Menu

Menu
Prompts
Contests
Stories
Blog
Featured stories
Activity feed

Discover weekly, the best short stories

Looking for a steady supply of middle school short stories? Every week thousands of writers submit stories to our writing contest.

150+ Middle school Short Stories to read

Submitted by writers on Reedsy Prompts to our weekly writing contest. Keeping the attention of a middle schooler is hard. But our collection of gripping middle school short stories will do the trick!

Middle school Short Stories – Page 8 of 10

1898 at the Lighthouse - A Whale of a Secret

Submitted to Contest #234

The majestic whale who had seen many decades was floating with the swells near the lighthouse. She knew her time was nearing, when her essence would go on to another life. She began to instinctively look for a soft, sandy beach for her 40-foot-long body to rest. For many years the wise whale taught the younger whales and helped lead when they swam in the migrations up and down the Oregon coast. They liked to spend summers in the Arctic and go south to the warm, tropical waters off Mexico for winters. There they bore their cal...

7 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Darkness Before the Sunrise

Submitted to Contest #234

I’ve been best friends with three girls for five years. Up until September eighth of 2023, it was senior sunrise and I went with, my current friends, Noemi, Angela, Gabby, and Anabeth. At senior sunrise there was a reason why I went with my current friends. I went with them because my "best friends" Aliyah and Madylin told me the day before they weren’t going when I asked them through text message. My other best friend Melanie, told me she asked Aliyah if she was going to senior sunrise and she wasn’t. So I showed up to senior sunrise with m...

4 likes 1 comment 1
Read story

Evening Light

Submitted to Contest #232

The girl who holds the candle never showed up. Scarlet was supposed to be done at five. The manager promised her that by five o’clock, she’d be all set, because the girl who works the night shift never bails. That was three hours ago, and Scarlet’s arm is beginning to grow tired. She’s allowed to put the candle down, but only for a minute. Then, she has to pick it back up again, and somehow, after resting for a moment, it always feels heavier when she retrieves it. Short, sputtering breaths dribble out from the woman lying in bed. Scarle...

39 likes 25 comments 25
Read story

The Viper

Submitted to Contest #231

It was finally here, the day they’d all been waiting for: our eighth grade end-of-year field trip.  The sun was shining and the birds were singing, and the school bus was agog with excited chatter.  They were so excited.  I tried to be. I was dimly eager about our trip to Darien Lakes amusement park, simply because I’d never been to one, an amusement park, that is, but I was more focused on the water slides and bouncy houses and the ferris wheel, and the ring tosses and balloon popping ---I could win Sharon an enormous Panda...

7 likes 3 comments 3
Read story

Resolutions for a New Hare

Submitted to Contest #231

I’ve decided that I’m a little too competitive.In the new year, I’d like to be less competitive. I’d also like to win more races. Not because I’m going to be competitive, because I won’t be, or, at the very least, I’ll be less competitive, but ideally, I won’t be competitive at all, and so competitiveness will have nothing to do with the fact that I will absolutely dominate every race I enter.Less cutthroat enthusiasm, more trophies.More winning.And so I am resolved.I’d like to befriend more tortoises. I currently have no tortoise friends, a...

26 likes 22 comments 22
Read story

New Kid

Submitted to Contest #229

Cole entered the middle school for the first time. He was back. Excited kids ran about. You could tell the seventh graders from upper classmen. They weren’t seasoned. They didn’t belong. Cole knew about not belonging. His family always on the move, he was the perennial new kid. He’d been the new kid four out of his first six years in school. He would have called it migration, but birds returned to where they’d been. Until today. Now Cole was back, starting again where he’d once lived. He only needed to connect with old friends to feel like h...

8 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Mrs. Fezziwig

Submitted to Contest #229

Christmas is ruined. Ruined, once again. Last year it was the debacle with the nutmeg wine, and this year it’s the ghosts from the future showing up to terrorize everyone with some grumpy looking gentleman in old pajamas. Didn’t I tell you as soon as we saw that specter in the window that you needed to go outside and scare her off? Now, I don’t know how one goes about scaring a ghost, that is true, but we’re trying to have a party, and who feels like making merry when there’s demons floating about? I don’t care if she was a very pretty...

38 likes 24 comments 24
Read story

Mushrooms and Mice

Submitted to Contest #228

I am only little. The Wizard says that if I were good, I would be bigger, but because I am bad, I will be little forever. I cannot see what's on the table unless I stand on my tiptoes and stretch, but I must clear it anyway. I cannot add wood to the fire without being singed, but I must stoke it anyway. I cannot reach the windows without first putting a heavy box on a heavy chair, but I must wash them anyway. Sometimes, I talk to Mouser, the cat. Sometimes, Mouser talks back. Mouser says that the Wizard has the wrong word. Inste...

13 likes 6 comments 6
Read story

Twisted Reflections

Submitted to Contest #225

Eddie was sitting in his middle school's cafeteria, programming a website on the computer the school gave him for assignments. It was a Chromebook, but he had installed Linux on it, since it could do so much more than Chrome OS. He was coding a forum website for a video game he liked called Void of Souls. It was pretty obscure– so obscure that he couldn't find any online communities for it– so he had decided to make one himself."Hey, want to go to the carnival with us?" Eddie heard Connor say behind him. "It just came to town a few days ago....

9 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

Self(ie) Portrait

Submitted to Contest #225

For the third time, Reilly’s phone slipped off the table and hit the floor, with a dramatic thud that seemed to say “you failed!” once again. She sighed, picked up the phone, repositioned the selfie circle light attached to it, and checked the timer on the photo setting. Carefully this time, she leaned her phone at an angle she thought would make her face look skinny.  She swiped the mode to “Portrait” setting, and mentally prepared herself for her best smile in 3,2,1….. Finally! A picture she can work with. She had been setting up he...

15 likes 13 comments 13
Read story

The Earworm

Submitted to Contest #223

“My angriness from sixth grade will scar my memory for life and I will be ashamed of my sixth grade year forever.”    -The Night Stalker THE EARWORM               Benjamin could never discover what it was exactly that made him cease to be an ordinary student.  He knew that he was one once, as he and his classmates emerged from the long dark time of uncertainty that preceded his revelations. There wasn’t a single precocious learner am...

8 likes 2 comments 2
Read story

A Clash of Fangs: A Battle for Freedom

Submitted to Contest #222

A Clash of Fangs: A Battle for Freedom By Kearnon Henske      “Ahhhhhhh!” I screamed as I came upon what looked like an old, abandoned asylum. At first,it looked like a run-down and broken building, but when I looked closer, I saw a guard on duty. This guard was heavily armed and was keeping a close eye on the building. He stood motionless, staring at it very intently. I was with my friends, and when we saw this,  we immediately were freaked out. My friends started backing up, and I sensed the worry in their e...

7 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

Emma's Gift

Submitted to Contest #222

A good friend and colleague who knew I had several weeks of summer hiatus from teaching design at Claremont College, asked me if would volunteer to teach a summer school art class for high school freshmen. I agreed and this announcement was included in the Spring/Summer issue of the City Civic Arts Newsletter:   ’Scapes: Land and Sea. Learn to draw the world around us. For young artists interested in taking their drawing to a higher level. Explore a variety of subjects, developing an understanding of form, composition, line, ligh...

5 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

THE HEADMASTER

Submitted to Contest #221

When I think back on my childhood, there is one image that stands out in my mind. When I was in upper elementary school, our respected principal, we call him Headmaster, tried to teach us the ins and outs of English grammar. The teacher towered over the students, and his stern eyes seemed to reach right into their hearts. He was a powerful leader whom we all feared. In our childhood, he stood out from the rest of us because we believed he could think in English. We used the name of our respected headmaster a lot when we wrote Hindi compositi...

6 likes 0 comments 0
Read story

A Walk in the Hereafter

Submitted to Contest #221

“A Walk in the Hereafter” (A Ghost Story) It’s taking a lot longer than I thought it would. Of course, there’s no guidebook for dead people, at least as far as I know. After three months I’m still trying to get used to being dead. Even using that word is hard to adapt to. When death comes, people usually use terms like “He passed away” or “She’s in a better place”. It makes them feel better but the person is still dead and words can’t change that. I guess it’s just a way that people try to adjust to the whole situation. And one of the bigg...

7 likes 1 comment 1
Read story
RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. All for free.