- If you're keeping track, the friend count is now up to three. But Winn-Dixie isn't done yet. He helps Opal find yet another friend: Gloria Dump.
- Here's the story:
- While Opal is riding her bike home from Gertrude's Pets, she sees Dunlap and Stevie Dewberry, aka Naomi's Bully Patrol.
- Their heads are menacingly shaved for the summer, and they look like twins, even though Dunlap is ten and Stevie is nine.
- The evil duo follows her, and Winn-Dixie starts running ahead.
- Dunlap warns her to watch out, because Winn-Dixie is running straight to a witch's house.
- Winn-Dixie crosses into the overgrown yard.
- Stevie claims the witch will eat Winn-Dixie. Opal tells him to shut up, but she can't help being worried.
- Winn-Dixie won't come out. Opal decides losing Winn-Dixie is scarier than facing a witch, so she enters the gate (after calling the boys "bald-headed babies," of course) (9.13).
- Deep in the jungle of the witch's yard, she hears someone laughing and sees Winn-Dixie literally eating from the witch's hand. Delicious peanut butter!
- Opal sees that the "witch" has wrinkled brown skin and a big flowered hat and she doesn't look like a witch at all. In fact, thinks Opal, "She look[s] nice" (9.22).
- Introductions all around: the old lady is Gloria Dump (too bad for her, right?); Opal is Opal Buloni (and kids called her Lunch Meat at school sometimes); and Winn-Dixie, yes, is named after the grocery store.
- Then Gloria Dump makes Opal a peanut butter sandwich, and they all happily eat peanut butter together.
- Gloria Dump admits to Opal that she can't see very well, so she needs Opal to tell her everything about her, "so as I can see you with my heart" (9.40). Opal does.