Taking Care of Terrific by Lois Lowry

refolding maps, reading the bronze plaques
on the bases of statues, taking pictures, pointing out landmarks to each other. Now their shoulders sagged and their children whined.
    "I
know
we were going to walk back," I heard a woman say grouchily to her husband, "but my feet hurt. A taxi wouldn't cost that much, would it?"
    One after another, the Swan Boats glided to the dock and unloaded their last passengers. Two toddlers had fallen asleep in their mothers' laps during the ride; their mothers deposited them, still sleeping, into strollers that had been parked on the dock.
    A young couple came running up to the dock, a small, pigtailed child between them.
    "Are you going around one more time?" the woman asked the man at the ticket booth.
    "Sorry," he said, shaking his head. He set a CLOSED sign up at the front of the booth. The child burst into angry tears and her father picked her up and patted her back. The couple walked away.
    Seth nudged me and nodded toward the place at the side of the dock where three empty boats were now moored. The teenage boys who paddled the boats were climbing around on them, removing the small American flags from their short
poles and then bending down to attach the chains that secured the boats to each other front and back.
    "Take notes," Seth muttered again.
    I groaned a little to myself. Seth was too much. He was really getting into this spy scene. I jotted down in my notebook: "Chained together. Small padlocks."
    A fourth boat was empty now, and the boys hooked it up beside the first three. At the ticket booth, the man in charge was filling a green wooden box with things: the flags, a clock, some papers, a portable radio.
    A pair of college-age kids, boy and girl, went up to the policeman on his horse. They were arguing with each other.
    "Excuse me," the girl said to the policeman. "Is there any way to report a stolen purse?"
    "Stolen around here?" the policeman asked them.
    "About fifty yards from here," the girl said, pointing toward some benches near a clump of bushes.
    "What did you do, put it down and somebody grabbed it?"
    The girl nodded in despair. The boy with her
said angrily, "Of all the idiotic things to do, Marcia!"
    "Did you see who took it?" the policeman asked. He was looking around the Garden; the horse's ears were suddenly alert. You could tell he was thinking: Wow. Action. The horse, not the policeman.
    "No," said the girl. "I was reading a magazine, and when I reached for my purse to get a cigarette, it was gone."
    "Of all the idiotic things," the boy began again.
    "Well," said the policeman in a resigned voice, and the horse's ears relaxed, "you can go report it at the precinct if you want. But if you didn't see who took it, there's not much they can do. It might turn up in a trash can, but the money'll be gone. Was there much cash in it?"
    The girl shook her head. "No. But my address book, and my make-up, and my whole class schedule. Now I won't even know where my classes are, and they start next week."
    "Come on, Marcia," the boy said furiously. "He can't do anything." He pulled her by the hand and they walked away, the boy talking loudly.
    "Think of it as a learning experience," the policeman called after them cheerfully.
    Now the last two boats were empty, and the six were fastened to each other with chains. Together, they formed a hugh flotilla beside the dock.
    I wedged my feet protectively around my backpack, which I had placed on the dock, and watched the final closing-up procedures. The ticket man locked his green wooden box and put it on one of the boats.
    "Do you think he put the money in that box?" I whispered nervously to Seth. "I don't want to steal any
money
."
    "Shhhh. No. He has the money with him, stupid," Seth whispered back.
    The six boys who'd been chaining the boats together now jumped over to the dock. With the man, they began to pull a huge, heavy chain from the water.
    "What's
that?
" I asked Seth in a low voice.
    "Shhh," he said again.