Taking Care of Terrific by Lois Lowry

ratty coats and dresses, gliding silently, grandly, majestically, around the dark pond, with a breeze rustling the trees and a moon shining down.
    "Yes," I said firmly. "I'm sure they'd be absolutely quiet."
    "Could you get them all here together at the same time? At night?"
    "Hawk could," I said. "He organized them for the strike."
    "I need a little time to plan," Seth whispered. "I have to figure out those locks and chains. That's really the only hard part. I can pedal the boat okay."
    "Seth," I said suddenly, suspiciously, "you wouldn't arrange for a TV crew, would you? You're not thinking of this as a
Heartwarmers
spot, are you?"
    Seth exploded. "Really, Enid! You know who you sound like? My
mother!
As if you think I'm
some kind of unreliable creep or something, like she does! Don't you trust me?"
    "I'm sorry, Seth," I said. And I was sorry. "I'm starting to trust you. But it takes a while to change your mind about someone, you know?"
    "Yeah," he said grudgingly. "I'm feeling the same way about you."

    On the way home I asked Seth somewhat nervously, "What would they call it if we got caught? Theft? A felony? Because we'd only be
borrowing
the Swan Boats. We'd be giving them back. And it would be for a good cause."
    "I think," said Seth, after he had chewed his lip for a minute, "they'd call it hijacking."

Chapter 12
    I've never taken much time to think about Fate. Mrs. Kolodny believes in Fate, I know. "Well, that's Fate," she says cheerfully when her lottery number fails to win, week after week; and I honestly believe that if it ever
does
win her a million dollars, she will say just as cheerfully, "Well, that's Fate," and off she'll go on a round-the-world cruise, wearing a mink coat and her bright blue sneakers.
    Mrs. Kolodny also believes in horoscopes, Ann Landers's advice, fortune cookies, and UFOs.
    I am not at all sure about any of those things. But Fate certainly did make itself evident that afternoon when I went to West Cedar Street to pick up Tom Terrific.
    "Enid," said Ms. Cameron, "I mean, Cynthia. Sit down for a minute. I want to talk to you about something."
    Omigod, I said to myself, using Mrs. Kolodny's catchy turn of phrase. She's found out
everything: that I changed his name from Joshua; that I let him eat Popsicles, talk to strangers, and touch dogs. That he made disruptive signs for the bag ladies' strike instead of drawing trees and birds. That I'm a dishonest person and a lousy babysitter to boot.
    I sat down apprehensively on the beige velvet couch in the living room and inadvertently glanced up toward the high ceiling. Up there somewhere, I thought nervously, was an ax that was about to fall. I smiled the kind of let's-get-it-over-with smile that Joan of Arc probably smiled as they tied her to the stake.
    "I find," said Ms. Cameron, "that I have to go out of town on business overnight on Saturday. Now ordinarily I would leave Joshua with his grandparents in Marblehead, but this particular weekend, his grandparents are entertaining a very large group of guests for dinner, and they don't feel up to coping with a four-year-old."
    She went on and on, and I relaxed. It wasn't grill-her-at-the-stake time, after all. She simply wanted me to take care of old Tom Terrific overnight. I could hear her chattering about how she knew I was only fourteen, and it was a big responsibility for someone only fourteen, but she thought—and so on.
    Liar, I was thinking. Did she think I was stupid? What was this story about going out of town on business? Ms. Cameron didn't even
have
a business. She didn't work. She spent her afternoons, while I took care of Tom, going to do-good meetings, having tea with friends, taking harpsichord lessons, and playing tennis. Now all of a sudden I was supposed to believe that she was going out of town on business. Enid may almost rhyme with stupid, and I may almost have flunked Geometry, but I'm not
naive.
    Anyway, I thought it was kind of neat that apparently she had a