Bungee Jump by Pam Withers

least our hands are free.
    Twisting my head, I see the cash box beside Mrs. Dubin’s pointy black boots.
    “Where’s Gord?” I ask, trying to sound calm.
    “Craven took care of him,” the librarian says with an ominous smile. “He was greedy and conniving, your engineer.”
    “You took the box from him,” I say. Doesn’t that make them greedy and conniving? “So the doctor really did take money from the leper kids.”
    “No one will ever prove that,” Mrs. Dubin says, leaning down and putting her face in mine. “My mother and father gave everything for those kids. My father even gave his life. Yes, the doctor and nurse. My parents.”
    Caitlin and I are speechless.
    “So you’ve been searching for the box all these years?” I say. “Trying to scare people off so you’d find it before them?”
    “Wrong. Keeping people away to let the innocent souls and my father rest in peace,” she says. “With no smudged reputation.”
    In other words, she didn’t want anyone to find it. If they did, they’d know her father had been stealing. It occurs to me for the first time that she might intend to kill Caitlin and me.
    I may not be able to struggle up, but the old lady can’t see what my hands are doing behind my back. I maneuver them to grasp the bungee rope.
    “You slammed the board down on the hot tub when Caitlin was in it?” I ask.
    “That was me,” Craven says proudly.
    “And wailed during the picnic and earlier tonight?”
    “That was me,” Craven says proudly again.
    “And trapped us in the pipe just now?”
    “Both of us,” Mrs. Dubin replies curtly.
    “But you never knew the doctor hid the box in the hatch? Not before we found it tonight?”
    “What box?” Mrs. Dubin roars. She pushes through the gate and stands on the red footprints. She opens the box and lifts out a fistful of money.
    So she got the box away from Gord before he could get the money .
    She lets coins and paper money drop from her fingers. Then she tips the entire contents out. Money fills the air. It rains down to Misty Passage. To sink forever. Finally, she heaves the empty box off the bridge.
    “Oh!” Caitlin exclaims.
    “Those stories of a box were nothing but nasty rumors,” she declares.
    She never wanted the money. She just wanted people to admire her father.
    She comes back through the gate and steps over us. She stands on the platform, arms crossed. “My father didn’t deserve nasty rumors.”
    “Did he fall or commit suicide?” I dare to ask. I’m busy grasping the bungee rope’s metal rectangle.
    Mrs. Dubin kicks me with one of her pointed boots, prompting Caitlin to scream. The kick shoves us closer to the gate.
    She bends down again to put her ugly face beside mine. Her breath smells sour. “He fell during a delirious fever,” she says. “So sad. He gave his life for the hospital.”
    “Then your mother ran away and had you,” I say. Behind my back, I quietly click the bungee clip to my harness.
    “Your interest in history is admirable,” she says. “But you went too far. Craven, it’s time.”
    She turns and stomps back to the catwalk. Caitlin shuts her eyes. I wince as Craven’s big body looms over us. “Have a nice fall,” he says and laughs.
    “I’ve got you!” I whisper to my sister. And I wrap my arms around her with all my strength.
    His kick would impress a professional football scout. We skid under the platform gate and over the red footprints. We fly off the board. Caitlin’s scream deafens me. Her small hands are clenched around my wrists.
    “One thousand, two thousand, three—” I count. Boing! Caitlin screams again. I smile. We’re traveling up, up, up. And down. A couple of rebounds and we’re hanging limply, no movement. But what if Craven or his mother cuts the rope from above?
    Swish, swish . Out of the darkness, Craven’s rowboat comes at us. No way. He didn’t have time to run down and get in it already.
    Swish, swish . A crumpled-up man is working the oars.