Stories and plots are fundamental elements of a novel and a short story. Because they are so fundamental, we tend to think little of them compared with other elements, such as characters and points of view. From a standpoint of teaching and learning materials, however, plots are not negligible at all. On the contrary they are effective in defamiliarizing forms and expressions to which they are related and giving us chances of learning a language. In this paper we examine how the plots function in two short stories and how they are treated in the adapted versions in high school English textbooks.