The Pie War That Saved Our Fair

The judging itself I will not drag out, because you already know the shape of these things. Miss Fenwick, who has judged the pie table since I was younger than Junie is now, worked her way down the long table with her little scoring pad and her tasting spoon, sampling and murmuring and giving nothing away on her face, which is exactly how a good judge is supposed to behave and exactly why I have spent twelve years wanting to read her mind.

Vernon and I stood together at the back of the tent while she worked, which was new. Most years I stood alone gripping a paper cup of lemonade so hard it dented, and Vernon stood on the far side of the tent doing whatever quietly furious thing men do with their hands when they’re nervous, probably reorganizing somebody’s toolbox in his head. This year we stood together, not talking, and at some point, without either one of us deciding to, our shoulders were touching, and neither one of us moved away.

When Miss Fenwick finally stood up with her card, the whole tent went quiet the way the Grange hall had gone quiet back in June, except this time it was a good kind of quiet, a held breath instead of a dropped stomach.

Junie won the youth division outright, no contest, ninety seven points for a seventeen year old who had never entered a fair pie in her life, and when they called her name she looked at her grandfather first, before she even looked at the ribbon, and Vernon Stroud, who I have watched sit stone faced through funerals, had to take off his glasses and clean them on his shirt for entirely unrelated reasons that had nothing whatsoever to do with his eyes.