ETWINNING PROJECT COLLABORATIVE WORK
A strange sleepover Six students, some books and a psychopathic writer in an ancient castle, during a stormy night...
Chapter 1 (French school) It was a stormy night of Summer in Horvey Hill, England. A group of children were on a sleepover in the town’s school. It is a very old building which was once a big castle. All around it you can find a big park with lots of trees, bushes and a path leading to the doorway. There were mice wandering in the corridor looking for food. In the last room, some voices could be heard. About ten children were gathered in a classroom, sitting on the floor with their sleeping bags. They were laughing as Leonidas, a sixteen-year-old boy of Greek origin was telling a joke. There were many people of different nationalities as it was summer school.
Elena is a beautiful Italian girl with dark hair. She is only thirteen, but she is fearless and very strong. Jaroslava is a girl with long blond hair and blue eyes. She’s also thirteen and comes from Slovakia. As for Zosia, she’s a little Polish girl with curly hair. She loves reading and listen to Leonidas’ jokes. That’s also Ali’s favorite activity, even if he’s not bad at telling jokes too. He is not very tall and has short black hair. He always smiles and has a very good time with his friends in England, even if he misses his family in Turkey. The last boy of this team is Patrick, a French boy. He is tall with brown hair and he is very generous. He loves basketball. After many fits of laughter, the children decided to play hide and seek.
Some of them hid behind the lockers or under some desks; others went to hide in the playground. Zosia was the seeker. She found Patrick and Leonidas in a corridor, Jaroslava in the toilet, Ali behind a door and Patrick under the desk in the headmaster’s office. Three others were hidden behind trees. However, one child was missing and was nowhere to be found‌ All of them decided to seek their missing friend, in vain. Elena offered to take the sleeping bags and move to the library because the door could be locked. The six friends took place between the detective stories and the drama shelfing units. Ali and Patrick tried to reassure the others by saying that the missing person was probably playing with their nerves. Another boy offered to go and get something to eat from the cafeteria. While Zosia was looking for a book to read, some noise could be heard at the back of the room.
She came closer and discovered a little book on the floor. It was an old green-and-gold book entitled The Dream Book. As Zosia opened it, she was surprised to find a list of names and not a story. Suddenly, she screamed. The first name was that of the missing boy. All of a sudden, Ali realized that the boy who went to look for snacks never came back. “What’s his name?”, Zosia asked reluctantly. “Andrew, I think, why?”, Elena answered. “Look at this”, Zosia replied nervously. She took the book and showed them, her hands strongly shaking...
Chapter 2 (Italian school) "The next name is... Ali! And then, all of us!", Zosia added. Ali tried to joke about it but this time... they were all terrified. Outside the summer storm raged and a light illuminated the room. Leonidas looked up and saw a trap door: “Look! The book has fallen from up there!". " I don’t think it fell ... what’s hiding up there?" Patrick said, making a couple of jumps to reach it but the ceiling was really too high. Leonidas wanted to take the ladder placed against the shelf but all at once a strong thunder rumbled in the room, Zosia jerked and the book fell from her hands. Ali took the book from the ground and... there was something between the pages!
It was the clipping of an old newspaper article with this title: "Orlando Smith is now in the psychiatric prison in London". Elena read it quickly: "Apparently, this writer was famous, but his success was brief, his publisher refused to publish his latest novel, so he fell into misery and went mad". All of them were frightened. "Let's keep calm", Patrick said taking the book and leafing through it. "Look! The pages were written but then someone deleted them". "It's true! - Ali said someone scraped them!". "Who does something like this must be crazy!" , Jaroslava said.
"Exactly! Perhaps this is Orlando's unpublished book. He eradicated the words of his last work in a moment of anger and madness “, Ali said while he was sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag. "It could be... This story is really disturbing!", Leonidas affirmed thoughtfully. “Let me see”, Zosia said and as she watched the newspaper cutout she started laughing. "Ha ha! Look! The photo of the psychopath with a straitjacket is horrible! It seems Mrs Brown before going to bed!"."He he! It's true! When our teacher scolds Patrick for his jokes, she looks like that!", Ali said. The laughter distracted them for a while from that terrible situation. Suddenly, Jaroslava heard a beep on her mobile. It was a text from an unknown number ...
She screamed, so Elena took the phone and read: “Three hours to find your friends Daniel and Andrew. Those who live among the books are never lost. Orlando Furious. Three hours... come on guys, we can do it!”, Elena said. Ali added: "Who is Orlando Furious, our crazy writer? Uhm… who lives among the books... maybe it means our friends are somewhere here, hidden among the bookshelves ...". Elena replied: "Or ... we’ll find the answers among the books … Yep!!”. She rushed to the shelves and returned with a book: "Here it is, Furious Orlando, L’Orlando furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, it is an important opera of the Italian literature that talks about Orlando, crazy for love...". She was leafing through it and a piece of paper fell. Jaroslava picked it up. There was written "Miserable! That's what you are ". Patrick exclaimed: “Victor Hugo! Les misérables, let's look for it!".
Chapter 3 (Greek school) It didn’t take them long to find the famous French novel on the top of the biggest bookcase right in the middle of the library. Patrick was in a hurry to open it and find the next clue! ...only this time there were two clues instead of one. As he started flipping through the book, a picture of a young lady with a purple umbrella fell off. Soon after Leonidas made the connection as he realized that the next book they should be looking for was a well known Greek novel for teenagers by Alki Zei The purple umbrella. Zosia followed him along the corridor in great excitement and was actually the one to reach for the book on the top shelf. This time to their disappointment there was no paper between the pages… But it wasn’t long before Ali noticed that some of the letters forming the title of the book had been highlighted.
The purple umbrella. They all gathered around the book trying to figure out the “secret code” behind its title… Suddenly, Jaroslava shouted out loud: “TRAP! The hidden word is trap!!”. “What is the meaning behind this word?”, Zosia wondered. Leonidas exclaimed in awe: “The trap door!! Someone or something is hiding behind the trap door on the ceiling! It’s high time we found out! Patrick, grab the ladder! Everybody follow me!”. “I think it’s way too risky… maybe… maybe we should just stay here and wait for Daniel and Andrew to return… you know just in case they turn up…”, Elena said in a trembling voice. “Well, why don’t you stay here Elena and the rest of us climb up… Besides, we need someone to warn us in case something goes wrong”, Patrick reassured her. The door was unlocked. It opened with a crack and the children jumped in a place
they’d never seen before. It was short of a hidden library… only an untidy one! Books and papers were scattered all around. Everything was dusty but the children soon came to notice one notebook that immediately attracted their attention. Jaroslava opened it and started reading aloud: “My diary. My deepest, most secret thoughts”… It was signed by Orlando Smith! After reading quickly a few pages off the diary, the children realized that Orlando Smith, the renowned writer who had become a psychopath, had actually been a student himself in that same school they were in! Always distant and lonesome, he never had any real friends and hated school. This had been his “secret place” where he would go to find some peace of mind so as to write in his diary… write about the love of his life… a girl that had captivated his heart… a girl with a purple umbrella! It was then that Leonidas and Patrick exclaimed together: “Look! There’s a wooden frame
of the girl on the wall!”. Zosia carefully removed the photograph of the girl from the wall as she had a hunch that some new information would be revealed. She was right! A name was written behind it… maybe the name of the girl herself… nobody was sure…it read ‘Penelope’. They were all startled and with the time running out, as one hour had already elapsed, they felt anxious and ‘trapped’ into something they couldn’t understand. “We need to find the answer to this mystery in a book”, emphasized Jaroslava. “Penelope, the faithful wife of Ulysses, who waited for her husband and king to return from Troy for 20 years…”, said Patrick who had spent a whole summer studying Ancient Greek authors. “That’s it!”, pointed out Leonidas. The Odyssey the epic story told and narrated by Homer! “Elena!”, everybody shouted when they came down the ladder. “Elena! Wait till you hear this! You won’t believe it!”. But Elena was nowhere to be found….
Chapter 4 (Slovakian school) They came down the ladder to look for Elena. “Where is she?”, asked Zosia, but no one answered. “Let´s split up. One group will look for Elena and the second group will look for Odyssey”, Patrick suggested, but Leonidas disagreed: “Don´t be ridiculous, if we split up, we´ll end up like poor characters in all the bad horror stories. Elena is lost and so are Andrew and Daniel. We should stop wasting our time and focus on finding another cue before it´ll be too late”. The rest of the group just nodded and started looking for the ancient Greek book. It didn´t take long to find it because it was the only book on the bookshelf that wasn´t dusty. Girls opened it and started browsing. As they were doing it, Patrick said: “By the way, did you know that T. E. Lawrence needed more than four years to translate Odyssey from Greek to English? It was published in 1932 and the epos is divided into 24 books…”
“LOOK!”, his lecture was suddenly disturbed. “Come here and have a look at what I´ve just found”. They were looking at the Odyssey content – books 1 to 19 were crossed and book 20 was highlighted with freshy looking highlighter. “Find the beginning of the book 20”, they all shouted at once. Jaroslava quickly found the page and there was an old picture used as the bookmark. “It looks like a class photo. Wait a minute! Isn´t he Orlando?”, said Ali and pointed at a young man in the picture: “And who´s that girl with ink stain on her face standing next to him? They are holding their hands!”. “This photo seems familiar to me. I guess I´ve seen it on the wall in one of abandoned classrooms”, Zosia said thoughtfully. “Follow me!”, she commanded bravely and everybody followed her.
They ran into a small classroom at the end of long dark corridor. On the wall they found the same photo but enlarged and there were some names written next to each person and a certain year. Under the revealed girl´s face they read Julia Penelope B. “OMG, that is Miss Brown!”, Leonidas shouted: “But I must admit that she looks prettier, skinnier and a lot younger than today”, he added smiling. “We don´t have time for your jokes, Leo!”, said Patrick strictly.Let´s sum it up. We have found Odyssey with 19 books crossed and the twentieth is highlighted…”, “... We have found a picture of our teacher holding the hand of the future madman”, Ali continued.
“Ha ha ha, so our strict teacher is pretending to be Penelope from Homer´s story! She is counting 20 books like 20 years until her love returns from hospital, ha ha”, Leonidas said and Zosia started laughing. But she stopped when she noticed that no one else was laughing with her, and she silently asked: “It was funny, wasn´t it?”. “I´m afraid Leonidas is right”, Ali agreed. “We must find Mrs Brown”. They run to her office and Jaroslava knocked at the door with anxiety.
Chapter 5 (Polish school) They knocked again... There was a dull silence which came from the office. They opened the door carefully. Calling Mrs Brown loudly, they entered the room. It was dark, only one lamp at the desk was on. They looked around anxiously. They asked themselves only one question: “Where was Mrs. Brown?”. "Look, I see something on the desk. Is it a letter?", Ali exclaimed. "Yes, indeed, it's a letter. It looks very old as if it was hundreds years old. It is dressed to Julia. What do you think about it? Do you think we can read it? - asked Patrick - “Can we read it?”. "I guess we have no choice if we want to find out where Mrs. Brown is," Leo said. Zosia carefully took out the letter. Everyone was looking at her while she began to read it aloud:
“Dear Julia! My heart was bleeding for a long time when I learned about the obstacle standing in our path. Is it possible for the same story to repeat itself four hundred years later? Our parents - like Romeo and Juliet’s parents - they hated each other. Two feuding families that stood in the way of our happiness. William Shakespeare's tragedy took place again, only the ending was different. You, Dear Julia, you decided to listen to your parents. You left me. Then I erased you from my memory. I expressed my pain by writing books. They have become my rescue and godsend. I know that you also dedicated your life to literature”. Suddenly, Mrs. Brown, Elena, Andrew, Daniel ... and Orlando came in.
Chapter 6 (Turkish school) Everyone was shocked when they saw the missing friends including Mrs. Brown. There were many questions to be answered and all those questions were asked by Ali, the most curious one in the group. “Where have you all been?”, “Elena! Why didn’t you wait for us in that room?”, “Mrs. Brown! Have you fallen in love with a mad English writer?”, “Andrew and Daniel, what did happen to you guys?”… Ali has asked questions for nearly 10-15 minutes… When Ali stopped for a while, Mrs. Brown asked a question: “What is the date of today, guys?”. It was a simple question, but the answer is not known by any of them. Leonidas went little bit furious and asked angrily: “What’s happening here right now?”. Mrs Brown began to laugh and says: “Today is the 1st of August. In this school is the Summer’s Fool Day! it’s an ancient tradition here in Hovey Hill!”. “Oh Gosh! That’s a bad joke Mrs. Brown…”, Zosia said, while all of them died laughing... T E D
thanks for reading! e-t i n
p ec Wri g R a 2017-2018
FRANCE GREECE ITALY POLAND SLOVAKIA TURKEY