Free The Big Dip by Melanie Jackson Page B

eyes were glued to the old man. Why would anyone want to kill a harmless guy like him?
    PNE security guards were rushing onto the platform. The attendant started to cry. I wasn’t feeling too good myself.
    The attendant could only point a shaky hand at the dead man. The guards shoved Skip and me aside.
    Sirens sounded—ambulances and police were coming.
    Skip dragged me to the exit. He urged, “We gotta get outta here. What happens when the police see you? What if somebody from the newspaper takes your picture? Your dad will know you went to the PNE.”
    Dad had threatened to pull me out of track if I didn’t improve my grades. This summer course is it, he’d said. This is your last chance.
    Still, I hesitated. The old man’s face swam up before me again. I heard him mumble his last strange words. I told Skip, “The old guy said something about a rose, the Margaret rose. He wanted me to give it to the police.”
    â€œWhat?” Skip said. “The guy was dying, Joe. He wasn’t in his right mind. C’mon. Once we’re away from here, you can send the cops a dozen roses if it makes you feel better.”
    I didn’t think the old man had been talking about bouquets. But there was no time to think. The sirens screamed closer, ripping our eardrums. Feet pounded up the entrance ramp. Police officers ran over to the dead man.
    â€œYou can’t do anything for him,” Skip said.
    I nodded numbly. He was right. The old guy was beyond my help. He’d taken the biggest dip of all—the one that you never come up from.
    We bolted down the exit ramp.
    Skip came home with me and coached me for the test the next day. “C’mon, dude. I know you can concentrate. I’ve seen you on the racetrack. Your mind is one hundred percent on the finish line.”
    But Skip didn’t know there was a third person sitting at the table—the ghost of the old man. He was clear to me, even if Skip couldn’t see him. One minute the old man was grinning at me—the next, he was slumping sideways.
    Finally, after wrestling with the math for ages, I started to get it.
    â€œYou can do anything if you just concentrate,” Skip encouraged. He was so sure I could do it, it kind of infected me. I started believing that, yeah, I could pass the math test.
    The next morning, the heat wave that the weather people had warned about finally rolled in—just in time for my math exam.
    With no air conditioning in the pre– World War II school, the humidity was thick enough to cut through.
    The teacher switched off the lights. “At least we can make it shady in here,” she said, wiping a tissue across her forehead. “Now, good luck with your exam.”
    I stared at the first question. The words wriggled in the heat. If X is…what would Y… But I thought I could figure it out.
    I unstuck my sweaty arm from the page and started my calculations. X equals, Y equals…
    X … Y …
    Why would somebody want to kill a harmless oldster?
    There’d been a story about the shooting in the morning Sun . Man Shot on Roller Coaster. Ride Closed While Police Investigate . The story said the man’s name was Jake Grissom. It didn’t say anything else about him.
    There’d been a quote from the police, asking anyone who had been on the ride to contact them.
    I thought of the woman sitting behind Skip and me—the stocky woman with the big purse. Had she been in touch with the police? Maybe she told them about the two boys behind the old man. Maybe the police were on the lookout for us.
    I pushed these thoughts out of my mind, or at least to one side of it, and kept slaving away in the heat.
    When I looked up after the final question, I was the only student left.
    The teacher smiled at me. She was holding a battery-powered mini-fan that blew her hair away from her face. “Are you done?”
    â€œYeah.” I handed in the test. “Thanks