The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher (5 page)

It worked like a charm. Aunt Inga had dozens of golden plaques from the magazine companies thanking her for selling magazines that nobody wanted.

When Aunt Inga wasn’t on the phone selling magazines, she sat in her big chair and watched television and ate cookies and took little naps. The television was on from ten o’clock in the morning, when she woke up, till eleven-thirty at night, when she went to bed.

The only thing that could tear Aunt Inga away from her chair in front of the TV was the mail. Every afternoon at exactly a
quarter past two, Aunt Inga stood at the front door waiting for the mailman. If he was late, she let him know what an inconvenience it was for her. And of course, the mail always disappointed her.

“Nothing. Nothing but people wanting me to buy things I don’t need. Do they think I don’t have anything better to do with my time than open their dumb envelopes?”

You may be thinking it’s odd that she hated being bothered by people wanting her to buy things she didn’t need, when that is exactly what she did for a living. Me too. But some people are just like that.

So, Aunt Inga didn’t hear Darius when he took the bike up and down the basement stairs. It’s a good thing, because I’m sure, just as Darius was, that she wouldn’t have let him touch the bike, even though no one was using it.

Aunt Inga didn’t know the first thing about bikes. She couldn’t ride a bike if she had to. To be sure, she had learned how to ride a bike when she was a little girl. But even though everyone says that once you ride a bike, you never forget how, I am afraid that she had.

You are probably wishing that Aunt Inga would just stop being mean and say, “Darius, my little bunnykins, anything you find in that musty old basement is yours.”

But you know Aunt Inga well enough by now to know that she’s not going to say anything of the sort.

5
A Strange Occurrence

D
arius survived the next few days, but that was about all he did. It seemed that Aunt Inga was doing her best to forget that he was there.

And then, on the fourth day at Aunt Inga’s, a very strange thing happened.

It was quite early and Darius was sitting in the dim basement with his head in his hands, staring at the bike again. It was in worse shape than he thought.

“I can’t do this,” he said to himself, “it’s impossible! I’ll have to live with Aunt Inga forever!”

He climbed up the stairs and went out the door into the backyard. Absentmindedly, he stuck his hands in his pockets. His fingers touched the chain that Miss Hastings had given him. He pulled it out and held it up. The silver wings dangled in front of his face.

As he gazed at the charm, he heard a clanking and a whirring. He instantly recognized the sound of a pedal arm hitting the chain guard on every turn, and the clicking of a derailleur. It was someone riding a bicycle. He looked around. Where was the noise coming from? Darius ran around the house and peered up
and down the street. No one was there. Now the sound was above him. He looked up into the sky.

“Holy moly!” he gasped.

There, forty feet above the houses, was an old man riding a bicycle unlike any Darius had ever seen. Extra parts had been attached to every available surface. Someone had welded forks to the fenders, and the forks held smaller wheels that spun upside down in the air. Strange wing-like contraptions extended from the handlebars and wheel hubs.

Darius stared at the man flying the bicycle. A mane of white hair stuck out from underneath a black skateboard helmet. The man’s long, sky-blue coat fluttered in the wind behind him like a cape. The rider was humming loudly as the bike disappeared over the trees.

Then it was over. What Darius had seen lasted no more than nine or ten seconds. He ran down the street, hoping for another look, just to make sure that what he had seen was real. But the sky was now empty; there was nothing but a few wispy clouds high overhead and a sparrow winging its way skyward.

Because of his father’s adventures and stories, Darius had come to believe that almost anything was possible. But he had never imagined a flying bicycle.

Maybe I saw it because it was really there
, he thought,
or maybe I saw it because I wanted to see it
.

Darius couldn’t be sure. “Maybe I’m just going crazy,” he said out loud.

Maybe he was.

Later that day, his head still reeling with the vision of a flying bicycle and the disappointment over the broken bike in the corner, Darius lay on his cot, staring at the basement ceiling. When he heard the floorboards creak over his head, he guessed that it was a quarter past two, and that his aunt was making her way to the front door to get the mail. He heard Aunt Inga’s voice. Although he couldn’t hear what she said, he could tell by the tone of her voice that she was scolding the mailman again. The door slammed, and the footsteps returned to the living room.

It suddenly occurred to Darius that Miss Hastings hadn’t written him like she’d promised. Maybe she hadn’t had time at first after her move. Maybe she was walking to the post office to mail him a letter right now. Or maybe she had already written to him!

Darius crept upstairs and peeped into the living room. Aunt Inga was back in her big chair, opening her mail, watching television, and nibbling on cookies. Darius knew this was not a good time to talk to his aunt. But there was never a good time to talk to her.

“Aunt Inga,” he said as politely as he could, “has Miss Hastings written to me?”

“What?” Aunt Inga said.

“Has Miss Hastings written me any letters?” he asked, moving closer to her and trying to make himself heard over the raucous TV applause.

“Fine,” Aunt Inga grumbled, looking up. “Now he thinks I’m in charge of mail delivery. How would I know if she has written? Have you gotten anything?”

“No, but I just thought …” He paused for a moment, then said, “Maybe I should write to her.”

“Do you know her address?” Aunt Inga asked.

“Well, no. But maybe we could find it out.”

“And how would we do that? I don’t know where she went. It would be a wild goose chase. You need to get on with your life and stop wishing things were what they used to be. You’re lucky you’re here. You have a roof over your head and plenty to eat. There’s a woman here on television who had to feed her children dog food. Have I ever fed you dog food?”

“No …” said Darius, thinking about the plate of warmed-over pork patties and clammy green beans she’d left for him every evening since his arrival.

“Exactly. Now please don’t disturb me.” She turned back to watching the program, fumbling in a bag for another cookie. Darius watched for a while—it was a talk show with people arguing about the horrible things they had done to each other.

“That’s right,” Aunt Inga said to the talk show host. “You tell him. Running off like that without saying good-bye and taking the vacuum cleaner, too. I’d stick him in the slammer and throw away the key!”

The television shows Aunt Inga watched only reinforced her belief that people were, by and large, rotten creatures. She looked back at Darius.

“You see how the world is? What’s the point of trying to do any good? What do I get for all my pains? I take you in, and here you are worried about getting letters from some old woman. Always thinking of yourself, Mr. Snootypants.”

Darius decided that if he ever got to be in charge, grown-ups would have to take a test to prove that they liked kids before they would be allowed to take care of them. Only nice people would raise children.

Aunt Inga would have failed the test and had her license denied.

Darius went into the kitchen to escape the lecture. But Aunt
Inga only raised her voice. “Fine!” she shouted. “Go in there and eat my food, too. I knew that would happen. Why don’t you go outside and do something? You’ll never make anything of yourself sitting around here.”

For once, Darius thought Aunt Inga was making sense. Glad for an excuse to get away from her, he slipped out the back door. Darius heard some whooping and shouting. He rounded the corner of the house just in time to see Anthony riding by furiously on his bicycle. In the middle of the street, directly in front of Aunt Inga’s, was a ramp made of a sheet of plywood, one end propped up on some milk crates.

Anthony pedaled up the ramp at top speed. “Yee-haaaaah!” he yelled. The wheels spun wildly as the bike left the ramp and flew through the air. The bicycle landed,
thump, thump
, and Anthony careened down the street, then circled back for another try. Even though he had the very strong feeling that Anthony was showing off just to taunt him, Darius couldn’t help but watch. He longed for a bike of his own—one that he could ride, not that rusty wreck he’d found in the basement.

“Too bad you don’t have a bike,” Anthony chortled as he circled around again. “If you did, you could fly like me. But maybe it’s just as well. You’d never be as good as I am.”

Darius watched the older boy pop wheelies and weave up and down the street. Darius was desperate to ride. Finally, he got up enough courage to speak.

“Anthony, can I ride your bike?”

“No,” the boy replied, “I’m putting it away now and going inside. If you want, you can watch TV with me. But you can’t talk when the show’s on.”

“What show are you going to watch?” Darius asked.

“I don’t know,” Anthony answered, “Whatever’s on.”

Darius didn’t want to watch television. But he was bored out of his mind, and he didn’t want to go back to Aunt Inga’s house.

Anthony’s house was bigger than Aunt Inga’s, although most of the time the family didn’t need the extra space. Mr. Gritbun worked on top-secret computer projects and only came home once every three months for a shower and breakfast. During the school year, Anthony was at military school.

You may be wondering why the Gritbuns sent their son away to school.

Anthony Gritbun was, to put it mildly, a handful. At home, he rarely did what he was told and often did exactly what he was told
not
to do. I suppose that is one reason his parents sent him away. The other reason was this: Anthony’s father had gone to Crapper Military Academy, and he wanted his son to go there, too.

“Look at me,” Mr. Gritbun had said one day during breakfast, just before he disappeared for another three months. “I turned out all right. A few years at Crapper will do wonders for our boy.”

Anthony had spent the past nine months at Crapper, but so far it was hard to tell just what wonders the school had worked on him.

Anthony led Darius into his bedroom and turned on the television. It was a stupid movie about a policeman who lost his job and fell in love with a woman who was going to rob a bank
because she needed money for her child who had to have an operation. There was much more kissing than there needed to be, and Darius was bored. Every time there was a commercial, Anthony stopped staring at the tube and jumped on Darius. He held him down and hit him on top of the head with his sharp knuckles.

“Ouch!” said Darius. “Stop it! That hurts.”

Anthony laughed. “They do it harder than that at school. Do you want to see what else they do?”

“NO!!” Darius yelled. Just then, the commercial ended. Suddenly, Anthony climbed off Darius, sat back down, and stared at the set.

At the next commercial, Anthony said, “Where was I? Oh, that’s right. The Laundry Job! Do you know what a Laundry Job is?”

“No,” said Darius, “and I don’t want to—”

Before he could finish, Anthony leapt onto Darius’s back, grabbed the back of Darius’s underpants and pulled on them until they reached almost over Darius’s head. Anthony guffawed. “That’s a Laundry Job, you worm. I learned it at school.” With Anthony sitting on top of him and his underwear stretched to its limit, Darius could only hold his breath and wait. When the commercial ended, Anthony climbed off of Darius and stared at the television again. Darius stuffed his stretched underwear back in his pants, then tiptoed out the door. Anthony’s eyes never left the TV screen.

Darius walked through the living room and out the front door, which he closed quietly behind him. He decided that from then on he would avoid Anthony whenever possible.

Avoiding Anthony
and
Aunt Inga meant that Darius spent most of his time in the basement or the backyard.

Early every morning he worked on the old bike with a few rusty hand tools he had scavenged from Aunt Inga’s garage. On nice days, he dragged the bike out into the backyard, where he could work in the fresh air. About the time he thought his aunt would be waking up, he’d put away the bike and the tools and wait in the basement until she called him for breakfast.

He’d then spend the next few hours on his cot, reading and rereading the books he’d brought with him. He had nearly memorized the adventure books. He stared at the maps in the atlas, imagining he was somewhere else. The book his father had read to him,
Bullfinch’s Mythology
, was difficult; he tried to imagine his father’s voice reading the words, and that made it easier.

Darius was trapped. And he was bored. Bored as could be.

Although you may not like to admit it, I’m sure you’ve been bored in the summer. There are too many hours in the day, and there is no way to get where you want to go to do something interesting. If you could drive and had an endless supply of money, you’d go to the water park on Monday, to the zoo on Tuesday, and to the beach on Wednesday, and you’d never get bored. But when you can’t drive and you don’t have much money, you stay at home and get bored. And you drive the people around you crazy. Even if they love you.