"Roy, what are you going to do with this when you get it fixed up?" Rick asked, as he handed Roy another tool from the box sitting on the floor of the barn beside where they sat working.
"We'll fly it, dufus, what else," Roy snorted from under the antique airplane he'd been rebuilding for months now. As a sixteenth birthday present, Pop and Uncle Joe had agreed to help Roy get the parts necessary to fix up his father's old plane. It was the biggest dream of Roy Fokker's life. His mother had been less than thrilled.
"Why can't we just get him a car?" She had asked, terrified of her son trying to fix up the very plane that had killed her own beloved husband. Roy had been jubilant. He'd fix the old thing up again, and he'd be more careful than his father had been. But he needed an assistant in his task. Rick had of course jumped at the chance to help.
"What if something goes wrong again," Rick sounded worried. At eight, he knew the story of Roy's own father. Rick's mother had died, and he understood loss. Roy knew that Rick was more than a bit afraid that this particular plane was cursed.
"Well then I'll fix it. Nothing will go wrong." Roy had all the teenagers' belief that anything he set his mind to would work. Rick quietly accepted this but his worried frown didn't go away.
"Tell you what, how about I let you come up with me for the first flight?"
"Whoopee, would ya', Roy?" Rick's face lit up like a Roman candle then, a broad grin reaching from ear to ear.
"Sure would, besides, I was your age when your dad used to take me up."
This sobered Rick. "Wish Pop would take me up too. He says I'm too young, but I'm not if you were my age when he let you fly."
"Well," Roy thought quickly. He knew Pop was very leery of taking Rick up, especially after having lost a wife. Losing his son would be too much. "He will eventually."
"I just want to fly, Roy," Rick sighed, toying with a wrench from the box. "Everyone in my family flew, and I want to."
"You'll fly someday, Rick, just be patient." Roy said soothingly. "I'm your big brother, you don't trust me?"
"You aren't REALLY my big brother," Rick was going through a very literal phase at the moment. The complex nature of his family unit, made up of his father, uncle, Roy's mother, and Roy, was something new he was still trying to understand in the terms of so called 'normal' families.
"Well I grew up with you, I was there when you were born, and it's almost as good." Roy shot back.
"But real brothers have the same parents," Rick insisted.
Roy moved his head from under the plane to look at the boy. Over six feet already, he had to crouch from under the fuselage then stand tall to look down at the dark head on the floor.
"Sometimes, Rick, brothers are made, not born. You'll figure it out when you are older."
Rick rolled his eyes. The line "You'll figure it out when you are older," drove him mad.
"Why is everything secret till I'm older?"
"Cause it just is," Roy snorted. "You'll get your secret knowledge card when you turn my age."
"But you are seventeen, that's NINE whole years away!" Rick sounded like it was an eternity.
"Nine whole years, how will you make it?" Roy taunted as Rick tossed a wrench bit at him.
"Watch it, if you keep that up, I won't take you up tomorrow." Roy waggled an eyebrow at him.
"What!" Rick leaped up, and then clasped his hands in front of him dramatically. "Roy, I didn't mean it, PLEASE take me up!"
"I'll think about it," Roy grinned wickedly as Rick pleaded below.