Chapter 1 : Information
Once there was a girl that was eight years old. Her name was Jordan. She liked to figure out mysteries. She had a brother. His name was Jacob. Jacob was three. She was related to Louis Armstrong, and she wanted to figure out how to get his horn because she listened to his music all the time. She knew where the horn was. It was in his museum. He got it from the Queen of England. Jordan lived in Queens and the museum in Queens.
The next day Jordan woke up and she went downstairs to have some breakfast. Her mother was there. Her brother Jacob was still sleeping. Jordan asked her mother if they could go to the museum.
“Sure but we have to wait until your brother wakes up,” said her mom.
Jordan said, “Okay.”
Then Jordan asked for some breakfast. Her mother said, “I’ll give you some breakfast.”
While Jordan was eating her breakfast, her brother woke up. When Jordan was done with her breakfast, her mom told her to get dressed so they could go to the museum. Jordan went upstairs. Her mom gave Jacob some breakfast. Jordan was dressed and came downstairs. She got her shoes on and her coat on. Jacob finished his breakfast and he was already dressed so he put on his shoes and coat. Her mother did the same thing. Then they went outside to the museum.
On the way, she felt nervous because she might get caught. When they got there, they went inside. They went to the part where the horn was. When Jordan got to the horn, she looked at how shiny it was. So did her brother and mother.
“Yes, now I can touch it and use it!” Then she started running towards the horn. And ran right into the plastic cage. Jordan said, “Darn it! It wasn’t as easy as it looks.”
Chapter 2: Getting In Trouble
Then her mother said, “Is that what you wanted to do?
Jordan said “Yes.”
Then her mother pulled Jordan out of the museum and onto the sidewalk. When they got back to the house, Jordan’s mother sent her to her room.
Jordan was walking to her room. Jacob was yelling and screaming. When Jordan went in her room, she turned on some music, but not any ordinary music. She turned on Louis Armstrong’s music. She heard the trumpet in the back that he was playing. She was thinking that she could be exactly like him. When her mom called her for lunch, she came down the stairs, and when she got to the dining room, she ate her lunch and ran outside to play. In the meanwhile, her mom started making one of her favorite dishes for dinner. It was also Louis Armstrong’s favorite dish, Jambalaya. Jacob was in his room playing on his iPad. When her brother was done playing his iPad, Jordan came into the house and into the dining room, and started eating.
“Wordan,” said Jacob, “I willed a wig in winecraft.” Which is “I killed a pig in Minecraft” in Jacob language.
“Great,” said Jordan, being sarcastic. “After all, that is the hardest thing to do in Minecraft,” being sarcastic again. While Jordan and Jacob were talking, her mom got Jacob some food, Jambalaya to be specific. When Jordan finished her food, she went upstairs and started reading. She was reading a series called Ellray Jakes.
Jacob was about to go upstairs. He said, “Wommy, W’m winished” ’which is “Mommy I’m finished” in Jacob language.
“Okay, you can go up now, Jacob. But just for a few minutes,” said his Mom.
Chapter 3: Planning Something
When Jordan woke up, again her brother was still sleeping.
Jordan began to blast Louis Armstrong music to wake up her brother from his sleep. Jacob started screaming, “Waaaah!” which is “Aaaah” in Jacob language.
She turned it right off so she wouldn’t get in trouble. She still really wanted the trumpet. So she started to save up money. She was trying to save up money for a jackhammer to break into the cage. She cleaned people’s cars. She set up something in front of her house. She got fifteen dollars! When she got the money, she hid it in her pocket and went to the store to look for a jackhammer to see how much it cost.
Jordan went to the hardware store on the corner of her street. She went in to ask the person at the counter where the jackhammers were. The man led her to the jackhammers. He went back to the counter to help other customers. She looked at each of the jackhammers one by one. Each one of them was over $200. She ran out of the store and went back to her house and asked her mom if she could buy a jackhammer for her.
Her mom said, “No way! I’m not buying you a jackhammer!”
Jordan went to her room to decide what she was going to do to get more money.
She decided that she has to make something.
Chapter 4: Spending More Money and Even More Money
She decided she was going to make a concert. But to make a concert she had to learn how to play an instrument.
She talked with her mom and her mom said, “You should play the cello.”
She remembered that things cost money. So she remembered that she would have to make money for a cello. She ran downstairs to ask her mom if she could buy the cello. She said she would. So her mom and her went to a music store and bought a cello.
She asked her mom if she could have cello lessons, but that would also cost money, too.
And her mom said, “Yes, but you can only have one more thing that you can ask me to buy for these next three months.”
Jordan’s mom found a great cello teacher named Eleanor. She would come to her house every Wednesday at 4:30. It was pretty easy until the harder songs came. She almost finished a book of songs that Eleanor suggested for her to do. She knew that she had to do something really famous. She decided that she had to do a Bach’s Minuet No.2 or Pachalbel’s Canon.
She was so excited to get the horn that she had to do the prettier one, and that was Pahalbel’s Canon. She told Eleanor that she wanted to practice that. Eleanor made sure that she was ready for it, but she was. She practiced every day for 30 minutes. She was pretty much ready, all she had to do was somehow make a stage. She decided she was going to make flyers and put them on every single tree that she could find in her neighborhood. Luckily, she had a copy machine, so she only had to make one.
The flyers said: “Come March 8th, 2015 to a concert in Central Park.” She was almost done, all she had to do was figure out how to make a stage. She asked her mom for the last thing she could buy for the three months which was materials to make a stage.
Her mom said that she would try to but asked, “What do you need it for?”
Jordan said that their school didn’t have a stage so they asked her if they could make one for the school. She didn’t want her mom to know she was trying to make money because she wanted to get a jackhammer so she could get the horn.
Her mom went out again for the last time for one month to buy lots of materials for the stage. Her mother bought steel, curtain, nails, lights, and all kind of things like that. When her mother and her got home, Jordan started building the stage in their basement which was humongous. When she was done all she had to do was find the space where she could do the concert in Central Park. But then she remembered that when you do something you have to pay for the space.
Then she realized that she couldn’t ask her mom to buy anything else. So she just waited a month until she could ask her mom to buy something. She asked her mom if she could buy a space in Central Park to do a concert just because she had been practicing the cello for so long. Then her mom bought a space in Central Park for her, but just a pretty small one. She asked her mom and brother and her dad who was in Pennsylvania to come help her bring the stage into Central Park to lift it in their truck. When they got to Central Park, they all helped to bring it to the space the Park gave them seats to put down.
People came when the hours passed by. Then at 7 o’clock the show started. Everybody had to pay $10 for the concert which meant she needed more than 20 people to come to the concert. Right before the show started, she counted how many people were there. She counted 20 people but she needed more than 20 people. She remembered that one of the Jackhammers cost $210. When the show was about to start she saw a face coming in. It looked familiar. It was Eleanor. She came to listen. Now she had enough money to buy a jackhammer, all she had to do was make it worth it. The concert went great, she missed a few notes but otherwise it was really good.
When she got home, her mother gave her all the money that she got. She was very proud of her. The next morning, she went to school. When she came home, she asked her mom if she could go to the hardware store. She bought a jackhammer. When she went home, her mother asked her what she was doing with the jackhammer. She said that her school needed it because they were trying to put an art studio in the school.
Then at night, when everybody was asleep, not close to the museum, she woke up, took the jackhammer, and tiptoed across the street. When she got there, fortunately the door wasn’t locked. She tiptoed in, wondering if anybody was in there. She could either go to jail or she could get what she wanted. She tiptoed to where the horn was. She looked right at it. She really, really, really wanted it. So she turned on the jackhammer and she started drilling in the plastic cage. People could hear her, but they were sleeping so they thought it was just construction. The cage was all drilled up so she could reach to get the horn.
She picked it up and quickly tiptoed back to her house, up the stairs, put the horn under the bed and tiptoed down the stairs into the basement and put the jackhammer down there quietly. She tiptoed back up the stairs into her room and went to sleep.
When she woke up, she left the horn under her bed and everything was normal. She went downstairs, ate breakfast, and went to school. Then, she came home. she looked under the bed. The horn was still there. She thought that she did the wrong thing. She felt kind of shy. She carefully took the horn, and decided to put it back where it came from. It wasn’t that easy. She had to pretend it was her own horn and she had to bring it back before anyone in the museum could see her.
Jordan left the house without anybody seeing her. In her head she thought she was one third of the way there. She looked in the Louis Armstrong Museum. She didn’t see anybody inside. She opened the door, tiptoed in, and then she turned around to make sure nobody was looking. But that made her look like she was taking it. A guard noticed her and started running after her. Jordan started running away from the guard. She ran towards her house. The guard followed her out of the museum. Then suddenly, when she was almost at her front door, the guard caught her. He called the police.
Jordan felt like she was going to get into humongous trouble. She was embarrassed and terrified of the trouble she was in. The police arrived. The police ask lots of questions. “Where do you live? How did you get inside? What’s your name?”
Jordan answered the questions with lots of “Umm’s”. When she told the police she lived there, they went to tell her mom.
But Jordan didn’t let them get to her house by being shy, admitting that she stole the horn but she was going to give it back, and saying “Umm, umm, please don’t, umm, tell, umm, my mom.”
They walked towards the guard that caught Jordan. They put him in jail for catching her for no apparent reason. The police put the horn back where it was.
Jordan went back home, which was three steps away and went to her room and went to sleep.