I like it Paul. My 12 year old daughter wrote this last week for school if anyone is interested. It has appropriate ending if you can take the time to read it all.
Merry Christmas everyone.
Kevin g
The Mystery of the Stolen Christmas Presents
by Rachel
CHAPTER 1 My Blurry Dream
Hi, I’m Jessica Gilmore. Most people call me “ Jess” because it’s shorter and easier to say. I’m from Atlanta, Georgia. I’m nine years old.
It was Christmas Eve and we were all on the couch next to the Christmas tree. My mother, father, brother “ Josh”, and I were singing songs about the baby Jesus. We read Christmas cards and were having one of the best Christmas’ ever. My family and I decided we weren’t going to open our presents until Christmas day, but I was dying to get a peak at, at least, one present.
“No! I told you already, Jess. We’re not going to open the presents until tomorrow.”, my mother said.
“But Mom, it won’t kill you if I opened just one gift, would it? Josh could open one too if he wants. Just one present, pleeeease?”
“ The answer is, no. End of discussion.” Mom said firmly.
Ugh! My mother could be as stubborn as a donkey sometimes.
While my family finished dinner, I was getting ready for bed just so I could get up extra early. As I got ready for bed, I thought about what could be under the Christmas tree. Maybe there were CD’s, or clothes, or even a motorized scooter. I couldn’t wait!
That night I had a dream. I saw a person. I couldn’t catch what he looked like, but I knew where he was. He was by the old library next to the coffee shop on Sunny Street. No one really goes there anymore. It’s pretty much deserted. The library burned down and the coffee shop ran out of business. In my dream though, it was a busy street and the library looked new. The coffee shop was serving coffee. Why would I have a dream of this place? The guy’s face in my dream was very blurry but he looked familiar. I knew I had seen him somewhere before. He seemed quiet and calm, just someone passing by on the sidewalk minding his own business. Suddenly I woke up.
CHAPTER 2 The Christmas Tag
“Mom! Dad! Josh! Get up! It’s time to open the presents!”, I screamed. As quick as lightning, I ran down the stairs to the family room where our Christmas tree was. When I got down the stairs, my heart froze and my mouth dropped open. Josh, Mom, and Dad walked down the stairs. Their eyes were still half closed.
“Is it just me, or is it chilly in here?”, Dad asked.
I yelled at the top of my lungs, “The presents! Where are all the presents? They were all here yesterday. Is this some kind of a joke? If it is, it isn’t funny at all!”
My whole family was wide awake now. They all were speechless.
“Honey, I have no idea what happened to the gifts. Your father and I didn’t do anything with them.”, my mother said.
“ Look.”, Josh said as he pointed to the big window in the kitchen.
I looked at the window and gasped in fear. The window had been smashed into a million pieces. The cold breeze was coming in from the winter chill outside.
“We’ve been…been robbed!”, Dad exclaimed.
The window was at ground level so it would be an easy place to break into, I thought.
“Dad, we’ve got to do something!”, said Josh.
“There’s nothing we can do.”, Mom chimed in. “Our presents are gone. They could be a thousand miles away by now.”
“Well, I’m just not going to let some robber steal our presents!”, I exclaimed.
“Yeah, we can’t let them ruin our Christmas.”, Josh said.
“Mom, Can Josh and I look around town? You know, like detectives? For clues and stuff?”, I asked.
“Yeah Mom, it might cheer Jess and I up a little bit.”
“If it’s alright with your father, I suppose you can go out for a few hours.”, Mom said.
“Dad, can we please go?”, I asked.
“Well, ok, but only until 1:00.”, Dad said. “It’s Christmas Day and we need to spend time as a family.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll be home by then.”, Josh said.
Josh was 14 years old. He has always been a cool brother. Although sometimes he could act like a real jerk like a couple of weeks ago. He pushed me into a snow mound for no good reason just to show off to his friends. Since it was the holidays and we were out of school for 2weeks, he didn’t mind hangin’ out with me. Just as long as he didn’t see any of his friends he would be “my cool big brother”.
We got dressed and ate breakfast super quick. It was already 10:30 so we had to leave the house as soon as possible.
It was pretty quiet around town. It was Christmas so everyone was with their families. As we walked down the street, I told Josh about my strange dream and how I couldn’t understand why we were on Sunny Street. He thought it was strange too. All of a sudden, we saw Mr. Coup. Mr. Coup wasn’t married and didn’t have any children. He didn’t even have a family that I knew of.
“Hi, Mr. Coup.”, I said.
Mr. Coup looked at us.
“Uh, hey kids. What have you been doing lately?”
“We’ve been robbed!”, I exclaimed.
“Robbed, huh? Wow, did you call the police?”, Mr. Coup asked.
“Not yet,. Jess and I went out to see if we could catch the
“Well, good luck to you both and have a nice Christmas.” said Mr. Coup.
“You too!” , both Josh and I said at the same time. Then Mr. Coup left.
“He’s a nice man.”, I said.
Josh looked at me, “Yeah, but sometimes he gives me the creeps. Have you ever noticed that when you talk to him his eyes start to twitch?”
“You know, he looked a lot like the guy in my dream.”, I said. “Really, that’s strange.”
As Josh and I walked down Main Street, I saw a tag on the ground. I picked it up and it said, “To: Jessica From: Mom and Dad”.
“Josh, look what I found!”
“What is it?”
“It’s a tag that says ‘To: Jessica From: Mom and Dad’! It’s Mom’s handwriting too!”
“Wow, that must mean the robber went that way!”, Josh exclaimed pointing down
So we ran down Main Street and then realized we were at Sunny Street. I gulped. “Yikes! This is too weird for one day.”, I said.
Josh knew I hated scary movies and by the shakiness of my voice, he knew I wanted to go home.
“OK, we’ll go home.”, Josh said. “But we have to get to the bottom of this tomorrow.”
“OK”, I said.
Silently, we walked home.
CHAPTER 3 The Search Is On
When we got home, it was around 12:30. We saw the police parked outside our home. We knew Mom and Dad had called them to investigate.
“Oh, great, they’re going to be asking us thousands of questions. That’ll take us 2 and a half hours to answer them all.”, Josh exaggerated.
“Well, maybe since it’s Christmas, they’ll cut some slack on us.”, I said.
When we got in the house , we saw yellow “Caution” tape all over the big, broken kitchen window. Like Josh said, the police were all over my Mom and Dad asking them all kinds of questions.
“Where were you when the robbery took place? Have you done anything to anyone to make them want to break into your house? Was anything else taken besides presents?”, the police asked. They went on like this for an hour and finally Mom and Dad pushed them out the door.
For the first time today, we finally got some family time without anyone bugging us.
“What do you say we have a big Christmas dinner? We’ve got the turkey in the oven.”, Dad asked cheerfully.
“That sounds great! I’m starving!”, I said.
At the dinner table, we had mashed potatoes, turkey, stuffing, gravy, and asparagus. For dessert we had Christmas cookies Mom and I made special for today. As we ate, dad asked how our day went. We told him about Mr. Coup, the Christmas tag, my dream last night, and Sunny Street.
“Sounds like you two are getting along and you had a pretty good day.”, Mom said.
“It was alright.”, I said.
“Yeah, we’re going to go out tomorrow and look around some more.”, Josh said.
“Ok. I guess that’ll be ok.”, Mom said.
After dinner I was so stuffed, I knew if I ate another bite I’d explode. I sat in the family room next to the Christmas tree and thought about what happened today. I felt terrible. I got so caught up with the presents and everything that I totally forgot about Mom and Dad. Christmas is a big deal for them. They wanted to spend time with Josh and I but they never really got to. I was about to go up stairs and say sorry to them but I got so tired. I fell asleep on the couch.
I had the same dream again only this time I could see that the same man had dozens of Christmas presents in his hands. He looked like he was about to drop the gifts at any time but he didn’t. He was in a hurry and was bumping into people on the street which was very rude. Then Josh woke me up.
“C’mon! We need to get down to
I was still half asleep at the time and really didn’t feel like getting up. “Josh, let me sleep in for 20 more minutes.”, I said.
“No! We need to go now!”
“OK, Fine!”, I said irritated.
So I got dressed and we headed out the door. I stuffed a few granola bars in my pocket since I didn’t have time to eat breakfast. Before we headed downtown, we looked at the outside of the window. We saw high heeled foot prints that led in the direction we were going so we followed them. When we got to Main Street, it was a lot busier than yesterday. We were walking and we then saw Mrs. Abbe. Mrs. Abbe was very rich and fancy. She had a big fur coat on and wore high heeled shoes.
“Oh, Hello children. How nice to see you. How was your Christmas?”, she asked.
“We were robbed.”, I said.
“Quiet Jess. You don’t have to tell the whole world about our robbery.”, Josh seemed pretty angry.
“Oh, that’s too bad. Have you called the police?”
“Yeah, but they weren’t much help so we decided to look ourselves.”, Josh said.
“You children are always looking for adventure. Hope you find you robber.”, she said. She turned to leave.
“She seems suspicious.”, I said. “ Why would she want our presents though. She’s filthy rich.
“ Yeah, but still she could be the one.”, Josh said.
When we got to Sunny Street, my stomach felt empty. I wanted to go home but I knew I had to stay. Josh and I walked by the burned down library. The building was still standing but it was black from the fire. There were no windows. I got shivers up my spine walking by. Behind the building was a whole different story. We saw a homeless family sleeping. They looked so cold and helpless. I started to feel a lump in my throat and I remembered I had 3 granola bars in my pocket. I gently and quietly set the bars down next to them. I knew that when they woke up, they would enjoy them.
Then we looked in the coffee shop. I remember going in there with Mom when the coffee shop was still in business. She would always get coffee and I’d get hot chocolate. I wondered why it when out of business. Josh and I looked through the coffee shop window. It looked very bare compared to the last time I was here.
“Nothing’s here.”, Josh said.
“What should we do?”, I asked.
Like Mom said. There’s nothing we can do. I guess all we can do is go home.”, said Josh.
“OK”
I once again felt a lump in my throat. This year’s Christmas was ruined.
CHAPTER 4 My Last Dream
That night I had my last dream. This time the man was still on the same street. He still had dozens of presents in his arms and still had a mysterious, blurry, yet familiar, face. The man was walking to the coffee shop and again he was in a hurry. He looked around then took out a key that opened the coffee shop. Just as he went in, I woke up.
“Josh!”, I screamed. I ran into his room. “Get up! Get up!”, I yelled into his ear.
“What do you want!”, he said.
“I want to go back to the coffee shop one more time.”
“Why?”, he asked.
“Because I want to check something out.”, I said.
“But there was nothing there.”
“Just listen and trust me. Ok, Josh?”
“OK, fine.”
When we got down to
“Hmmmmm….”, I wondered.
Then I thought about my dream. I went to the back of the coffee shop. I then saw Mr. Coup and Mrs. Abbe.
“Josh, come back here.”, I whispered.
“I’m going to call the police.”, Josh said.
“OK”
Five minutes later we heard the police car sirens. The police kicked open the door and arrested Mr. Coup and Mrs. Abbe.
“So what made you take all our presents?”, I asked.
“Our lips are sealed.”, Mr. Coup said.
“C’mon. You’re going to jail anyways.”, Josh said.
“Fine. Every year Mrs. Abbe and I steal people’s Christmas presents and sell the to people around Georgia.”, Mr. Coup said.
“That’s how I got so rich!”, Mrs. Abbe said hesitantly. “We were selling the presents like hotcakes. It was a good business. So I went to your house, broke the window, and left without anyone knowing it was me.”
“So that’s who’s footprints it was.”, I exclaimed. “And that was Mr. Coup in my dream.”
“Yeah and we’re not sorry either.”, Mr. Coup said. “We would have stolen presents from other homes if we could have.”
By then I trailed off and wasn’t listening to Mr. Coup and Mrs. Abbe.
I ran over to the presents, the reason I ran all over town. I picked up one of the presents and started shaking it. Just as I was about to rip one open, I saw the homeless kids outside the window. I looked at the present and sighed. Then I grabbed a few more presents and ran out the door. I walked up to the homeless family and said. “ Here. You deserve these more than I do.”
The children smiled and opened up the presents.
“Thank you.”, the parents said.
“You’re welcome.”,
As I walked back to the coffee shop, I turned back to look at the happy family.
“Merry Christmas!”, I said.
CHAPTER 5 The Best Christmas Ever
Our Christmas went pretty well after all. My parents were really cool about giving away our Christmas gifts. They were actually really proud of me. They were so proud, they got me a puppy. I named him.
As for Josh, he’s till “my big co
