Short Story written by: Sharon Krager

Click here to read The firefly jar (First part)

….A couple of days went by and we saw those two boys again at the park. We both asked where our jar was. They denied having it at all and said we must have lost it ourselves. We told them that they needed to bring it back and they ignored us.

“You bring that jar back to us.” Katie yelled. There was no reply.

Katie and I had a plan to sneak over to both of their houses after dark to look around. We were sure that one of them had it in their shed or on one of their back porches. When we got to the first house, we looked inside their back yard building. It just happened to be open and that was our time to go in and look around. There was no jar in that old building. We looked around in the bushes and on the back step. Still there was no firefly jar.We stepped through a small patch of woods to get to the second boys house. He had a back porch, but we didn’t want to get into trouble, so we very quietly looked through the screen door. No jar was found. We started back through the woods and because the moon was full, we saw something shiny sitting at the base of one of the big trees. As we got closer, we could see that it was our firefly jar. There it was and still in good shape. We scooped it up and ran the rest of the way home.

Katie asked me to take it home and so that’s what I did. She said, “Don’t bring the jar out if those boys are around.”

“I won’t.” I yelled as I ran on home. “I will keep it safe, I promise.”

It was a few of days before we got back together. I had taken the jar to my room to hide it where no one would find it.

Then one evening I brought it out, went over to Katie’s Grandma’s back yard to play again. No one else was around, so we caught our fireflies and had a great time. Just before we were getting ready to let them go, both boys came running around the house and grabbed it from Katie. She screamed and her Grandma came out to see what was wrong.

“What is going on out here?” Grandma asked

“Those two boys grabbed our firefly jar and ran away with it,” cried Katie.

Grandma yelled at them to bring it back, but they kept on going.

“Well,” Grandma sighed. “ I Don’t want you to worry. I will make you the most beautiful firefly jar that you have ever seen.”

The very next day, Grandma met us in the back yard with a brand new jar. This jar was clear with flower decals all over it. Around the top it had a pink plaid cloth tied with a big pink ribbon. The cloth had holes in it so that our fire flies could have air. She was right. It was the most beautiful jar I had ever seen. Katie and I thanked her and went on about our business.

“There you go.” Grandma said. “Those boys would not want to get caught with a jar that has flowers all over it and a big pink ribbon on it, I guarantee.”

She was absolutely right. The next time we saw those boys, they joked about having taken our other jar. We let them know right away that we had a new one. When they looked at our new jar they just made a funny face and walked away.

“That’s alright, you can keep that one.” One of the boys said. “It’s too girly for us.”

“Yea,” said the other one. “I don’t want to be seen with that jar.”

We both smiled and went on with our catching fireflies with that brand new beautiful jar.

THE END