Jackson Heights Elementary School, Albany, GA

by the students at JHES, Albany, GA

To look at him, you would have never imagined that he had a doll.  The really mean, really tall boy did not look like the kind of kid who would ever even hold a doll, unless he was aggravating his sister,laying keep away, or threatening to run over the doll with his Big Wheel. But there he was, looking at and holding this blond haired, blue eyed, Barbie doll.  Jacob never talked about the doll, but if he had talked, he would have told you that the doll belonged to his sister and that she was away on a long trip.  He would tell you that the doll reminded him of his sister and that he carried it with him wherever he went.

Of course, you never SAW the doll.  He kept it in his book bag or in his gym bag, so only he could see it and know it was there. 

You can imagine how upset he was when he opened his book bag and discovered that the doll was missing!  There was a hole in the bottom of the bag!  His mom had told him not to drag his bag, but to carry it. 

"You're going to wear a hole in that bag, and all your stuff is going to fall out!"  She was half right.  There was a hole, but not ALL of his stuff fell out.  Only the doll.

The only other person who knew about the doll was Schaman, his best friend, who often pretended to be the world's greatest detective.  When she wasn't eating (she often told Jacob that eating was a way to "detect" whether or not something tasted good!) Schaman was always reading mystery stories and trying to solve the mysteries before the hero in the story could.  Since Schaman was the only one who knew about the doll, AND since she was the only detective he knew, he talked to her about the missing memento.

While Jacob and Schaman were making making posters to help find the missing doll (Schaman had agreed to say it was hers), a girl named Shakira, who was in the fourth grade, found a blond haired, blue eyed Barbie doll in the hall of the school, under the edge of a table the PTA had left out in the hall for selling Fall Festival tickets.

Shakira was a nice girl who loved dogs and had three dogs of her own.  She thought her dogs might like to play with the doll and put it in her back pack to take home. The doll would have been chewed to pieces by the dogs if Shakira had not seen one of the posters as she was getting on the bus to go home.  She brought the doll back to school the next day and returned it to Schaman, who gave it back to Jacob. 

Jacob decided to thank Shakira and tell her that the doll was his, and why he had it.  He and Schaman and Shakira became best friends, and while he still missed his sister, having good friends made it a little less painful.

The end.

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