Dad is already inside the building when Lewis and I get there. He’s examining the very front display case—the baking Court of Honor—and hasn’t gone anywhere near the pie section yet.
Good, I think.
I have a minute, maybe two, to find the judges. But that’s it. I turn toward the back of the building.
Lewis grabs my arm. He jerks his head at the baking Court of Honor. Fancy cakes and pies are on display inside the glass case—all blue-ribbon winners. One cake has a blue ribbon and a huge green and pink rosette ribbon for best in show.
“Lewis,” I say under my breath. “I have to—”
He drags me to the glass. I stop breathing. Next to the best-in-show cake is my dad’s pie dish. The last slice is gone; there’s not a crumb left.
My heart sinks through the floor. I get the big joke now. A pie dish with no pie, in the baking Court of Honor.
Ha ha ha.
I swallow. I try to push words past the hunk of petrified wood in my throat. “Dad, I need to tell you—”
“Sure, in a sec, Miller. I want to see what the second note says.”
Second note? There’s more than one? My note is on a little stand to the left of the dish. I follow Dad’s gaze to the right. There’s another note. I lean close to the glass, and Lewis leans over my shoulder. We read:
Dear Mr. Sanford,
We couldn’t award a place ribbon because your entry did not conform to the Fair handbook rules. After tasting the single remaining piece, however, we agree with your son’s assessment: best ever. So we are awarding it the Judges’ Choice, with our apologies for not leaving any of your delicious lemon meringue pie for display in its original baking dish.
Sincerely,
the pie judges
“Ha ha ha ho ho.” Dad is laughing before I even finish reading. His blue, purple, and yellow Judges’ Choice rosette is the biggest ribbon in the Court of Honor.
I feel like I might disintegrate into a rumpled mess of molecules on the spot.
Lewis points his camera at the notes. “Now everybody knows you’re the king of pie, Mr. S.,” he says.
“If I had known about the pie mix-up,” Dad tells us, “I’d never have tried to enter that one last piece of pie. You’re making saves all over the place today, Miller!”
“I thought you’d be mad, Dad,” I admit.
“You should have told me, but hey”—he grabs my head in an armlock and pulls me in—”it’s just pie. And I know you didn’t set out to eat my Fair entry on purpose.” He looks at his Judges’ Choice ribbon again. “I had a feeling that old recipe I found in my great-grandmother’s collection would be a winner. I should have written the name of the recipe on my entry form.”
“What’s it called?” I ask.
“Maynard’s Meringue.”
Lewis lowers his camera.
When we ran away from the flying death heads last night and showed up at adult baking just in time for the judges to go for coffee, I’d said, Good thing the Maynard sisters scared us out of the graveyard. But I was joking!
We stare at each other with our mouths open.
“What’s with the two of you?” Dad says. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Lewis coughs. “Y-yeah, r-right, Mr. S.,” he says.
The chimpanzee in his pocket laughs again.
“Oops,” he says. “And … cut.” He runs out of the building holding the phone to his ear.
“Thanks, Lewis.” I watch him go.
That’s it. My Fair Friday with Lewis is over. A long sigh leaks out of me.
“So,” Dad says. “You had quite a job taking care of those kids, didn’t you?”
“It looks easier when you and Mom do it,” I admit.
Someone claps me on the shoulder. I turn, and the first thing I see is a red and black checked shirt. It’s Rip! I fight off a shiver, activate my brain cells, and get ready to collect ghost matter data.
“The judges sure appreciated your note,” Rip says with a chuckle.
I can feel his hand on my shoulder. There’s weight, there’s pressure, there are five regular person fingers.
“Hullo, Rip,” Dad says. “Great Fair this year.” They shake hands.
Dad sees him and hears him, and he can grip his hand. Okay, I think. “But who’s the woman in the long dress?” I blurt out.
Rip gives me a quizzical look. “The woman in the … oh, you must mean my granddaughter Rose,” Rip says. “Wasn’t her display of antique baking tins in the Farm Museum interesting? And she sewed that old-fashioned costume herself,” he adds proudly.
“Ohhh. A costume,” I say. “It’s—it’s very nice.”
Rip smiles a few thousand more wrinkles. “Thanks for all of your work setting up this week, Rob,” he says. “Judges’ choice and pie judge for next year, too. Not bad.” He raises one of his shaggy eyebrows at me.
Based on my scientific observations and data, Rip does not seem to be a ghost. But he does seem to be waiting for me to say something.
“So … they gave Dad the ribbon and made him a judge?” I offer.
“Your dad gets the ribbon. The pie judge is you. Youngest baking judge in the history of the Fair. But watch yourself, Merwin,” he warns. The old storyteller sits himself down on a bench and wags a long finger at me. “This all started for me with a note, too.”
I feel a smile spread across my face. I put my hand under the neck of my sweatshirt and feel the “Rip” in my T-shirt. “A note and a hole in the fence,” I say.
Rip lets out a big guffaw. Then he rearranges his wrinkles into a more serious expression. “Next year, you’ll have to be here all Thursday afternoon and evening before the Fair,” he says. “And you’ll have to help judge the state bake-off on Saturday. You might as well come tomorrow at noon to see how that works. Judging’s a big responsibility, you know.”
“Tomorrow?” I risk a glance at Dad.
“My son is very responsible,” he tells Rip. “He’ll be here at noon tomorrow.”
I don’t jump up and down, even though I want to. “I’ll be here,” I say. Very responsible, I think. A Saturday job at the Fair!
“Are you a baking judge, too?” I ask Rip.
He laughs so hard all of his bones shake. “Someday, maybe, if I’m lucky,” he manages, after a moment. “I’ll have to check with my son, though. He’s the boss in adult baking.” He tips his head toward the hardware store owner, Mr. Hansen, who’s sitting at a desk near the back.
“Well, we’d better catch up with the rest of our family,” Dad says. “Good to see you, Rip.”
“You too!” He’s still chortling as we walk out of adult baking.
“What’s so funny about being a baking judge?” I ask once we’re outside.
Now Dad laughs. “I’ll bet Rip Hansen sometimes wishes he was a baking judge,” he says. “He’s the superintendent of the whole Fair. He works on the Fair year-round, and he’s working every minute the Fair is open. He has to be everywhere at once, and they call for him on the loudspeakers all day long.” Dad curls his hand in front of his mouth and toots like a trumpet. “Rip’s responsible for everything and everyone here. Which reminds me,” Dad adds, “the next time you see him you should tell him your name is Miller, not Merwin.”
“Oh, he knows.” I reach back and check the huge rip in my T-shirt again. “He knows.”