Free Baby-Sitting Is a Dangerous Job by Willo Davis Roberts Page B

except an old mattress on the floor.
    He put Shana down, and I envied the cool look she gave him. “I don’t like you,” she told Henry, and he stared at her.
    â€œI don’t like you much, either,” he returned,“but it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to like each other. You just stay put here; and if your daddy pays us the money we’re gonna ask for, then you can go home. Just don’t try anything.” This last part was said to me, and then Henry went out and locked the door behind him.
    I stared around the room. There were big windows on two sides, but they didn’t offer any hope. We must have been thirty feet off the ground, and though there was a roof beneath one of the windows, it was very steep and too high for us to drop from without breaking our necks. There were no sheets or blankets to tear into strips to make a rope to slide down, no tree branches close enough to the house to provide an escape.
    Nothing at all.
    For a moment my throat ached so much I thought I would cry. Only I knew I couldn’t do that; it would scare the kids. I’d have to pretend I thought everything was going to be fine.
    â€œWhat are we going to do?” Jeremy asked.
    I looked at the mattress. “Well, all we have is a gym mat. I guess we’re going to do calisthenics.”
    â€œWhat’s ’thenics?” Melissa wanted to know.
    â€œGym exercises,” Jeremy said. “Isn’t it?”
    I got them going on some of the Yoga exercises my mom does to keep her figure, and then some jumping jacks. We stirred up enough dust to make me sneeze, but the kids weren’t looking scared anymore.
    I wished I had a watch so I’d know how much time had passed. Had Mrs. Murphy reported her car stolen yet? Had anyone found it, or had Dan hidden it too well? Was my mom wondering why I hadn’t come home for supper? Had anyone notified the police that the Foster kids and I were missing?
    â€œI have to go potty,” Shana said.
    I looked around the room. There was no provision for this, and they hadn’t brought any spare clothes for the kids. There was no telling how long we’d be here. On TV the kidnappers usually make the parents sweat it out for a while before they even make their ransom demands, and the parents have to have time to get the money. Could a bank president like Mr. Foster get the money quicker than ordinary people? And then they have to drive out in thedark to some isolated place to leave a bag containing the cash. After the kidnappers have the money, they are supposed to leave the kids where someone will find them soon, after they’ve made their getaway.
    I didn’t know if these kidnappers would follow the TV scripts, but I had to assume we’d be here for a day or two, at least. I tried not to let my heart sink any lower than it already was.
    If we were going to be cooped up here, we’d all need to use the bathroom.
    I walked to the door and pounded on it, making such a racket it almost scared me all over again. “Hey! We need to use the bathroom!”
    I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d ignored me, but they didn’t. I heard footsteps on the stairs, and then Dan opened the door.
    â€œIt’s across the hall,” he said, pointing, and stood waiting while we went over there.
    The bathroom was about the size of my bedroom at home. There was a big, old-fashioned tub on legs and faded linoleum and rust stains on everything; the water ran in a trickle when you turned it on. Jeremy said he didn’tneed to go, but I told him he’d better, because there was no telling when they’d let us come here again.
    When we went back into the hallway, I worked up my courage and spoke to Dan. “If you’re going to keep us here very long, we’ve got to be able to go back and forth to the bathroom. Even during the night,” I added, not knowing if it was true or not. “Shana will need to