The Ragged Suitcase

Ages 8-12--Cricket Kelly raced to the mailbox at One Pennywhistle Lane trying to beat her old record of thirty-two seconds from her porch to the street and back. “Ten, eleven, twelve,” she counted under her breath as she ran. “I think I can make it.” She pulled the mail from the mailbox, and then stopped the race.
Cricket came across a letter addressed to her. What’s this? she wondered scrunching her face curiously and fanning herself with a stack of grocery sale ads. She placed the pink envelope on the top of the stack and examined it carefully. Expertly drawn on the back of the letter was a sketch of a map. Like a treasure map, a red “X” marked the spot where she lived and a blue circle identified the location of her school. Someone had drawn the courthouse in the center of town and had sketched a diamond shape for the baseball field in the right-hand corner where the ball park would be. Intrigued, Cricket suddenly realized that she didn’t know anyone who would send her a letter. Everyone she knew either called, texted, or emailed her on the computer. No one sent letters, anymore. No one, that is, except for someone.
She searched for a return address on the envelope, but there was none. Sure enough, however—she checked it again to make sure—the letter was addressed to her and her alone, Miss Cricket M. Kelly who lived at One Pennywhistle Lane, up the stairs and down the hallway in the big white house on the corner.
Cricket Kelly was eleven years old, soon to be twelve. She was a tall girl for her age, with shoulder-length brown hair and blue eyes that stayed mostly hidden behind her wire-rimmed glasses. She was a sixth grade student at Hazel Hollow Middle School and was among the smartest in her class. Cricket had the ability to look at something once and remember it forever, which certainly came in handy on quizzes and tests at school. Her best friend Lucy was also intelligent, but it was hard to beat Cricket who was good at just about everything she tried—from social studies and drawing to playing volleyball on the school team. Overall, Cricket lived a very happy life in Hazel Hollow. Before this evening, however—as the sun set in the sky and melted into the sidewalk like an orange Popsicle—nothing had ever happened in all her eleven years that would compare the events that were about to unfold.
Cricket considered how nothing exciting usually happens in Hazel Hollow unless you count the truly odd events. There was the time when Old Man Simpson got arrested for haunting his own house, or the time when Turner McQueen won a blue ribbon in the county fair for growing a twenty-two pound potato. Once, a fierce wind swept a traveling carnival ride called The Flying Admiral up in the air and onto the high school football field the night before the big game. Sometimes, exciting things did happen in Hazel Hollow, Cricket reconsidered, but mostly these things never happened to her.
Just the day before, Cricket sat on her front porch after school feeling bored and sorry for herself. Then, only one day later, she received in the mail a mysterious letter from an unknown sender with an oddly-drawn map on the back and a postmark too faint to read. Strangely, she felt like she was The Flying Admiral being swept away by whatever the envelope contained. Excited, Cricket spun around on one heel and ran back toward the house past the tire swing that hung from an old oak tree.