Trent Reedy - Stealing Air

There was one last empty spot at the table where Alex and the guys sat. Maybe Brian hadn’t been invited, but Dad would have said that this was one of those times to take a risk. He picked up his pace toward the other end of the lunchroom. Alex looked up from his tray and tilted his head back in one of those cool sort of reverse nods.

Then something crashed right into Brian and sent his tray flying. His crispito hit the tiles and split open. Pears slid along the floor. People at tables all around him burst out laughing. And Frankie Heller was right there, laughing loudest of all.

“Frankie Heller, what are you doing?” Mrs. Brown stood up from her little table at the far end of the room, back by the lunch counter. She put her hands on her hips and frowned.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry.” Frankie put a scared look on his face. “I didn’t see you there, Brian. Can I get you another tray?” He didn’t wait for Brian’s answer but leaned closer. “What?” He cupped his hand to his ear. “I can’t hear you!” he shouted.

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” Brian said.

Frankie stepped away. “Oh, okay. If you’re sure you want to get your own tray.” He looked at the teacher. “Sorry about that, Mrs. Brown.” He shrugged and went to the guys’ table, sitting down in the last seat with a big grin on his face.

Brian looked to Alex, hoping he’d make some room for Brian to join him. Alex caught his gaze for an instant, but then he looked down at his tray. He wasn’t going to say or do anything.

Mrs. Brown was beside him. “Don’t worry about that mess now,” she said. “We’re going to run out of time. Just hurry and get another tray.”

Brian went back to the lunch counter. He could hear people laughing at him, talking about him — Frankie most of all, with his loud thunder voice, sitting in Brian’s seat. Brian picked up a new tray of soggy pears and a cold crispito and went to the empty table right by the lunch counter. He sat down to eat, trying to ignore the fact that he had just been branded a total loser in the eyes of everyone at his new school. That everything was going wrong. That here in Iowa, like here in this cafeteria, he was completely alone.

The afternoon was mostly time for schoolwork. Since they hadn’t been assigned much yet, Ms. Gilbert had them read a story out of the language arts textbook, something about a boy who lived in South America and was having trouble getting his fruit to market. Brian found it hard to pay attention.

When the final bell rang for the day, he figured it was best to grab his things and hurry out of the building ahead of the crowd. But instead of going out the front, where everybody could make fun of him about the cafeteria incident and Frankie might pull another stunt, he bolted for the back door. Soon everybody would be gone and he could head home.

After Brian had waited out back for at least ten minutes, Max came out the back door too. He checked his digital calculator watch. “I believe Frankie has left for the day. However, sometimes he lingers in front. If you’d like, I could show you a different way home.”

How pathetic was this? Brian wasn’t fooling anyone. “Sure. I mean… whatever you want.”

Max led the way out to the playground behind the school. They went through the pea-gravel pit, past the plastic slides and climbing equipment, on across the baseball field. Brian kept looking out for Alex and the guys, and Frankie. A large oak stood in the corner of the schoolyard, right next to the big wood fence.

“Um, Max, where are we going?”

Max stopped by the tree. “Sometimes when I have experienced a tough day at school and want to get home quickly, I take this shortcut.” He went between the thick trunk and the fence, then climbed up to a large branch that reached out over the top of the fence.

“It’s like a sort of bridge,” Brian said. “A back way out of here.”

“Precisely.” Max scooted out onto the limb. When he passed over the top of the fence, he dropped down out of sight.

Brian handed his backpack and skateboard over the fence and then climbed up into the tree. He went across and found the branch reached pretty low on the other side. It was an easy jump to the ground, a grass strip near a cornfield.

Max handed Brian his things. “Follow me,” he said. He walked off into the field, holding his hands up so that his forearms blocked his face.

Brian followed but didn’t protect himself — at least not at first. After the second long cornstalk leaf nailed him in the eye, he held his skateboard up like a shield. They rustled their way through the rows. “How long are we going to have to cut through here?”

“We’re almost to the turn.”

What turn? Every way Brian looked, all he saw was more corn, six feet high all around him. He kept walking until he bumped right into Max.

“We change direction here.” Max started off to the right.

Brian followed. “Wait. How do you know?”

“We’re twenty-seven rows in.”

“You’ve been counting?”

Max didn’t reply. He had said he took this shortcut home when he’d had a bad day. How many bad days did it take to memorize a secret route through the corn?

When they finally emerged from the field, they had reached the dead end of a street Brian didn’t recognize.

“This is Tilford Street.” Max took off his glasses and blew dust off the lenses. “You know, your grandfather lives on this street on the other edge of town. We could go to the Eagle’s Nest and put in some final checks on the flying machine.”

After a rotten mess of a school day, checking out the flyer sounded pretty great. “Sure, let’s see what we can get done.”

In the Eagle’s Nest, Max went to the side of the flyer opposite the tunnel. Brian pulled the cover off it.

“I returned last night after we all left the Eagle’s Nest—”

“Whoa, wait a minute. How late were you here? Didn’t your parents mind?”

Max tilted his head. “My parents often work late at the university. Even when they’re home, they are sometimes so absorbed in their work that they don’t notice I’ve slipped out. It’s how I found the time to build the flyer in the first place. Anyway, last night, I didn’t need much time because I merely checked to make sure all the controls are working correctly. What do you think?”

The light from the bright bulb hanging over the table gleamed on the flyer’s white Plastisteel wings. “She’s a beautiful machine, Max.”

Max sighed. “You know, in modern practice, vehicles are generally not called by personal pronouns. That is, boats and airplanes are usually ‘it’ and ‘its’ rather than ‘she’ or ‘her.’”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds so boring !” Alex emerged from the tunnel holding a bag of Doritos and a pack of cookies in one hand along with a case of Mountain Dew in the other. “Please tell me this isn’t a homework party.”

“Preflight checks,” said Brian.

Max nodded. “We should be ready to fly tonight after dark.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Alex shook his treats above his head. “You guys got to help me with this stuff, though.”

“I’m afraid I have no means to keep the soda cold,” Max said.

“Have to drink them fast, then.” Alex took three sodas out of the box, setting his on the table and giving one to Brian and another to Max before putting the rest on the tool bench. “So what’s the plan?”

“I have prepared a detailed presentation about the takeoff procedure.” Max pulled a big rolled piece of paper out of the drawer beneath the computer, unwound it, and taped it to the wall. It was a giant map of Riverside. He fired his Star Trek phaser pointer at the map. “We are here. We will wait until nightfall to move under the cover of darkness.” He moved the red dot to the doors. “We’ll carry the flyer out the main doors, across the street, around the back of Alex’s house, and north up into the fields.” The red dot moved up the map and hooked around across a light dotted line for a gravel road. It reached a heavy dotted line. “This is the abandoned railroad.” He moved the laser down the rail line. “We’ll have to carry the flyer all the way down the tracks across the highway and over the Runaway Bridge.”