“Hey, you got some mail,” said Yvette.

She walked into the kitchen where her friends and her brother were sitting around.

She tossed the mail on the table in front of her brother, Davy.

“Who's it from?” asked Pat.

Davy looked at the postcard. “They didn't say, but they mailed it from Vermont.”

Joshua puzzled over this. He was a little confused. “Why would you get a postcard from someone from Vermont? It’s anonymous—they didn’t even sign their name.”

“I got a rubber stamp with my name and address,” explained Davy. “I've been stamping all my paper money with it.”

“Why did you do that?” asked Karen.

“So whoever ends up with that money will be able to buy a postcard and send it to me.”

Karen considered it. “That's really smart. Really clever!”

“Stupidly clever,” added Yvette. She sat at the table with everyone. “Where do you come up with these dumb ideas?”

“You're just jealous because you didn't think of it first,” said Davy with a snort.

“How many have you received?” asked Joshua.

“Just a couple. People don’t like spending money these days,” Davy sighed.

“What about the letter you mailed me?” asked Joshua. “That was done on the cheap. You didn’t spend any money on it.”

“That was an experiment,” Davy said mysteriously.

Now everyone was curious.

“What kind of experiment?” asked Pat.

Davy wiggled his eyebrows.

Joshua just laughed. “He put my address in the corner. That’s where the return address goes. That way, if anything goes wrong, it can be mailed back to the person who sent it!

"He put his address on the front. That’s the address where mail should be delivered. He didn’t put a stamp on it at all.

"Then sent it, without postage. He wanted to see if it would get to me. Kinda like it was returned to me.”

Everyone rolled their eyes and laughed. Davy's experiment wasn't mysterious at all.

“Is that like the package you mailed to Omar?” asked Pat.

“You actually mailed something to Omar?” asked Karen. “What did you send him?”

“An empty box, but without enough postage,” replied Davy as he got up. “And speaking of boxes, I have a brand new box of Sooper Goop I haven’t opened!”

“I still can't believe you eat that crap,” grumbled Yvette.

She thought the cereal was horrible.

“Hey, it's part of a nutritionally balanced breakfast!” exclaimed Davy.

He pulled the box of cereal out of the cupboard.

Yvette rolled her eyes. Nothing they could add to the cereal would make it healthy or nutritious.

Pat giggled and shook her head. “That's a kids’ cereal. Why do you still buy that stuff?” she asked.

“I'm saving the box tops for a free Sooper Goop t-shirt,” explained Davy.

He set the box on the table.

“Besides, I want their latest prize,” he added.

Joshua looked at the box. “A free Rodney the Cat glow-in-the-dark figure?”

Karen read the other side of the box. “Wow, you have to send in fifty-two boxtops for the shirt,” she said. “If you eat one box a week, it will take you a year to collect enough box tops.”

Davy sat down with a large mixing bowl.

“Yeah, but the prize is worth it. The shirts come in five different colors; I'm hoping to be the first on my block to collect all five.”

“But you live on a dead end road. There’s no one else on your block,” noted Joshua.

“That's beside the point,” said Davy.

He opened the box and poured cereal into the bowl. It spilled across the table.

“It's in here somewhere,” he said to himself. He dug through the cereal.

After a long moment, he yelled, “Hey, it's not in here!”

Joshua looked in the bowl. “What?”

“There's no prize in the box!” Davy yelled frantically, obviously upset.