The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher (2 page)

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Miss Hastings. “I forgot about the toast. I thought you might like some.”

“I’ll get it,” said Darius. He got up and ran into the kitchen. Miss Hastings had been burning toast for years. While some people won’t eat burnt toast, Darius had gotten used to the flavor and now quite liked it. He liked it even better because Miss Hastings made it for him.

He put the toast on a plate, cut it into neat triangles, and brought it into the living room. The three guests gave each other knowing looks, and then Katrina Zarnoff wrote something down on a notepad.

“No, thank you,” they sniffed when Darius offered them some toast.

“It’s really good,” said Darius, taking a big bite. “I like it this way.”

“As I was saying,” said Katrina Zarnoff, “what will we do with you, little Darius?”

“You could leave me and Miss Hastings alone, and we could figure out what to do ourselves,” Darius suggested.

The three visitors looked at the burnt toast on the table.

“Impossible,” said Figby.

“Impracticable,” said Migby.

“Out of the question!” proclaimed Katrina Zarnoff.

“Ahem,” said Figby. “We have made arrangements for you to stay with the one relative you have left.”

“Ahem,” added Migby. “And you will be leaving tomorrow morning.”

“You lucky boy,” said Katrina Zarnoff, “You are going to live with your sweet Aunt Inga.”

“Not that!” Darius nearly choked on his toast. “Anything but that! Anyone but Aunt Inga!”

“You’re upset now,” said the woman, “but time will heal your wounds.”

“What about Miss Hastings?” said Darius, glancing over at his ancient caretaker. She had a very sad look on her face. “She needs me!”

“Don’t be silly,” said Figby. “She’s a grown-up.”

“She can take care of herself,” said Migby.

“She burns the toast,” said Darius.

“Then she shouldn’t be raising you,” said Katrina Zarnoff. “That’s why we’re sending you to your Aunt Inga. Tomorrow we will come for you. Pack a few things to take with you, but not too many. Your dear Aunt Inga doesn’t have very much room in her house. She is making a sacrifice to take you in because she loves you.” Katrina Zarnoff tried to pat Darius on the head. He leaned away from her to avoid her bony fingers.

“Aunt Inga doesn’t even like me!” Darius protested.

But Figby, Migby, and Katrina Zarnoff were not listening. They snapped their briefcases shut and rose from their seats like a flock of scavengers, then flapped toward the door.

“We’ll be back for you tomorrow,” Figby squawked.

“Tomorrow morning,” Migby added.

“Good-bye, Darius,” said Katrina Zarnoff with a snooty smile. “And remember, this is for your own good.” She then marched out of the house, Migby and Figby trailing in her wake.

“I told you,” Darius called after them, “Aunt Inga doesn’t even like me!” When he heard the door slam, he turned to Miss Hastings, who was now sitting on the couch.

There were tears running down her cheeks. “I am so sorry, Darius,” she said.

“We can’t let this happen!” said Darius.

But if there are two groups of people to whom unpleasant things happen despite their best efforts, it is children and old people. And as much as I would like it to be otherwise, Darius and Miss Hastings had more unpleasant things ahead.

2
Good-bye, Miss Hastings

A
fter the lawyers left, Darius and Miss Hastings racked their brains trying to come up with a way out of their predicament.

“We could join the circus,” Darius suggested.

“Yes, and I could be the lion tamer,” said Miss Hastings.

Darius laughed. Miss Hastings smiled. Then they both fell silent again. Maybe pigs could fly, but Darius and Miss Hastings couldn’t. Even if they could have, they had no place to land.

They sat at the kitchen table until the sun went down, but neither of them could think of a practical solution.

“Let’s eat,” said Miss Hastings. “Sometimes food helps.”

Miss Hastings made a nice supper of macaroni and cheese and crispy brown toast, but neither of them felt like eating. “Darius, my dear,” she said as she cleared away the dishes, “perhaps we should go to bed now and talk about all this tomorrow. Things always look better in the morning.”

Darius suspected that Miss Hastings was putting on a brave face so he wouldn’t feel so sad. He knew that Miss Hastings needed him, just as he needed her. Although they weren’t related, Darius had always considered her part of his family. And now that his dad was gone, they only had each other.

You may be wondering where Darius’s mother was in all of this. The sad fact is that Darius’s mother had died years earlier in a horrible accident involving a can opener, an umbrella, and an English muffin. Darius had very little memory of her. Mr. Frobisher and Miss Hastings had raised him together.

Miss Hastings had been with Darius’s family for many more years than Darius had been alive. In fact, she had been the family’s housekeeper and babysitter when his father was born. No one knew how old she was. Even I don’t, and I am telling the story.

More than being family, though, Miss Hastings was Darius’s friend. When his father went on his stunning and ridiculously spectacular expeditions, Darius stayed home. Of course, he would have liked to travel with his father, but he didn’t mind one bit being left with Miss Hastings. Darius’s father was exciting, but Miss Hastings was like—well, she was like hot chocolate. She was endlessly kind and fun to be around, which is a high recommendation indeed for a housekeeper.

And she was a wonderful storyteller. Her stories were marvelous, even though they sometimes got muddled in the middle. Halfway through the story about Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel might let her hair down from the giant’s castle so Jack could climb in and have some of the bear’s porridge. Darius fondly recalled many happy hours sitting forward on his chair and listening very closely to her miraculous tales. At the end of every story, Darius would always ask, “Is that true?”

“If it’s not true, Darius,” Miss Hastings would answer in a soft voice, “it should be.”

Miss Hastings was also very good at making paper airplanes. Her room was on the third floor of the rambling old house, and she and Darius would fold huge pieces of paper into airplanes
and launch them out of her window. As you know, they also enjoyed shooting water balloons off the roof.

And now they would both be leaving the big house. No more paper airplanes, no more balloons. Darius sighed and trudged up the stairs to his room.

Unable to sleep, Darius slipped into the hallway. The house was quiet. He tiptoed from room to room, counting the good memories about each one, as if each room were a book that held stories. At last, he came to his favorite—the Map Room. Several massive bookcases of rich dark wood were filled with atlases containing maps of every country, every ocean, every city, village, and hamlet ever known, as well as maps of stars, planets, and the moon. Three globes of different sizes stood on stands next to a heavy oak table. Maps covered the walls and the ceiling; someone had even painted a map of South America on the floor. A large grandfather clock in the corner ticked off each second and solemnly chimed every hour.

When Darius’s father was getting ready for a trip, he would call Darius and Miss Hastings into the Map Room, pull an atlas from the shelf, and open it on the table. Then together they would locate his next destination. Darius grew to love maps as much as his father did. The maps were flat and made up only of lines and squiggles and words, but when Darius looked at them he saw forests and oceans and mountains, and even bustling city streets. He liked to imagine that he was flying over the land, looking down at the world below.

“If you can read a map,” said his father, “you’ll never be lost.”

But that night, surrounded by maps and globes, Darius felt
very lost. He wondered how he was going to find his way without his father or Miss Hastings.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Miss Hastings came in the room. “There you are, Darius,” she said.

Darius felt unspeakably sad. Miss Hastings walked over to a globe and gave it a spin. As it wobbled and squeaked, Darius closed his eyes and let his finger hover close to the spinning globe. This was a game that he used to play with his father and Miss Hastings, making up stories about where he would go when he was older. When the globe came to a stop, he opened his eyes to see where his finger was pointing.

“Vladivostok!” he said. “I’ll go to Vladivostok!”

“And I’ll go with you!” said Miss Hastings. She always said that.

They smiled at each other, but it wasn’t the same. Darius’s father wasn’t there to make it seem like it really might happen. His father would have said something like this:
I have friends in Vladivostok! They have pet wolves! How would you like to play with a pet wolf? They don’t bite!

“Maybe you should pick out a book to take with you to Aunt Inga’s,” said Miss Hastings. “Your favorite map book?”

“I need a map for life,” Darius muttered.

Unfortunately, none of the books on the shelves had one of those.

“You will be fine, Darius,” Miss Hastings said.

Darius looked at her. “But what about you, Miss Hastings? Where will you go?”

“Oh,” she said, “I will find a place. Don’t you worry about me. I have some friends who I think will take me in.”

But Darius was worried. What would she do? Friends were
fine, but as far as he knew, she had no family of her own; she’d spent her entire life taking care of the Frobishers.

“Miss Hastings, why didn’t you get married? Why didn’t you have your own kids, instead of just raising my dad and me?”

Miss Hastings slumped down in a chair by the globe. The clock ticked in the stillness.

Darius instantly wished he had kept his mouth shut. “I … I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I just meant …”

“I almost did once,” she said. A distant look came into her eyes, and she began to rub a small charm around her neck. It was a set of tiny silver wings. Even when he was quite young, Darius had noticed that Miss Hastings would reach for them when she seemed to be deep in thought.

“What happened?” Now Darius was too curious to keep his mouth shut.

“It didn’t work out,” she said sadly.

“Why didn’t it work out?” Darius pressed her. “What happened? What was his name?”

“Oh, I don’t want to talk about that,” she said. “It was a long, long time ago, but it still makes me sad. I got mad at him because he did something I didn’t like. I wouldn’t talk to him. And then he wouldn’t talk to me. And then he moved away.”

“Did you ever see him again?” Darius asked.

“No,” she said. “We went on with our lives, and, well, I was raising your father and taking care of the house, and both of us were proud. Too proud.” She was still rubbing the wings.

Darius reached out and touched the charm with his finger. “Are these angel wings?” he asked.

“Oh no, they’re just wings.”

“Where’d you get them?”

“Well,” said Miss Hastings, taking in a breath, “I got them from the person we were just talking about. When he gave them to me he said, ‘Remember, you can fly.’”

“So you still like him.”

“Oh no.” Miss Hastings chuckled. “Nothing like that.”

“Maybe you should look for him,” said Darius.

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” said Miss Hastings. “Now I’m just an old woman who throws water balloons and burns toast.”

“That’s why I love you, Miss Hastings,” said Darius. He usually didn’t say things like this, but he was very afraid that he wasn’t going to see her again, and he didn’t want to lose anyone else without telling them how he felt.

“I love you, too, Darius,” Miss Hastings said. She kept rubbing the silver wings.

The next morning Figby, Migby, and Zarnoff drove up bright and early in their shiny black sedan.

I’ll bet I know what you are thinking. You are probably wishing they had never come.

You are probably wishing that they’d had four flat tires and their car was stuck in a ditch somewhere. Permanently.

Or that a pterodactyl had dropped down out of the sky, picked them up, and carried them far away, never to be seen again.

But that would be another story, not this one.

No, I’m afraid they showed up at the front door looking more crow-like than ever before. Miss Hastings was still dressed in her bathrobe and was wearing one sneaker. She looked horrible, and Darius was terribly worried about her.

“Can’t I stay here?” said Darius, hoping the lawyers might change their minds.

“Of course not. Miss Hastings can’t take care of you. She is known for burning toast,” said Figby.

Migby opened up his briefcase and asked Miss Hastings to sign some papers.

“I don’t want to sign them,” she said. “I don’t understand what they say.”

“You wouldn’t understand them anyway, even if we explained them,” said Katrina Zarnoff. “Just sign. It’s what’s best for Darius.”

Miss Hastings was sweet and loving and a wonderful storyteller, but she was not strong. So, she signed the papers.

“Run get your bags,” said Katrina Zarnoff. “We don’t want to be late.”