Creative Writing 13-Year-Olds

One of our 13-year-olds wrote this piece about a mysterious engraving! Read below to find out what it’s about.

It was a normal Friday for Nia. She first went to school, which was raging with excitement, for tomorrow was the Violet Hill Highschool graduation ceremony. Nia was only in grade 10, but she was a member of the Party Committee, which planned all of the big events for Violet Hill Highschool. Because graduation was the next day, the halls were buzzing with excited students. For some, tomorrow would be the day they graduate highschool, and for others, today was the last day of school. Even though everyone was excited, Nia was beginning to get anxious, as she was the decoration leader. This meant that she was the person that decided what decorations go where, and she had to have the auditorium decorated by the end of the day today for graduation the next day. 

Nia ran to the supply closet to find all of the things that she had got to decorate the auditorium. She found streamers, banners, and so much more. She had even found plenty of old photos and paintings of the school on graduation day from years before. As she was taking all of the things down to the auditorium, her friend Macy came up to her.

“Are those the decorations for graduation?” asked Macy.

“Yeah, do you want to help me set up the auditorium? I need all the help I can get!” replied Nia. 

“Sure, that will be fun!” said Macy. 

Nia and Macy walked down to the auditorium and started to set up the decorations. As they were setting up the decorations, Macy took one of the paintings that Nia had found and started to hang it up. 

“Hey Nia, do you want this painting here?” asked Macy.

“No, actually. I think it would look better over there.” said Nia as she pointed to a different wall. 

As Macy was taking down the painting to go put it on the other wall, she noticed something odd engraved on the back. 

“Hey Nia, look at this. There is something on the back of the painting.” 

“Whoa, it looks like directions to something.” replied Nia

The engravings said:

Start at the location in the painting, and follow these directions . . . 

Left, straight, right, straight, left, up, right, straight, up, left, straight. 

Go into the room, and open the one vent that is there.

The girls were so confused. They both decided to finish up decorating the auditorium and then follow the engravings. They hung up all of the other paintings and photos, but made sure to check the backs of them to see if there were any other directions. They found nothing, and concluded that there was only painting with engravings on the back. 

The girls finished quickly, because they wanted to figure out the mysterious riddle on the back of the painting. They started from the first step of the riddle. Start at the location in the painting. To the girls, it looked as if the painting of the large oak tree right in front of the school, so they started there. They followed the first 4 directions, left, straight, right straight. This brought them to the doors of the school, which they walked into. The next directions were left then up. Fortunately, once the girls turned left after the doors of the school, there was a staircase. They walked up the staircase, and they were now on level 2 of the 3 levels there were in the school. The next directions were right, straight, and up. They took a right, went straight, and sure enough, there was another set of stairs. At this point, the girls started to get very excited. The last directions were left and straight. They took a left and went straight. 

They looked at the next direction. “Go into the room, and open the one vent that is there.” And again, sure enough, there was a room right in front of the girls. This was a janitor’s closet. They went into the closet, and looked for the vent. It was on the ground. 

“Do you think we should open it?” asked Nia.

“Yeah! Of course! What if it is prize money or something?” replied Macy excited. 

So, of course, the girls opened up the vent, and inside, there was an envelope. The girls opened the envelope, and inside, there was a note.

 The note said:

Hey people who opened this envelope!

This whole scavenger hunt was a big PRANK! This was the senior prank of 1997. We hope you had fun, but there is no big prize to win. Sorry, not sorry!

• Seniors of 1997

“Well,” said Macy, “I’m surprised that nobody found this before us, this was like 15 years ago. Anyway, that was disappointing.” 

“Yeah it was,” replied Nia “But you know what we can do?” she asked Macy.

“What?”

“We can create our own prank! We should write the same directions on the back of a different painting, and prank some other people!”

“Haha! Yeah, that sounds like fun!”

Nia and Macy went on to make their own little prank for some other poor students. They had fun making it too, but it was getting very late, and they had to go home. They said bye to each other and left, and hoped that their prank would be as funny as the one that they went through.