The Amazing Flight of Darius Frobisher Read Online Free PDF Page B

call people I don’t know, but how else am I going to get by? My time is as valuable as yours, so let’s get on with it. You may not like it, but I’m just going to keep calling, so you might as well quit stalling and order some magazines now.
    “Only one? That’s it? All right, but there’s no reason to make my job so difficult. I’m just trying to help everybody here, but nobody ever appreciates it. I’ll just put you down for a couple of extra subscriptions.
    “Sure, go ahead. Eat your dinner while I have to stay here and work. Fine. Good-bye.”
    She sold a lot of magazines.
    Aunt Inga was so good at making people feel like idiots, she only had to make phone calls in her big chair in front of the television for three hours a day. She liked to call in the late afternoon and early evening, when she knew people were sitting down to eat dinner with their families.
    It worked like a charm. Aunt Inga had dozens of golden plaques from the magazine companies thanking her for selling magazines that nobody wanted.
    When Aunt Inga wasn’t on the phone selling magazines, she sat in her big chair and watched television and ate cookies and took little naps. The television was on from ten o’clock in the morning, when she woke up, till eleven-thirty at night, when she went to bed.
    The only thing that could tear Aunt Inga away from her chair in front of the TV was the mail. Every afternoon at exactly aquarter past two, Aunt Inga stood at the front door waiting for the mailman. If he was late, she let him know what an inconvenience it was for her. And of course, the mail always disappointed her.
    “Nothing. Nothing but people wanting me to buy things I don’t need. Do they think I don’t have anything better to do with my time than open their dumb envelopes?”
    You may be thinking it’s odd that she hated being bothered by people wanting her to buy things she didn’t need, when that is exactly what she did for a living. Me too. But some people are just like that.
    So, Aunt Inga didn’t hear Darius when he took the bike up and down the basement stairs. It’s a good thing, because I’m sure, just as Darius was, that she wouldn’t have let him touch the bike, even though no one was using it.
    Aunt Inga didn’t know the first thing about bikes. She couldn’t ride a bike if she had to. To be sure, she had learned how to ride a bike when she was a little girl. But even though everyone says that once you ride a bike, you never forget how, I am afraid that she had.
    You are probably wishing that Aunt Inga would just stop being mean and say, “Darius, my little bunnykins, anything you find in that musty old basement is yours.”
    But you know Aunt Inga well enough by now to know that she’s not going to say anything of the sort.

5
A Strange Occurrence
    D arius survived the next few days, but that was about all he did. It seemed that Aunt Inga was doing her best to forget that he was there.
    And then, on the fourth day at Aunt Inga’s, a very strange thing happened.
    It was quite early and Darius was sitting in the dim basement with his head in his hands, staring at the bike again. It was in worse shape than he thought.
    “I can’t do this,” he said to himself, “it’s impossible! I’ll have to live with Aunt Inga forever!”
    He climbed up the stairs and went out the door into the backyard. Absentmindedly, he stuck his hands in his pockets. His fingers touched the chain that Miss Hastings had given him. He pulled it out and held it up. The silver wings dangled in front of his face.
    As he gazed at the charm, he heard a clanking and a whirring. He instantly recognized the sound of a pedal arm hitting the chain guard on every turn, and the clicking of a derailleur. It was someone riding a bicycle. He looked around. Where was the noise coming from? Darius ran around the house and peered upand down the street. No one was there. Now the sound was above him. He looked up into the sky.
    “Holy moly!” he