James pointed down the street.  "Look!" he whispered to Molly.
    Molly followed her friend's indication to a man walking ahead of them.  He'd just come out of a shop and was moving down the street.  "What?" she asked.  "I don't see anything.  Just a guy."
    "Shhhh!  Not so loud.  You missed it."
    "Missed what?" she asked, and started walking.
    "Hang on," he said, catching her forearm to slow her down.   They stopped on the sidewalk, which was fairly empty, except for the man at whom James had pointed, and he was already at least fifty yards ahead.
    Molly watched as James bent down.  Lying on the sidewalk in front of a pawnshop was paper.  James picked it up and pulled it taught.
    "Wow, more than I thought," he said happily turning toward his friend.
    "A Fifty dollar bill!" Molly exclaimed, then almost as quickly clapped her hand over her mouth to shush herself.  Her eyebrows were raised, and James could tell she was smiling from the way her eyes crinkled at the corners.
    He drew her hand away from her mouth.  "He's gone.  You don't have to whisper anymore," James said, smiling mischievously.  "So, what'll we do with it?"
    "Gosh, I don't know.  It's an awful lot, isn't it," Molly said.   Then her expression changed.  She looked quizzical, almost perplexed.
    "You think," she started slowly, "we should catch up to the man who dropped it and give it back?  It is his, after all."
    "What?" James cried, his voice cracking, "Are you out of your mind?  This is fifty dollars!  Just think of all the stuff we can do with it."
    Molly looked at him expectantly.  She wasn't so sure about keeping the money, even though she was already thinking about the ice cream store, imagining how many cones of mint chocolate chip fifty dollars would buy.
    Just as quickly, however, she shook off the thought.
    "James, it's not ours.  I'm sure he'll be missing it soon enough.  It's a lot of money, you know."
    "But he dropped it.  Finders keepers, right?"
    "This is different.  We saw who dropped it.  Besides it's not like it's just a quarter or something."
    "What if it was just a quarter.  Would it be ok then?" James said, demanding more than asking.
    "Well...I don't know," she hesitated.  "Maybe.  But —"
    "But what?" James snapped.  "If it was a quarter, it'd be all right.  But it's not okay because it's a lot more.  Is that it?"
    "Well, yes.  I think so."
    "Well, what if it was five?  How about ten?  When does it become enough to give back?"
James was frustrated now.  He wanted to keep the money, but was starting to have his own misgivings, and this made him angrier than his friend's doubts.
    "But," Molly pressed on, "we saw him drop it.  That's why we should give it back.  It doesn't matter the amount," she offered.  "We can still catch up to him."
    "Mo-lleee-ee," James whined, "C'mon, stop making such a big thing out of it.  So what we saw him drop it.  He probably doesn't even know it's missing.  He won't notice for a long time."   He looked at her pleadingly.
    Molly sighed.  "Let's at least try to catch up and follow him.  Maybe he needs the money.
    "Oh!" her eyes grew wide, "Maybe he was in the pawn shop," she said, pointing over her shoulder at the store, "and he had to sell his wedding ring to pay for his son's operation!"
    James shook his head.  "We don't know anything about him and here you are making up stories so that you can justify giving back his money.  You're such a girl!"
    Molly crossed her arms angrily and stared at him.  "Right and wrong has nothing to do with my being a girl or your being a boy.  I shouldn't have to tell you that."
    "Oh, come on!" James laughed, but Molly held her ground.
    "If you don't come with me, I'll just go alone.  And when I find him, I'll tell him that my ex friend has his money."  She arched an eyebrow.  "Then we'll see what happens."
    James crumpled the bill in his hand and huffed.  "You are so frustrating! Fine, we'll go," he said, and started off down the street so fast that Molly had to trot to catch up.
    They rounded the block in the direction the man had taken, but did not see him anywhere.  Then, out of the corner of her eye, Molly caught a glimpse of a car door closing down the street a way.  "There!" she exclaimed.  "Quick, before he gets away!"
    She took off, and this time it was James' turn to catch up to Molly, who'd begun to cross the street, zigzagging through cars.  She reached the sedan just as it was starting to pull out of its spot, and whacked on the trunk.
    It was a large, dark car, and clearly expensive.  It stopped abruptly as Molly's fist thudded against its back.  The window rolled down, and a man looked out.
    "What are you doing?" he said with irritation.  "You're going to dent my car!"
    "Sir!  Sorry, sir," Molly apologized breathlessly, leaning to catch her breath.
    Just then James caught up with her.
    "Well, what is it?" the man asked, still irritated, "What do you want?"
    He looked to be in his mid-forties and was well dressed to complement his car.  Even his fingernails, which James could see clearly as the man's left hand perched on the door, looked manicured.  Just like a girl's, James thought.
    "We — " Molly started, but James interrupted.
    "Nothing, really.  Sorry to bother you.  We thought we recognized you...from school."
    Molly bolted upright and stared in disbelief at her friend.
    "Do you teach at J. S. Mill?" James continued.
    Molly's mouth dropped open.
    "No," said the man, "I don't teach there.  I'm not a teacher."
    "What," Molly recovered herself and turned to James as if the man wasn't there at all, "in the world do you think you're doing?"
    "Guess I win the bet," he responded, smiling at the man.  "Sorry to disturb you, sir.  Have a nice day."
    "Yeah, sure," the man said.  He rolled up his window and James and Molly stepped back as he pulled out and drove off.
    James turned to Molly, whose fists were now planted firmly on her hips.
    "What?" he asked indignantly.  "Didn't you see what he was driving?  Obviously he didn't pawn any wedding ring," he grinned, "at least not for money."
    "I can't," Molly stammered, "I can't believe you just did that.  You just jumped in and stopped me from giving that man back his money."
    "Look," James said, adopting a tone of authority, "before you starting chasing Mercedes Man down you said that we should give him back his money because he was poor.  Well," James said looking satisfied, "obviously he's not poor.  He won't miss it.  And besides, Moll, we'll do something fun with it," he reached out to tap her shoulder playfully.
    Her arms fell, shoulders hunched.  Molly seemed defeated.  "It just...doesn't seem right to me," she looked at him sadly.  "I'm going home."
    "Wait, Molly," James began to stop her as she turned away.  "What do you want me to say?  He's rich.  He doesn't need the money."
    "Maybe I was wrong.  Maybe it doesn't matter if it's a quarter or a hundred dollars, or why he'd need his own money in the first place.  It's not our money, that's the problem, and I won't take it."
    "Oh, come on!  Please, don't go.  It won't be any fun spending it without you."
    Molly looked him squarely in the eyes and said, "Suppose you hadn't seen him drop it.  Suppose we just saw it lying on the sidewalk.  What would you do?  Would you look around to see if anyone was near, to see if maybe they'd dropped it?"
    "What does it matter now?" James seemed to be getting agitated again.
    "Just answer me.  Would it matter if you hadn't seen him — wait," she stopped herself.  "Why am I bothering to ask?  You didn't want to give it back when you even saw who dropped it!"
    She turned away again, and began walking back the way they'd earlier run.
    "It's hard to know what to do," James called after her.
    Molly stopped and turned back to face him.  "That's why you should think about it, but you didn't want to do even that much.  You didn't want to think about it at all."
    "What's to think about?  I just mean — "
    "It wasn't ours," Molly said stridently walking back to him.  "Sure, we wanted to keep it, but what we want and what we should do aren't always the same thing."
    "But why should we think there's something either right or wrong about it?  Why can't we just say we found the money, that's it."
    Molly shook her head.  "It's never that easy, you know that."
    "So, what do we do now?" James asked.
    "Well," Molly said as they started back the way they came, "I don't know, but I guess we need to figure it out."

***