by Bill Harley
“I went to the library,” he said, holding out the books. “I got these.”
“Without my permission?” she asked.
“Well, um … yes,” said Darius.
“Fine. Just fine.” She uncovered the mouthpiece and spoke to someone. “I’m sorry. I’ll have to call you back…. Yes. Of course I will. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll take three subscriptions…. Of course I’ll bother to call you. I have to. Do you think I like this?”
She hung up.
“Now look what you’ve made me do. I’ve lost at least three subscriptions and probably won’t get them back, all because you bothered me. What’s all this about the library?”
“I got some books to look at.”
“Well, you’ll just take them right back. I don’t want all of your books and things cluttering up my house.”
“I’ll be careful. I’ll keep them downstairs.”
“Sure you will. I know how this goes. You’ll forget all about them, and you know who’ll end up paying the months and months of fines? Do you? I’ll tell you who. Me. I knew this was going to happen—one burden after another falling on me. Every single book will go back tomorrow, or you won’t be going to the library at all. One more thing for me to keep an eye on. I just knew it. Now let me get back to work.”
Tears filled Darius’s eyes. “I’m keeping the books!” he said, almost shouting. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll take them back on time.”
Aunt Inga began to sputter. “Oh, well, look at Mr. Snootypants now. Been here one week and thinks he’s ruling the roost. Thinks he can do whatever he wants at my expense.”
“I just want to look at these library books!”
“You will take those library books back tomorrow! This is my house and I won’t have any books in here cluttering up the place, making it look like a pig sty!”
The walls rattled with Aunt Inga’s shrill voice.
“All right, all right,” Darius said, turning to escape to the basement. “Sorry.”
“SORRY. NOW HE’S SAYING HE’S SORRY! NOW THAT EVERYTHING IS IN AN UPROAR, HE’S SAYING HE’S SORRY. A LOT OF GOOD THAT DOES. COMES IN, RUINS MY BUSINESS, EATS ME OUT OF HOUSE AND HOME, AND MAKES THE HOUSE A DISASTER AREA, BRINGING THINGS IN WITHOUT MY PERMISSION. AND WHAT DO I GET FOR THIS? WHAT’S MY REWARD? NOTHING. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!”
Aunt Inga went on yelling, lost in her own world. She didn’t even notice that Darius had left the room.
In the basement, he lay down on his cot and looked at the library books while Aunt Inga continued her tirade. It was hard to concentrate, but he had no trouble locating the map that showed the road leading from Aunt Inga’s to his old town. He stared at the map until it was burned into his brain cells.
“I’ve got to get out of here soon,” said Darius to himself. “I’ll have to work even harder to fix that bike.”
He rolled over and sat up on the edge of the cot. The silver wings in his pocket jabbed his leg, and Miss Hastings’s words echoed in his head. “We all have wings.”
He wished he had wings to fly right now, but all he had was a bike that he couldn’t ride.
Not yet, at least.
The next day, he took the books back to the library. Ms. Bickerstaff recognized him the moment he came in.
“Back so soon, Darius?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m done with the books.”
He held them out to her, but she didn’t take them. “You can have them for two weeks,” she said. “Why are you bringing them back?”
Darius didn’t want to explain. How could he? “There’s not enough room where I live for me to keep them there,” he said. That sounded absurd, and he knew it. But Ms. Bickerstaff didn’t tell him that. Instead she looked at him thoughtfully and smiled.
“I have an idea,” she said. She took the books and rose from her chair. “We have an extra empty shelf here behind the desk. We’ll make this your shelf, since no one’s using it. The books you take out from the library, you can keep here.”
Darius caught his breath. “Really?”
“Really,” Ms. Bickerstaff said, smiling again.
“Thanks,” said Darius. “I have to go.”
“They’ll be here waiting for you,” she said.
Darius turned and walked out of the library. He smiled as he thought about the librarian’s kindness. Even though she knew something was wrong, she had helped him without asking for an explanation. That is about as kind as anyone can get, he thought.
Darius got up early every morning, made three pieces of toast, and put peanut butter on them. He sat on the back steps, eating his breakfast.
Everything seemed peaceful then, and he liked watching the sun come up. During that quiet time alone, Darius tinkered on the old bicycle. He would bring the bike up the stairs and work on it in the backyard for a couple of hours, then take it back down to the basement before Aunt Inga woke up.
One day he found some aluminum foil in a kitchen drawer and rubbed it on the handlebars to take off the rust. Another day he filled a bucket with soapy water and washed the frame. He found an oilcan in the basement and oiled the chain.
The bike began to look better.
But Aunt Inga began to get suspicious.
“What are you doing every morning before I get up?” she asked him.
“Nothing,” answered Darius. Aunt Inga was sitting in her big chair, stuffing cookies in her mouth and watching a game show while she talked to him. Aunt Inga should have weighed four hundred pounds from all those cookies, but she was still skinny as a rail.
“Don’t give me that,” Aunt Inga snorted. “You must be doing something. I don’t want you to go outside before I’m up. I can’t trust you. And why was the kitchen sponge wet this morning?”
“I was wiping up the sink with it,” said Darius.
“Well, just don’t do anything without telling me,” she said, cookie crumbs spraying from her mouth. “Now don’t bother me; this is a very important show.”
Darius went down into the basement. He found an old blanket and carefully covered the bike. If it was a secret, it had better stay hidden. He couldn’t afford to let anyone see it—not if he was going to use it to find Miss Hastings.
It had been almost two weeks since Darius had found the old bicycle in the basement. As he worked on the bike, he started to think of it as his. That can happen with things—when you care for them, they become a part of you. Darius often daydreamed about the places he would go with the bike and the things he would do.
One night, in his dreams, Darius climbed on the newly repaired bicycle and pedaled madly. The frame had been painted the impossible turquoise of the ocean in the tropics. The bike went faster and faster, and then, suddenly, Darius was in the air, pedaling over the houses and roads, looking down at the earth beneath him. It looked like an enormous map! The names of cities and rivers and countries were printed on the land he flew over. The word “Newfoundland” spread out below him across forests and plains. He remembered that Newfoundland was the last place his father had been seen before he’d disappeared over the ocean. Darius looked out across the horizon. Off in the distance he saw a balloon of blue and orange and red and yellow stripes. His father was in it—waving to him!
“There he is!” someone behind him said. The bike had become a tandem bike, and Miss Hastings was on the seat behind him, pedaling.
“Let’s go get him!” she shouted.
“Dad, here I am!” Darius yelled. “I’m coming, Dad. Wait for me.”
And then he woke up on his thin mattress in the basement.
Finally, the bike was all ready, except for the tires. They were still as flat as could be. Darius pushed the bike up the stairs and out the back door, and walked it down the driveway. He planned to take the bike to the gas station on the corner, fill the tires, and then ride back to the house. He would be back in plenty of time before Aunt Inga woke up and turned on the television.
But when Darius reached the gas station, he discovered
that the air pump was broken. He remembered another station several blocks away, so he pushed the bike there. But he ran into another problem—to make the air pump work, you had to put in two quarters. He didn’t even have a dime.
Now he began to worry about the time. Darius certainly didn’t want Aunt Inga finding out about the bike when he had just gotten it ready to use.
“Excuse me,” Darius asked the man inside. “I don’t have any money and I really need to fill up my tires. Is there any way of making the pump work without putting money in?”
The man looked at Darius like he was crazy. “What do you think this is, kid, a place for free handouts?”
“How can you charge fifty cents for air?” asked Darius. “Air should be free!”
“Get outta here, kid,” said the gas station attendant. “Go get some money from your mom.”
Darius didn’t bother to explain that that was impossible. He went back outside, sat down with his bike on the curb, and thought. He remembered one other service station, but it was all the way over by the library. Darius looked at his watch. If he hurried, he might be able to fill the tires and ride back before Aunt Inga got up.
I know what you are thinking. It would have been more sensible to go back to the house and wait until the next morning. But if you had been working patiently on a bicycle for days and days, what would you have done?
I bet you couldn’t help yourself, and neither could Darius.
He set off, moving as quickly as he could. It wasn’t easy pushing a bike with two flat tires.
And it was further than he thought. By the time he got to the third gas station, it was 9:45. Darius had fifteen minutes to get the tires filled and get the bike safely hidden away.
Little beads of sweat began to run down his back as he thought about what would happen if Aunt Inga found him gone. He dragged the bike over to the air pump and put the nozzle on the tire valves one at a time.
“Hsssssssss,” screamed the air hose.
“Clang, clang, clang,” rang the air pump’s bell.
As the tires swelled with air, the bike seemed to rise up off the pavement. Darius hung the air hose back on the rack and looked at the bike. It was ready to ride. He hopped on and took off down the street. The gears clicked and whirred as he pushed the pedals faster and faster. Darius felt like a million bucks.
“YEEE-HAAAAH!” he screamed as he turned a corner. “This is a piece of cake! I’ll be back in no time!”
And that is when the most horrible thing happened.
7
Enter Daedalus
Suddenly Darius’s feet spun on the pedals and he heard a grinding, clanking sound, as if something were scraping on the pavement. He looked down. The bicycle chain had broken and was caught in the teeth of the sprocket. Sparks flew up as the chain dragged and bounced along the street. The bike veered to the side and the front tire hit the curb. Darius flew head over heels above the handlebars and landed on someone’s lawn. The bicycle careened into the gutter, teetered for a moment on one wheel, then slowly tipped over into the street.
Darius waited until his head stopped spinning, then got up and brushed himself off. He’d scraped his arms and elbows, but he wasn’t really hurt—it was the bicycle that worried him. His heart was pounding as he ran over to the bike. He pulled it onto the sidewalk and looked at the damage. The rim of the front wheel was a little bent, but it still turned. Some spokes were twisted. Worst of all was the chain. He huddled over the bike, holding the greasy chain in both hands, trying to figure out how to make them go together.
“Oh no,” he moaned, “Aunt Inga will eat me alive.”
Tears welled up in his eyes.
“She’s going to kill me,” he wailed. “She’s going to—”
“Broken chain?” boomed a deep voice just behind him.
Darius looked up from the bike. His heart almost stopped.
An old man holding a black skateboard helmet in one hand was staring at him. He was dressed in baggy clothes—wrinkled khaki pants and an oversized white shirt. A long, sky-blue coat hung down to his shoes. Even the man’s hair seemed baggy: although the top of his head was bald, long shanks of white hair streamed down over his ears. His eyes were crystal blue, and his nose was long and a little red around the edges. The odd-looking man was sitting on an old three-speed bicycle. A large basket attached to the handlebars held vegetables and a loaf of bread, as if he had just been grocery shopping.
Darius knew exactly who this was. It was the man who had flown over his house on the bicycle! “I’ve seen you before,” he said. “You were riding a flying bike.”
“Impossible,” said the man, his eyebrows working up and down as he spoke. “Inconceivable. It was probably your imagination.”
“I don’t think so,” said Darius, shaking his head.
“Your bicycle is broken.” The man seemed eager to change the topic of conversation.
“Yes, sir,” said Darius, remembering the desperate spot he was in. He tried to push the chain together. “My dumb chain broke and there’s no way to fix it. I’ll never get back in time now.”
“Well,” the man said with a strange grin on his face, “let’s see what I have here.”
He reached into a pouch strapped around his waist and fumbled through it. “Ah, here we are,” he said, pulling out a little tool that glinted in the sunlight. “Chain wrench. Works wonders,” he cackled.
He bent down and took the chain from Darius’s hands. He slipped the contraption on the chain, wound it tight, popped the chain back together, and tightened it. He pulled the chain on the sprocket and stood the bike up.
“All fixed now. You can ride it, but you’d better get the rim fixed soon.”
Darius looked up in wonder. “Who are you?”
“Daedalus.”
“Deh-dah-lus?”
“That’s correct. And your name?”
“Darius. What kind of name is Daedalus?”
“Ancient Greek. I’m not really ancient, though. Old, but not ancient. And I’m not Greek, either. You’d better get going if you don’t want to get eaten by this Aunt Inga you were moaning about. She sounds like Hera on a bad day.”
“Hera, I think I’ve heard that name,” said Darius. He seemed to remember his father reading to him about her.
“Hera was queen of the gods! She was married to Zeus. He was the big cheese of all the gods, but he wasn’t very dependable. Hera was always getting mad at him. Just like Aunt Inga—whoever she is—will be, if you don’t get going.”
Darius looked at his watch. It was 9:54. His heart jumped.
“Thanks, Daedalus.” He threw the words over his shoulder as he hopped on his bike. Darius took off, the pedals clanking and the chain whirring.
“Fix the rim,” Daedalus called after him. “And get a helmet. One bump on the noggin and you’re kaput.”
Darius pumped the pedals madly, turning to the right at the first intersection, then to the left at the next corner. Time was running out. The bike was moving, but the front wheel wobbled and would not turn freely. As he swerved onto his own street, with one hundred yards to go, the bell in the church at the end of the street began to ring the hour. It was ten o’clock.
Aunt Inga was getting up!
The television was about to go on!
He was about to be eaten alive!
Darius tore up the driveway and flung himself off the bike. Standing outside the back door, he tried to calm down and catch his breath. He opened the door quietly and listened. There was no sound. As carefully as he could, he pulled the bike through the doorway and onto the basement steps. Halfway down, he heard his aunt’s footsteps as she walked over the floorboards. He scooted down the last few steps and paused, listening again. All was quiet. Then, from the top of the stairs, he heard Aunt Inga’s voice.
“Darius! Darius! Are you down there?” she called.
“Yes, Aunt Inga.”
“Well, what are you doing?”
Darius tried to quiet his
breathing. “Nothing,” he called up the stairs.
“Then why is the back door open? Where have you been? I’d better come down there and see what you’re up to.”
Darius heard Aunt Inga’s foot hit the top step.
“No, wait!” Darius screamed. If Aunt Inga came down now, his goose was cooked. Darius frantically kicked off his shoes and pulled off his shorts. He ran to the bottom of the stairs and stood there in his underwear, looking up at the gaunt figure of Aunt Inga silhouetted against the light from the open door.
“Don’t come down just yet, Aunt Inga,” he begged. “I’m in my underwear.”
Aunt Inga looked away. “Oh, what a disgusting creature. Put your clothes on this instant. Have you no decency at all? Look what I have to put up with!” Aunt Inga turned away and pulled herself back into the hallway. “You’ve got me so upset I’m going to be late getting my breakfast, and I’ll miss the beginning of Moneymania.”
“Yes, Aunt Inga, I’ll be right up.”
Darius stood motionless as he listened to Aunt Inga’s footsteps over his head, going into the living room. He was sure that if his aunt stopped to listen, she would hear his heart beating, leaping, catapulting out of his chest. Then he heard the television go on. Darius let out a long, loud sigh. He was safe in the basement.
And so was his bicycle.
8
Remote Control
That very afternoon, Darius made a very useful discovery. Aunt Inga had gone shopping, and he was alone when he heard a knock.
When Darius opened the front door, Anthony walked right into the house without being asked.
“Hi, you little worm,” the boy sneered.
“Hello, Anthony.”
“My mom sent me over here to be nice to you,” Anthony said, pushing his way past Darius.
Darius hurried after him into the kitchen, where his rude neighbor was already opening and shutting cupboards.
“Where are those cookies your aunt is always eating? Ah, here they are.” Anthony took down a bag, tore it open, and pulled out a handful. He stuffed three cookies in his mouth.
“Wait, Anthony,” Darius said. “You can’t do that. She’ll know there’s some missing.”
