Blossoms and the Green Phantom by Betsy Byars

distinctly heard his mom murmur, “Oh, no.”
    “What? What?” Junior cried.
    At first he had merely been sort of irritated at the gasp because it broke what was, to him, a religious silence. Now he felt genuine alarm.
    “Maybe it’s nothing, hon,” his mom said, “I don’t really know anything about it, but—”
    She didn’t have to finish. Junior saw it too, and it was definitely not “nothing.” The Phantom had stopped turning. It was motionless in the air. Something was wrong.
    “It’s exactly like last time,” Junior said. “Only last time—” Junior didn’t get to finish. Because, exactly like last time, the Phantom began turning in the opposite direction. Once again, the wind had shifted.
    “Why does the wind keep doing this to me?” Junior moaned. His hands were under his chin now, clasped in prayer.
    It seemed to him there was an awkwardness about the Phantom’s turn, as if it were doing something it didn’t want to do, as if it were resisting. Then the Phantom began moving toward them. Junior knew that the last time it had done this it had kept right on moving until it got to old man Benson’s chicken house.
    He spun around. “Mom, it’s going to the chicken house again.”
    “Maybe not, hon,” his mother said. “Anyway, don’t worry about that, I can handle old man Benson. Just don’t let yourself get upset.”
    “I’m trying not to,” Junior wailed.
    Another breeze started up the hill, Junior could hear the leaves rustling. The new breeze caused the Phantom to bob in the air and shift course again.
    It seemed to Junior then that all the different winds in the world were struggling with his Phantom, trying to send it where he most didn’t want it to go.
    “Where’s it going now? What’s happening? Where’s it going?”
    Junior looked around for the place he most didn’t want it to go, because he knew from past experience that would most likely be the Phantom’s destination.
    He saw it immediately—the oak tree. The Phantom was directly over their heads, and it was on a straight path for the oak tree.
    The only thing that could save it now was another breeze. “Come on, breeze, come on, breeze,” Junior began to mutter under his breath. “Come on, breeze.”
    He stood there helpless, tears rolling unchecked down his cheeks, hands clasped in prayer, and watched his precious Phantom move closer and closer to disaster.
    “That stupid wind,” Maggie muttered. “It just can’t land in the tree. It can’t.”
    Ralphie did not want to be the one to tell her that it not only could, but it was going to.
    Even though Junior knew the worst, he was not prepared for how terrible he would feel when it happened. The sounds were so sad. Plastic brushing against leaves, catching on twigs, then that fatal silken sigh he had come to know, and then silence.
    For a long moment nobody spoke. Maybe everybody felt as he did, Junior thought, that as long as nobody said anything, it wouldn’t really have happened. The Phantom would break away and keep going. The moment stretched on, but this didn’t happen. The Phantom remained where it was, a beautiful unearthly blob, glowing against the darker foliage of the tree.
    And what made it so especially terrible, Junior thought, was that he would have to look at this sight for the rest of his life. He could see this tree from the road. He would have to watch the Phantom deteriorate, the way he had watched his American flag kite fade and shred and die on the electrical wires across the street. He would have to watch the polka dots fade, and the garbage bags tatter. He would have to watch the air mattresses grow limp and—
    Junior’s shoulders sagged and his mom came over and put her arm around him. “It looks like it’s stuck, hon, but it was very beautiful while it lasted. I just loved it. Everybody did.”
    Junior pulled away. He said what he knew all along he would have to say. “If I can climb up on a chicken house to save it, I can climb