them.“Go ’way!” she ordered, backing away

from the dog, which answered with a sharp

bark. He had teeth like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Oh, Grandmother, what big 153

teeth you have! The better to eat you with,

my dear. Ramona took another step back.

Growling, the dog advanced. He was a dog,

not a wolf, but that was bad enough.

Ramona used the only weapon she

had—her lunch box. She slung her lunch

box at the dog and missed.The box crashed

154

to the sidewalk, tumbled, and came to rest.

The dog stopped to sniff it. Ramona

forced her feet to move, to run. Her oxfords pounded on the sidewalk. One shoelace

came untied and slapped against her ankle.

She looked desperately at a passing car, but the driver did not notice her peril.

Ramona cast a terrified look over her

shoulder. The dog had lost interest in her

unopened lunch box and was coming

toward her again. She could hear his toenails on the sidewalk and could hear him growl-ing deep in his throat. She had to do some-

thing, but what?

Ramona’s heart was pounding in her ears

as she stopped to reach for the only weapon

left—her shoe. She had no choice. She

yanked off her brown oxford and hurled it at the dog. Again she missed.The dog stopped,

sniffed the shoe, and then to Ramona’s

horror, picked it up, and trotted off in the 155

direction from which he had come.

Ramona stood aghast with the cold from

the concrete sidewalk seeping through her

sock. Now what should she do? If she said,

You come back here, the dog might obey, and

she did not want him any closer. She watched helplessly as he returned to his own lawn,

where he settled down with the shoe between

his paws like a bone. He began to gnaw.

Her shoe! There was no way Ramona

could take her shoe away from the dog by

herself.

There was no one she could ask for help

on this street of strangers.And her blue lunch box, now dented, lying there on the sidewalk.

Did she dare try to get it back while the dog was busy chewing her shoe? She took a cau-tious step toward her lunch box. The dog

went on gnawing. She took another step. I

really am brave, she told herself. The dog

looked up. Ramona froze. The dog began to

156

gnaw again. She darted forward, grabbed her lunch box, and ran toward school, slap-pat, slap-pat, on the cold concrete.

Ramona refused to cry—she was brave,

wasn’t she?—but she was worried. Mrs.

Griggs frowned on tardiness, and Ramona

was quite sure she expected everyone in her

class to wear two shoes. Ramona would

probably catch it from Mrs. Griggs at school and from her mother at home for losing a

shoe with a lot of wear left in it. Ramona

was always catching it.

When Ramona reached Glenwood

School, the bell had rung and the traffic