miles. At the end there is a geyser they have to jump over, otherwise they will get sprayed with hot lava!
They walk through the cave very carefully. After walking, they look down and they come upon a map. They open up the map and it shows a hidden treasure! In the cave they also find a monster giant huge snake! They don’t want it as a pet because it is dangerous. They get around the huge snake and wish they could stay in a hotel. Sarah and Sonja just decide they should make a fire. They grill s’mores and burgers. They make a tent under the cave. They tell a scary story and go to bed.
The next day, they continue to follow the map and find the treasure! The treasure looks like a hard rock square of gold.
Sarah has a bag and puts the treasure in. They get to the geyser and have to jump over it with super springs in order to avoid hot lava. Sonya makes it over, but Sarah needs a little help. Sonya backtracks and pulls her friend over.
Just past the geyser, Sarah and Sonja find the tour guide right by some dry lava and run out of the jungle. They go back to Rio and they find all of their luggage waiting for them at their hotel!
This is such a relief, that they decide to watch a movie about dragons. They stay in Rio for a week and then head home. They wonder when they can come back because it was a pretty cool adventure.
OUT OF THIS WORLD
JUNE 2, 2020
Rachel and Jackson have a quest to outer space. They are packing everything up to go on it. To go, they need towels and tools. They are headed to the moon. They have everything packed up, so they are heading to the space station. They are going to the moon and then they are working on any other things that may need to be fixed.
When they get there, part of the moon isn’t going up and down. There is half moon, half sun, and it looks like the twilight zone eclipse. Turns out, this is the least of their worries. They were out trying to fix the solar eclipse, and the tethers ripped off both of their space suits. They are now struggling to get oxygen, and they know they only have so long to be out there. They are headed to the international space station when their tethers rip off. They have little jet packs and use them to get close to one another. Their jet packs have power on them so they can get their air back together. The helmets have a cord to help get the air back into the oxygen tank. They use a code to get into the spaceship, and the code is 1234. They use their arm strength to build space-like monkey bars and swing back to their ship. They finally make it back safe.
On their way to the international space station, they have snacks and drinks. They take turns napping and driving the space shuttle. It takes a few hours to get there. When they arrive, they have to figure out the data for everything about the moon. They met with other astronauts before coming to space, so they got a lot of data that the astronauts were collecting. The data shows them about the eclipse. They were working on the project, but they invited a friend, Steve Erkle, who helped them to work it out. Steve Erkle is a professional pioneer. They figure out, based on the data, that the solar eclipse is supposed to happen every 20 years, but it was happening every few months instead. They figure out that the sun and the moon have been going the wrong direction and are colliding with each other.
Just as they make this discovery, the sun and the moon bump into each other, and there is a really big bump. When the bump happens, all people in the space shuttle fall down to the floor. They know that the moon just hit the sun, and they are going to try and fix it with their computer. They have a satellite rover on their computer, and it helps to fix it with the robotic hands. It is going to push the sun and moon back into the directions they were before so it can solve this collision problem.
Just as the rover is doing its job, it goes down and will not come back up. It is broken! Rachel and Jackson will need to fix it. They are going to fix it with a space car. They are going to go out to the rover. They finally fix it using really good, fast batteries. They charge it with electricity, so it won't need any more charge. The spaceship has an electric charger. Now it is time to go to the half moon, half sun, to go and fix the problem. There is not enough energy to push them back in the right direction, but they start going in different ways. Now they are fixed, because they had 4 rovers fixing it.
Finally, the mission has been accomplished, so Rachel and Jackson begin talking about and singing a song. They have a song about space, and the song is called “What Makes you Beautiful” by One Direction. They have a space cafe that they go out to eat at. At the space cafe, there are instant cookers where you can put food and cook it rapidly. They also have space cottage cheese. Rachel and Jackson stay at the space hotel for a couple of weeks, and then head back to earth. When they land back at the space station, Rachel and Jackson will be floating! They are going to go see their friends on the landing strip while they are floating. All of the friends are happy to see them, and they think it is really cool that Rachel and Jackson can float. They are going to float for forever. They like floating! So, they live happily ever after!