Stealing Air

by Trent Reedy

  The pastor was delivering the sermon. Something about forgiveness and peace. Those were the last things on Brian’s mind.

  After church, Brian changed quickly into jeans and a T-shirt. Without even bothering to ask his parents if he could go out, he grabbed Spitfire and tore off up the street toward the Eagle’s Nest. He hoped Max was there, for Max’s sake, because otherwise Brian was going straight to Max’s house. And Max probably wouldn’t want Brian on his case about the Plastisteel in front of his mother.

  Leaving his skateboard outside, he went into the Eagle’s Nest, coming up out of the tunnel to see Max and Alex laughing at a Weird Al video on Alex’s phone. It was great to see them acting like such pals, Brian thought savagely. Great that Alex seemed to be getting over his problem about hanging out with Max. Really terrific.

  “Dude!” Alex said when he spotted Brian. “You’re just in time. We’ve been working all morning and we finished the wing. Now Max is putting the last touches on the engine.”

  Brian reached over and paused the video on the phone.

  “Hey, we were watching that,” Alex said. “Max kept asking me to play it. Finally, I gave in. It’s really funny stuff.”

  Max watched Brian with an even expression. “Unless I am very mistaken, something is troubling you.”

  Brian put his hands on the table and leaned toward Max. “How did you really get the Plastisteel to build the flyer?”

  Max turned away for a moment, almost as if he were about to ask the cardboard Captain Kirk for advice. “I told you. My mother … she had extra and she —”

  “Liar!”

  Alex put his hands up. “Whoa! Chill. No need to freak out and start —”

  “You stole it!” Brian moved around to Max’s side of the table. Max staggered back. “I know all about it. My dad said they had all this Plastisteel when the lab was still in Riverside and it was stolen. If it takes them so long to make the stuff, your mom wouldn’t have just given you this much to play with!”

  Max had circled around the other corner of the table and squeezed past Alex. Brian followed him. “I was so stupid! An idiot to think that your mom just said, ‘Here, son, I have some extra industrial-strength sheets of super plastic and I want you to have them. Just for fun!’ You stole from our parents’ company and lied to everyone!”

  Alex looked at Max. “Is this true?”

  “Well.” Max took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. “Sort of. I mean. Mostly. Just let me —”

  “My mom and dad invested everything they had in this company! I had to move all the way to stupid Iowa! Where this stupid guy will be born!” Brian punched cardboard Kirk in the chest, knocking him back to the wall.

  “Don’t take it out on Captain Kirk!” Max said.

  Brian spun to face him. “No, I’m going to take it out on you.”

  He lunged toward Max, but Alex moved between them. “Just calm down a second, Brian. We gotta work this out.” Brian shoved him out of the way. “Dude, chill! You about made me drop my phone!”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry for nearly wrecking your phone! Your rich father would have had to buy you a brand-new one.”

  “You think your family is the only one going through tough times?” Alex yelled, shaking his iPhone in the air. “I didn’t even want this thing in the first place, but my dad thinks it’s important to have all the best stuff. Reputation, success, blah blah blah. If this breaks now, my dad will kill me, and he can’t buy me a new one.”

  “Guys, stop fighting! I’m sorry!” Max shouted louder than Brian had ever heard him. His glasses were off and he wiped his eyes. Nobody spoke or moved. “I’m sorry for lying. I should have been honest with you. I didn’t realize that Plastisteel was so difficult to synthesize back when I acquired … stole it,” he said. “I thought this was a relatively small quantity that wouldn’t be missed, given the massive volume they would eventually manufacture. By the time I realized how much trouble my theft had caused, they had already filed police reports. My mother was so angry about it that I lacked the courage to confess what I had done.”

  Something twisted inside Brian. Here he was screaming at Max for lying. But how many times had Brian lied to avoid going to lunch with Max? Which was worse, being a hypocrite like Brian or a thief like Max?

  “Well, you’ll have to confess now,” he said. “You’ll give the Plastisteel back. They might not punish you that much since your mom —”

  “Wait a minute,” Alex said. “It isn’t that simple. We’ve been working on the flyer for like a month now. We all showed it off to Mrs. Douglas together. You can’t just go to the cops and tell them that you’ve had this stolen property for so long. We’ll get … I don’t know … second-degree theft, or conspiracy to steal Plastisteel —”

  “That’s not a real criminal charge,” said Max.

  “Well, something!” Alex said. “Like it or not, Brian, we’re all in this now. Together.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s great,” Brian said. “So my family will be bankrupt now because of this, and the three of us are going to jail.” Oddly enough, being involved in something with Alex was a big part of why Brian had agreed to work on the flyer. Too bad neither of them had realized they were getting themselves wrapped up in a crime.

  “What happened to getting the flyer in the air, impressing that rich lady?” Alex said.

  Brian examined the mostly reassembled engine. “Is she ready to fly?” he asked Max quietly.

  Max kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “With the drag from the skateboard wheels, I don’t think we have quite enough power to reach a true takeoff speed.” He slipped his glasses back on. “I have some solid theories for improving engine power, but to implement them, I’ll need … more Plastisteel.”

  Brian said nothing. Max was a good guy in the end, but now it seemed they were all stuck in a hopeless situation. He didn’t know what to do, but he knew he needed to get away from all of this, at least for a little while. He went out, grabbed Spitfire, and left.

  The next morning, Brian left the house early and rolled down to the ramps at Riverview Park. He was tired of thinking about the whole stolen Plastisteel thing. It was good just to move, to skate out his trouble. He popped up over one of the smaller ramps, sailing through a good two feet of air before his wheels hit the cement. He wobbled a little. Sloppy landing.

  He kicked Spitfire faster, then stomped her tail to jump her up, grinding her trucks along the edge of a steel rail. He didn’t kick off right on the dismount, though, and had to jump clear and come to a running stop. Stupid. That was an easy trick. Skating was the last thing in his life that wasn’t messed up, and he was messing up every trick he tried that morning.

  “I was hoping I’d find you here.”

  Wendy stood at the edge of the skate park, her skateboard leaning against her leg. She put down her backpack and took off her white jacket. She had on a sleeveless flower-print shirt with wide straps over the shoulders and lace at the bottom. Brian hooked his upside-down board with his toe and flipped it back onto its wheels. He usually found clothes boring, but somehow he always seemed to notice what Wendy wore.

  He hopped on Spitfire and rolled around in a tight circle. Wendy dropped her skateboard to the cement and rolled in an opposite arc. They skated around and around, facing each other.

  “How did you know I was down here?”

  “The other day you skated past my street on the way to school,” Wendy said with a grin. “You couldn’t have been coming from your house. I asked myself where you might have been, then I took a guess and rolled down here to find out if I was right.”

  “Yeah, but why?” Brian kicked his skateboard out of the circle they’d been running, guiding Spitfire in a gentle curve toward the stairs to the half-pipe.

  Wendy skated after him. “Because one thing Frankie will absolutely not do is wake up really early to follow me.” She joined him up on the half-pipe deck. “And you looked kind of down in church yesterday.”

  On any other d
ay Brian would have felt almost dizzy if a beautiful girl like Wendy had come all the way to the skate park to find him. “Sorry,” he said. “A lot on my mind.”

  “Anything I can help you with?”

  “Not unless you can help me fly.”

  She elbowed him lightly. “I thought you were best at that.”

  Brian put his back truck over the lip at the edge of the ramp and looked down into the half-pipe. “I keep trying to get a high enough jump make a complete 360. I can never quite get enough air.” He stomped the front of his board down hard and dove into the drop. Transition. Flat. Transition. Up! He cleared the other side and cranked Spitfire around in the air. He put the wheels back on the ramp and rolled back toward Wendy. In the air again, he tried to twist around for the 360 but wasn’t fast enough.

  His wheels hit the ramp and he felt the board slow down just a little from the drag. He bent his legs to shoot up the other side and soared into in the air, twisting Spitfire in a half spin. Nothing slowed him up here — no gravity, no drag, just flying.

  That was it!

  He landed backward, skating for a while, but then waxing out in the flat bottom.

  “Are you okay?” Wendy called down to him. “You almost had it!”

  Brian’s knees and elbow hurt, but he stood up with a smile. “I’ve got it! Everything is going to be great!”

  The flyer couldn’t get into the air because the engine didn’t have enough power to overcome the drag and reach takeoff speed. But what if it wasn’t slowed down by rolling along on the runway? What if there was a way to get rid of that drag force?

  They both skated around the park for a while longer before heading off to school. A plan was coming together in Brian’s mind. It was totally crazy. The odds were still stacked against them. But it just might work.

  Brian spent most of that day waiting for his chance to get back to the Eagle’s Nest. He only had to put up with a couple body checks from Frankie — more minutes off his time spent with Wendy. At least the idiot hadn’t figured out that he skated with her that morning. When the class was dismissed for lunch, Brian stayed at his desk as he did most days, sketching out his plan, until Ms. Gilbert kicked him out of the room. When he finally made his way to the cafeteria, he didn’t even bother with the lunch line, but simply took his pencil and notebook to an empty table and kept working.

  That afternoon Brian was the first one out of the school. He stopped on the way to the Eagle’s Nest to buy a bag of cheese puffs and three Mountain Dews. Hopefully the soda would help smooth things over a little after his outburst yesterday — that, and the new plan.

  At the Eagle’s Nest, Brian admired the flyer. Her streamlined wings and tail. The engine that was now mostly back together. She looked good, and she was going to fly. Soon.

  Max came up out of the tunnel. “Brian, I didn’t expect you to be here.” He wouldn’t meet Brian’s eyes.

  “Alex coming?”

  Max nodded. “I talked to him on the street out front. He’s going to get his iPod speakers, and then he’ll be right over.”

  Brian put his bag on the east wall workbench, taking out his notebook. He saw the dent he’d made in cardboard Captain Kirk’s chest.

  “I’m very sorry for not telling you sooner about the stolen Plastisteel,” Max said. “I should never have stolen it in the first place. I just thought my parents might be impressed if I could show them a working flyer.”

  Alex came up into the workshop. “Oh,” he said when he saw Brian. “What did I miss?”

  “Max,” said Brian, “you shouldn’t have stolen the Plastisteel, but Alex was right yesterday. We’re all in this together now. We have to get this flyer airborne so we can impress Mrs. Douglas and get her to, well, basically save Synthtech.”

  Brian was about to go on, but Max held up his hand to speak. “I might have improved the engine capacity by a very small amount, but there’s only so much I can do without more Plastisteel. I don’t believe the engine has enough power to overcome the drag.”

  That was exactly what Brian had hoped he would say.

  “Bingo,” he said. “What if I told you there’s a way to eliminate all ground drag on takeoff?”

  “That’s impossible, right?” Alex said. “I mean, they’re skateboards, not hoverboards. You’re going to have some resistance from the wheels on the runway.”

  “We’re not going to take off from a runway.” He rolled out his drawing. It showed the flyer hanging by three cables from a giant balloon. A close-up sketch in the corner detailed the steel ring-and-pin release system that would attach the cables to the flyer.

  “You propose to lift the flyer into the air?” Max said.

  “Yeah,” said Brian. “We fill our balloon with helium and hoist the flyer really, really high. Then we start the engine in the air. The flyer won’t have any problem building up speed since it’ll already be off the ground.”

  “We’ll never be fast enough,” Alex said. “The balloon will be a giant parachute.”

  “Once we top out our speed and we’re dragging the balloon, we release the cables.”

  “But your lack of forward velocity would then put the flyer into a rapid descent,” Max said.

  “Big deal,” Brian said. “We’d be high up, and we’d be level. I just dip the nose forward a little and then level off. She’d come out of the fall and be flying under her own power with hundreds of feet to spare.”

  Alex looked from Max to Brian and back again. “You seriously think this could work? Where do we even get a giant balloon?”

  “This Saturday night, Mr. Pineeda is having a Pig-Out Contest where the prize is Mr. Piggly himself,” said Brian. “All you have to do is finish a Big Porker sandwich and some Pig Tails. I may not look like a big eater, but I can pack food away. I’m going to win that balloon.” Brian had taken first place in a hot-dog eating contest back in Seattle, devouring eight disgusting school dogs in one lunch period. He was older now, and this was actually good food. He could win this.

  “Finding that much helium may pose a problem.” Max leaned over the diagram, looking from the picture to the flyer. “Otherwise, I think this is an excellent plan. It may interest you to know that the first space shuttle, named Enterprise after the ship from Star Trek, did not first take off under its own power. It was taken up on top of a 747 and launched in atmospheric flight tests from there.”

  “Wow, more lame Star Trek stuff,” said Alex. He chugged down the rest of his soda and tapped Brian’s drawing. “Dude, this is really cool, but if this is the plan, flying under a giant pig, we better finish putting the engine back together.”

  The week dragged on. Every day one of them read an article or watched a video online about eating contests. How much to eat. How much to drink. By Saturday, Brian felt as though he knew everything about how to eat a lot of food as quickly as possible.

  That evening, Alex and Brian left Max in the Eagle’s Nest and went down to Piggly’s for the Pig-Out Contest. Brian breathed deeply, taking in the amazing smells of the place. He leaned toward Alex. “I’m ready to win.”

  Alex spoke quietly. “Win or lose, so many people are betting on this contest that I’m still going to make a ton of money.”

  “Good evening, boys!” Mr. Pineeda greeted them. “Young Mr. Mackenzie, and … Mr. Roberts, right?”

  “Right,” Brian answered.

  “Ha! I knew it! I knew it! Just you two tonight? Coming for a taste of the truly extraordinary for dinner, or for the frozen dee-light, the treat that that can’t be beat, Piggly’s ice cream?”

  Brian looked over to the tables in the dining area. A whole section of the room had been roped off, with a big pink sign advertising the Pig-Out Contest standing nearby. A couple of high school guys were already sitting at one of the tables, talking, laughing, and drinking sodas. Could he really out-eat high schoolers like that?

  Alex elbowed him. Brian nodded and took his hands out of his pockets, his shoulders squared back. “I’m here to win the
Pig-Out Contest,” he said. “I want Mr. Piggly.”

  “That’s the spirit!” Mr. Pineeda clapped his hands. “We need more big eaters like you in this town.” He put his hand behind Brian’s back and led him to the dining area. Alex followed. Mr. Pineeda unhooked the thick rope and motioned them through with his other hand. “Right this way, gentlemen. Take any seat you like. The contest begins in about twenty minutes. Miss Kendra Hanson will be around in a bit to take your drink orders.”

  Brian and Alex took the table farthest from the high school guys. One of them gave a nod, but the rest just ignored them.

  “Remember what Max said about the stuff he looked up online,” Alex said quietly. “Water only. No soda. The carbonation will only make you feel more full. You need to chew quickly, but really chew.”

  “I know,” Brian said. “Chew the food up a lot so it’s all compacted into a paste in my mouth before swallowing. That way it will take up less stomach space.”

  “A Big Porker is over a pound of food,” Alex said. “The winner may be whoever can finish first, but the guys who stuff the food as fast as they can are going to feel too full to keep going.”

  Kendra the waitress approached the table. She put her hand on her hip and glanced back at the high school guys. “Want drinks?”

  Alex’s eyes traced her from her shoes all the way to the pig snout on her nose and the pink bow in her hair. He smiled at Kendra. “What happened to the nice greeting I’ve come to expect here at —”

  “You want a soda or not?” She still didn’t look at them. One of the high school guys had noticed her and made a snorting sound like a pig, then they all laughed and acted like they hadn’t done anything. Her cheeks reddened.

  “Don’t pay attention to those guys,” Alex said.

  She glared at him. “Last chance. What do you want to drink?”

  “Mountain Dew,” said Alex. “Brian will just have water.”

  “Fine.” She spun away so fast that her sandy brown hair flew back.