Flying Solo

by Ralph Fletcher

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  “Does it hurt?” Karen asked.

  Sky nodded and bit his lower lip.

  “Sorry about that pass,” Jordan said. “Guess I shouldn’t have thrown it so low.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Sky grimaced.

  “That’s pretty ugly,” Karen said. “You better go down to the nurse.”

  “I’m okay, really,” Sky said.

  “He can’t go to the nurse!” Tim said.

  “Why not?” Jasmine demanded.

  “Because he needs a pass,” Tim told her. “Who’s gonna sign it? Mr. Fab? Our invisible sub? Huh? Are you gonna sign it?”

  “Hm,” Karen said.

  “You should just go to her office,” Jasmine told Sky. “What’s the nurse going to say: ‘You can’t come in—go bleed somewhere else’?”

  “That’s what she told me last week,” Corey said. “It’s a new rule: You can’t go to the nurse without a signed pass.”

  “You better go,” Jessica told Sky. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Ooooh,” Christopher said, raising his eyebrows and starting to sing: “Sky and Jessica, sittin’ in a tree, k-i-s-s-”

  “You Neanderthal!” Rhonda said.

  “Opinion!” Christopher shouted.

  “Shut up!” Jessica pleaded in a whisper.

  Rachel nudged Missy. When Missy gave her a questioning look, Rachel nodded and nudged her again.

  “Well, it doesn’t look that deep,” Missy said. “I don’t think you need stitches or anything. I can probably take care of it.”

  “You?” Tim asked skeptically.

  “Sure,” Missy said. “My father’s a doctor. I know something about medicine.”

  “My father’s a heart surgeon but you don’t see me going around cutting up people’s hearts!” Christopher retorted. He scratched his head. “Though actually that might be kind of fun!”

  “This isn’t heart surgery,” Missy said. “Does Mr. Fab have any Band-Aids or anything?”

  She walked to Mr. Fabiano’s desk, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out a first-aid kit.

  “Great, this has everything we need.”

  “Can you really . . . do this?” Sky asked her.

  “Sure,” Missy said softly. “First we need to wash out the wound. Can you get over to the sink?”

  Sky hobbled over. The entire class clustered around him. Rachel stood in back, watching.

  “Give him some room to breathe!” Robert said.

  “See if you can sort of sit up there,” Missy said. “So your knee is right under the faucet.”

  Sky scooted up onto the counter and pulled his leg around.

  “My mother used to give my sister her bath in the sink,” Corey said.

  “Same with my little brother,” Tim said. “Except one time he—”

  “Don’t say it!” Rhonda begged. “I just ate.”

  “This is going to hurt a little,” Missy said, turning on the water. “You guys, see if you can distract him.”

  “Try this,” Jordan suggested. “Say: ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers’”

  “No,” Sky said. “Ow!”

  “Just a sec,” Missy told him.

  “Think nice thoughts,” Jasmine suggested.

  “Yeah, think about surfing,” Jordan said.

  “Surfing can be pretty dangerous,” Sky told them. “A friend of mine got hurt bad his first day surfing on a brand new board.”

  “Really?”

  “He was riding this huge swell, and he wiped out, and his board came shooting up, and caught him right here.” Sky pointed at his solar plexus.

  “Hey!” Missy said. “You guys are supposed to be distracting him!”

  “Ouch!” Sky said.

  “Sorry,” Missy told him. “That stuff’s supposed to kill any infectious germs.”

  “What happened to your friend?” Tim asked.

  “Broke six ribs,” Sky said. “He couldn’t even move in the water. Luckily, he was able to hold on to his board and float there till somebody swam out to help him.”

  “There!” Missy said. “Good as new. Well, almost.”

  They all looked at the bandage. Missy had done a nice, neat job. Sky got off the counter and stood testing his knee.

  “Feels pretty good,” Sky said. He looked at Missy. “Thanks a lot.”

  “When you get home, take the bandage off,” Missy said. “The air will make it heal faster.”

  “Not bad,” Christopher admitted. “You gonna be a nurse when you grow up?”

  “I want to be a doctor,” Missy said shyly.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Jessica asked him. “Women can be doctors, too.”

  “Fact,” Rhonda told Christopher.

  “Our hero!” Jasmine said, raising Missy’s hand in the air.

  “It’s no big deal,” Missy said, though she did look pleased.

  “See what I mean?” Tim demanded. He whirled around so Corey and Christopher could slap him five. “KIDS RULE! Who needs the teacher? Who needs the nurse? Huh? Who needs any grownups at all?”

  1:10 P.M.

  Enrichment

  Rachel stared out the window, looking past the field to the patch of woods beyond. She had heard that deer lived in those woods, and she liked this idea because deer were her favorite animals. A deer knew how to make itself invisible by using camouflage and silence. Deer made no bark, no whinny, no growl, no sound. They were mute.

  Or were they? Rachel wondered if silence might be something that deer chose. Maybe they had everybody fooled. Maybe they had invented their own secret language to communicate when nobody was around.

  A few large raindrops splattered against the windows. For a minute she sat watching the rain. She guessed that it would be hard to fly a plane in the rain, especially a small plane. (Did planes have windshield wipers, like cars? She should know that, but didn’t.) And landing in a rainstorm would be a lot trickier. The rain would cut down visibility.

  Rachel looked past Sean O’Day’s face to the window where droplets were bouncing off the glass. The rain was starting to fall harder now. She thought of the silent deer getting wet in that patch of woods. Corey jumped up to close the windows.

  “Hey, we’ve got to go to enrichment,” Jessica announced.

  “Thank you, five-points-below-genius,” Tim said.

  “Shut up, you troglodyte,” Rhonda shot back.

  “What’s that?” Tim asked.

  “Look it up,” Rhonda told him smugly.

  “Look it up,” he mimicked.

  Enrichment was the program for gifted students. Early in the school year Rachel had gone to enrichment, too. But when she stopped speaking, Mr. Doblin dropped her from the program.

  “I don’t want to go to enrichment,” Jessica groaned.

  “I must go to enrichment,” Christopher said. “I must feed my brain! I’m gifted!”

  “You’ve got a gifted belly,” Tim said, nodding.

  “Shush,” Karen said. She looked at Jessica. “You know, I really don’t feel like going, either.”

  “But we have to,” Jessica said. “Mr. Doblin will come after us if we don’t.”

  “We’re getting all the enrichment you can ask for right here,” Karen asked. “Let’s skip it today.”

  “Skip it?” Christopher asked. “How you gonna manage that?”

  “Just watch,” Karen said, going to the phone behind Mr. Fabiano’s desk. She picked it up and dialed a number.

  “Order me a pizza while you’re at it,” Tim suggested.

  “Mr. Doblin?” Karen asked. “Hi, this is Karen Ballard in Mr. Fabiano’s class. We were wondering if we could maybe miss enrichment today. Yes, sir. We’re doing a project here in Mr. Fabiano’s class. Sort of like an independent study.”

  Vicki giggled at that.

  “No, sir, Mr. Fabiano is absent today.” Karen said again. Pause. “Yes, sir.” Another pause. Karen smiled. “Okay, I’ll tell them. Thanks, Mr. Dobl
in.”

  She hung up the phone.

  “That was a close call,” she said, grinning. “For a second I thought he wanted to talk to our sub. Anyway, it’s all set. We’re staying right here.”

  “Amen,” said Jasmine.

  “What about me?” Sean asked. “I gotta go to Resource Room. I’m already late.”

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “Does Mrs. Zemetti really help you?” Robert asked. “I went to her last year. I think she’s an alien. Seriously. She’s nice but she’s from another galaxy.”

  “Fact,” Christopher said. He looked at Sean. “You really have to go?”

  Sean shrugged and lowered his eyes. It was no secret that he was a poor reader.

  “My dad showed me this trick,” Robert told Sean. “For remembering stuff after you read it. I can show you—it’s pretty easy.”

  “So it’s decided then,” Karen said. “You’re staying. We need you right here.”

  “But what—” Sean said.

  “Don’t worry,” Karen said, getting out of her seat. “I’ll arrange everything.”

  Karen picked up the phone again.

  “No answer,” she said, frowning.

  Just then the door opened and Mrs. Zemetti herself walked into the room. Rachel sat up with a start.

  “Come on, Sean,” Mrs. Zemetti urged from the doorway. She was the grandmotherly sort of teacher, short and plump, with a pair of thick bifocals around her neck.

  “But, um, I gotta do some stuff here,” Sean said. He looked confused.

  “I’ll have you back here in thirty minutes, maybe less,” Mrs. Zemetti said with a kind smile. “You’ll hardly know you were gone.”

  Reluctantly, Sean stood. Rachel saw him hesitate by the rain-drenched window, torn between going and trying to stay. She felt sorry for him, but there was nothing she or anyone else could do to help him.

  “You are to be commended,” Mrs. Zemetti said, smiling at the kids in the classroom. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to see a class behaving itself. You can tell that to Mr. Fabiano.”

  “He’s out today,” Karen explained as Sean walked to the front of the room. She smiled. “We have a substitute. She just ran to the bathroom.”

  “Well, please tell her that I said you’re a wonderful class,” Mrs. Zemetti said.

  Mrs. Zemetti and Sean left. For two full seconds the class stayed silent as if holding its collective breath. Then everyone cracked up.

  “Shhhh!” Jasmine said but she was laughing, too, bent over.

  She opened her eyes wide and, still laughing, pointed at Rachel White. The whole class looked and saw what Jasmine had seen: a small smile on Rachel’s face.

  1:20 P.M.

  D.E.A.R.

  “Less than two hours to go!” Jordan said.

  Christopher let out a loud whoop.

  “You do that again, we’ll have fifteen teachers coming through that door,” Karen said, pointing. “Is that what you want?”

  “Sowwy,” Christopher said, pouting and sucking his thumb.

  At that moment Bastian and John burst into the room, both wet from the rain.

  “Greetings, Earthlings!” John announced with a formal bow. “Take me to your leader! Give me a towel!”

  “Yo, John!” Christopher cried. “You finally made it!” He stood and started to applaud.

  “I thought you were sick today,” Jessica said.

  “Feeling much much better!” John said, bowing again. He shook his head, and water from his hair sprayed all over the place.

  “Hey, quit that!” Jessica yelled.

  “I wrote a note for him,” Bastian said. “He skipped into school!”

  “Yesss!” Christopher sprang up to slap John five.

  “You guys smell like wet dogs,” Vicki said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Thank you, thank you,” John said, bowing for the third time. He strolled to the front of the room and fell back into Mr. Fab’s empty chair. “I wouldn’t miss this for a million bucks!”

  John pulled out two bags of candy from his backpack and tossed them to Tim and Christopher.

  “Party time!” Christopher cried, ripping open a bag.

  “You mean D.E.A.R. time,” Karen said, pointing at the board.

  John laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Rachel closed her eyes and pictured Tommy Feathers during D.E.A.R., reading with his face close to the book. He always hummed while he read, and he always hummed the same tune: the 1812 Overture.

  “No way!” Bastian said hotly. “I’m not gonna do D.E.A.R. or D.A.R.E. or D.W.E.E.B. or any other stupid thing! We shouldn’t be doing any work—we’ve got no teacher! At this rate we’re going to get into the Guinness Book of World Wimps!”

  “Mr. Fabiano always does D.E.A.R. after lunch,” Karen said, as if that settled it.

  “Now hear this, now hear this,” Bastian said. He cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke as if through a megaphone. “I HAVE AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT TO MAKE. MR. FAB IS NOT HERE. REPEAT. MR. FAB IS NOT HERE.”

  “That’s what you think,” Tim muttered.

  “I’m reading,” Jessica said.

  “Why?” Bastian demanded.

  “Because I happen to enjoy it,” she replied calmly.

  “Yeah, me too,” Vicki put in. Some of the girls started pulling out their books.

  “Look at this,” John said, stuffing two pieces of bubble gum into his mouth. He held up a computer disk. “Anybody up for playing a little DOOM III?”

  “Yeah, I do! I’m playing! Lemme go first!”

  Tim, Christopher, Robert, Corey, Jordan, Sky, Bastian, and John all rushed to the back of the room and crowded around the computer.

  “You guys are so wicked awesome cool!” Rhonda said.

  “Fact,” Christopher said.

  “Go back to D.E.A.R.,” Tim told Rhonda.

  “Shut up,” Rhonda told him.

  “I feel sorry for you,” Tim said. “I really do.”

  That’s how D.E.A.R. time went. The boys played DOOM III; the girls read. Rachel looked over at Sean’s empty desk. She wondered which one he would choose—the computer game, probably, even though he didn’t usually hang out with the other boys much. The room felt different, emptier, now that he was gone.

  Rachel pulled out her book. She loved reading, but the whole idea of D.E.A.R. bugged her. Why cram reading into a fifteen-minute time block and give it a cutesy name like that? Why not just call it reading? It was the world’s dumbest title—you didn’t drop everything when you read, you picked something up!

  Still, reading was the best part of the afternoon, especially on a rainy day like this. There was a cozy feeling in the room when the whole class, including Mr. Fabiano, read their books together.

  Rachel picked up her book, A Beginner’s Flight Manual. It was the most detailed book she had ever read on how to become a pilot. She read slowly so she wouldn’t miss a single word:

  Several steps are involved in earning a pilot’s license. Each one requires many hours of practice. The next three chapters will cover the following areas:

  Chapter 8: Simulated Solo. Engineers have designed machines known as “flight simulators” to help train pilots. These machines are totally realistic, with all the pedals, instruments, rudders, and throttles you have in a plane. Sitting in a simulator on the ground feels like you’re actually flying in a jet or propeller airplane. A simulator allows you to experience flight conditions—takeoff, flight, approach, and landing—in a controlled setting where you can’t get hurt.

  Chapter 9: Supervised Solo. This happens much later in your training. In this step you can actually fly the plane under the guidance and strict supervision of an experienced pilot. Often the pilot will take off or land the plane but allow you to fly for short periods of time.

  Rachel looked up from her book; the room had begun to turn bright. She looked out the window and saw that the rain had stopped and the sunlight was playing sparkling tricks on th
e new grass.

  For some reason this sudden light reminded Rachel of her first airplane flight. She was ten years old, flying to visit her father in New Mexico. The plane left in a heavy rainstorm, rose through thick clouds, and then burst through into the purest sunlight, the bluest skies Rachel had ever seen.

  Chapter 10: Solo Flight. This is the ultimate goal: to fly on your own.

  1:35 P.M.

  Exploration

  “Okay, guys, we better stop,” Karen said.

  “No!” Christopher cried from the computer. “I’m just about to kill this guy!”

  “We’ve got Exploration,” Karen said, pointing at the schedule.

  Tim and Jordan booed softly. Christopher began sounding a low chant: “Bo-ring . . . Boring . . .”

  Rachel sighed and slowly closed her book. As far as she could tell, “Exploration” was just a snazzy word for geography, which boiled down to old-fashioned map skills. She dreaded this subject, and she suspected that Mr. Fabiano felt the same way since he scheduled it so late in the day. Not even a teacher like Mr. Fabiano could breathe much life into map reading, though he certainly tried to show his students how important it was.

  If you want to fly you have to know how to read a map, Mr. Fabiano told her one time. Longitude and latitude. Elevation. There’s no way around it. If you want to be a pilot you have to know this stuff cold.

  But it’s so deadly dull, she had written on a slip of paper.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Tim said, shaking his head. “We’re not doing any more work!”

  “This won’t take long,” Karen said. She started passing around the photocopies. “There’s just one worksheet, and then we’re home free. I bet we can knock it off in twenty minutes. Where’s the legend?”

  “Right over there,” John said, pointing at Bastian.

  “Very funny.”

  “It’s true,” John said smugly. “He’s the legend because this is his last day of school.”

  “I’m gone,” Bastian said. “I’m history. Have a nice life.”