Free Blossoms and the Green Phantom by Betsy Byars

the phone and answer it if it rings. Do you think you can do that? Do you think you can manage to do that one simple thing without messing up?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you”—she pointed at Ralphie—“you go home.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Ralphie said.
    Vicki Blossom turned and began striding down the road again. There was a pause, and then Ralphie manfully took command of the group. “We better,” he said, “do exactly what she said.”
    Maggie hesitated a moment. She was holding her braids against her cheeks, so she would be ready for the tears when they came. Then she called, “Mom, please be careful. He really does have a gun.”
    Without turning around, Vicki Blossom answered, “I can handle Benson.”
    “I’m sorry!” Maggie called.
    This time there was no answer. Maggie turned—she needed her braids now—and ran into the house.

CHAPTER 17
Junior and THEM
    Junior had not moved a single muscle except his throat muscle in fifteen minutes. He would not have moved that except that he was desperately afraid he was going to cough, and the only way for him to keep from coughing was to swallow. His swallows sounded, to him, as loud as gulps.
    Fifteen minutes more passed slowly by. Junior had now been stranded on top of the chicken house for a long thirty minutes. Old man Benson had been sitting on the front porch with his double-barreled shotgun, waiting, for the same length of time.
    In those thirty minutes, Junior had come to realize that the roof of a chicken house was a terrible place to be. It was such a terrible place that parents could even threaten their kids with it. “You behave yourself or I’m putting you up on top of a chicken house!”
    Finally, finally, Junior heard old man Benson get up. He heard the rocking chair keep on rocking a little. He heard old man Benson walk to the edge of the porch. Then he heard old man Benson walk across the porch, open the door, go inside, and close the door behind him.
    Junior had spent most of the thirty minutes on the chicken house praying for this to happen. “Please let him go in the house, please please let him go in the house, please please please let him go in the house.” He had added so many pleases , he had lost count.
    So he felt a great moment of relief when his prayers were finally answered. He waited until the bedroom light went out, and then he allowed himself the quiet, muted cough that had been in his throat so long. As it turned out, it was not just one cough, it was a series of coughs.
    Junior clapped his hand quickly over his mouth. The coughs kept coming.
    Immediately he heard a ruffling of feathers beneath him. There were a couple of startled cackles, then the beating of wings, some miscellaneous bruck-bruck-bruckkkkks . He had come to particularly dread those brucks .
    He swallowed his remaining coughs, and the chickens grew quieter. This did not give Junior a lot of comfort, however, because he now understood the situation. Old man Benson thinks we’ve all gone home, but THEY—that was how he thought of the chickens—THEY know better. They know one of us is still here, and they know it’s me.
    Please let them think I’ve gone, he began to pray. Please please let them think I’ve gone. Please please please—
    Junior broke off. His body hurt too much to go through all the pleases again. Even though the pleases had finally worked, he hurt too much.
    Junior was lying on his stomach, and since the roof had a steep slope, Junior’s head was pointing toward the ground.
    His hipbones hurt, his knees hurt, his ribs hurt. His toes really hurt. His toes were hooked over the peak of the roof to keep him from sliding down the slope. When Junior got off the roof, if he ever did, his toes would probably be frozen in this position, for days, weeks even, maybe for the rest of his life.
    Tears kept filling his eyes, but because he was upside down, they couldn’t roll down his cheeks like tears were supposed to do. They dropped off his face between his