Like a Broken Doll Read online

  Like a

  BROKEN Doll

  A N N E S C H R A F F

  A Boy Called Twister

  The Fairest

  If You Really Loved Me

  Like a Broken Doll

  One of Us

  Outrunning the Darkness

  The Quality of Mercy

  Shadows of Guilt

  To Be a Man

  Wildflower

  © 2011 by Saddleback Educational Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-61651-005-3

  ISBN-10: 1-61651-005-6

  eBook: 978-1-60291-790-3

  15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5

  TABLE OF CONTENT

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  “My purse!” a girl standing in front of Harriet Tubman’s statue at Tubman High School screamed. “There’s a hundred dollars missing from my purse!”

  About a dozen kids were arriving for Monday’s classes when she began yelling. One of them was Jaris Spain. He knew the girl—Ryann Kern—but he didn’t know her well. She was in his American History I class. All he knew about her was that she was very smart, and she was a loner with one friend, Leticia Hicks.

  Now Leticia grabbed Ryann’s hand and cried, “Oh my gosh! Are you sure, Ryann? Are you sure it’s gone?”

  “It’s not here,” Ryann screamed. She dropped to her knees at the foot of the statue and dumped out the contents of her purse. Lipsticks, mirrors, papers, a driver’s license all flew out. She groped through the mess frantically, crying, “It’s not here! It’s gone! It was in my wallet. I put it in my wallet and now it’s gone!”

  Jaris drew closer. Some of his friends were near Ryann, looking at her sympathetically. Sereeta Prince was there. So were Alonee Lennox and Sami Archer.

  “Girl, could you have dropped it on the bus?” Sami asked. “If you did, they got a special number you can call. The bus driver hangs on to stuff like that.”

  “No!” Ryann cried. “I had it a few minutes ago. I leaned my purse against the base of the statue, and I turned my head to talk to somebody. Somebody must’ve reached in and grabbed the money.” Ryann began to glare at the girls closest to her. She took an especially hard look at Sereeta. “Did you see anybody near my purse?” Ryann asked her, “You were right here, Sereeta.”

  “No,” Sereeta responded, “I didn’t see anything.”

  “A hundred dollars!” Ryann moaned, beginning to cry. “Mom gave it to me this morning. I was going to go shopping at Lawson’s for my summer clothes. I was going to get all the cute tank tops and shorts on sale. I can’t believe somebody reached in my purse and stole my money!”

  “Nobody here would have done that,” Jaris said. He knew all the kids who were near enough to Ryann to have been able to reach her purse. “There’s gotta be some mistake.”

  “I’m going to report it to the office,” Ryann cried. “I’m going to let them know there’s a thief here who has my hundred dollars!”

  Jaris glanced at Sereeta. She looked very upset. She leaned close to Jaris and said, “She thinks I took it. I was the closest to the purse of anybody, and I think she suspects me! I feel so horrible.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jaris consoled her. “Everybody who knows you knows you wouldn’t do something like that.”

  Slowly, the students dispersed to their first classes. Even before this happened, Jaris had been worried about Sereeta. She was going through a lot lately. Her mother and stepfather had had their first child. They had been paying little attention to Sereeta in their excitement over the new baby. Sereeta felt lonely and abandoned. Now she seemed badly shaken.

  Jaris tried to remember all the students he saw near Ryann. Alonee and Sami were there, but he was willing to bet his life on their honesty. Jasmine, Marko Lane’s girlfriend, was there too. Marko lavished gifts on her, but she always wanted more. She was mean and sly. She might have ripped off the hundred dollars.

  Then there was another guy, new to Tubman High. Quincy Pierce seemed nice enough, but Jaris didn’t know him yet. Maybe his family was tight on money. Maybe he was hurting for cash. Could Ryann have been careless enough to leave her purse open when she put it down? Did Quincy—or someone else—see a hundred dollar bill sticking out of her wallet and just grab the bill on impulse?

  Jasmine was still hanging around the statue of Harriet Tubman after the others had left. “Too bad about Ryann losing her money like that, huh Jasmine?” Jaris asked.

  Jasmine shrugged. “Stupid chick,” she replied. “She stacks her purse against the statue and then looks the other way. She asked for it. She got what was coming to her. You gotta keep your purse with you all the time. Ryann, she thinks she’s so smart ’cause she gets As, but she’s got no common sense.”

  Jaris looked at Jasmine, hoping he could read some sign of guilt in her face, but she was cool. Even if she had taken the money, she’d never show any emotion. “Seems terrible we can’t even trust the kids we go to school with,” Jaris commented.

  “I’ll tell you who I don’t trust, boy. That girl you hang around with—Sereeta.” There was a sneer on Jasmine’s face. “She is one sick puppy.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Jaris snapped.

  “She always cryin’,” Jasmine complained. “What’s that about, huh? Maybe she got mental problems. You ever hear of people who steal ’cause they’re sick in the head?”

  “Sereeta is fine,” Jaris insisted. “She doesn’t have any mental problems.”

  “Well, all I know is,” Jasmine asserted, “nobody’s gonna take what’s in this girl’s purse. They even try, I’ll scratch them bloody.”

  As Jaris walked to his class, he wasn’t sure what to think. Jasmine’s father had a good job in banking. The family wasn’t hurting for money. Jasmine didn’t need to steal another girl’s hundred dollars unless she saw the chance and took it just for spite.

  Later in the school day, Quincy joined Jaris, Alonee, and Sami for lunch. Sereeta was usually there too, but she went home from school early. She said she wasn’t feeling well, and that worried Jaris even more. Maybe the accusation that she took the money had gotten to her, adding to the stresses she already had.

  “Too bad Ryann lost her hundred dollars,” Jaris said to Quincy, wondering how he’d react.

  “Yeah man,” Quincy responded, “if I lost a hundred dollars, my mom would freak big time. I’d be afraid to go home. Mom does housekeeping at the hospital, and she doesn’t make much money. My dad’s sick. So a hundred bucks is big stuff for us.”

  “It’s a tough break for Ryann,” Sami chimed in. “I feel for the girl.”

  “I just can’t imagine somebody being nervy enough to reach into some girl’s purse when she’s only a few feet away,” Alonee commented. “I mean, Ryann turns her back for a minute, and somebody darts over and grabs it? I gotta believe the money just fell out of her purse earlier, and she wants to believe it was stolen.”

  “You know what I heard that witch Leticia say?” Sami asked. “I heard her say she’s pretty sure Sereeta took the money. That burned me good. I go, ‘Where you get off accusing another girl you don’t even know, sister?’ And she goes, ‘She was right there, and I don’t like her anyway.’”

  Jaris was saddened to hear Sam
i say that. It added to his worries about Sereeta. He needed to talk to Ryann and Leticia and convince them that Sereeta was a good and honest person. If they really knew her, they would never call her a thief.

  After school that day, when Ryann and Leticia came walking toward the bus stop, Jaris stepped into their path. “Hi,” he said in a friendly voice. “The money turn up yet?”

  “Are you kidding?” Leticia snapped. “The dirty thief who took it is out spending it and having fun!”

  Ryann dabbed at her eyes as if she had been crying. “This is the meanest thing anybody ever did to me,” she moaned. “I had all my stuff picked out at Lawson’s. Now I got to ask my parents for another hundred dollars.”

  “Ryann,” Jaris told her, “I just want you to know that Sereeta didn’t take your money. I’ve known her all my life, and she’s a really honest person. She’d never steal from anybody.”

  Leticia was a tall, plain girl. She wore her hair severely pulled back. She looked like she didn’t trust many people, and she looked older than her age of sixteen. “She’s your girlfriend so you’d stick with her,” Leticia replied. “All I know is she was right there next to Ryann’s purse. When I looked at her, she had this guilty expression on her face. I’m pretty good at reading the looks on peoples’ faces.”

  Ryann took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes. “It’s just so m-mean to steal from somebody,” she sobbed.

  “If she’s your girlfriend,” Leticia said to Jaris, “tell her to give the money back.”

  “Look, she didn’t take it,” Jaris snapped.

  “The bus is coming,” Leticia said. “Come on, Ryann.”

  Jaris felt sick. Sereeta was one of the most beautiful girls at Tubman High School. She had glossy black curls, honeycolored skin, and sparkling eyes. A lot of girls at Tubman envied Sereeta because she was so beautiful. Boys looked at her when she passed by and the other girls noticed her. Jaris had loved Sereeta since they were both in middle school. It broke his heart to see her accused of stealing. But how could he prove she was innocent? Neither Ryann nor Leticia was very attractive, and it was easy for them to believe bad things about Sereeta.

  After the girls got on the bus, Jaris wanted to make sure Sereeta was all right and texted her: “R U OK.” He waited a while for her reply but none came. So he rode his motorcycle over to her house. When he rang the doorbell, Sereeta’s mother, Olivia, came. She was holding her newborn son, Jake. “Hi,” she said in a girlish voice. “Wassup?” She was in her midthirties, but she acted much younger.

  “Sereeta left school early. She said she wasn’t feeling well. I just wanted to make sure she was okay,” Jaris explained. “If she is, maybe I could say hi to her.”

  “I don’t think she came home,” Sereeta’s mother replied. “I haven’t seen her. She should be coming home soon I suppose.”

  “Uh, you mean she didn’t come home around one?” Jaris asked.

  The baby started to cry, and the woman jiggled him on her hip. “There, there, Jake. . . . No, I haven’t seen Sereeta all day. I don’t see much of her. She’s got a lot going on in her life. Clubs or something,” she said.

  “Well, when she gets home, will you ask her to call Jaris?” Jaris asked.

  “I will,” the woman said. “I think she’s doing a play at school or something.”

  “She was in a play quite a while ago,” Jaris replied. “But that’s over.”

  “Oh,” Olivia Manley said. “Then it couldn’t be that.”

  Back on the street, Jaris tried Sereeta’s cell phone again, but he was transferred to voice mail. It was getting late in the day, and he was getting more worried. Jaris headed home, but he kept calling Sereeta with no luck.

  When Jaris got home, he told his mother what had happened at school. “This girl kinda blamed Sereeta as if she stole her hundred dollars. I think it really got to Sereeta and she left school early, but I don’t know where she is.”

  Jaris’s mother frowned. “Did you call her mom?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I went over there,” Jaris answered, “but she didn’t seem to be worried or to know where Sereeta was.” Jaris tried calling Olivia Manley again. Surely Sereeta was home by now.

  The phone rang for a long time before a man answered. “Perry Manley here,” Sereeta’s stepfather announced.

  “Hi, I’m Jaris Spain, a friend of Sereeta’s. Is she home?” Jaris inquired.

  “Uh,” he hesitated. Jaris heard him yelling. “Is Sereeta home, Olivia?” Then he returned to the phone and told Jaris, “No, she’s not home.”

  “Do you know where she is?” Jaris asked impatiently. “What was wrong with these people?” he thought. It was getting dark.

  “She’s a teenager,” Manley laughed. “Who knows where they are most of the time?”

  “Yeah,” Jaris replied. “But it’s getting late, and she left school around one, and now it’s after six-thirty. Aren’t you guys a little worried?”

  “Oh, she’s probably hanging out with her friends,” Manley suggested in a casual voice. “She’s got a lot of friends. When she gets in, I’ll tell her you called. Who did you say you were again?”

  “Jaris Spain,” Jaris snapped, almost hanging up the receiver in the man’s ear.

  Jaris’s little sister, Chelsea, came to the doorway of his room. She was fourteen years old. “Wassup?” she asked.

  “I’m worried about Sereeta, chili pepper,” Jaris explained. “Some creeps at school accused her of stealing some money, and it really freaked her out. She felt so bad she left school early, and now I don’t know where she is.”

  Chelsea flopped down on a chair in Jaris’s room. “One time in sixth grade,” she told Jaris, “some dumb girl said I stole her necklace. It was just a cheap thing, but she thought it was great. She accused me of stealing it. She told everybody I stole it, and I didn’t. Then she found it in the bathroom where it fell behind the toilet.”

  Jaris agreed with his little sister. “I think maybe this girl at school just lost her hundred dollars too, and she thinks somebody stole it. But Sereeta was so upset she just took off.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where she is.”

  “I’ve seen her sitting on those old stones in the field sometimes,” Chelsea offered.

  “What?” Jaris asked, jerking to attention. “What are you talking about?”

  Chelsea shrugged. “Me and my friends were riding bikes,” Chelsea explained, “and we saw her sitting there one time. You know the little pizza place over behind Iroquois Street? Well, there’s a field about a block away where there’s a house that burned down. There’s pepper trees and the foundation of the old house that burned. Anyways, sometimes she sits there.”

  “Wow!” Jaris exclaimed.

  “We didn’t want to bother her because she was sorta crying,” Chelsea added.

  “Thanks, chili pepper,” Jaris said as he ran outside and jumped on his motorcycle. He was soon moving through the darkness to Iroquois Street. Before he got there, he again called Sereeta’s cell, but he got no answer.

  When Jaris got to the place Chelsea described, he saw Sereeta sitting on part of the stone foundation.

  “Sereeta!” he shouted as he rode up. He stopped the motorcycle and got off. “What’re you doing here? It’s past seven o’clock.”

  “Oh Jaris, I just came here to think,” Sereeta answered. “I was thinking about stuff, and I sort of leaned on one of the stones and fell asleep.”

  “I tried a million times to call you on your cell, Sereeta,” Jaris told her. “I was really worried.”

  “I’m sorry I worried you, Jaris,” she said.

  “Sereeta, you need to go home now,” Jaris insisted.

  “Are they worried about me? My mother and my stepfather?” she asked with a half smile on her lips. There was a deep bitterness in her eyes.

  Jaris wondered if she did this to try to alarm her mother, to arouse some stirring of motherly instinct. If Sereeta hoped for such a reaction, she didn’t get it.


  “Climb on behind me, Sereeta,” Jaris told her, mounting the motorcycle. “I’ll have you home in no time.”

  As they pulled out and onto the street, Sereeta held on tightly to Jaris. “I didn’t know you had a motorcycle, Jaris,” she shouted over the noise of the bike.

  “My dad just gave it to me. He fixed up an old one from the shop and asked me if I’d like it. I said, ‘Pop, are you kidding?’” Jaris explained.

  “Thanks for coming to get me, Jaris,” Sereeta said. “Did you hear any more about the stolen money?”

  “No, most of us think she just dropped it somewhere and thinks it was stolen,” Jaris replied. “She’ll find it on the floor of her room or somewhere.”

  After a few moments, Sereeta said, “They all died in that house, you know.”

  “What?” Jaris shouted back to her.

  “Where the foundation stones are,” Sereeta explained. “The people who lived there died in the fire. When the house burned down, you know. It’s so peaceful there. I can feel their spirits. I think they were suffering a lot before the fire for some reason. Then they left this earth and found peace. I think when you’re near the spirits of the dead who were happy to be leaving this earth, you can feel their serenity. It’s a good thing.”

  Jaris felt scared. He felt more scared than he had in a long time, or maybe ever.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jaris pulled into the driveway of the Manley house and shut off the motorcycle. Then he turned and took hold of Sereeta’s arm before she got off the bike. “Sereeta, don’t worry about that girl’s missing money. Don’t let it get to you. Anybody who knows you knows you wouldn’t take a dime that wasn’t yours.” He helped Sereeta off, and then he kissed her. “I love you babe,” he whispered to her. “I love you so much that it makes me freakin’ crazy when you’re hurting.”

  Just then, angry voices floated from the Manley house. Sereeta stiffened at the sound.