Born to Fly Read online

  Uh-uh. With no time to waste, I went right for the throat. “So. Friday night and no date again, huh?”

  “Get lost, twerp.”

  There it was. Big-sisterly love in all its glory It was time to spark her dull-witted interest. “Remember that cute lieutenant who was here a few weeks ago?”

  Margaret played dumb, which wasn’t hard. “Which one?”

  “Um. The one who saw you in your bra.”

  Margaret walloped me in the face with her pillow. “What do you want this time?”

  Maybe she wasn’t so dumb. We could practically read each other’s minds. “Just watch Alvin for me tonight.”

  “Forget it. I watched him last week,” she said.

  “Please. He’ll go to bed early,” I promised her. “Just have your party here.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’ve got a direct communication line to the lieutenant. He’s very interested.”

  “Well, who said I’m interested?” Margaret said.

  I dangled her pillow and flannel pajamas. “A slumber party on a Friday night? That pretty much says it all.”

  “Get lost,” she said.

  Maybe I had overplayed my hand? I glanced at her stack of icky True Romance magazines. The cover of one declared: “Confessions of a Jealous Lover!” That gave me an idea. I decided to try a new tactic.

  “Of course, if you’re not interested, I’m sure Betsy Brightwell could squeeze him onto her dance card.”

  Betsy had been a thorn in Margaret’s side ever since fifth grade. Margaret had fallen hard for Billy Ackerman. She had spent that whole year doing everything she could think of to get Billy’s attention. Every day, on the way to school, she would walk slowly in front of him, dropping her books, her handkerchief, even her lunch—anything that might provide an opportunity for her to flutter her eyelashes and ensnare him with her charms. But every time, Billy would just walk past her, chewing gum and obliviously tossing his baseball into his mitt. In desperation, Margaret had planned an elaborate “surprise” birthday party for herself. Billy ignored the invitation she’d sent him, and as the day grew near, Betsy volunteered to talk to him. She promised Margaret she knew a surefire way to get him to come to the party. The night of the party, to everyone’s surprise, Billy indeed showed up—with the backstabbing Betsy on his arm, and a new leather mitt from Betsy’s dad’s hardware store stuffed in his jacket pocket.

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Margaret said to me, fuming.

  “Just try me.” The thought of Betsy swooping in to snatch the lieutenant sent Margaret over the edge.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll do it. But if there’s any trouble with Alvin, you’re taking the blame.”

  I handed her back her pillow. “Deal.”

  An hour later, Kenji and I were walking along the south shore of the bay with an armful of fireworks and his Graflex camera.

  “I figure our best shot is if we split up and light the bay from both sides.” He handed me two Roman candles. “Take these and when I flash twice with my flashlight, light ’em.”

  “What about the noise?”

  “I think these ones only flare.”

  “You think?” I said. I guess it had finally hit me that this wasn’t some game. We were really gonna try and catch a spy. “Kenji?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s gonna happen if this works?” I asked.

  “Then we get a picture of the spy sub.”

  “Yeah, but then what? Something tells me spies don’t generally like having their picture taken.”

  Kenji swallowed hard. Then he tapped his fist against my shoulder to buck me up. “Hey. You want to get your dad home, don’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Just take your flashlight and signal me when you find a good spot,” he said.

  “Okay,” I said, and headed for the north shore.

  I was somewhere along the north shore, fumbling around in the grass for a dry spot to plant the flares, when I stepped through some brush and thwump! I tripped and fell flat on my face. I looked back and saw my ankle caught in a twist of boat line. When I pulled the line out of the sand and followed it, it led me to Father Krauss’s boat. The boat was lying upside down in some weeds. I checked the hull for damage, but it seemed okay. So I crouched down to flip it over. I got a good grip on the rim. “One, two, three.” I hoisted one side of the rowboat, and then fwap! A lifeless human arm plopped out.

  “Ahhh!” I shrieked.

  It was Mr. Peck, Farley’s dad. His face and body were all pale and bloated with seawater. He was dead. I gasped for air but I was too frozen to scream out again. My arms went limp and I accidentally dropped the boat back onto Mr. Peck’s dead, outstretched arm.

  “Ahhh!” I screamed out again. I flashed my light across the bay to signal Kenji. I waited a moment until I saw his flashlight blink on and off, which let me know that he was coming. But it was a long way from him to me. And I didn’t feel like staying there and keeping dead Mr. Peck company. I slowly backed away from the body. That was when I bumped right into something large and very alive.

  I spun around. Oh God! In front of me was a towering man, dressed all in black, with a knit mask pulled over his face. But I could see his eyes. They were dark and empty, like a shark’s. He grabbed me, lifting my feet off the ground, and covered my mouth so that I couldn’t scream.

  Suddenly Kenji’s flare lit up the moonless sky, surprising the man in black. With all my might I instinctively bit down hard into the forearm he had wrapped around my neck, and I didn’t let go until I tasted blood.

  The man screamed a strange word, “Scheisse!” I broke free and ran for my life.

  At last I was able to scream out, “Kenji!”

  Across the bay, I could see the beam of Kenji’s flashlight dancing through the grass as he ran to find me. I heard him calling out. “Bird?”

  But I was busy running blindly through the high marsh weeds because I could hear the splash of pounding boot-steps gaining on me.

  “Help, help!” I screamed between gasps. I tumbled into some thick brush, scraping my arms, and then somehow I managed to scramble up a tree. Within seconds, the man in black was below me. I had to cover my mouth with my hands and hold my breath to keep from screaming.

  About thirty yards downshore, I could hear Kenji running full speed. Without breaking stride, he reached over his head and fired his last flare. It rocketed into the sky like a shooting star. When the flare burst overhead, it lit up the bay.

  Immediately, the man in black ducked behind my tree. I could tell he sensed I was nearby. In a dark, out-of-breath whisper he called out, “You’re such a clever little girl, Bird.”

  How on earth did he know my name? My left leg, which was supporting me on a branch, started to shake. I tried to steady it with my hands, but it kept right on shaking.

  “I bet you’re clever enough to forget everything you saw tonight. That is, if you like your family alive.” He sniffed the air like a bloodhound and checked his watch. “I know you can hear me.”

  Suddenly, my stupid quivering leg slipped free and snapped a branch.

  “Well, well,” the killer snickered. Slowly, his gaze moved upward.

  But before he saw me, he was blinded by a ghost-white beam of light from the bay. A fishing boat was approaching the shore.

  “Who’s-a there?”

  It was Mr. Ramponi, calling out from his boat! He shined his spotlight into the woods.

  The man in black ducked down. He looked up at me and said, “I know you’ll keep our secret, for your family’s sake.” And then he slowly disappeared into the shadows of the woods.

  Then Kenji’s voice cried out from ten yards away, “Bird? Bird!”

  I slid down from the tree, barely able to stand on my wobbly legs.

  Kenji burst through the darkness. “Are you okay, Bird? What happened?”

  But before I could open my mouth, a deafening explosion ripped through the air, rattling our bones and sending s
hock waves through the earth beneath our feet. I grabbed on to Kenji and fell to the ground.

  My ears were pounding and everything sounded muffled, like my head had been stuffed with cotton. Were we being bombed? I tried, but I couldn’t hear any plane engines overhead. I braced for more explosions, but they didn’t come.

  By the time we struggled back to our feet and dusted ourselves off, a giant cloud of smoke and flames was beginning to fill the sky from somewhere inland.

  “Who’s-a there?” Mr. Ramponi cried out again.

  Kenji was about to call out when I slapped my hand over his mouth. With the killer’s threat against my family fresh in my mind, I shook him and whispered, “Listen. If anyone asks, we weren’t here tonight. And we didn’t see anything. All right?”

  “But I didn’t see anything,” Kenji said.

  “Just cross your heart and promise!”

  “All right. I promise.” He traced a cross on his chest. “Cross my heart.”

  I crossed mine, too, and held out my pinky to seal the pledge. “Hope to die.”

  He clasped my pinky but looked at me like he wasn’t really sure. “Hope to die.”

  The next morning it was raining like crazy, but that didn’t stop me and half the town from finding our way out to the exploded P-40 engine factory. The only time I had seen this many people standing outside in the rain was after Farley’s little brother Frankie fell in the bay and drowned two summers ago. But stuff like buildings blowing up just didn’t happen in Geneseo. A huge chunk of the factory’s redbrick wall was missing, completely blown away. It looked like a tank had run through it. Through the hole I could see that inside, the main engine-block casting oven was no more.

  Outside, ignoring the steady downpour, Deputy Steyer and a team of soldiers were painstakingly searching through the ashes and smoldering debris when a big, black Buick Roadmaster pulled up. It wasn’t the kind of car you saw around town. It looked like something out of a gangster movie. When the door opened, out stepped a tall, clean-cut man in a trench coat. His face was half hidden by the brim of his hat.

  The deputy approached him. “Fred Steyer. I’m the town deputy.” They shook hands.

  “FBI Special Agent Barson,” I heard the tall man say.

  FBI? Holy smokes! Well, that was good, right? They’d find the man in black and I wouldn’t have to say anything, and Margaret, Alvin, and Mom would be safe.

  The deputy showed him some of the debris. Then a second agent handed Mr. Barson something that looked like a melted alarm clock.

  “Was anyone killed?” Agent Barson asked.

  Deputy Steyer nodded solemnly. “Two people. The main casting oven exploded at about eight-thirty last night. We checked the gas lines, but they seem okay.”

  Agent Barson stopped. He knelt down and peeled off a piece of plastic that was melted onto a piston rod. He smelled it. Then he stood up and very slowly shook his head.

  “This was no accident,” he told Deputy Steyer. He looked out over the crowd of people, and I could see his eyes for the first time. They were sharp and focused, almost more triangular than round. They tracked and darted from side to side, like the eyes of Wendy’s cat when it was stalking a sparrow. Then he stared right at me.

  “Somebody knows something,” he said to the deputy. “You can’t hide in a town this small.”

  “Deputy Steyer?” A man hollered from the deputy’s car. “You’ve got a call to go to the bay. They said they’ve found Ben Peck.”

  I felt a sick twist in my stomach and turned away. This wasn’t how things were supposed to turn out. Kenji and I were supposed to be heroes.

  “Who is he?” Agent Barson asked.

  “A draft dodger. Disappeared about a month ago,” the deputy told him.

  “Let’s go,” Agent Barson said.

  By the time I got to the north shore, Deputy Steyer and several fishermen were carrying the body of Mr. Peck to an ambulance.

  Agent Barson stopped the stretcher. He reached down and lifted the sheet. “Killed with one stab wound. Not the work of an amateur. Looks like your draft dodger got in the wrong person’s way.”

  Suddenly Farley came running out of the woods. His face was all red, and he was huffing and puffing like he’d run all the way from town. He tried to reach the stretcher, but several fishermen held him back.

  “Let me see!” he cried.

  “It’s his father,” Deputy Steyer explained to Agent Barson.

  Agent Barson looked at Farley a moment. Then he said, “Let him go.”

  Farley stepped up to the body. He grabbed hold of the sheet. But at the last minute he couldn’t look. He turned his head away. Before last night, the only dead body I had ever seen was my great-grandfather Alvin. He had looked nice and peaceful, almost like he was sleeping in the casket. When I saw Mr. Peck under that boat, he didn’t look peaceful. He looked like a dead animal on the road. If it had been my dad under that sheet, I wouldn’t have looked, either.

  Agent Barson knelt down next to Farley. “Someone sabotaged the plane factory last night. I think your father tried to stop him.” He put his arm around Farley’s shoulder, but Farley stiffened and knocked it away. “Who else knew he was living in the woods?” the agent asked.

  Farley lifted his head and his eyes locked with mine. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I knew that if I got dragged into this now, the man in black was gonna come after my family for sure. Farley looked like a volcano about to explode with anger. He spit out one word.

  “Kenji.”

  At the sound of my friend’s name, I heard others in the crowd start to grumble: “I knew it.” “Of course.”

  Agent Barson looked at the deputy, who explained, “A Japanese boy. Just moved here. He lives in town with his uncle.”

  The rained-on crowd started to fidget and the air around me suddenly got this weird sort of scary electricity. It was like on the playground when all the kids were gathered around Farley and whoever he was picking on, and everyone was just waiting, almost wanting someone to throw that first punch.

  “Let’s find him,” Agent Barson said. “Before some of these townspeople do.”

  They piled into the black Roadmaster and drove away.

  “This is asking for trouble, Bird,” Mom said. “What’s new?” Margaret broke in. “She’s had an open invitation for trouble stamped across her face since she was two.”

  “But he doesn’t have anyone else,” I said.

  Agent Barson was waiting with Kenji by his parked car in our dirt driveway. I stole a glance at Kenji through our front window. He looked different. He wasn’t the same kid who’d saved me from drowning when the sub tipped our boat, or the kid who’d come running to my rescue when the man in black had me up a tree. Somehow he looked, I don’t know, smaller.

  “His uncle’s in jail. Agent Barson said Kenji needs a place to stay,” I told Mom.

  “That’s not our responsibility,” Mom said.

  “Neither is the Widow Gorman, and we help her.”

  Mom was avoiding looking out the window at Kenji. She knew I was right, at least partially. I think she was just afraid.

  “It’s not the same,” she said.

  So I pulled out my trump card. “Dad would let him stay.”

  “That’s not fair,” she said.

  Maybe not, but it seemed to tip the scales in Kenji’s favor.

  “He won’t eat much,” I promised. “Just look at him. He’s not much bigger than his suitcase.”

  Finally Mom started to bend. “I don’t want to hear about any more sea monsters or submarines.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “The first sign of trouble and he’s got to leave,” she said.

  “Deal,” I told her as I burst out the door to tell Kenji. Agent Barson carried his suitcase and I led him inside.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Agent Barson said to my mom.

  Kenji stopped and turned to the agent. “You know my uncle didn’t do it.”

  Agent B
arson soaked in Kenji’s stare, and Mom and I led Kenji upstairs toward Alvin’s room.

  “You’ll have to share a room with my little brother,” I said.

  “That’s okay,” Kenji said.

  As we opened the door, Mom let out a gasp. “Alvin!”

  “Surprise?” mumbled Alvin. My wacky little brother had Margaret’s bra strapped to his head like a skullcap.

  Kenji looked at me and we all burst out laughing.

  “Come with me, Captain Alvin.” Mom escorted him out.

  Thank God for my little brother. It was the first smile any of us had had all day.

  Later, after Mom had gone, I pumped Kenji for the details of what had happened.

  “The deputy and the FBI guy just barged right in,” he told me. “My uncle asked, ‘What are you doing?’ And then Deputy Steyer started rummaging through everything. He found a Japanese flag buried in one of Uncle Tomo’s drawers. Then they asked where he was last night at eight-thirty My uncle said he heard the noise, and he asked if something had happened at the factory. They got real suspicious when he said that. So I told them he was home, with me.”

  “Good thinking,” I said.

  “But they didn’t believe me.”

  “But you didn’t say we were by the bay, did you?” I asked, panicked.

  “No. I didn’t say anything about the bay. But my uncle wouldn’t let me cover for him anyway. He said he wasn’t home, but instead had gone to visit someone after work. Then the G-man found my uncle’s gunpowder and fuse materials.”

  “Oh no!”

  “I tried to explain that they were for the Fourth of July, to make fireworks. But then they found something else in my uncle’s toolbox. They said it was some kind of special explosive, like what they found at the factory. My uncle tried to tell them it wasn’t his, that he didn’t know how it got there, but they didn’t believe him. Then the deputy put him in handcuffs and said he was arresting him for the sabotage of the Warhawk engine factory, and the murder of Mr. Peck.” Then Kenji leaned in closer to me and whispered, “Is that what you saw last night? Mr. Peck, dead?”