Flying Solo Read online

  “I seriously doubt that,” Karen said. “But anyway, we can prove him wrong. We are proving him wrong. Christopher?”

  “Yes, I shall read my masterpiece!” Christopher declared proudly. “You will now hear the Legend of Sir Francis Brave Fart!”

  “Braveheart?” Robert asked.

  “No, Brave Fart!” Christopher said and started reading.

  On the night before the great battle Sir Francis Brave Fart came to dinner with a legion of other fearless knights. As he sat down on a chair he suddenly farted and the chair exploded in a cloud of foul smoke.

  The boys cracked up.

  “You moron,” Jasmine said.

  “Opinion!” Christopher giggled. He read:

  The other knights were stunned and excited. They had finally found a secret new weapon that might work in their bloody war against the all-powerful Dark Knight!

  “That’s all I have so far,” Christopher said. “Stay tuned for the next adventure of Sir Francis Brave Fart!”

  “That would make a great movie,” Tim said. “I’d go see it.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Rhonda said.

  “Jessica?” Karen said. “You’re next.”

  “Okay,” Jessica said, “but you guys won’t like it.”

  She read:

  I read about these parents who left their kids alone in the house for almost a week while they went on vacation. The kids were both under ten years old. The parents got arrested when they came home. What did they expect?

  Another time two brothers were home alone. They went into their father’s bedroom to look at their father’s gun. The gun cabinet was unlocked. The gun was loaded. Stories like this are so predictable. How can anybody be shocked when the gun went off and killed one of the kids?

  That is what is happening today in this room. We are playing with a loaded gun. Someone could bring a lawsuit against the school for what is happening in this class today. I know this because my father is a lawyer. A good lawyer would argue that the school was negligent by leaving us alone and unsupervised, not just for a few minutes, but for the whole school day. How could any jury possibly disagree?

  We are not equipped to deal with running our own class. Doing math or writing is no big deal. But what if a fight starts? What if someone has an epileptic seizure? What if—

  “What if someone farts?!” Christopher interrupted her.

  “Kindly shut up,” Rhonda told him.

  “Yeah, nobody interrupted you!” Karen told him. She looked at Jessica and nodded. “Go on.”

  “That’s about it,” she said, glaring at Christopher.

  “You end all your paragraphs with questions,” Robert said. He leaned over and pointed at her paper. “Ever notice that?”

  “Hmm,” Jessica said, looking down.

  “Could your father sue us?” Corey asked.

  “I doubt it,” Jessica said. “We’re all minors.”

  “Fact,” Christopher put in.

  “We have time for a couple more,” Karen said. “Missy?”

  “Uh uh,” she said, clutching her paper against her. Missy never shared her writing.

  “Okay. Rachel?”

  Rachel handed her paper to Missy. Missy cleared her voice and began to read:

  I was thinking about when we read Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, at the beginning of the year. Brian is flying on a bush plane to visit his father in Canada but the pilot has a heart attack and Brian has to take over the controls. He learns to crash-land the plane and survives the wreck. After that he has to learn to survive in the wilderness.

  It’s sort of like what’s happening today. True, nobody had a heart attack around here. And it’s true that we are not in the Canadian wilderness. But we are trying to see if we can survive on our own without any grownups. I halfway think we’re doing the right thing, but I halfway think Jessica’s right. It is dangerous. Anything could happen.

  “The first sensible words I’ve heard all day,” Jessica said, smiling at Rachel. “Other than mine, of course.”

  “Hatchet was cool,” Bastian said. “Remember when the kid ate the raw turtle egg? That was nasty!”

  “We have time for one more,” Karen asked. “Sean?”

  Sean shook his head.

  “Okay. Sky?”

  Nobody in the class really knew Sky. He’d arrived at the school in January, and he still hadn’t made any close friends. Rachel often saw him at recess, standing alone on the playground or sitting by himself. He hardly ever talked in class, and he had never once read aloud any of his writing. Now Sky looked down at his paper and shrugged. With a soft voice he started to read.

  I was thinking about when Mr. Fab told us on Monday about that time he was rushing his pregnant sister to the hospital. He knew he was doing something he’d never forget and he said to himself: I’M INSIDE A STORY.

  That reminded me of one time I was surfing in California. This monster swell came and I caught it perfectly. For a few seconds I was inside the curl of the wave.

  It was my first time ever and it didn’t last very long but I’ll remember every detail of that ride till the day I die. The board under my toes. The water a half foot thick all around me. The blue-green light coming through the water. The hissing sound of the wave. So much spray flying in my face I could barely see. My ears popping from the change of air pressure. It was an awesome rush, like nothing else in the world. I felt happy and scared, and the whole time I kept saying to myself: HEY, I’M IN IT! I’M INSIDE THE CURL!

  Sky looked up.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  “Cool,” Jordan said. Other kids nodded.

  “Yeah,” Bastian admitted. “Pretty good.”

  “That was great, Sky,” Vicki said softly.

  The bell rang: lunch.

  12:10 P.M.

  Lunch

  “Hey, we better go,” Vicki said.

  “Yeah, but the whole sixth grade will be in the cafeteria,” Tim pointed out. “How’re we going to keep the teachers from finding out?”

  “They’ll find out,” Jessica predicted. “People will talk.”

  “Yeah, you, for instance,” Bastian muttered.

  “Everybody, for instance,” Jessica retorted. “You think Robert and Corey aren’t going to tell Josh?”

  The kids all looked at Robert and Corey. The two triplets sat with their brother, Josh, every day at lunch.

  “We’re innocent!” Robert said, throwing up his arms.

  “Yeah!” Corey said. “We didn’t do it! We demand to see a lawyer!”

  “Listen, guys,” Karen said. “We’re only trying to do this for one day, right? Six hours. And we’re close. It’d be a shame to get caught now.”

  “I say we keep it a class secret,” Jasmine said. “I’m not telling anybody. Not even if they torture me.”

  “It won’t work,” Sky said quietly. “A story like this is contagious.”

  Bastian flinched at the word. Contagious. Quarantine.

  “He’s right,” Karen said. “Morgan already knows. You really think he can keep quiet about this? No way. And other kids’ll find out, too. I say we tell the other sixth graders, after we swear them to secrecy. We’ve got to make them swear they won’t tell any teachers until school is over.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Jasmine said. “Three o’clock. That’s all we’re asking. It’s less than three hours away.”

  “Fact,” Christopher said.

  “Never work,” Tim said. “There are about a gazillion teachers’ pets in the sixth grade. Maybe more.”

  Rachel started scribbling a note.

  “Wait a sec,” Missy said. “Rachel’s got something.”

  “Ah,” Bastian muttered. “The Silent Pilot speaks again!”

  “This is your last day,” Rhonda told him. “Just pretend for one day that you’re a nice person.”

  My dog thinks I’m nice, Bastian thought. He smirked at Rhonda.

  Missy took the paper from Rachel and read out loud:

 
“Maybe the other sixth graders won’t tell any teachers if we make them feel included. If they feel like they’re part of it.”

  “Part of it how?” Jasmine asked.

  “By keeping the secret,” Jessica said, nodding at Rachel. “Then it’s like they’re sort of getting away with it, too. It’s our only hope.”

  “Our only hope?” Jasmine smiled at her. “Sounds like you’re with us after all.”

  “Not really,” Jessica said, folding her arms.

  ***

  In the cafeteria, Rachel sat with Missy and Rhonda. Miranda Lundstrom, a girl from Mrs. Friedman’s class, sat with them.

  “Tell me,” Miranda begged. “Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

  “Swear you won’t tell anybody till after school,” Missy said.

  “I swear, I swear,” she said. “Jeez, Missy, what’s the big deal?”

  “This is really serious,” Missy said in a hushed voice. She ripped the wax paper off her sandwich as if she was unwrapping a fabulous gift. “This is Highly Confidential. As in Top Secret.”

  “All right, already!” Miranda said in an exasperated voice. “I swear! I swear on a stack of pictures of Rob Nelson!”

  “That’s better!” Missy smiled. Rob Nelson was the cutest boy in the sixth grade. She leaned forward and whispered: “Mr. Fab’s out today.”

  “Yeah?” Miranda said. “You mean out, like: absent? Gee, that is exciting!”

  “We’ve got no teacher.”

  “Who’s your sub?”

  “That’s the thing,” Missy whispered. “We don’t have one! We’re running our own class today!”

  Miranda gave Missy an incredulous look, then glanced over at Rachel. Rachel nodded.

  “What?” Miranda hissed. She smacked her forehead.

  “Remember,” Missy said. “You promised!”

  “Who, what—I mean,” Miranda sputtered, “how did you get away with that?”

  “It started off as a normal day,” Missy began.

  From the other side of the room Rachel heard a snort of disbelief, a squeal of outraged delight that quickly got squelched. Looking around, Rachel could see dozens of kids in pairs, threes, and fours, heads bent together, all talking intently. She closed her eyes but even so she could feel the story spreading through the cafeteria, carried on thousands of whispered words, a fire burning up a dry forest, jumping from table to table, little flames she could feel licking at her insides. For the second time that day she could feel the pressure of words in her chest, words that wanted to get out but somehow could not come out. She chewed a bite of sandwich and swallowed it down.

  12:21 P.M.

  Early Dismissal

  Bastian gulped down lunch. There was a phone right outside the cafeteria. He jammed in the coin and punched in the number to his house.

  “I’m sorry,” a voice said. “The number you have called—555-7134—has been disconnected. Please—”

  He hung up the phone.

  Disconnected.

  All at once it hit him. He was moving.

  Bastian walked down the hallway and out the front door of the school. Nobody tried to stop him. Nobody said Where-do-you-think-you’re-going-young-man? He couldn’t believe how easy it was. He strolled past the flagpole and down the street. The skies had grown heavy with clouds, and the air smelled like rain. He had no idea where he was going and he didn’t care. His feet kept moving and he just walked.

  He walked past a young woman washing her car. She waved at him and he waved back. In the front yard Bastian saw a little boy playing ball with a bulldog.

  Barkley. For the hundredth time that day he tried not to think about the puppy, but not—thinking had turned out to be a lot harder than he’d ever imagined.

  He went past a Catholic school, Our Lady of Sorrows, and stopped to watch the kids playing soccer on the playground. They were all wearing uniforms, boys in slacks and white shirts, girls in identical tweed skirts and white blouses. A couple hundred kids and he didn’t know a single one of them. He knew that moving to Hawaii would feel exactly like this. No friends. Hundreds of strange kids. Most of them would stay apart, watching, checking him out from a distance.

  He would go through his own kind of quarantine.

  He left Our Lady of Sorrows and walked to the end of Walden Street. The Galleria mall was down the street to the right, but his feet didn’t turn that way. Instead they turned left and began carrying him toward his house. At first going home and seeing Barkley seemed like a terrific idea. But he couldn’t do it.

  He sailed past his own street, heading straight toward the house of his best friend, John LeClerc. He got to the house and rang the doorbell.

  “Yeah?” John’s voice came through a crack in the door.

  “Hello,” Bastian said in his deepest voice. “This is James Warren, the district truant officer. Are you John LeClerc? Open the door! I have a warrant for your arrest! I have a report that you are playing hooky from school today. Don’t you realize that’s against the law?”

  “Bastian!” John laughed and swung open the door; Bastian followed him inside. “You’re the last person I expected to see! I thought you were having, like, tons of awesome fun in school. Your last day of school.”

  “John, you won’t believe this,” Bastian said, following John into the kitchen. “Mr. Fab’s out today, right? But they didn’t send us a sub! They screwed up in the office, or something. We got no teacher in the class!”

  “Yeah, sure,” John said. He opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. “And I bet they put free video games in all the classrooms, huh? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m serious! I’m telling you: We’ve been alone all day! I swear, John! Alone! For a while it looked like Jessica was going to squeal, but she didn’t. It’s awesome!”

  “Alone?”

  “We’re running the class ourselves! We’ve got a new motto: KIDS RULE!”

  John shut the refrigerator.

  “I don’t believe this!” he said.

  “It’s wild,” Bastian said. “I’m telling you, this day will go down in history. You’ve missed a lot of fun, but the day’s not over yet. Come to school! Karen’s playing Little Miss Teacher. That’s why we need you—you’ve got to help us party!”

  “I’m coming!” John yelled. He ran toward his bedroom. “Just let me get my shoes!”

  “All right!” Bastian called after him. “This afternoon we’re going to crank up the music!”

  “Wait!” John said, carrying his shoes into the kitchen. “They won’t let me back into school without a note!”

  “Don’t worry,” Bastian said. “You want a note, I’ll give you a note. I’ll give you a great note. Gimme some paper.”

  John gave him a sheet of paper and Bastian sat down to write.

  “Good thing I’ve got perfect penmanship,” Bastian said as he carefully formed the letters. He laughed. “Yes, sir. You’ve had a miraculous recovery!”

  “C’mon!” John said. “Hurry up!”

  12:30 P.M.

  Recess

  Rachel stood on the playground watching the other kids. She heard a plane in the distance. The air smelled like rain.

  She thought of her father.

  He was a tall man, all elbows and knees, with dark bushy eyebrows. He’d left home when Rachel was in fourth grade. He and Mom had been arguing, and their fights seemed to grow more ferocious with each new day. Finally Rachel couldn’t take it anymore. One day she burst into their bedroom and started shouting at them.

  “Stop it! Stop arguing! You should hear yourselves! It’s pathetic that two grownups should act the way you do! It’s disgusting!”

  Dad and Mom looked at her. They looked at each other.

  “She’s right,” Dad said to Mom. The next day he moved out. He moved west. A few months later he bought a small cattle farm in New Mexico. He’d been living there ever since.

  She only saw him twice a year now, and there were many days when she missed him terribly: his silly s
tories, goofy songs, magic tricks that were so amateurish even a baby could figure them out.

  The rain smell reminded her of one summer day he took her to a playground. It started pouring rain but they didn’t leave. Instead, they stayed on the swings, singing at the top of their lungs while their clothes got soaked.

  Why flying? Mr. Snickenberger had asked her. Why is flying so important to you?

  If I could fly I could see my father whenever I want, she thought. But she never said this, not even to Mom.

  She kept replaying the sequence of events: her parents argued, she scolded them, then Dad left. One, two, three. Even now she had the nagging thought that in some way her scolding had been the catalyst for his moving out. Those fights had been horrible, but she wished he was still living at home, arguments or not. She wished she had kept her mouth shut. Back then it had never occurred to her that she had the Right.

  The Right to remain silent.

  12:50 P.M.

  Blood

  After recess Class 6-238 filed back to the room. Rachel walked near the front of the line, right behind Karen and Jasmine.

  “Bastian left,” Jasmine said. “He just went home.”

  “I know,” Karen said, shrugging.

  “His last day of school,” Jasmine said. “It’s weird to think that we’ll never see him again.”

  Like Tommy Feathers, Rachel thought. It was April 28. The six-month anniversary of Tommy’s death. Was she the only one who remembered?

  “Bastian’s gone!” Tim announced when he walked into the class.

  “We know, we know,” Jessica sighed.

  Just then Jordan came in with Sky, who was limping.

  “He’s bleeding!” Jordan said. Kids ran over to see. Sure enough, there was a large scrape the size of a half dollar on Sky’s knee. A bright rivulet of blood had snaked halfway down his shin. He moved stiffly to his desk and sat down, wincing.