Stealing Air (6 page)

Lots of times, adults saying “fine” felt a lot worse than if they just said “everything is terrible.” Brian spun a huge clump of spaghetti around his fork and crammed it in his mouth, chewing it as fast as he could. That would round out his second full plate.

“Come on,” Mom said. “We were going to have a nice night.”

“We are. Just one quick figure was all —”

“Please, Jack. Can we not do this tonight?”

The only thing they didn't seem to argue about was letting Brian go when he asked to be excused.

 

A half hour later, the boys were carrying the aircraft across town. They stopped by the highway to wait until it was clear, then they rushed across the road and followed the train tracks into the woods near the river. “Can we rest a minute, guys?” Brian asked. “It's really amazingly light, but it's just a little awkward to carry. I feel like I'm going to drop it.”

“I concur. Let's take a break,” Max said.

“Yeah,” Alex said. “Right here on the Runaway Bridge.”

They had reached the middle of a big bridge made of giant blocks of limestone. The tracks ran down the middle, with small scrub grass growing up between the wooden ties and three feet of stone on either side of the steel rails. The sound of water churning around the center support column came from far below. Brian walked over to the edge to take a look. There was no side barrier, nothing to keep them from falling off. More than fifty feet down, moonlight sparkled on the water of the English River.

“Brian, be careful.” Max was crouched down next to him.

“Are you kidding me?” Brian said. “I'm about to fly an experimental aircraft. Maybe she'll hold together. Maybe not. But this bridge has been here for a hundred years or whatever. I think I'm okay.”

“Still,” said Alex. “You don't have to stand that close to the edge.”

Brian smiled. How could people be afraid of heights when they were perfectly safe? “Is that why they call this the Runaway Bridge, because everybody is so scared to be on it?”

“Whatever, dude,” Alex said. “Just if you fall, you won't be able to help us carry the flyer back to the Nest.”

“I think it would be a good idea to keep going. Let's get the flyer into position for takeoff,” Max said.

If it was a challenge to carry the flyer all the way down the railroad tracks and across the bridge, it was even tougher to get it down the embankment and through the woods. The weeds and shrubs kept snagging the wings, skateboards, or tail assembly.

“Perhaps it would have been a good idea to come here earlier to clear brush and prepare a path for the flyer,” Max said. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Yeah, no joke. This is the worst runway taxi I've ever seen,” Brian said.

Finally, they cleared the woods at the edge of the grain elevator's lot and brought the flyer around to the blacktop lane. They set it down in takeoff position with its nose pointed straight down the center of the long flat stretch of pavement.

Brian stretched his arms and drew in a deep breath. For the last week of August, the air was cool and still. A great night to fly. He looked up. Beyond the tops of the tall, skinny evergreen trees that lined both sides of the driveway, the open sky and the stars seemed to call to him.

“Let's do this,” he said. “Let's fly!”

“Yeah!” Alex rushed to the backseat, but before he sat down, he stopped and motioned toward Brian's chair. “You're the pilot. You should board first.”

Brian grinned too, approaching the flyer. “She looks great.”

“Yeah, it does,” Alex said.

Brian slapped him a high five. “She's ready.” He sat down. Alex took his seat next. “We're ready.”

“If you don't mind, I'd like to start the engine,” Max said. Brian waved toward the handle on the pull start. Max took hold of the handle. “When the engine starts, gently push the throttle lever up to give it more power.”

“Woo-hoo!” Alex shouted. “Let's go!”

Max laughed. “Prepare to engage engine.” He yanked the starter cable. The engine rumbled a little, but didn't fire up. He frowned and pulled harder. This time the engine sputtered and popped for a moment, then the propeller began to spin and the engine roared to life. Max backed away and gave them the thumbs-up.

They were rolling! Slowly, maybe, but the flyer was moving under its own power with the propeller pulling them forward. Brian eased the throttle up, giving the engine more gas to increase speed.

Alex tapped him on the shoulder. Brian risked a look back. Alex grinned widely as he leaned forward. “It's working! It's really working!”

Brian pushed the lever the rest of the way up. “Full throttle!”

The flyer moved fast now. Brian was pushed back in his seat. He loved this part. The thrill of the aircraft's power. The mad rush just before takeoff. Speeding up to the skies.

They were halfway down the runway. Brian pulled back on the yoke. The nose lifted. The front wheels were off the ground! The back wheels were up next. “We're flying!” he shouted. “I can't believe it! We're really flying!”

But even though the yoke was back, the plane came down and hit the pavement again. It rolled a bit farther and went up for a few seconds more before falling again. Brian cranked the yoke harder. Maybe he wasn't pulling enough. Maybe the cables controlling the horizontal stabilizer weren't engaging right.

“What's up?” Alex shouted over the noise from the wind and engine.

“Not us,” Brian answered. “Not yet.” He gripped the yoke, pulling with all his weight. They were up now, two, maybe three feet off the ground.

“Dude, this is awesome! We're flying!” Alex said. “You got it!”

No, I don't
, Brian thought. The pitch wasn't right. The nose should be pointing higher when he had the yoke pulled all the way back. Instead they were level. The flyer smacked back down on its wheels.

“Give it some gas!”

“She's at full throttle already!” The flyer was up and then down again. This was bad. They were running out of runway! They needed to get more air right now. He'd have to bank her hard as soon as they were off the ground, then shoot right down the highway to avoid hitting the trees on the other side of the road.

Brian shoved the yoke all the way forward and then pulled it back. Twenty feet of runway left. They went up — maybe four feet this time — then down again. They were going to roll right across the highway. Brian pulled the throttle lever all the way back to power down. He hit the kill switch to shut off the engine.

“The road!” Alex shouted. “I'll hit the brakes!”

“No, don't!” Brian called back. “You'll stop us right in the middle of the highway. Just hold on!”

“Of course I'm holding on!” Alex screamed. “The heck you think I'm doing?”

“Please no cars, please no cars, no cars, no cars, no cars,” Brian whispered. The flyer rolled out into the highway. A pair of headlights made his stomach leap in terror for a moment until he realized they were over a mile away. The flyer hit the gravel on the shoulder of the far side, and as the ground below them dropped away into a deep, grassy ditch, they glided out into the air. They cleared the barbed-wire fence below and sailed into the woods. Twigs from a low branch whapped Brian in the face, scratching his cheek.

“Ow!” Alex shouted. The branch must have hit him too.

A huge tree trunk was dead ahead. Brian steered the flyer's nose clear to port just in time, but the starboard wing cracked hard against the trunk. He lurched forward as they spun flat and hard to the right. Then he was thrown back in his seat when the flyer slopped down into the mud.

It was quiet except for a tick in the engine and the gurgle of the English River nearby. Brian touched his cheek. It was already swollen, and his fingers came away wet and sticky with blood.

“Brian?” Alex said. “You okay?”

“I'm fine. Not so sure about the flyer, though.” Brian stood up. His foot sank down in thick mud. “Or my shoes.”

“Brian? Alex?” Max appeared up on the road, silhouetted by the weak light filtering in from the streetlight across the road. “Have you sustained any injuries?”

“Have we sustained … Why can't he talk normal for once?” Alex said quietly to Brian. Then he called back, “We're okay, even though your flyer almost got us killed!”

Max stumbled down into the brush to meet them. “I'm very sorry. I followed the wing and tail design specifications for conventional aircraft. Plastisteel is lighter. The takeoff should have worked. I don't understand what went wrong.”

“What went wrong is that I never should have agreed to this in the first place,” said Alex. “If it hadn't been for Brian, we would have hit that tree head-on.”

“It's not that bad,” Brian said. “What
really
went wrong, Max, is that the wings, tail, and propeller might be in the style of other planes, but this has to be the first flyer with skateboard landing gear. Skateboard wheels are light and can handle speed, but there are still eight of them. That's a lot of drag to overcome.”

Max leaned over the flyer, checking for damage. “Fortunately, the engine is intact. I'll have to find a way to improve it, to give the flyer enough power to overcome the drag.”

“Yeah, well, you'll have to do it without me. I'm out of here.” Alex started walking away.

“Alex, wait,” Brian said. “We were flying! We must have been four feet up for a while. I thought we were really going to take off.”

“You thought wrong.”

Brian couldn't let this fall apart. Working with these two on the flyer was the best part about living in Iowa. “So you're just going to give up?” he said. “What about the money we're going to make?”

Alex stopped. “Nobody wants to pay for an interview with three guys who made a plane that
almost
flew.”

“Nobody wants to buy the story of three kids who succeeded on the first try! People always want to hear about overcoming difficulties and crap like that. This will just make our story better, more valuable. We'll fix her! It won't be that hard.”

“Actually, it will mostly involve repairs to the starboard wing,” said Max, who was crouched in the dark by the flyer.

Brian bent down and examined the right wing by touch. He did not like what he felt. There was a dent right in the forward section of the wing, with a crack running back from the middle of it.

“It's not that bad,” he said. “Plastisteel has to be the strongest stuff on earth. We nailed that tree and the wing has just this tiny dent. We can fix this no problem.” Brian hoped he sounded believable enough to convince Alex to stay.

Alex squelched through the mud back toward them. “You really think it will be that easy?”

Max stood up. “Unfortunately —”

Brian elbowed Max. “Unfortunately, we're going to have to lift her up out of the mud and carry her back to the Eagle's Nest tonight. Then, yeah, you and I will fix up the wing real quick, while Max works on improving the engine. We'll be flying in, what … a week or so?”

“Actually —” said Max.

“We actually will,” Brian said quickly. “Hey, Alex, do you think you would be able to set up the interviews and stuff soon after that? Or maybe it's too hard on short notice, and we should just wait until after winter when we can fly again.”

“Are you kidding?” Alex said. “The publicity and the money is the easy part as long as we can get this thing flying.”

“We can make it fly,” Max said.

“If we promise that we all stay with the project,” said Brian.

There was a little silence.

“Okay,” said Alex.

They carried the broken flyer back to the Eagle's Nest, but they were so tired by the time they got there that nobody wanted to do anything besides call it a night.

Brian walked home. He gently eased the back door open and slipped inside, holding his muddy shoes in his free hand. His filthy jeans were rolled up so they wouldn't get dirt all over the floor.

In the kitchen, only the little light above the stove was on. The house was silent. He peeked around the corner to the living room to see if Mom was reading in her favorite chair. She must have gone to bed early. She sometimes did that back in Seattle after big arguments.

Brian walked softly through the living room, careful to keep quiet on the wood floor by stepping first onto his bare heel, and then rolling forward onto his toes. Light spilled out from under the door to Dad's office. He was still up working. He was always working.

Why did he even bother sneaking around? Nobody ever noticed him anyway. They probably wouldn't even care about the cut and bruise on his cheek. He almost wished he would get in trouble for it.

He half smiled at the thought. The crash must have scrambled his brains.

After washing off the muck in the shower, which stung his scraped face, Brian dressed for bed and lay down on top of his bedspread in the dark, his hands behind his head on his pillow. A little light from the streetlamp on the corner reached inside his room, while the leaves on the tree outside made creepy shadows on the wall. Exhausted from the night's adventure, Brian fell asleep at once.

The next morning, Brian stood on the deck of the half-pipe at the park, his back wheels over the edge and his front wheels up. He stomped the front of his board and dropped hard into the ramp. Down across the flat bottom, up the far transition to the lip on the other deck. He kicked his board up to grind his trucks on the lip before throwing the front of the board back into the ramp and up to where he had started.

Brian let out a long breath with his eyes closed, feeling the morning sun shine on his face. After the trouble yesterday with Frankie Heller and the flyer that wouldn't fly, he needed something to go right, so he'd left the house extra early to skate it out with
Spitfire
. One of these days he would get enough air to hit the full 360-degree airborne spin. He was close. He knew it.

He also knew that it was a long skate to school, a lot of it uphill, and if he didn't get going, he'd be late. Somehow he doubted Ms. Gilbert appreciated tardiness. He rolled out of the skate park and up Weigand Street past the square, moving fast and jumping curbs. Then he kicked like mad until he reached Lincoln Street at the top of the hill. Here, he could relax a little and enjoy the smooth run on the gentle downward slope until the hill dropped steeply near the school.

As he cleared the intersection at Seventh Street, he almost lost his balance. Wendy whipped around the corner onto Lincoln on her own board.

“Woo-hoo! Come on, Brian! Keep up!” She looked back at him.

She was a block ahead of him already. Brian kicked the pavement hard to go faster, Wendy coasting so he could join her.

“Wow, that hill is a rush!” she said as he came up alongside her. She knocked on her purple helmet. “Glad I'm wearing this.”

As they approached school, she jumped off her board and jogged to a stop, kicking up her board to carry it as she walked. Brian did the same. She frowned when she saw the bruise and scrape on his face. “What happened?”

“Oh, this?” Brian touched his injury. “I, um … I fell down.”

“And landed on your face?”

They both heard the rumble of skateboard on pavement getting louder and louder behind them. Frankie was skating up on a fast approach. Brian gripped
Spitfire
's truck. He could use his board as a club if Frankie wanted a fight.

Instead, the tough guy just rolled right past them. His eyes were cold and hateful as he stared at Brian, his fists tightly clenched. Frankie might try to hide the mean things he did from his sister, but Brian knew there would be trouble with him later.

“Forget him,” Wendy said after a moment. “Come on.” Her hand gently touched Brian's elbow, and a tingling shiver went all through him. They walked together in silence for a while, then Wendy finally spoke. “I'm sorry my brother is acting like this. I know you don't believe me, but he really is a good guy. He's just having a tough time with …” Her voice trailed off.

With being a jerk? With threatening people? With making Brian miserable? “What?” he said.

“Nothing,” said Wendy. She took off her helmet and ran her fingers through her long dark hair. She looked at him. Her eyes were such a deep green. “It's like lately he's always looking for trouble. Just promise me you won't fight him?”

Sure, Brian could agree not to fight Frankie — but what if Frankie fought him? It didn't matter. Wendy looked so sad, he couldn't help but agree. “Sure,” he said. “I promise.”

She smiled and looked like she was about to say something, but instead she just gave Brian a slow-motion punch to the shoulder. “Thank you.” She went inside, where she was immediately snatched away by the Wolf Pack.

Brian couldn't stop thinking about Wendy as he stopped by the office and picked up his locker information. Her face was still in his mind as he struggled to open his new locker. Max stood three lockers away.

Then an elbow crunched into Brian's back and his face slammed into his locker. Frankie spoke in almost a growl right near his ear. “Twelve minutes. That's how long it took you and my sister to get here this morning. Figure fifteen from yesterday. And I'm going to make you pay for every minute of it.” He chuckled. Brian wanted to shove him away or punch him, but Frankie had his arm gripped tight around Brian's shoulders like they were buddies. “This little locker slam was good for one minute.” He gave Brian a quick, hard slap to the face. “That's another. Thirty minutes to go.”

That wasn't right. “Twenty … Twenty-six,” Brian said.

“Well, golly,” Frankie said in an exaggerated hick tone. “I guess you're right. I ain't never been no good at figuring them there numbers.” He started walking away, but stopped long enough to crush Max up against the lockers, his hand gripping Max's shirt. “Sorry I haven't been around to thump on you in a few days, Mad Max. I've been busy with this new guy.” He grinned. “I'll get to you soon, though. I promise.”

Brian put his skateboard and backpack in the locker and acted like he was shuffling around on the shelf for some books. He heard people laughing, but when he sneaked a peek, David, Red, and even Jess O'Claire just looked away, snickering and whispering to one another.

The morning classes went the same as the day before, except the teachers started up with lessons and homework. At midday, while everyone else charged to the lunchroom when Ms. Gilbert dismissed them, Brian held back.

“Are you heading to the cafeteria, Brian?” Max said quietly from the desk behind his as the last of their classmates left the room.

“Um …” Brian started. He should just go to lunch with Max. Max was a good guy. But Frankie had been taking every chance he could to hurt or humiliate him, and he couldn't stand giving him more ammunition by hanging around with Max. “Oh, go ahead. I'm going to take too long. I … um … have to organize this … thing in my desk. Then I have to ask Ms. Gilbert something.”

Max frowned. “Are you sure? I'm happy to —”

“No, really. Go ahead.”

Max looked at him for just a moment and then lowered his gaze to the floor as he walked out. Brian sighed and shook his head.

Since Tuesday's homework load was extreme, Max insisted on going home after school. Brian and Alex figured there wasn't much point in trying to work on the flyer by themselves, so they all agreed to meet the next day.

At lunchtime on Wednesday, Brian didn't have to make up any lame excuses to avoid Max. He really did have to go to the bathroom. The only problem was that Frankie found him at the urinal. He pushed Brian in the back and made him pee all over himself.

“About twenty-eight minutes left to pay for!” Frankie laughed on his way out of the bathroom.

Brian missed all of lunch trying to splash water from the sink onto his pants to wash the pee off. This made an even bigger wet spot, so then he had to stand there for a long time with his crotch under the hand drier.

Timmy Hale, from the other sixth grade classroom, came into the bathroom.

“I spilled ketchup in my lap,” Brian lied.

“Whatever,” said Timmy. He did his business, washed his hands, and left quickly, laughing as he sneaked a look at Brian on the way out. Brian wanted to get back at Frankie somehow, but he had promised Grandpa that he would stay out of trouble and Wendy that he would not fight her brother.

He skated home slowly that afternoon, dumping his book bag on the floor in the entryway. The house was empty and silent. A note on the fridge told him that both Mom and Dad would be working late. He was supposed to go to Grandpa's house for supper at seven. Brian sighed. He wasn't ready for all of Grandpa's questions about school. Grabbing his skateboard and heading for the door, Brian figured he'd check in at the Eagle's Nest first to delay the visit with Grandpa and see if the flyer could be salvaged.

When Brian came up out of the tunnel, Alex and Max were standing at the table in the center. A math book was open in front of them. “I hate story problems!” Alex was saying. “Why doesn't stupid Miguel just sell lemonade made from a cheap mix or yellow food coloring or something? He'd make a lot more money for half the work that way. But no! He's got to squeeze fresh lemons, and now I'm supposed to figure out how many lemons he'd need if he wants to expand his business?” He slammed the math book closed and pointed at the cover as he shouted, “Stop riding trains from New York to San Francisco and figuring out how large the pizza slices should be and how many lemons you need for your stupid lemonade stand! Why don't you just go play video games or something, Miguel? Solve your own problems!”

Max chuckled. “I sympathize with your frustration, but do you understand how to finish the math assignment now?”

“Yeah,” Alex said. “I can handle basic math, enough to keep track of how much money people owe me, but these problems drive me nuts. You're a bit strange sometimes, Max, but you're awesome at this stuff.”

“I don't know what's worse, the story problems or the super-cheerful way Mrs. Brown explains them,” Brian said. He put on a huge grin and opened his eyes as wide as he could. “Okay, boys and girls,” he said in a breathy, high-pitched voice. “Today we're going to have fun with fractions!”

Alex and Max laughed. “That's her, dude,” Alex said. “Sometimes I want to throw something across the room just to make her mad and get that fake, pasted-on smile off her face for a little while.”

“It is a bit disconcerting,” Max said.

Brian nodded toward the flyer. “How bad is she?”

“Not as bad as one might expect from a crash of this nature,” Max said. “If this had been a standard aluminum airplane, the damage from the collision with the tree would likely have been far more extensive.”

“This Plastisteel stuff really rocks.” Alex switched on the spotlight above the table. The forward, curved section of the right wing was dented in about three inches. A nasty crack ran back about four inches from the dent.

Brian slid his fingers along the tear. “Sorry about this. I tried to steer us around the tree trunk.”

“Don't apologize,” Alex said. “You probably saved our lives. If we would have hit that tree head-on …”

“Alex is correct,” Max said. “Furthermore, you saved the engine.”

Alex winced. “Max, don't use the word ‘furthermore.' You're not writing a paper for class.”

Max ignored him. “It was still excellent flying, Brian.”

Brian looked at the dent closely. “Can we just take off the top panel of the wing and then hit the dent from the inside, like with a hammer or something? If hitting it from the outside pushed the Plastisteel in like this, maybe hitting it from the inside would push it back out.”

Max shot his phaser pointer along the tear. “Your approach to repairing the dent might work, but this tear presents a more difficult problem.”

“Can we just put in a different panel?” Brian asked.

“I don't have any more Plastisteel, so I'd prefer to align it on both sides of the tear as evenly as possible. Then maybe we could find a very strong glue to seal it up.”

“We could file it down to make sure it's smooth,” said Brian. “The wing would be mostly okay then.”

“After that …” Alex said. “I don't know. Maybe we could ask Miguel how to get it to fly.”

Brian laughed a little, but Max frowned. “The answer to our story problem is a bit more problematic.” He took off his glasses and chewed the earpiece.

“But it did fly,” Brian said.

“Yeah,” said Alex. “It glided for a while down off the highway until it crashed, but —”

“No, I mean on the runway.” Brian put his hand on one of the flyer's wings. “She was flying for a little bit. She'd get up two, three, maybe four feet in the air at a time.”

Alex nodded. “Then it dropped right back down onto its skateboards. Maybe that's the problem. Are there other wheels we could be using?”

“Other wheels I investigated were too large, too heavy, or couldn't roll fast enough,” Max said. “Yet that's still the problem. The flyer needs to move faster in order to overcome the drag created by all those wheels.”

Brian pointed to the rocket on the workbench by the wall, labeled the NX-03. “Why don't we just mount that rocket on the flyer?”

“You have a rocket?” Alex asked.

“It's how we got away when Frankie was chasing me at the skate park.”

“I was wondering about that. You turned the corner and we couldn't see you through the trees.” Alex said. “So that's what that loud noise was.”

“I don't think the rocket method will work,” Max said. “The NX-02 exploded shortly after its first use.”

“Exploded?” said Alex.

Brian spread his hands out to mime the burst.

“We shouldn't use it,” said Max. “Even if I could engineer it correctly so it doesn't explode, it is important to consider the physics of a solid-fuel rocket. Once ignited, it will continue to increase speed along one straight line, making it difficult to maneuver the flyer. The best course of action is for me to improve the engine somehow. I'll have to find a way to increase its power so the flyer can move fast enough to take off.”

“There it is,” Brian said. “You can take the engine apart and figure that out. Alex and I can get to work fixing the wing.”

Nobody said anything for a moment. Max stared at the engine like he had never seen it before. Alex wore a similar expression.

“Guys, don't worry,” said Brian. “This is going to work.”

“You're right.” Alex smiled the way Dad had with Mrs. Douglas. “We're still going to make a pile of money on this. I'd bet on it, and I never lose a bet. Plus —” He reached down into his backpack and pulled out a bag of Oreos, another twelve-pack of Mountain Dew, and a cool set of iPod speakers. “I brought treats and tunes. It may take some work to get this plane flying, but there's no reason we can't have fun in the process.”