The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher (14 page)

“I … uh … it was … uh … in the basement,” he stammered.

Aunt Inga’s bottom lip began to quiver, and her top lip lifted so Darius could see her teeth.

Uh oh
, he thought.

“That bicycle is mine!” she hissed.

“I wondered whose it was,” said Darius.

“What … are … you … doing … with … that … bicycle?” Aunt Inga spit out each word as if it were a pit from a rotten prune.

“Riding it,” said Darius. He didn’t mean it to be a smart-aleck answer; he was saying as little as he possibly could, trying to stay out of trouble. But as soon as he said those words, he knew they would only make Aunt Inga madder.

“That’s my bicycle!” she screamed. “YOU’VE STOLEN MY BICYCLE!”

“Aunt Inga, I didn’t steal it. I was only borrowing it. I didn’t know it was yours. No one was using it. Look. I fixed it up and–”

“You stole it! You took it without asking. I just knew it. I just knew you would do something like this. Now leave it right there and go to your room!”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Inga. Please let me keep the bicycle.”

“Do as I say. Right now.”

Darius’s head drooped. Aunt Inga opened the door, and Darius walked down into the basement. He lay there on his cot for the longest time, thinking of all the hours he had wasted, all his plans that had come to nothing. He stared at the ceiling of the basement, looking at the cobwebs hanging from the floorboards.

Late that afternoon, Darius dared to creep upstairs. He looked out the door. The bike was not there. Heart beating wildly, he went into the living room. As usual, his aunt was watching television.

“Aunt Inga,” he said, “where’s the bicycle?”

“You can forget about the bicycle. It’s gone. I gave it to Anthony, since you ruined his.” Without taking her eyes off the television screen, she grabbed a handful of cookies from the bag on her lap and stuffed them into her mouth.

Too stunned to respond, Darius left the room and headed toward the basement. When he came to the steps, though, he stopped. As quietly as possible, he slid out the back door and closed it silently behind him. He paused to listen. All he could hear was the television blaring from the living room. No sounds of Anthony in the street, jumping the ramp and shouting. As Darius scurried down the driveway, he almost collided with the mailman.

“Hello, there, fella,” said the mailman. “You live here, right?”

“Yes sir,” said Darius.

“Why don’t you just take these letters up the walk for me, then?”

Before Darius had a chance to answer, the mail carrier handed the letters to him and hurried on down the street. Intending to slip the letters in the mailbox and get away before Aunt Inga heard anything, Darius tiptoed up the porch steps. Just as he was about to put the mail in the box by the door, he noticed the small envelope on top. It was addressed to him. He recognized the handwriting.

“Miss Hastings!” he whispered to himself.

Her address was on the envelope. Now he knew exactly where she lived. He put the letter in his pocket, slipped the other mail in the box, and closed the lid quietly. After looking both ways to make sure no one was in sight, Darius took off down the street. Several blocks away, he stopped and pulled out the envelope. Fingers trembling, he tore it open and read the letter:

Darius stuffed the letter back in his pocket and began to run. Tears stung his eyes and his chest heaved as he ran, closer and closer to Daedalus’s house.

He did not see Anthony following behind him, pedaling slowly on a beautiful, bright blue-green bike.

Darius burst into Daedalus’s house without knocking. He knew that he shouldn’t disturb his friend while he was thinking, but this was an emergency.

“Daedalus!” Darius yelled. He stopped short. Taped on every wall of the living room were large sheets of paper covered with mathematical equations—numbers, symbols, lines, squiggles—like some alien language.

“Hmmmm?” said a voice from the corner. Darius whirled around. There was Daedalus stretched out on the couch, an open book lying over his face.

“Daedalus? Are you sleeping?”

The old man lifted the book and peeped out. “What? Who?”

“What are you doing?” asked Darius. “You told me you thought during the afternoon.”

“I do,” said Daedalus, struggling to sit up on the couch.

“It looked more like sleeping to me,” said Darius.

“Close, but not the same. When you sleep, your mind takes you where it wants to go. When you think, you take your mind where you want to go. But what are you doing here? Why aren’t you at home, being eaten alive?”

“I have been eaten alive,” Darius wailed. “Aunt Inga got up early! She saw me with the bike and said I stole it from her.”

“You stole your Aunt Inga’s bike?” Daedalus seemed groggy, like he was still sleeping. Or thinking.

“No! My bike! The bike we fixed. She took it away from me and gave it to Anthony! Daedalus, what will I do now? Everything is hopeless. I’ll never get there now. I’ve got to have a new bike!” Darius rushed to the basement door and charged down the stairs.

Daedalus got up slowly and followed Darius down to the workshop. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself. I’ll build another bike.”

“And where were you going?”

“You know! To Miss Hastings—she’ll know what to do.”

Daedalus sat down on the bottom step. He leaned over, resting his arms on his knees.

“I can’t give up now, Daedalus,” moaned Darius. “They’re coming to get me tomorrow. They’ll take me away to that horrible school. No one will ever see me again!”

Daedalus was silent. Darius waited for him to say something. Why didn’t he speak? Why wouldn’t he help?

With no sign of help from the old man, Darius started gathering bicycle parts on his own. He quickly found a pair of handlebars and two rims that seemed to be in good shape and placed them on the workbench. The picture on the wall above the bench top caught his eye. It was the drawing of the boy on the bicycle, flying in the air.

“Boy,” he mumbled to himself, “I could use a bike like that now.”

“You’re a strong boy, Darius,” Daedalus said. “You can survive that silly school.”

“I don’t want to just survive! I want to live! I want to find Miss Hastings! If I only had one of your flying bicycles, I could get away.”

Daedalus still didn’t answer.

“What’s wrong, Daedalus? Why won’t you help me fly?” Darius sank down to the floor. The world seemed to be falling in on top of him, and there was no way he could escape. Even Daedalus, the person he trusted most, didn’t seem to care.

It was the last straw. Darius felt very alone.

Suddenly, he saw his father quite clearly in his mind. He missed him terribly. He always missed him, but now he needed him more than ever. In spite of himself, he began to cry. He couldn’t stop. He cried and cried.

While he sobbed, he felt Daedalus sit next to him on the floor. Finally, Darius’s tears were all cried out. “There’s no hope left,” he whispered, trying to catch his breath.

And then Daedalus spoke.

“Darius,” he said, “I have something to tell you.”

Darius wiped his nose on his sleeve and looked up. It seemed that the old man was trying to find the right words.

“When he was a boy, your father Rudy used to come into my shop and watch me work, just like you do. In fact, I was the one who taught him to ride his first two-wheeler.” Daedalus smiled briefly at the memory, then turned serious again. “In those days I had ideas about the way the universe worked. I used bicycles to test my theories. Someone else might have used rockets, or subatomic particles. But bicycles are cheaper and more available. I invented all sorts of devices to improve their performance. And one day, I hit on a discovery that surprised even me.”

“A bike that could fly?” asked Darius.

“Yes,” said Daedalus. “I added another gear, a sixth one, that changed its physics. And it worked. The bike didn’t respond to the law of gravity. It flew! Even though I had intended to keep it a secret, your father found out about it. He was about eleven.”

“I’m eleven,” said Darius.

“I know,” Daedalus said. “Your father was a little full of himself in those days. He had a tremendous amount of energy.”

“That’s my dad,” Darius agreed.

“Yes.” Daedalus nodded. “He begged and begged to try the bike out. For a long time, I refused. Finally, though, he pestered me until I gave in and designed a smaller version, one just his size.”

“The bike in the picture!”

“Yes. But when Gracie—Miss Hastings—found out, she was furious with me. I thought I could make it safe. She said that it didn’t matter, that I should destroy the plans and get rid of the bikes. I didn’t listen, though. I was too excited about my discovery. I kept working on them, trying to perfect them. My calculations were correct for a large bike, but there was something wrong with the smaller one—because of the difference in mass, in weight.”

Daedalus closed his eyes for a moment. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. “Now, after all these years, I think I finally understand the adjustments I should have made. But at the time I didn’t know. And one day …” Daedalus paused and blew air out through his mouth.

“Go ahead, Daedalus,” Darius said, touching the old man’s arm. “Please tell me.”

“One day, when I wasn’t there, Rudy took the bike from my shop. I had warned him not to ride without me, but I suppose you can’t blame him. He managed to get it into the air—but he was too young and too eager, and the bike wasn’t ready. The mechanics and the physics of the bike were wrong. He lost his balance, and he fell.”

“From up in the air?” Darius asked.

Daedalus nodded grimly.

“Wait,” said Darius, putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “That’s the red bike I found back in the corner! That’s why the wheel is bent. My dad wrecked the bike when he fell out of the sky!”

“He was only fifteen or twenty feet up in the air,” said Daedalus. “But it was terrible. He broke his leg in two places.”

Darius thought of his dad’s hiccupping walk. “That’s why my dad limped,” he whispered.

“Yes, and it was my fault.” Daedalus took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. “I felt terrible about the accident. I went to see Rudy in the hospital, but Gracie wouldn’t let me in the room. She loved your father more than anything in the world, you know. I loved both of them, and I had let both of them down.”

“You didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Not on purpose. But I did it. I was wrong. Gracie was right. She almost lost her job, too, because of the accident. There was nothing I could do. We argued. I was as upset as she was. I didn’t blame her when she stopped speaking to me.”

“But you still could have gotten along,” Darius insisted. “She still thinks about you. I know she does.”

Daedalus shook his head. “Not long after the accident, I changed jobs and moved here. I never heard from Gracie again. I hid the plans for the flying bicycles away and buried myself in other work. And now your father is gone, and I feel responsible. If I hadn’t taught him how to ride the bike, or talked so much about flying, he might not have disappeared.”

“A hot air balloon is different from a bicycle.”

“It wasn’t the bicycle,” Daedalus said. “It was the flying. If you want to fly, you have to be ready. You have to know your possibilities, true, but you also have to know your limits. Sometimes when you fly, you forget who you are. You’re alone, and you forget. I know that now. It’s very exciting to try new things, but you can never forget who you are. When you’re learning to fly, you
first need a safe place to fall. I should have given that safe place to your father. I didn’t. That was my fault.”

“It’s not the same with me,” said Darius. “You can show me the right way.”

“I can’t take a chance on another accident. I’d never get over it if something terrible happened to you.”

“Don’t you see? Something terrible
is
going to happen to me if you don’t help. We can still find Miss Hastings. We have to!”

“She doesn’t want to see me. And we don’t even know where she—”

“Yes, she does,” Darius interrupted. “Yes, we do. Look!” He pulled out the letter and handed it to Daedalus.

The old man read the letter, then folded the paper with trembling hands. “I don’t think I can do anything about this,” he said. “After all that’s happened.”

“Sure you can,” said Darius.

“No, I can’t. It’s too late now.” Tears welled up in Daedalus’s eyes.

Darius reached in his pocket, looking for a tissue—something to dry tears and sadness. Instead, his hand wrapped around the silver wings Miss Hastings had given him. He pulled them out and held his clenched fist out to the old man.

“Look,” Darius said, opening his hand to reveal the charm in his palm.

Daedalus drew in his breath. “Where did you get that?”

“Miss Hastings gave it to me. She told me what you said to her: ‘Remember, you can fly!’”

“She said that?” Daedalus asked.

“Yes. Those were her exact words. Isn’t that what you said to her?”

Daedalus looked off across the basement, but he might as well have been looking off into a clear blue sky with no end. He was remembering something from long ago.

“Didn’t you say that?” Darius asked again.

“Yes, I did.”