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

there was a commercial, Anthony stopped staring at the tube and jumped on Darius. He held him down and hit him on top of the head with his sharp knuckles.
    “Ouch!” said Darius. “Stop it! That hurts.”
    Anthony laughed. “They do it harder than that at school. Do you want to see what else they do?”
    “NO!!” Darius yelled. Just then, the commercial ended. Suddenly, Anthony climbed off Darius, sat back down, and stared at the set.
    At the next commercial, Anthony said, “Where was I? Oh, that’s right. The Laundry Job! Do you know what a Laundry Job is?”
    “No,” said Darius, “and I don’t want to—”
    Before he could finish, Anthony leapt onto Darius’s back, grabbed the back of Darius’s underpants and pulled on them until they reached almost over Darius’s head. Anthony guffawed. “That’s a Laundry Job, you worm. I learned it at school.” With Anthony sitting on top of him and his underwear stretched to its limit, Darius could only hold his breath and wait. When the commercial ended, Anthony climbed off of Darius and stared at the television again. Darius stuffed his stretched underwear back in his pants, then tiptoed out the door. Anthony’s eyes never left the TV screen.
    Darius walked through the living room and out the front door, which he closed quietly behind him. He decided that from then on he would avoid Anthony whenever possible.
    Avoiding Anthony
and
Aunt Inga meant that Darius spent most of his time in the basement or the backyard.
    Early every morning he worked on the old bike with a few rusty hand tools he had scavenged from Aunt Inga’s garage. On nice days, he dragged the bike out into the backyard, where he could work in the fresh air. About the time he thought his aunt would be waking up, he’d put away the bike and the tools and wait in the basement until she called him for breakfast.
    He’d then spend the next few hours on his cot, reading and rereading the books he’d brought with him. He had nearly memorized the adventure books. He stared at the maps in the atlas, imagining he was somewhere else. The book his father had read to him,
Bullfinch’s Mythology
, was difficult; he tried to imagine his father’s voice reading the words, and that made it easier.
    Darius was trapped. And he was bored. Bored as could be.
    Although you may not like to admit it, I’m sure you’ve been bored in the summer. There are too many hours in the day, and there is no way to get where you want to go to do something interesting. If you could drive and had an endless supply of money, you’d go to the water park on Monday, to the zoo on Tuesday, and to the beach on Wednesday, and you’d never get bored. But when you can’t drive and you don’t have much money, you stay at home and get bored. And you drive the people around you crazy. Even if they love you.
    But since the only person around was Aunt Inga, Dariusthought
he
might go crazy. His aunt didn’t want Darius in the house, but she didn’t want him out of the house either. Really, she just didn’t want him anywhere. If he stayed in the basement, she would say, “Where have you been? You think you can just hide out down there without so much as a word as to what you’re doing? Here I am, so worried about what you’re up to that I can’t get anything else done.”
    Then, when he came upstairs and sat quietly while his aunt watched TV or made her phone calls, she would say, “Fine, Mr. Snootypants, you just sit there and stare at me. You don’t do anything worthwhile the whole day long. I don’t know why I put up with you. I’m here slaving away and you don’t lift a finger to help out.”
    Darius had read about slaves, and Aunt Inga didn’t appear to be slaving away at anything.
    After a while, Darius realized that he was going to disappoint her no matter what he did.
    So one day, just when he was about to go crazy with boredom, he slipped through the kitchen and called from the back door, “I’m going out!” Then he