Squashed by Joan Bauer

out for Halloween. Two years ago, Helen Bjork’s 294-pounder was stolen, and she swears she saw it in the window of a florist’s in Ebberton. Dad wouldn’t let me stay home for the next twenty days to guard Max, and since vegetable branding hadn’t been perfected yet, I needed a plan.
    It was 8:59. The phone rang. I raced inside. It was Grace. About time. I positioned myself to keep Max in sight. “Well,” she began, “I talked to him for a long time after you left.”
    “And?”
    “Well, he said he really liked the party and my friends.” This was not heart-stopping news, and Grace always needed to tell the whole story before she got to the good part.
    “Okay…” I said.
    “Then he said he was having some trouble with his truck and had been fixing it all day. He likes trucks and things.”
    “Great,” I said. He likes trucks. Does he like
me
?
    “Um, he said his dog was sick and he had to take him to the vet because he’d been coughing. He was worried about him, getting used to a new vet and all, the dog’s pretty old, and he wants to see your pumpkin.”
    “Say the last part again.”
    “He wants to see Max.”
    “At my house?” I was overcome.
    “Well, yeah, where else?”
    “Right,” I said. Grace had finished. “Anything else, Grace?” I asked, my heart pounding. “I mean, did he say anything about me, you know?”
    “Well, he said he liked Mom’s butter pecan cake and that he hoped you won at the Weigh-In.”
    “He said that?”
    Grace was jump-started now: “Yes, he did. And I could tell by his face, not that he said anything directly, you know, but his face said that he liked you. I could tell on account of we’re cousins and I know him pretty well.”
    “But he didn’t say anything about me personally.”
    “No, but I could tell.”
    “Maybe,” I said, “I should invite him over next weekend to see Max. No. That’s too forward and—”
    “Not a good idea.”
    “No,” I agreed.
    “He’s driving down to see his old girlfriend next weekend.”
    “But you said he liked me, that—”
    “Those roads are bad, Ellie. Potholes, slow traffic. She’s not that great.”
    “You’ve met her?”
    “No,” said Grace, “but I can tell.”

    Nana said she would guard Max from ten to two for the next few days while I was at school. I had rigged a jiggly fence around him with hanging bells that would ring if a pumpkin thief tried something sneaky. I painted a sign, BACK OFF, CREEPS, YOU’RE BEING WATCHED, and stuck it by the fence. Not state-of-the-art protection, but enough to get a robber to think twice. I hoped.
    Rock River High was decorated in orange and brown crepe paper in honor of the upcoming fair, when all schools closed and children ran free. Mrs. Zugoruk’s freshman art class had covered the bulletin boards with crepe paper cornucopias that looked like tornadoes. The great pumpkin-pie-baking contest was on as Marsha Mott collected cans of puréed pumpkin for her mother, who promised to someday deliver a 350-pound pie, the world’s largest, to the fair if it killed her. Marsha said it probably would, unless the family finished her off first.
    It was afternoon, and I hadn’t seen Wes yet. In study hall I boned up on corn. Tossing a few corn facts in Wes’s direction couldn’t hurt, especially since he was visiting the Other One this coming weekend.
    I was worried about Max because Nana couldn’t sit him for the next nineteen days. I needed more than bells and threats for peace of mind. Cyril was probably sleeping in his field with a cannon. With any luck, Cyril would fire the thing and blow up his foot, or better yet,Big Daddy. Richard suggested I get a guard dog to ward off vandals.
    “One with a loud bark,” Richard said, eating a school cafeteria meatball sandwich.
    “I don’t like dogs.”
    “They probably sense that,” said Richard. “A dog will respond to you just the way you respond to him.”
    “I don’t do dogs.”
    “It’s like medicine,”