By Katie Guyot
Cars rolled into the parking lot, students rolled into the lobby and bags rolled into the Holiday Inn President’s Room for the Flint Hills Publications Workshop on Sunday.
The Holiday Inn staff checked students’ bags -- some of which modestly carried a few T-shirts and shorts while others burst at the seams. Most of the bags arrived in students’ rooms without difficulty. Some suitcases, however, got lost on the way up.
“This was found in two girls’ room,” student assistant Kayela Richard said, referencing a suitcase sitting at her feet. “They came and told me that it wasn’t theirs.”
The wheeled bag was about as tall as a toddler with a checkered pattern of blue, yellow and beige. The fabric bulged around the zipper like a pregnant belly. It undoubtedly held items that would be sorely missed in a few hours, or even a few minutes.
Richard glanced around the Holiday Inn ballroom, where ravenous future journalists slurped spaghetti.
Does this bag belong to you, she asked in the microphone.
No one stepped forward to claim it, but it wasn’t long before another student reported he had discovered another mysterious bag lurking in the corner of his room. Even more reports of lost and found luggage were soon to come.
Marisha Boyle, who works at the hotel’s front desk, said the mix-up can be blamed on last-minute room changes.
“Before those lists were updated, the original room numbers were given out,” she explained.
By the end of Sunday, two bags were still missing in action. The front desk proceeded to conduct a room-by-room search via hotel phone.
At the 11 p.m. curfew Sunday, student assistants knocked on each door, matched the occupants’ names with their faces, and inspected closets and corners for the two missing bags -- one red and one orange.
“One of the two bags was found and is back with its owner,” Richard said at lunch the following day. “There is still one bag missing.”
The remaining piece of luggage is a red Vera Bradley bag holding pillows and bedding. Luckily, the student has all of her clothing.
“So we’re really glad about that,” Richard said of the bag’s owner.
Clothing is exactly what Andover High School sophomore Sarah Pickert was worried about when she walked into the ballroom for dinner on Sunday. Earlier in her room, she hadn’t her suitcase with the checkered pattern of blue, yellow and beige. Now, she saw it waiting for her beside a circular table.
“I did a double take because I wasn’t looking for it,” Pickert said as she grasped the handle for first time since check-in.
She escorted her luggage from the ballroom to the elevator and pressed the second floor button. Her checkered bag was not yet home, but it would be soon.
The red Vera Bradley bag, however, is still submerged somewhere deep within the Holiday Inn.
Katie Guyot is a junior at Free State High School and a student in the advanced writing class.
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