The Great Bike Rescue (2 page)

“If you don't lock your bike, it's almost like you want it to be stolen,” he said.

I didn't want my bike to be stolen!

But he was right about it not being locked. I was supposed to always lock it. The cable was wrapped around the seat post, with the lock and key attached, to make it easy to lock. I was foolish not to lock it.

Still, it hurt when those were his first words. And they were the first words from everyone on the street as well, the people we asked as we made our way to Riley's house.

“Unlocked bikes disappear fast around here,” said the waitress who was clearing tables outside the coffee shop.

She said it like it happened every day. Did it really happen that often?

“Do you know how many times people ask us about stolen bikes?” said the city workers with the garbage truck. “People are crazy not to lock things up.”

I wasn't crazy!

“If it's not locked…” said the guy at the gas station. His name was AJ, or at least that's what was written on his shirt. He finished the statement with a
what-do-you-expect
kind of shrug. But then he looked sympathetic and added, “I'll keep an eye open for it. I see a lot of things from this corner.”

After AJ, we saw the perfect sisters. They aren't really sisters, but they dress alike, talk alike and always do what they're supposed to. Even their bikes are the same.

“Watch out if you're headed to the corner store,” Riley called to them. “Levi's bike just got stolen!”

In unison, they swerved across the street toward us. Synchro-biking. Maybe it could be a new sport.

“Was it locked?” they asked together.

“I was only inside for a minute,” I said. “It was the middle of the day. It was right in front of the store.”

“We always lock our bikes,” said Julia.

“No matter how long we're going to be,” said May.

“Or where we leave them,” said Julia.

Of course they did. They were the perfect sisters. They smiled at each other and pedaled away, side by side.

It was the first question Riley's mom asked too. Except Riley's mom is really nice and her very next words were, “Sorry, Levi. No matter how it happened, I know how much you and Riley like your bikes. You must feel awful.”

She was right. I do like my bike. Riley and I have all kinds of adventures on our bikes. I did feel awful.

Besides his great mom, Riley also has a dad, a little sister, an older brother and a bunch of cousins that come and go. Usually I liked to stay at Riley's house for a while. But I knew it was time to go home and tell Dad. Telling Dad was going to be the hard part.

My dad doesn't yell or shout—he's not that kind of dad. But he's big on responsibility. It's one of a whole list of things he says Mom would have wanted me to learn. Locking up my bike was the
responsible
thing I was
supposed
to do. I couldn't even argue with him about whether or not that kind of stuff was important to Mom. My mom died when I was too little to remember. I guess you already know the first thing he asked.

“Was it locked?”

I could feel the word
yes
forming on my lips. If I asked Riley to go along with it, Dad might never find out!

But I didn't lie. I shook my head no.

Adults always say that it's best to tell the truth. I'm not so sure. Dad was even more disappointed than I'd expected. He looked tired and he looked discouraged. He poured himself a cup of coffee. He goes through a lot of coffee these days. He is trying to work from home because I'm too old for a babysitter, but he doesn't want me on my own all summer either. Responsible kid, responsible parent. I'm not sure it is working out.

“I know,” I said. “I should have locked it.”

“Locked or unlocked, it needs to be reported to the police,” he said. “Give me a few minutes to finish what I'm doing. We'll take the car.”

As we drove, I looked hard out the window, trying to see through fences and behind trees just in case I saw my bike. I didn't.

If you've ever thought that a police station might be a fun place to visit, forget it. Cameras watched us walk from the parking lot to the door. We had to ring an intercom buzzer and ask to come in. The door was made of heavy metal—really heavy, as in bulletproof. It closed behind us with a loud metallic
click
. Yup. First we'd been locked out. Now we were locked in. Visiting the police station makes you feel like a criminal.

A uniformed officer was doing paperwork behind a tall counter. For a moment, I thought things might be getting better. She was about the same age as Riley's mom. Maybe she had kids of her own and might even care about someone whose bike had been stolen.

Nope. Wasn't going to happen. The set expression on her face didn't change when Dad explained why we'd come. She simply passed a form across the counter.

I filled it in—part of Dad's latest lesson in responsibility. The bike was secondhand and we didn't have a receipt, and I'd never written down the serial number. Luckily, there were other things I could remember, like exactly what was written on the frame and which tire had been replaced. Dad signed the form and gave it back to the officer.

“A lot of bikes have been stolen lately,” she said, looking down at me with her official police-officer expression. “You should have locked it.”

She was right. Everyone was right. On the way home, I scrunched myself up small on my side of the car. We aren't poor, but there isn't a lot of extra money at our house either. I couldn't believe I'd made it so easy for someone to steal my bike.

But there was something else bugging me. Really bugging me. Dad must have felt it, because he glanced across the seat.

“What is it, Levi?” he asked.

I pressed my lips together. I didn't want to make things worse than they were. But I was mad.

“Just spit it out,” said Dad. “You'll feel better.”

“I know I messed up,” I said. “But just because something isn't locked that doesn't make it right for someone else to steal it!”

Dad drove in silence for a few moments.

“No,” he said at last. “That doesn't make it right.”

That's when I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I hadn't even known I'd been feeling that way! But I had. And now, all of a sudden, I was able to think more clearly.

The store clerk, the people on the street and the police officer had all said the same thing. My bike wasn't the only one that had been stolen. If it had happened more than once, it would happen again. If there's one thing Emily Grimshaw had taught me, even at age six, it was that criminals always return to the scene of the crime.

The phone was ringing when I stepped in the door. It was Riley.

“We can't just give up on your bike,” he said. “It's a great bike. Superheroes don't just let people walk away with things!”

I don't want to be a superhero and I'm not sure Riley really does either. But I'm glad he's my friend.

“I've got a plan,” I said. “Can you help me out tomorrow? Can I borrow The Flame?”

Chapter Three

“Go, go, go!” called Riley.

My legs were already cranking so fast that I felt like a hamster on an exercise wheel. The Flame was Riley's bike from two years ago, and it was too small for me. If I sat on the seat, I felt like a circus clown on a tricycle. If I stood up, I felt like Frankenstein's monster on a dinky toy. And I had to pedal like crazy to keep up even when Riley was coasting.

“If I ever get my own bike back, I'm going to put thirty-seven locks on it and weigh it down with bricks,” I called, pumping my legs even harder.

But the paint job on The Flame—deep red with tongues of orange and yellow fire—made it the kind of bike people noticed. It was exactly what we needed.

I must have been pedaling harder than I thought, because a few moments later I shot past Riley. The next intersection was Battersby Street. I hit the brakes and rounded the corner.

There's always a hum of traffic on Battersby. Pedestrians flow up and down the sidewalk, different numbers at different times of the day. I leaned The Flame against the front of the store, exactly where I'd left my own bike a day earlier. I looked around.

A delivery driver was carrying packages through the door of an office building. The waitress at the café was outside, talking to a man in a black T-shirt. One of the perfect sisters was dropping a letter into the mailbox down the street. No one was looking in my direction. I took a few steps and ducked into the unused doorway, the one the store keeps locked.

It's a spot that most people don't notice, a little alcove—deep and narrow. Like everywhere else along the storefront, the plate glass is lined with posters. I sat with my back against the door and pulled in my legs. Instantly, I was hidden. Only someone looking directly sideways at the exact moment they passed the doorway would see me.

But I could see out. By peering through the cracks between the posters, I could see the street, The Flame and a stretch of sidewalk in either direction. Perfect.

The next minute, Riley walked around the corner and sat beside me.

“Hey!” he said. “This is going to work great. It's a stakeout, just like on the cop shows. We should have brought coffee and donuts.”

“Where's your bike?” I asked.

“Locked at the back,” he said. “Bikes get stolen in front of this store, in case you haven't heard. And I can't watch it if I'm helping you wrestle some thief to the ground.”

Wrestling wasn't part of the plan. As soon as the thief laid a finger on The Flame, we'd both step out of the doorway. The thief would abandon his plan and take off. But I'd know what he looked like. Our city is big, but our neighborhood isn't. I'd ask around and find out who he was. Maybe I'd even find out where he lived. I'd tell the police.

Riley's head was swiveling back and forth. “See anyone suspicious yet?”

As far as I was concerned, everyone was suspicious.

Two teenagers were pooling money at the bus stop. A bike, even one as small as The Flame, could save one of them the cost of bus fare.

A summer student hurried down the sidewalk, headed to the college across the ravine. A bike would get her there way faster.

A bottle picker ambled down the street, looking in garbage cans. He could tie his bulging bags to the bike and push it, like a cart. Way easier.

Nope. None of them even looked at The Flame. But I wasn't discouraged.

If the bike thief needed a bike for transportation, he now had one—he had my bike.

I should be watching for someone who
wasn't
going anywhere. Someone who was hanging around. Someone who was stealing things because that's what he or she did.

The man with the black T-shirt was now walking back and forth on the opposite corner. I could see tattoos all down one arm. Definitely suspicious. And when I thought about it, I was pretty sure I'd seen him around before.

A gray-haired man on a bench was pretending to scratch lottery tickets. I could tell he was doing a lot of peering around from beneath his bushy eyebrows.

Two women wearing frayed jeans were looking in shop windows across the street. They could be using the reflection to case out opportunities. I held my breath as they crossed at the corner. Nope, they passed by without a glance.

The only one who did look at The Flame was a little boy. If he'd taken it, his mom would have made him put it back.

That's when someone in blue jeans and a wrinkled T-shirt slid around the corner and sat down beside us.

“Hey,” she said.

I couldn't believe it. Emily Grimshaw.

Emily is tiny. She'd squeezed herself into the corner next to Riley, her knees hugged up tightly. With her sharp chin and bright eyes she looked like a rodent—a rodent in a wrinkled T-shirt. Riley looked at Emily and then he looked at me. Back and forth. Emily. Me.

When I was little, Emily Grimshaw had made me so mad I'd felt like a cartoon character—you know, the kind with steam coming out of its ears? Instantly that feeling returned. Or maybe there really
was
steam, because the puzzled expression on Riley's face shifted. He'd figured it out. He knew who she was. He waited for me to say something.

I couldn't. Emily was the
last
person I wanted to see. I didn't want to be reminded of one thief—even if it was little-kid stuff—when I was trying to catch another! What was she doing here? What kind of weird coincidence was this? It was so weird, I couldn't have thought of what to say even if I wasn't already steamed.

But Emily had no such problem. She was bobbing her head around, looking between the posters, this way, that way, up and down.

“This is a pretty good place to hide,” she said. “Who thought of it?”

No way was I going to answer. But Riley had become interested. He decided to jump right in.

“Levi did,” he said.