Free Squashed by Joan Bauer

waved good-bye, and Grace winked at me, meaning she would get the lowdown on everything and talk to me tomorrow.
    The sky was clear, black, and filled with stars—the kind of sky I remembered as a child when Dad would wake me up to see the constellations in perfect display. Dad gave me his love for stars. It was the only part that stuck with him from his life on the farm. Dad said he would lie out in the fields as a boy, counting stars trillions of miles out in space. He had an astronomy club with four other boys. They called themselves the Knights of the Night, a totally uncool name, but one of the boys became a space engineer at NASA. You never know how nerds are going to turn out.
    Richard, Dad, and I stood on Mrs. McKenna’s lawn, hushed under the stars, taking time to get oureyes used to the darkness. Dad’s eyes searched the night sky like he was trying to solve a mystery. We found the October constellation Pegasus, the Flying Horse. It had four bright stars at the corners. Dad counted eighteen faint stars inside its square. Richard said the sky reminded him of a baseball stadium at night—high praise. I remembered Dad telling me to pick the star I wanted and it would be mine. As a child, I never believed that could happen, but tonight I felt lucky. I pointed to a small star hanging left of the McKennas’ chimney and took ownership.
    Dad laughed, opened the car door for me, and helped me inside. “Good party?” he asked hopefully as we sped off.
    Richard said something about the greatness of Mrs. McKenna’s butter pecan seven-layer cake. I said “Mmmmm,” and looked out the window. My star was following us. It waited over Richard’s house as we dropped him off, then trailed us home. I had picked well.
    “Well,” Dad said, “I’m sure the boys were buzzing around you tonight.”
    I laughed and blushed sort of, because he had never said that to me before. I walked out back to Max.
    “Do you mind, Dad? I just need to—”
    “Ellie,” he sighed, “it’s late now and—”
    “Five minutes, okay?”
    He sighed in defeat and went inside.
    I crouched near Max and checked his runoff ditch, my khaki slacks pushing at the seams. I wondered where Wes was, what he was thinking about. I lifted the reemay cloth off, touched his skin, and in honor of the evening, gave it a go.
    “Listen,” I whispered. “It’s me. Ellie.” I felt dumbdoing this, but Wes had trusted me with his family secret because he knew I had guts. “I want you to know, Max, that I’m proud of how strong you are.” I couldn’t think of more to say so I squatted there as Max soaked that in. “I know you can do it, Max,” I continued, “because you’re a champion. It’s important you know that because you’re going to have to stretch a little more so we can beat the daylights out of Cyril Pool at the Weigh-In, who is thirty-five and a world-class sludge.”
    My star hung over us, which I really appreciated, because the next part was not as easy to say. “Not meaning to bring up negatives, Max, but Cyril’s pumpkin’s a deep orange color, deeper than you. Not that you’re not great-looking, you understand, and granted, weight’s the thing they go by, but you do look sort of pale. Good color just makes the whole win more dramatic, so if you could work on that, too, I’d appreciate it. Think orange, Max. Big, bright, and orange. Got it?”
    I stood up, and my pants ripped completely across the seam. It was inevitable, but for once in my life, my timing had been decent.

I t was Sunday , 7:00 A.M. , eight hours after Dad had dragged me from the Party of the Year, and Grace still hadn’t called to report on Wes. I had called the McKennas’ house fifteen minutes earlier, figuring they’d be awake since the sun was, after all, up. They weren’t.
    I called JoAnn Clark, who I knew would be up—people who grow African violets sleep lightly. We decided that Wes, being of good farm stock, had probably been awake for hours walking the