Amelia's Road

Amelia hates all roads and all maps. Her family moves frequently to pick the crops and she has always hated the time when her father takes out the road maps. This time she particularly hates to move because she has been going to a school where, for the first time, the teacher has bothered to learn her name.

She has drawn a picture there of her dream (a white house with a pretty yard) and the teacher has placed a star on it. One day, after working in the fields, Amelia comes upon an abandoned road that twists along beside the fields and into the woods. Here is a road she can love. In a metal box, she places the paper with the star and some other trinkets she has found. She buries the box beside the road. Now she has someplace to come back to. For the first time she doesn't cry when her father gets out the road map