Cricket is in Thelma’s Cash ’n’ Carry with her Aunt Belinda and cousins. She is thinking about her parents: her father, who is dead, and her mother, who is gone. Aunt Belinda is in a hurry to get everything she needs to prepare for the February Firehouse Jubilee Fish Fry. She gets a phone call, but when Cricket asks who it was, she dodges the question.

Cricket finds a cricket bug in the store. She tries to release it outside, but one of her cousins blocks her; it seems like he wants to kill the cricket. Cricket goes to the bathroom to try and let the cricket out a window. While she tries to get the energetic cricket out the window, she decides to name it Charlene, which is her mother’s middle name. After a struggle in which she fails to release Charlene outside, she returns to the store. She finds the store empty and dark. Cricket has been left behind.

Aunt Belinda’s car is gone. Cricket finds a note on the ground that Aunt Belinda wrote while she was on the phone. It says “GAG–Wed. 3:30, Cricket pack” (22). GAG is a nickname for Cricket’s relative, Great-Aunt Genevieve, whom Cricket dislikes.