The Tale of Gift Wrap, Ginger Bread, and Justin Time

Hey guys and gals! Lol. I totally forgot to tell you how my February "dare" went so I'll fill you in on that now! I had to wear mismatched shoes to school so I wore one Nike tennis shoe and one Saucony tennis shoe and no one noticed. I'm totally serious. Maybe they noticed but if they did they certainly didn't mention anything to me! So that one was a sorta fail, but whatever :P It was fun anyway! 

Vote on the March "dare" because March is almost done so we need to get moving! I was so busy earlier this month so now I'm going to get cracking at it.

Now for the main reason for the post. So today I stumbled across a short story we wrote in school and I thought, "You know what? Why don't I post this today!" So I'm posting it and hoping to get some constructive criticisms if you know what I mean! I don't think I've posted this story before, but if I have, sorry. I wrote it a long time ago and don't remember. Enjoy! Oh and sorry for the formatting, I hate the format Blogger has when you copy and paste because I always tab in on OpenOffice when I'm writing it..... Also, don't mind the bolded stuff, that's just something we had to do for the assignment.

The Tale of Gift Wrap, Ginger Bread, and Justin Time

One day, three kids named Gift Wrap, Ginger Bread, and Justin Time met up all by chance. It all started one day when there was a gummy starfish eating contest at the local shopping mall. The prize was a million dollar starfish aquarium.

Gift, Ginger, and Justin all wanted it to no end! Gift planned to keep it for herself because she hated giving anything to anybody, especially gifts, Ginger wanted it to give to her little sister Cinnamon for Christmas, and Justin wanted to get it just for bragging rights and because he liked the idea of free gummy starfish for breakfast that morning.

The contest started at 11:00 AM exactly in Nando's and many kids and adult alike gathered there.

“I'm gonna win the million dollar starfish aquarium! It's gonna be mineeeeeeeee!” screamed a wild eyed toddler.

“No, it's shall be mine when this challenge is over, which won't be long because I am obviously the greatest,” challenged an adult with a slightly evil gleam in his eye.

It was 10:59 AM and the owner of Nando's, Mr. Potato Head gathered all his workers and told all the competitors to go and stand behind their bowl of gummy starfishes.

“The contest will officially start once the clock strikes eleven,” Potato Head announced. “You may start eating right away and if you run out, just ask one of my employees for another plate. We have weighed each plate and our magical computers will tell us at the end who has eaten the most pounds of gummy starfishes, that person will take home the million dollar starfish aquarium!”

Everybody cheered extremely wildly and looked at the aquarium that was as big as an elephant (s).

Gift Wrap was standing by her bowl of gummy starfishes eyeing the large aquarium in the corner by the door behind her. How Gift wanted that aquarium all for herself! She had just the perfect place to put it: in her bedroom right beside her oversized ant-farm.

Next to her Ginger Bread was hoping to win it for her sister, Cinnamon. She could just imagine her sister's face on Christmas morning when she unwrapped a gigantic starfish aquarium. Starfish were Ginger's sister's favorite sea creature!

Justin Time looked at his watch seeing that he only had thirty more seconds until the competition for the million dollar starfish aquarium arrived. Justin was thinking about how no matter how hard he tried, he could never be early for anything. He was always just in time, or late, if he tried hard enough.

Justin stepped off the bus and rushed down the street towards the local shopping mall where Nando's was located.

There was such a big crowd, Justin didn't know how he would get to his own plate of gummy starfishes in time, “Excuse me, ma'am. Sorry about that sir.” Justin pushed through and finally squeezed into position between Gift and Ginger, then looked at his watch again.

“Three more seconds,” he whispered to himself and when the clock struck 11:00 AM, there was silence for a millisecond and then chaos erupted while people started stuffing their faces with loads of gummy starfishes.

Little did they know, a little French man was looking around suspiciously right outside the door by the million dollar starfish aquarium prize (f).

All the contestants had their backs to the prize so no one noticed when Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon snuck out with the prize in the back of his truck and drove away.

Back at the contest, competitors of all shapes, sizes and ages, shoveled gummy starfish after gummy starfish in their mouths.

One little boy thought about how peculiar it was that the gummies seemed to wiggle their little legs like a live octopus would (p). He concluded that they must really be gummy octopuses in disguise as gummy starfishes.

The eating officially concluded at 11:30 AM and most contestants were rolling on the floor moaning because of all that “gum” they put in their stomachs in such a short amount of time.

Mr. Potoato Head, the owner of Nando's and his girlfriend, Mrs. Cabbage Patch, the co-owner, went up to the speaking platform. Now our computers will calculate who has eaten the most pounds of gummy starfishes! Drumroll please!”

Every able person, or everyone who was not rolling around on the floor or running to the mall bathroom, grinned and patted their hands on their legs.

Ginger, Gift, and Justin were all hoping and dreaming that the prize was theirs to keep. All three had gleaming silver braces reflecting in the light as they smiled, knowing that the million dollar starfish aquarium could be theirs.

Cabbage Patch gasped as she looked at the computer. She pointed to her husband and all the Nando's employees gathered around as well. They all had looks of shock on their faces as they staggered backwards.

“It appears we have a three-way-tie!” Mr. Potato Head stammered and the competitors gasped.

“What will you do?” shouted a man.

“Yeah, what's the tie-breaker?” bellowed another.

The crowd murmured in agreement all looking at Potato and Cabbage with almost accusing eyes.

“Oh, hold your horses (i),” Potato started, “don't get too riled up, it'll be fine. We'll find some way to settle this, but first we'll announce the winners!”

“It looks like there are three kids in the tie,” Cabbage said and all the kids looked at each other expectantly. “The names are..... Gift Wrap-”

Gift gave a mighty hoot and grinned even bigger, she would get the aquarium no matter what it took, at home, she was never refused anything and refusal wasn't about to happen now.

“Ginger Snap-” Cabbage continued.

Ginger gave a fist pump and was left hanging when she tried to give Gift a high five as Gift scowled at her. Justin crossed his fingers.

“And the final name is.... Justin Time! They all ate 9.3 pounds of gummy starfishes. Congratulations and we'll work something out for the tie.”

“They must've eaten millions (h)...” murmured the crowd.

Justin impulsively hugged Ginger and they both lunged forward to include Gift in the group “congrats” hug. Gift leapt away with a disgusted look on her face then scowled.

Gift turned around to see her prize and let out a piercing scream which drew attention to the fact that the million dollar aquarium was gone!

Pandemonium set in and those people who hadn't left when their names were not called gasped and panicked. Mr. Potato Head and Ms. Cabbage Patch made their way through the crowds to the plastic gold pedestal where the aquarium had been sitting only thirty five minutes earlier.

They inspected the area and discovered one thing and one thing alone. Laying on the floor right next to the pedestal was a single piece of paper that had written in a messy scrawl what appeared to be an address on it.

“I bet that's the address of the thief!” Mr. Potato Head exclaimed.

Ginger and Justin approached them and declared, “Since the prize is technically ours, and you don't have a tie breaker, we want to propose an idea that will serve as a tie breaker, and an adventure. Plus it'll solve you the problem of going to get it yourselves.”

“Ok, what is it? Keep talking then!” Cabbage said, eagerly.

“Well, we want to go to the address ourselves and recover the stolen object! We promise we'll be careful, and look after each other. While we're there, we can talk to each other and determine how and if we need a tiebreaker. Or if we decide not to have one, we'll figure out for ourselves which one of us is most deserving!”

“That sounds like a great idea! Perfectly reasonable too, with you kids going to get it, we won't have to worry about liability claims if you're not on our property!” Potato said to himself.

He called Gift over, “Gift, darling, would you like to go with them too?”

“Oh, fine. If I have to,” said Gift who was obviously eavesdropping. “But if I get my new outfit dirty in any part of this, you owe me a new one.”

“Fine, fine. Now talk to each other about your strategy, tell your mum's, and be off! Oh, and don't forget to take a trip to the bathroom before you leave. Bye, now!”

The three left Nando's and stood together for a chat.

“Well, let's just take the bus and meet outside the house or whatever it is at 12:00 PM.”

“I'm not taking any bus that you peasants take, I will have my chauffeur drive me in my private limo. You two can get your own way.” Gift snapped as she pulled out her cellphone, turned around, and walked away with her cellphone pressed to her ear, talking to her mum.

“You wanna take the bus over with me?” Ginger asked Justin.

“Well, I should go home and tell my mom, but I don't have a cellphone. So I'll quick run home then I'll take the bus to the address and meet you there. Yeah?”

“Sure, but you can't be late. We don't have much time and something tells me that Gift will have a cow (I) if we have to stand around too long.

“I won't try to be late, I promise.” the two kids waved goodbye and Ginger set off for the bus while Justin headed home.

At about 11:55 AM, Ginger arrived at a big warehouse. She checked her slip of paper, and sure enough, it was the right address. She spotted Gift waiting by the giant front gate tapping her foot impatiently.

“Well, it took you long enough! Where is that boy anyway?”

“He's coming, he had to run home and tell his mom because you didn't stick around long enough to let him borrow your phone.”

“So it's my fault then?” Gift snapped.

While the two girls were arguing, they didn't know that they were being watched. From a curtained window, a face was spying on them, telling his minions to go and get them and throw them into the human sized cage made out of ginger bread.

“Where is Justin?” Both girls were facing the street, away from the warehouse so they could watch for the bus that hopefully contained Justin.

All of the sudden, Gift and Ginger screamed muffled screams as they were dragged away by Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon's minions and thrown into a cage made of ginger bread.

“Ah! I'm allergic to ginger bread!” Ginger squealed.

“Your name is Ginger Bread....” she said, but after she saw the look of horror on Ginger's face, she added, “Don't you have any allergy meds?”

“Well, yes I have my EpiPen, but needles are terrifying! Can I borrow your sweatshirt to sit on so none of my skin touches the ginger bread?”

Gift hesitated. She hated giving anything to people. If somebody didn't have something, it wasn't her fault. “No, just stand up. I don't want it to get dirty,” Gift sat down.

Ginger pleaded one more time with no prevail.

Meanwhile, it was 12:01 PM and Justin still hadn't made it to the warehouse. He was still at his house searching for his bus pass, actually.

“Come on, it's gotta be around here somewhere,” he muttered to himself.

“Looking for this?” his mother said, peaking her head in the door and holding Justin's bus pass.

“Yeah! Where was it?” Just asked.

“On the kitchen table. It always happens that whenever I look for something, it shows up. Maybe if you put your things in the right place right away, you would be able to find them quicker!”

“Yes, mom,” Justin said and he left in search of the nearest bus.

Justin was late. Again. Little did he know, that the girls really needed his help! When Justin arrived at the warehouse, he scanned the street, but finding no one, after a while, he decided to go in by himself.

The moment his hand touched the gate, silent alarms started going off inside Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon's security office. He immediately sent out another one of his minions to get Justin.

Once Justin was securely locked in the ginger bread cage with Ginger and Gift, de Spoon sent every single one of his minions off to the store to get something for the starfishes in his new aquarium to eat that night.

“I will deal with you in a few hours,” de Spoon told the kids.

“Never!” Justin screamed, outraged.

As soon as Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon left the room, Gift started whining again and Ginger told Justin about how she was allergic to gingerbread. Justin didn't have a sweatshirt she could sit on either, but he said if he did, he would gladly give loan to her.

“Well,” Gift interrupted, “how are you two planning on getting us out of here! You got us into this mess into the first place.”

“We did? We did?” Justin exploded.

“Guys, please don't fight, that's not going to help anyone! But look at my face!” Ginger said.

They turned to look at her face and noticed that it was getting red and puffy because of an allergic reaction.

“Gift! Give her your sweatshirt! If we're going to get out of here, we need to work together. First of all we have to figure out how to get out of this cage!”

Gift hesitated, then apprehensively handed her designer sweatshirt over.

“So--” Justin started.

“We need to break the ginger bread! It's still warm from the oven, so we can make a hole to climb out of!” Gift interrupted.

She was almost starting to warm up to these two other losers, especially Justin. He was pretty good looking after all!

“Great idea, Gift!” Justin said, “But first, we have to freeze the security tapes so the security will still see us in there and won't know we're escaping.”

“Ok,” Gift said and she took a pencil out of her pocket and threw it at the pause button on the camera in the room. “Why do they even include those anyway?”

“But will that stop all the cameras?”

“Yes, it should. I took a class on it this summer,” Gift said. “Ok, start tearing!”

As Justin tore a chuck out of the cage and dropped it inside, starting to tear off another, the piece on the ground started smoking and burst into flames! Ginger hit the flames with the sweatshirt almost extinguishing them, but they still would not go out. They were like trick candles! It was going to burn them all alive!

Ginger, sure that she was going to die anyway from all this ginger bread around them, picked up the flaming piece of ginger bread and popped it in her mouth.

“GINGER! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” Justin screamed, “YOU'RE GOING TO KILL YOURSELF!”

But the most peculiar thing happened. The second it entered her mouth, it stopped flaming and Ginger was able to swallow it, just fine. The only problem was, she was allergic to ginger bread, and that could prove fatal as well.

“Quick guys, we need to eat as much as we can. As soon as I pass out, stab me with this,” Ginger handed the EpiPen to Justin, “and hopefully I'll be ok.”

Gift and Justin could tell that it was a hard thing for Ginger to do as she made it clear that she was terrified of needles. Gift gave her a slight reassuring smile.

They all stuffed their faces full of ginger bread, and a whole started to appear, almost big enough to climb out of. Ginger was getting wheezy, and her face was getting huge from the swelling.

Finally, they could climb out. Gift when through first and then pulled Ginger through, as soon as she got out, sunk to the floor, unconscious. Justin came through last.

“Let's get her to a safe place to wake up,” Justin said. “Then we can plot how to get the million dollar starfish aquarium and our escape.

They dragged Ginger over to a large closet and set her up. Then they got in the closet themselves and started planning.

“Well, first we have to get the security out of their office and keep them out of the picture. Got any ideas?”

“Well,” Gift said, “since we know that the gingerbread cage bursts into flames if we drop pieces on the floor, I could take some of that and put into any room. Once the security notice the flames, they'll go running and once they're in the room, I can lock them in.”

“Brilliant!” Justin said and Gift beamed. “Then I can occupy the security office and watch all the cameras. I'm sure there are communication headsets in there, and I can let you know where the danger is using those.”

“By then, Ginger should be ok and we could sneak back down and tie up Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon while you're in the security office. Then once he's out of the picture, all we have to do is call my chauffeur to pick us and the million dollar starfish aquarium up.”

“Sounds great, let's go!” Justin agreed.

“But one thing!” Gift said, “If we're in danger, you have to be on time to save the day. You just have to!”

“I will. Promise,” Justin said and they both went of to their separate ways.

Gift quickly tore off a couple of pieces of the ginger bread cage, entered the room, turned that particular room's camera on, and threw the pieces on the ground. Thankfully they didn't start burning until she threw them into the room. Then she hid around the corner and waited for the security to go into the room.

Meanwhile, Justin went upstairs towards the security room, making sure that he was out of sight at all times. He saw the security rush out so he entered their office, locking himself in just in case one of them decided to come back for some odd reason.

Gift locked the security dudes in then ran up to Justin to get two headsets for both her and Ginger. Gift also gave Justin a quick run through about how to turn all the cameras back on so he could monitor everywhere for danger.

Gift rushed downstairs and let Ginger, who was obviously back to consciousness because she was banging on the door and yelling, out of the closet and handed her the headset. She also explained the plan.

“Let's go get de Spoon!” Ginger exclaimed!

The pair hurried off to the office that said “Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon's Office” and Ginger kicked the door in.

After they tied de Spoon up with little trouble, they pulled him out and put him in a second ginger bread cage next to the first one they were in.

While Ginger used the headset to tell Justin to come down, Gift fumbled for her phone and called the chauffeur to come pick them up.

Little did they know, while their backs were turned, de Spoon easily escaped and was heading over to grab them. He grabbed Ginger by the wrist and Gift by the hair and pulled them over, ready to lock them into the closet.

“JUSTIN! JUSTIN!” Ginger screamed into her headset, “Come down, now!”

Meanwhile, Justin was making his way down when he took a wrong turn and stumbled upon a room full of candy and junk food. Gummy starfishes were his favourite food and there was stacks upon stacks of gummy starfishes piled up there. He knew he needed to go down and help the girls but one package of gummy starfish wouldn't hurt would it?

But then he remembered what Gift said earlier: If we're in danger, you have to be on time to save the day. You just have to!

So he overcame the odds and scampered downstairs without the gummy starfish.

“STOP RIGHT THERE MONSIEUR BIGBAD DE SPOON!”

de Spoon turned around to face Justin. Justin charged toward him knocking him to the ground and freeing the girls.

“Ha, gotcha!” Justin said.

At that moment, the big bad Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon started crying! Crying! Gift Wrap, Ginger Bread, and Justin Time were very confused.

“What's wrong?” Ginger said.

“It's just that, it may seem like i'm a criminal,” Bigbad whimpered, “but really I'm a nice man. I'm just lonely! You see, I never did find myself a wife, and I've always been on my own. I just wanted the starfishes to keep me company! I just thought that maybe for a while, I wouldn't be so lonely.”

Gift and Justin rethought their reasons for wanting the million dollar starfish aquarium. “If we'd known that, we would have given it to you! You only had to ask!”

“What?” Gift exclaimed. “Given it to him? Are you crazy? That aquarium is going to me. No one else but me. I'm gonna put in in my room right next to my giant ant farm!”

“Gift! You have plenty of things! This man needs it more than any of us do! I was going to give it to my sister, Cinnamon, but he needs it more than she does.” Ginger tried to reason.

“And I only wanted it because I thought it was cool. Well, it's not that cool really, the starfish aren't even green, they're pink instead.” Justin reasoned more.

Gift saw her visions for the perfect room flash before her eyes, but eventually exhaled and said, “Ok, fine. I hate giving things to people, but whatever. I'll just get my granddad to buy me the mini lion exhibit instead.”

“What a sacrifice,” Justin whispered under his breath and Ginger snickered.

“Thank you so much, kids!” de Spoon said, beaming.

“You're welcome Mr. Spoon,” they chanted, two of them more happily than the other.

Gift's chauffeur picked them up outside of Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon's warehouse and they all went back to Nandos to tell Mr. Potato Head and Cabbage Patch what they had done.

Mr. Potato Head and Cabbage Patch were so amazed, that they called the mayor, Sugar Cookie, and all three kids got one million dollars and an award, and they all lived happily ever after. Gift had learned to give, even if it was begrudgingly, Justin learned to be on time, Ginger finally got over her fear of needles, and Monsieur Bigbad de Spoon was never lonely again. What could be better?