Fly to the Rescue Page 4

  “The sun is at the center!” Sir Isaac gasped. “Galileo and Copernicus were right! And—and—and are the planets traveling in ellipses?”

  “In ovals?” Jake said. “Yeah, those are their orbits.”

  “Kepler would be pleased to know his theory of planetary motion was correct,” Sir Isaac said approvingly. “But there are too many heavenly bodies displayed. There are but six in our solar system.”

  “Actually—” Jake began.

  Sir Isaac didn’t let him finish. “Unless—” he sputtered excitedly, “unless this means that there are even more planets than we knew—”

  “Yes,” Miss Earhart told him. “That’s exactly what it means. Now, Isaac, we both promised Jake—”

  “I must see for myself,” Sir Isaac declared. His eyes were wild with delight.

  “Absolutely not,” Jake replied at once. “After school you can find out everything you want to know about the solar system, I promise. You just have to wait—”

  Sir Isaac was inching toward the edge of the desk. “You ask me to wait?” he said incredulously. “I have waited, boy. I’ve spent my life waiting, watching, wondering. Searching for answers to questions no one else dared to ask. And now, with the truth hovering right overhead, you want me to stay quiet?”

  “That’s not—”

  “I must investigate!” Sir Isaac insisted. The hint of a smile flickered across his face. “You are, perhaps, too young to understand,” he said. “Perhaps being born in a time when so much is already known has diminished your curiosity. But I must have a closer look.” Then he slid down the leg of the desk and darted across the floor.

  Jake gasped and glanced around frantically. Everyone else’s eyes were on the SMART Board—but for how long? From the corner of his eye, Jake could see Sir Isaac shinny up the bookshelf and start climbing the blinds like a ladder.

  Oh no, Jake thought in despair.

  “Don’t worry, Jake,” Miss Earhart whispered, as if she could read his mind. “I’ll bring him back!”

  “No!” Jake squeaked as loud as he dared. But it was too late. Miss Earhart had already leaped to the floor! She zigged and zagged, dodging chairs and backpacks on her way to the same bookcase Sir Isaac had scaled.

  Jake could only watch in horror as Miss Earhart began to climb the blinds, too. The thin aluminum strips rattled faintly, but to Jake they sounded like a sonic boom. How was it possible that nobody else had noticed?

  Soon Sir Isaac reached the top of the blinds. In the dim room, Jake could just make out his silhouette as he reached, reached, reeeeeeached for the model …

  Without warning, Sir Isaac leaped from the blinds! As he sailed through the air, Jake sucked in his breath so sharply that Aiden gave him a weird look. Just before he started to fall, Sir Isaac grabbed the wire with one tiny hand!

  Jake could barely stand to look. But he forced himself to take another peek, just in time to see Miss Earhart give him an enthusiastic thumbs-up. He shook his head back and forth to stop her, but maybe Miss Earhart couldn’t see him. Because the next thing Jake knew, she had catapulted through the air like Sir Isaac.

  Now both geniuses were dangling from the solar system!

  The force of their wild leaps made the model start wobbling. Hand over hand, Sir Isaac moved closer to the glittering sun, with Miss Earhart right behind him. The planets, dangling from delicate threads, began to sway as the wobbling got worse.

  Jake didn’t know what to do. Any minute now the video would end … the lights would go on … and the entire class would see the solar system model spinning out of control—with two tiny geniuses hanging on for dear life!

  Jake had to do something. But what?

  Just then, the video ended. “Emerson, would you please turn on the lights?” Ms. Turner asked.

  It was now or never.

  Jake took a deep breath, mustered all his courage, and took a running leap at the solar system model. There was enough light for him to see Sir Isaac and Miss Earhart, who were still dangling from the wire. Jake grabbed them and stuffed them in his pockets, where the heavy denim of his jeans muffled Sir Isaac’s shouts of outrage.

  The room was flooded with light just in time for everyone to see Jake land on the floor with a hard thump.

  Then the solar system crashed on top of him!

  “Jake Everdale!” Ms. Turner exclaimed. “What on earth is going on?”

  Jake stared at the floor. The model of planet Earth had a big dent in Antarctica now, but he knew that wasn’t what Ms. Turner meant.

  “Stand up,” Ms. Turner ordered him. “What are you doing?”

  Jake pulled himself to his feet. “I …” he began. “Uh … I saw a … bee?”

  “A bee?” Ms. Turner repeated.

  “Yeah,” Jake said, thinking fast. “I didn’t want anyone … to get … stung. Ow!”

  Jake didn’t know for sure, but he was pretty sure that Sir Isaac had just kicked him!

  The class erupted into giggles.

  “I don’t see any bees,” Aiden said.

  Ms. Turner sighed. “Hannah, please switch seats with Jake,” she said. “Jake, you might find there are fewer distractions in the front row.”

  “But what about the solar system model?” Aiden asked. “Jake wrecked it!”

  “I’m sorry,” Jake said quickly. “I’ll take it home and fix it. I promise.”

  Ms. Turner was quiet for a long moment. “Okay,” she finally said. “I think that’s a good idea. Now, if we could get back to discussing tomorrow’s science fair … Does anyone have any questions?”

  Jake kept his mouth pressed shut as he carried his notebook and backpack to the front of the room. Sitting at Hannah’s old desk, in the center of the front row, he felt like he was in the middle of a fishbowl with everyone watching him. If Sir Isaac or Miss Earhart tried to escape again …

  Jake couldn’t bear to think about it.

  Miss Earhart must’ve given Sir Isaac a serious lecture, because the rest of the day passed without any more trouble. Jake knew better than to push his luck. At 3:00:00:00, he bolted from Franklin Elementary School with his backpack slung over one arm and the broken model of the solar system tucked under the other. As soon as Jake made it to the safety of his bedroom, he unzipped his backpack. “What were you thinking?” he exploded.

  Miss Earhart and Sir Isaac clambered out.

  “Why didn’t you listen? I was trying to keep you safe!” Jake continued.

  “But, Jake, there’s so much more that deserves consideration,” Miss Earhart spoke up. “The chance to explore—”

  “To investigate,” added Sir Isaac.

  “To discover,” they said at the same time. And then, to Jake’s astonishment, they exchanged a smile.

  Jake, however, didn’t have anything to smile about. His shoulders slumped as he sat on the bed. “For you, maybe,” he said. “But I have a huge science project due tomorrow, with a report and a presentation and everything. It’s not even close to being ready. And I failed another quiz today while you two were trying to explore or investigate or whatever. Now I’m going to fail the science fair, too, which means I’ll have to quit the baseball team.”

  There was a long pause, then Miss Earhart and Sir Isaac started whispering frantically.

  “Actually, Jake,” Miss Earhart began, “that’s not quite accurate.”

  “What do you mean?” he replied.

  Miss Earhart smiled mysteriously. “Close your eyes,” she said.

  Why not? Jake thought as he shut his eyes. Then he heard an unfamiliar sound coming from under his bed—a sputtering kind of sound—followed by—

  Was that a burning smell?

  Jake sniffed frantically as Flapjack started whining at the door. “Oh no,” Jake muttered. “Not again!”

  He dropped to the floor and lifted the blanket.

  Whoosh!

  Something flew out from under the bed, so close to Jake’s head that it buzzed the edges of his hair. He leaped up—never, ne
ver, never had he expected to see anything like this—

  Amelia Earhart, the world-famous pilot, was flying around his room!

  She threw back her head and laughed with glee as she expertly piloted the plane, swooping under and over the paper-clip garlands without hitting a single one. Sir Isaac watched in astonishment as Miss Earhart did a loop in midair. Still grinning, Miss Earhart began to descend, gliding in for a flawless landing on Jake’s desk.

  “Surprise!” Miss Earhart exclaimed as she climbed out of the plane. “Not too shabby, eh? What do you think?”

  “It’s amazing!” Jake gasped, crouching down to get a closer look. The plane was about eight inches long, with a propeller made of Popsicle sticks. The delicate frame was constructed from stretched-out paper clips, with broad wings that had been covered in canvas—Jake hardly minded when he realized that the canvas scraps had been cut from his baseball-gear bag. With the tip of his pinkie finger, Jake flicked open the engine compartment. A gleaming engine—built from a pair of bottle caps, Flapjack’s old tags, stripped twist ties, and a miniature spring—was still radiating heat. In the open-air cockpit, Jake could even see a pair of tiny safety harnesses made from rubber bands!

  “When did you do this?” Jake asked.

  “I’ll be honest, we burned the midnight oil,” Miss Earhart replied, covering a yawn with her hand. Then she noticed the alarm on Jake’s face. “It’s an expression! It means we stayed up too late. I promise we didn’t burn anything else.”

  “How can I thank you?” Jake asked Miss Earhart and Sir Isaac. “This is incredible! All I have to do now is write the report—”

  “Ahem.” Sir Isaac spoke up. With a flourish, he presented Jake with a stack of tiny pages.

  “You wrote the report, too?” Jake exclaimed. “It’s all done?”

  “Everything except the trifold poster,” Miss Earhart said. “That was a little too big for us to handle.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Jake said. “Thank you! Thank you so much!” He used his thumb and forefinger to pinch the papers. “I’ll just copy this onto something bigger and it will be good to go.”

  “If you have difficulty deciphering any of the equations, I shall be happy to advise,” Sir Isaac said.

  Jake got out a stack of lined paper and his favorite pencil. He squinted at the tiny pages, then began to write:

  Flight! Whosoever could imagine that such a feat could be accomplished by man? And yet it is so! The chains of Gravity have been smashed, if only momentarily. The principles behind such are not overly complex, and yet

  Jake paused.

  And yet.

  He put down his pencil.

  And yet … It wasn’t just that Jake didn’t understand everything Sir Isaac had written in the report. It wasn’t just that his words sounded nothing like the way Jake would write. It was the fact that this project wasn’t Jake’s work.

  It didn’t matter, Jake suddenly realized, if he copied it over in his own handwriting. It didn’t even matter if he fooled everyone at Franklin Elementary School. In his heart, Jake knew—and would always know—that he had cheated. It was an icky, squirmy kind of feeling that was even worse than the dread Jake felt during a quiz. And in that moment, Jake realized something important.

  I might be a failure, Jake thought, but I’ll never be a cheater.

  Jake wasn’t happy, exactly. How could he be, when tomorrow he’d have to tell Coach Carlson that he was leaving the team? But in a strange way, he was relieved.

  He leaned over to the little plane and twirled the tiny propeller. It was an amazing invention, and Jake’s only regret was that he couldn’t show it off to everyone at school tomorrow. He’d have to ask Miss Earhart and Sir Isaac to explain how they built it. Jake grinned as he remembered watching Miss Earhart fly the plane around his room. I wonder how she nailed all those turns, he thought. Last year, Jake had thrown a paper airplane at Emerson in the lunchroom. To his surprise, the airplane flew higher and farther than he expected, landing in the Tater Tots! Everybody laughed, but the cafeteria monitor was so mad she threatened to take Tots off the menu for a whole month. Why did my plane fly like that? Jake wondered.

  Suddenly, he remembered what Sir Isaac had said about not being curious. Jake was plenty curious about all sorts of stuff. And if curiosity was what he really needed to get started on his science project …

  Jake reached for his pencil.

  What things

  What forces affect how a paper airplane flies?

  Is it the folds?

  Is it the kind of paper?

  Is it the weather?

  Is it how you throw the plane?

  Jake read over the questions. He had a feeling that he was on his way to developing the purpose of his science project. Next would be the hypothesis—but first, he needed to do a little research.

  “Miss Earhart?” Jake called. “How do airplanes fly anyway?”

  A broad smile spread across Miss Earhart’s face. “Why, Jake,” she replied, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  “Let’s start with the propeller,” Miss Earhart said.

  Jake held up his hand. “Actually, I should’ve said paper airplanes,” he told her. “I need to change my science project.”

  Miss Earhart and Sir Isaac exchanged a glance.

  “I’m starting over,” Jake explained. “The plane you built is amazing. I don’t even know how to thank you for all your work. But that’s the problem—it’s your work. Not mine.”

  The geniuses still didn’t say anything.

  “So I’m going to do a new science project,” Jake finished. “One about paper airplanes and how they fly. I don’t have a lot of time, but I’m going to try my best.”

  “Which is all we ever can do, really,” Miss Earhart said.

  “I respect your decision, boy,” Sir Isaac said. “What sort of experiments do you plan to conduct?”

  “I’m going to make different kinds of paper airplanes,” Jake said. “Then I’ll test them to see how well each one flies. And—I’ll research the stuff that affects how a plane flies.”

  “Write this down,” Miss Earhart said. “You’ll want to learn about force.”

  Sir Isaac’s face brightened. “Allow me, madam,” he said. “Perhaps you’ve heard of my laws of motion?”

  “Uh …” Jake said, a blank look on his face.

  For once, Sir Isaac didn’t look annoyed. “My first law of motion,” he declared. “Objects in motion stay in motion, while objects at rest stay at rest, unless acted upon by a force.”

  “He means that things that are moving will stay moving unless something stops them,” Miss Earhart translated. “And things that aren’t moving won’t move unless something makes them.”

  “That’s what I said!” Sir Isaac objected. “Now, my second law of motion stems from the first. It is this: An object’s acceleration is reliant on its mass and the force exerted upon it.”

  “And that means, simply enough, that an object will move if force is applied to it,” Miss Earhart piped up. “How much force you need to use depends on how heavy the object is and how fast it’s going.”

  Jake, who had been writing every word, paused. “That makes sense,” he said. “Obviously, it takes more force to move a brick than a feather.”

  “And, of course, the third law of motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Sir Isaac said.

  “Here’s an example,” Miss Earhart said. “If my action is to bounce a ball on the ground, the ground’s reaction will push the ball back up. Does that make sense?”

  “Kind of,” Jake said, staring at his notebook.

  “I’m sure it will become clear as you do your research. Here are some aerodynamics terms to look up, too,” Miss Earhart said. “ ‘Drag.’ ‘Weight.’ ‘Thrust.’ And, of course, ‘lift.’ ”

  Jake wrote each one down.

  “Now, how can we help?” Miss Earhart continued. “Perhaps we could gather supplies or—”
>
  “No!” Jake exclaimed. The last thing he needed was Sir Isaac and Miss Earhart roaming around the house again. “I mean, no thank you. You’ve already done so much.”

  “We could try our hand at repairing the solar system,” Sir Isaac suggested with a longing glance at the model. Jake tried to hide his smile. He had a funny feeling that Sir Isaac would do just about anything for the chance to study it up close.

  “Excellent suggestion!” Miss Earhart agreed. “After all, it’s our fault that it broke.”

  Jake spent the rest of the evening doing searches on the computer and writing down lots of notes about everything he learned. At bedtime, he changed into his pajamas, brushed his teeth, and said good night to his parents—but he didn’t get into bed. That was when the fun part started!

  Jake went right to work making paper airplanes. There was one made of stiff construction paper and one made of shiny wrapping paper that was covered with pictures of superheroes and lightning bolts. He took an empty cereal box out of the recycle bin to make a cardboard airplane. He even made a plane out of a flimsy square of toilet paper! Then Jake snuck downstairs and nabbed a package of printer paper from Dad’s office. He used it to make a few dozen airplanes, each with its own unique twist.

  Every so often, Jake snuck a glance at Sir Isaac and Miss Earhart, who were talking quietly as they put the model of the solar system back together. He could only imagine what they were discussing. As much as he wanted to know, though, Jake knew he had to focus on his project.

  The moon gleamed high in the night sky when Jake finally climbed into bed. His trifold poster lay flat on his desk so that the glue could dry. He’d written every section of his report except the cover page. I’ll do it in the morning, Jake thought sleepily. He crawled into bed and turned off the light …

  Click!

  “Sir Isaac. Please,” Jake groaned as he pulled the pillow over his head. “I have to sleep, the science fair is tomorrow—”