Oh, this sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun!
I second gerry's suggestion of Maupassant's The Necklace. Fantastic story, although I found it misleading because after I read that first story (in French) I thought I could take on the rest of his work, so I chose a Maupassant short stories collection to study for my French oral exam and ended up feeling like I was in waaay over my head. But that could be because I was studying French. Still, while I adore Maupassant, I think that you'll have to carefully screen the stories because some might be hard for that age group to handle. But The Necklace is perfect.
My mum and I once had this looong conversation about our favourite short stories. One of mine definitely has to be Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter. It's a little morbid, so it veers away from his usual funny-ha-ha style, but it's amazing. I think it can be found in Roald Dahl's anthology Skin (which is full of other good stories) but I'm not too sure...
Another story I like is called The Epitaph, but I can't remember the author because I read that in a reading anthology in grade 8...
One of my mom's favourites is a well-known story called...gosh, I can't remember! Sorry about the vagueness!
But I think it's fairly famous. It's about this little girl who plays and talks to her doll - but you get to the end and discover that the girl is really a madwoman and her doll is actually her dead (stillborn?) baby.
Yikes, I hope I've helped more than I've complicated things! :p
Chriscy
