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admitted to himself that a half hour ago these reactions might have sent him into another of those terrible crying fits. Not now. Anyway, he didn’t want to cry again for a long, long time. His eyes were still stinging from the last cry, and his nose was still swollen shut. If at all possible, Junior wanted to avoid crying for the rest of his life.
    The difference was that Junior was now secure. He had become a Blossom promise, and that included even helium.
    Vern looked around for help. “Talk to her, Maggie.”
    Maggie felt terrible. She desperately wanted to help Junior. The sight of Junior crying because he was a failure had touched her deeply. It had caught her in the middle of feeling both happy and successful, selfishly happy and successful, it seemed now, and she would have done anything, anything to help Junior get the garbage bags and air mattresses airborne.
    Now she was faced with the truth. She could not help Junior. None of them could. She avoided Junior’s hopeful smile.
    “Mom, it’s true,” she said, misery in her face and voice. “I don’t even think you can get it. Maybe you even have to have a prescription. I don’t think ordinary people are allowed to have helium.”
    There was a moment of silence. Every single person had now stated that helium was the most rare, the most impossible-to-obtain element in the world. This was exactly the moment Ralphie had been waiting for.
    “I can get it,” he said.
    Junior drew in his breath with surprise, then he smiled. He should have known all along it would be Ralphie. Ralphie specialized in the impossible.
    Junior would never forget that wonderful moment in the hospital when Ralphie had accomplished the impossible for the first time.
    Junior and Ralphie had been in side-by-side hospital beds. Junior was there because he had fallen off the barn roof and broken both his legs. Ralphie had fallen off a riding lawn mower three years earlier and cut his leg off, and now he was having another operation and getting a new artificial leg.
    Junior had been desperate. Maggie was going to the courthouse for Pap’s trial and she wouldn’t take him.
    “I can’t, Junior,” she had said. “Wheelchairs won’t fit on the bus.”
    Everything she said made Junior more desperate. At the absolute peak of his desperation, Ralphie spoke up. And Ralphie had said the most wonderful words Junior had ever heard. “We could take a cab.”
    One thing about Ralphie. He knew how to do the impossible and he knew how to do it with class. That had been the one and only cab ride of Junior’s life, and he would remember it forever.
    “Where would you get helium?” Vern asked with a slight emphasis on the word you . He felt his friend Michael had somehow been belittled. If Michael’s family didn’t have helium, nobody would.
    “From my mom.”
    “Your mother has helium?” Vicki Blossom asked.
    Vicki Blossom was just coming out of the shock of hearing the word helium herself. She knew nothing about helium. She didn’t even know if the word had one l or two, which she would have to find out before she could look it up in the Yellow Pages.
    “Yes.”
    “At your house?”
    “Yes.”
    “Your mom has helium?” She looked at him as if she thought he didn’t know the meaning of the word.
    “Yes.”
    “Helium?”
    “Yes, Mrs. Blossom, helium!”
    “What exactly does your mom do, Ralphie?”
    As the questions and answers continued, Junior kept looking from Ralphie to his mom. It was like being at a tennis match.
    “My mother,” Ralphie said, and from the way he said mother instead of mom, Junior knew Ralphie’s mother was a very, very important person indeed. As usual Ralphie did not let Junior down.
    “My mother owns the Balloonerie.”

CHAPTER 11
A Bunch of Helium
    Junior and Ralphie were in the barn, looking at the Green Phantom. Junior was beaming with pride, but Ralphie was not smiling.
    “Of course, it’s not sprayed with the Day-Glo paint yet,” Junior said. He