The Giant Smugglers by Matt Solomon Read Free Book Online Page B

across, he leaned ahead on his BMX, gripped the handlebars tight, and lifted the back tire up in the air in a donkey kick. Then he brought the back of the bike down as hard as he could. It cost him a lot of speed, but he was willing to sacrifice it.
    Fitz was riding all-out as his bike hit the bridge. His front tire jumped all over the place, trying to stay true on the herky-jerky boards that Charlie’s ploy had set in motion. Fitz couldn’t hold the thin tire straight, and Charlie heard a yell.
    He glanced back to see Fitz’s bike lying on the boards, its front wheel spinning in the air. He skidded to a halt, raised his fists to the sky, and let out a triumphant “Yeah!”
    He stood on the pedals, ready to ride again, when his nagging conscience made him look back one more time. Fitz was nowhere near the bike. Then Charlie heard a shout from the underside of the bridge.
    â€œHelp!”
    Filled with a new kind of dread, Charlie pedaled over to the edge. Dark water swirled below as a dam loomed in the distance. Its concrete cap was crumbling at the edges from years of holding back the Pine River. He leaned out and peered down alongside the bridge.
    There was Fitz, hanging from the boards on the other side of the torn rope. He’d wiped out and crashed through the webbing. “You gotta help me,” Fitz pleaded. “I can’t hold on much longer.”
    Charlie couldn’t just leave. He rode over to the ripped-up webbing, jumped off his bike, and threw off his backpack. Kneeling down, he extended his arm. “Give me your hand,” he said, not even sure he could pull up the bigger Fitz without being dragged over the side. Charlie could smell the kid’s sweaty Hornets Football T-shirt.
    â€œYou did that on purpose,” Fitz accused, his strained, pimpled face turning crimson as he stared up.
    â€œOf course,” Charlie admitted. “You were going to kill me.” He stretched his hand out farther to the struggling boy.
    Fitz coughed and spat from the back of his throat in Charlie’s face.
    Charlie recoiled in disgust and landed on his behind. He wiped away thick saliva that smelled like grapes, but grapes that had been in somebody’s mouth. Fitz’s meaty fingers strained white as they gripped the edge of the bridge. Charlie heard laughing. He watched in horror as Fitz’s head began to rise.
    â€œYou believed I needed your help?” Fitz exclaimed. Then he let out a roar and heaved himself belly-first back up onto the footbridge. “Big mistake!”
    Charlie’s heart sledgehammered in his chest as he grabbed his backpack, jerked his BMX off the ground, and hurtled his leg over the seat. He burned away, standing tall on the pedals. The BMX sailed along the concrete sidewalk that led from the bridge, off the curb, and down Congress Street.
    Fitz cleared the bridge. He had an easy, eerie smile on his face that said, “Nothing can save you now.”
    Charlie eyed construction equipment up ahead, part of the city’s massive dike-building program to remedy a flooding problem. Charlie knew he couldn’t outrun Fitz, but hoped to use the construction mess to slow him down again.
    Adrenaline pumping, Charlie swung at full speed around an orange-striped barricade onto the tough terrain and bunny-hopped the BMX over a pile of metal rebar. He gave the pedals all he had, and the bike’s knobby tires gripped the mushy surface. Let’s see how your racing bike handles this, Jamie! By the time he was well into the heart of the construction, Charlie figured he’d left the bully far behind in the muck.
    But when he turned his head, there was Fitz, flying toward him from a cross street. He had not taken the construction zone bait after all.
    Fitz had learned his lesson on the footbridge about what his bike could and couldn’t do. Playing to its strength—straight-line speed on a good road—he’d headed a longer way around