Tangled in Ivy

This is a story I wrote called Tangled in Ivy. We had to write a short story in school using one picture and one line to build on.  My picture looked like this:

And my line was, "He had warned her about the book. Now it was too late. There are three main characters, Elizabeth, Benny, and McGuiness. It is seperated in to four parts, Benny and m
McGuiness each have one and Elizabeth has two. Here is part one

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Parker ran down the stairs of her small attic room into the old kitchen.  She was a small, timid girl of eleven years old.  She was often described as “like a mouse” with her fine, lengthy, light brown hair and curious brown eyes.

“Hello Lizzie!  Have a nice sleep?” asked her mom.

“Yes, I did.”, she replied.  “What’s for breakfast?”

“Toast”, her mom said, not glancing up from the toaster.

“Again?  Why oh why is it always toast?  Toast!  Toast! Toast!  I’m sick of toast!” Elizabeth cried out.

“Now look Drama Queen.  You know very well we can’t afford a fancy breakfast.  So you just have to live with it”,  Her mom said.

“Alright, alright.  I have to go now.  Bye mom”, she said as she tried to run out the door.

“Wait!” her mom called.  “Are you going to see Benny again?”

When Elizabeth nodded yes, her mom sighed and said, “Really Liz, you need to be spending more time with people your own age.”

“But mom, I really like Benny, and he likes it when I visit him.  Please mom?”  She pleaded.

“Okay, okay.  Go.”  Her mom relented.

“Thanks!”  Elizabeth replied, excited.

Elizabeth lived in a small town in Ontario called Camden Falls, even though there actually isn’t any waterfall there.  It is an old town set in the middle of the woods, that everyone called “Center Lake”.  Benny lived on the outskirts of Camden Falls, in a small log cabin in the woods.  Elizabeth loved hanging out in the woods.  The greenness, peacefulness, quietness of the woods always calmed her down. 

Benny was sitting on his blue rocking chair, like always.  Benny is eight-seven years old, small and has white hair.  He is nice, but also very mysterious.  The first time Elizabeth went to his house he showed her a door.  He told her to never, ever, under any circumstances go into that room.  Elizabeth thought that was little weird, but she agreed anyway.  Benny was now her best friend.

“Hey Benny”, she said, “How are you?”

“Doing well, thanks.” He replied in his low, raspy voice.

“Hello McGuiness!” Elizabeth said. 

McGuiness meowed and curled around her legs. 

“You know, you’re the only one other than me that she likes”, Benny laughed.

“I wonder why?” Elizabeth said, laughing back.

McGuiness is an elderly balck cat that hated everyone except for Benny and Lizzie.  Elizabeth sat there talking to Benny for the rest of the day. 

The next morning, Elizabeth grabbed her toast to go and headed out to the woods.  Instead of going to Benny’s she decided to explore the forest.  As she walked around, she thought about her friends, or lack of them.  She didn’t really have any, except for Benny and McGuiness.  No one really talked to her at school, but she didn’t really try to talk to them either. 

Suddenly, she tripped.

“Ow!  That hurt!  Hey, what’s this?”

It looked like the corner of an old book.  As she dug it up, she saw that it was an old book.  A red, dirt covered, dusty old book.

“Wow!”  She couldn’t wait to tell Benny.

“But first”, she thought, “I have to open it”. 

She did.  And what she saw made her very confused. 

“It’s all in gibberish.   Hamashigga wa was cenamook?  What?  Now I have to show Benny!”

She started running towards his cabin.

“Benny!  Benny!  Look what I found!” she yelled.

She put the book in his lap.

“I was walking in the woods when I tripped over it an then I saw it and dug it up and isn’t it really cool and –“. 

She saw then that his face had turned white.  He looked up, and Elizabeth saw his eyes were laced with concern and worry.