The only bit of him that moved was his jaw. He was chewing something large and resistant. The little muscles behind his eyes were working like mad. But when I repeated, “Where’s my sunset note?” he said nothing.
I was very aware that beside him, laid out on the freezer, was the wing. I wanted to look and see if he’d added in any of my green feathers, but his eyes were challenging me to look, so I didn’t. I was angry and wasn’t going to be pushed around.
I was going to ask how he’d worked out the gift was from me. I’d demand to know. I’d no idea where this would end, but that seemed a good enough place to start.
I never even got that far.
To show I wasn’t interested in what was lying on the freezer, I very deliberately looked away. I looked down at the floor. And there was the answer.
On the floor, in among all the rubbish, was the duster. He hadn’t removed any feathers; he hadn’t even cared that they might get damaged. But he’d chucked the plastic bag away, to reveal the whole thing. In my bedroom, I’d looked at the feathers but not the handle. Now I saw it was labeled. Someone had fixed on a big, white sticker halfway along. It must have been there when I first brought it home from school, but I’d forgotten. There, in Mrs. Hill’s super-big, super-clear Key Stage 1 writing, were the words “Alex Meadows.”
I wanted to fall through a hole in the floor and vanish like Rumpelstiltskin. Not that I was angry now. Just embarrassed. I’d so nearly asked how he knew it was me! It was only luck that I hadn’t.
What if I had? It was cold in the shed, but my face burned hot at the thought. I waited for him to call me stupid and tell me to get out.
But he didn’t. Instead he said, “What d’you want?”
That took me by surprise. That was what you might say to someone who’d backed you into a corner. I’ll give you what you want, if you’ll let me go.
I’d definitely not cornered Bogsy! Far from it. I’d shown myself up.
And then: But had I? What did it look like to him? I’d discovered his secret! I’d delivered him a package, much as he’d been delivering Icarus notes. Only I’d put my real name on mine—which was bold! He wasn’t to know I’d not meant to.
“You g—” He started to speak, but found he couldn’t because of the thing in his mouth. He took it out—a ball of chewing gum almost the size of an egg—and set it in a jam tart case on the table. Then he started again.
“You gonna mess things up?”
“No!”
“Then what d’you want?”
What did I?
The things I had wanted five minutes ago weren’t relevant now.
“I want … ” I began. “That is, I’d like, to … help.”
I sounded like a little kid asking to help an adult make a cake—right after they’ve spilled the bag of raisins on the floor.
Bogsy didn’t answer. I thought he was going to put the chewing gum back, but instead he took two little slips of paper from the table. Then his arms were resting on the chair’s arms again, and one of the slips was in one hand, one in the other. The one in his right hand was a sunset note, I saw. I couldn’t read what (if anything) was written on the one in his left.
He looked at me hard, narrowing his eyes, as if I were a sum he had to get right. Then, “Give us that,” he said, and nodded toward my right hand. I hadn’t realized I was still holding the envelope with its blank slip inside. I stepped forward and dropped it in his lap.
Still looking at me in that calculating way, and still holding his two slips of paper, he tweaked out the blank one from the envelope and flicked it aside. It was all so weird. By now I’d have been content to be given my sunset note, and go. Just to forget it.
But eventually he put in the slip from his left hand and gave the envelope back. Then he replaced his huge lump of gum and swiveled his chair round to face away.
“Bye, then,” I said to the back of his head. It was clear the discussion was over. I didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. He was chewing again.
In Don’s shed, I opened my envelope for the second time that day. The slip of paper inside was not blank now.
“Same time. Same place. Tomorrow,” it said.
Bogsy was giving me the benefit of the doubt.
“Yeah?” came Bogsy’s voice when I knocked on his shed door after school next day. We had walked home separately from the bus stop, but almost at once I’d come round, as the note had said.
I felt guilty, waiting for permission to enter, as if I’d never been in all those times unasked, as if yesterday had never happened, when I’d rudely burst in without knocking.
Inside, it was worse. Bogsy had the wing laid out on top of the freezer again.
For a moment, I was tempted to pretend I’d never seen it. I could express surprise and amazement, go up close and examine the workmanship as if for the very first time.
But Bogsy would know. He would know I was lying, and everything would be spoiled.
So I just said, “It’s great, that,” and hoped he would understand why I couldn’t say more.
If he did, he didn’t show it. “Gum,” he said, and held out a piece without looking up. He was bending over the wing, doing something delicate with his right hand, fingers spread.
“No, thanks,” I said, but I thought it was nice he’d asked.
“Then why’ve you come?”
That was really confusing. Not to chew gum, I wanted to say, but that would have made things worse. “To help?” I offered.
He flashed me a glance. “Oh, not to spy, then?”
That was really unfair. I felt it so strongly, I said so. “Unfair!” I exclaimed. “You spied on me!” I glanced at the tube sticking out of the wall. “Why did you?”
Bogsy straightened up and again looked toward me for a second. He seemed uncomfortable, which he never had before. “Dunno,” he said. And then he was angry. “It was stupid!” He stepped toward the tube and dashed it away. I couldn’t tell if he was angry because he had lowered himself to spying or because he had done something for no reason. It could have been either of these—or both. The cardboard tube lay wrecked on the floor, but somehow his outburst had cleared the air.
“Here,” he said. “Go on.”
He must have forgotten I’d said no thanks to the gum, because he was holding out a piece to me again. What was wrong with him? But this time I took it.
“Over here,” he said.
We both moved across to the wing. He was chewing, himself, I saw now, though not as much gum as he’d had in his mouth yesterday. He took a small brown feather from a box (it was over half full; I needn’t have worried) and chose a place on the wing where coverage was thin. He tucked the feather beside another, carefully patting and smoothing it down till it seemed to belong. Its quill rested on a crosspiece, which looked like a spoke from an umbrella.
And then, all at once, the mystery was solved. (Or this one, anyway.) It happened so quickly, I wouldn’t have seen if I’d even just glanced away. He licked his finger and thumb and pinched out a small bit of gum from his mouth and pressed it on top, welding quill and crosspiece together.
Bogsy’s beeswax!
I popped my own piece of gum in my mouth, and started to chew.
“Why d’you use spearmint?” I asked.
“Cos I like it.” He looked surprised at the question. “Least I used to. I’m sick of it now.”
“You could try a different flavor?” I said, but all he replied was “My jaw aches,” and there seemed no answer to that. To fill the awkward silence, I said, “Well, you have to chew it!”
“Not anymore, I don’t,” but he didn’t say why not.
It was really difficult, talking, and not just because we were chewing at the same time. The conversation kept going off in strange directions, or petering out. So I was relieved when he started explaining how to remove a piece of gum from my mouth without getting stuck to it. (“Lick your fingers first.”) He seemed very concerned that I learn the technique.
Which was thoughtful of him.
“You’re going to have to work fast,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to do it.”
I licked my finger and thumb, just as he had, and pinched out a piece of gum from the lump in my mouth. I took about half. Then I scanned the wing for a bare patch and reached out my hand.
WHAM!
Bogsy shot his hand out and hit mine away. He made me jump and I dropped the gum. It seemed an overreaction, but I thought he’d done it because I’d forgotten to take a feather first. “Oh, sorry … ” I began.
But “You’re not touching that!” he said fiercely. He meant the wing.
“Then, how … ?”
“Only I get to work on that.”
“But you said … ”
“You chew.”
It turned out my job was just to chew gum. So he wouldn’t have to. I’d be like one of those dogs in medieval times that ran round a treadmill while somebody else did the interesting stuff.
“Take it or leave it,” said Bogsy, and I knew if I left it, I’d leave the shed and never come back.
It was a no-brainer.
I licked my finger and thumb once again and took out the small piece of gum that was still in my mouth. Bogsy watched me in silence. Then I gave it to him.
He licked his own finger and thumb and took it. He didn’t say thanks. But neither did he whack me again.
So I knew we had an agreement.
After that, we worked together, me chewing, him choosing and sticking on feathers. I admired his skill, but we worked without talking: I couldn’t say much because of the gum; he didn’t want to. I tried to keep two or three pieces on the go in my mouth at any one time. That way, no matter how quickly he went, I was able to keep him supplied. I’d have liked to remind him about my duster, which was still lying untouched on the floor. But maybe, at that stage, I wouldn’t have, even without my mouthful of gum. I had loads of questions, but didn’t ask one. One was answered in the end, but not by me asking, only by chance.
“David!” somebody called (it was Bogsy’s mum) when we’d been there a while. At first he didn’t react, just went on working, so I did, too. But when she called again, his hand stopped midway to the box of feathers.
“David! Dinner!”
He closed the box and shoved it away. Then he started, ever so gently, gathering up the wing in his arms.
I don’t know how he managed to get it in and out of the freezer on his own. On this occasion, I was allowed to lift the lid. And so, just before he slid the wing inside, I saw what I hadn’t before. Lying at the bottom—yes—another. Its pair.
But totally different. No feathers on this one, just a wing-shaped construction of crisscrossing spokes and canes. It was more like a diagram of a wing and—maybe because it was complicated—it made me think of math. I didn’t know if Bogsy would mind that I’d seen, but I couldn’t help bursting out, “Wow! Look at that!”
And all he said was “Got to put feathers on that one.”
“I could help you!” I said, excited. “We could do it together, over half-term.” Half-term break was next week. “I’m not going away! Are you?” He frowned and looked at the floor. “I could come every day and—chew!”
He didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no. So I said, “See you tomorrow.” I didn’t mean at school. “Same time, same place!”
As I slipped through the bins and ran back up our garden, all I could think was how brilliantly things had turned out. Bogsy would fly with my help: In his wings would be telltale flashes of green (I’d make sure). It was good to be in on the secret, good to be sharing something with someone at last. Even someone so strange.
Mr. Smith had explained to us how things in books could symbolize things. Perhaps they could in real life. As Bogsy and I worked away on his wonderful wings, perhaps we were building something else, too.
Bogsy hated Alan’s Battalion. He hated them for being a gang and for having power over everyone else, although individually, as he said, they were just a bunch of morons.
And the bad news was, he thought I was one of them.
“You what?” I said.
“You hang out with them, don’t you?”
And I realized that’s what it looked like from the outside.
“So what am I doing now?” I said.
Hanging out with him, that’s what. (Something I never thought I’d do.)
But Bogsy shrugged. “How should I know?”
You gonna mess things up? he had asked on Monday. That seemed years ago. So much had happened since then, so much had changed.
Today, for example, Friday, he’d been using feathers from my duster. I’d finally plucked up the courage to suggest it, and he hadn’t said no.
“Use some of Squawky’s—the green ones,” I said. “They’d be good.”
“Squawky’s?” said Bogsy. “Who’s Squawky?!”
And suddenly he was laughing. I’d never seen him laugh (and I didn’t again, not for ages). At first I thought he had hiccups, but when he got going I understood. When he got going, he let himself go. He flailed his arms and knocked over a box: Loads of feathers came out and he grabbed great handfuls and threw them recklessly into the air.
“Squawky … ” I tried to explain, but as soon as I said the name again, I realized how funny it was and had to take out my gum, in case I choked. I didn’t have time to lick my fingers first, though: The gum got stuck to them, and I was jumping around, getting stuck to things and laughing with Bogsy.
And when it was over, the air in the shed felt different. Bogsy went back to the wing and stuck a green feather beside a pure black one. It looked great. I took a deep breath.
“Do you think … ” I began. “Do you think, when we’ve finished … I mean finished them both … Well, d’you think I could just have a go?”
Bogsy was scrabbling round on the floor, stuffing feathers back in the overturned box, making quite a bit of noise. I thought he said, “Only Icarus dies,” but I must have misheard.
“Daedalus flies as well,” I said. “Don’t forget that. The two of them do.”
“Daedalus was his dad!” Bogsy flashed. “You’re not my dad!”
The suddenness of his anger took me aback.
“What’s the plan, then?” I said. But it was too late.
So much had changed in the shed that week, but Bogsy still didn’t trust me. He was letting me help—and we’d just had a laugh—but still there were things he was keeping to himself.
“I’ve made friends with him!” I announced when I went to The Laurels the following day. Maisie was in her chair and Donald was perched on the bed, eating cookies.
They knew who I meant and Maisie said, “At last!”
Donald said, “What happened? How did you do it?” and I said, “Well, he gave out the sunset notes and I went round and told him I knew it was him and we talked. No sweat.”
“Was he surprised?” asked Donald excitedly. “What did he say?”
“Not much. He never does. But we get along fine.”
The way I described it, it sounded so simple, so normal, so everyday.
“I’ll be going round his a lot next week. You know, because it’s half-term.”
“Has he said why he’s doing it?” asked Donald, but Maisie cut in before I could say any more.
“Never mind why he’s doing it. Alex, you’ll be able to stop him now.”
“Stop him?” I said. “What d’you mean? I’m helping him. Next week we’re getting the second wing done. Why would I want to stop him? He’s going to fly!”
Why couldn’t she see?
“Then I’ll go to him myself,” she said stubbornly. “You must arrange it.”
“So you can stop him?” I wasn’t that stupid.
“No.”
“But you said … ”
“I couldn’t stop him. No. What I want is to meet him and see if I’m right. You must fix up a visit. And you”—she pointed to Donald—“will drive me.”
I
f she saw the wings, she would see she was wrong. I suddenly wanted her to. Who, when they saw them, wouldn’t want Bogsy to fly?
“Someone’s been trampling my pumpkin plants,” said Mum. “Down by Don’s shed.” She looked at me. She knew it was me, not because she’d seen me, but because I was the only person who went down there.
When I visited Bogsy next day, I made sure she was on the phone to a patient, well out of the way. But I was worried. I told Bogsy.
“I can’t come through the garbage cans anymore,” I said. “My mum’s on my back about treading on her plants. If she catches me at it, she’ll want to know where I’m going, and then we’ll be stuffed.”
“Come through the house,” said Bogsy straightaway.
Partly, I was relieved: I’d feared he might say, Stop coming, then, why don’t you?
But “What d’you mean, come through the house?” I said. “How—when I don’t even live in it now?”
“Well,” he said, speaking slowly. (I had that feeling again that I was a child and he was much older.) “You open the gate, walk up the path, and ring the bell.” He was being sarcastic, but I didn’t mind.
I liked the idea of visiting as he described. I liked its ordinariness. I’d had enough of climbing through the wall of garbage cans. And it would be public. People would see me. Not so much now, but after half-term, Alan Tydman would. And that would be fine. It would prove I’d changed.
And then I realized that using the door instead of the cans had another advantage.
“Can I bring a friend?”
He stiffened at once.
So I added, “Not from school.”
“Not Alan Tinybrain?”
“No! A friend! You’d like her.”
“A girl?”
“No, she’s old. An old lady.”
He looked at me questioningly.
“She’s—wise.” Yes, that was the word. “And she wants to come.”
The Icarus Show Page 8