Author's Note: This story is intended to be a chapter book for kids between 3rd and 6th grade. Please let me know if you feel the vocabulary, plotline, etc are out of kilter with that age group.

Thanks!
Ruatha

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CHAPTER ONE: Mrs. Ryden, Paper Airplane Stopper

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Mrs. Ryden had to be the single most boring English teacher in the whole world. She could spend days discussing the difference between an adverb and an adjective, and you didn’t even want to get her started on prepositions. Rumor was that two years ago, she had spent a whole month just on the uses of the word “but”. Then she had started with “and”. RC knew the rumor was true: his sister Amy had been in that class and he had seen her homework.

It was funny then, but he wasn’t laughing now. Now he was the one in Mrs. Ryden’s fifth grade class. And even though school had only started two weeks ago, he could already tell that it was going to be as long and boring as Amy had said. How could anyone want to teach grammar when it was so beautiful outside? RC snuck a look out the window to his right. The sun was still shining and there were puffy clouds in the sky. It would be a perfect day to jump on his dirt bike and—

“RC!” repeated Mrs. Ryden in her most pointed voice. She tapped long fingernails against the blackboard. “I asked you what the predicate of this sentence is. Do you want another check mark next to your name, young man?”

RC shook his head and muttered, “No, Mrs. Ryden.” He turned away from the window and looked at the sentence on the board. “Jane opened her wings and flew through the air,” he read. He looked at Mrs. Ryden. That was a strange sentence, even for her. Still, another check mark meant he was stuck inside during recess and he didn’t want that. “Uh, the predicate is ‘opened her wings and flew through the air’,” he answered.

Mrs. Ryden nodded. “Good. Brian, what is the subject?”

RC listened impatiently while Mrs. Ryden drilled the other students, though he made sure not to look out the window again. Mrs. Ryden always seemed to know when he looked outside. Instead, he glanced at his friend Danny, who sat two rows over.

Danny was carefully folding something under his desk. Every time Mrs. Ryden looked his way, he stopped what he was doing and watched her with a very attentive look. Then, when she looked at someone else, he went back to folding the paper under his desk. RC smiled. He knew what Danny was doing. Danny was the best paper-airplane flyer in the whole fifth grade. No teacher ever caught him.

As RC watched, Danny finished folding the airplane. He glanced at RC through the ragged ends of his dark hair and grinned. Then, as soon as Mrs. Ryden turned to write the next sentence on the board, he used an underhanded flip to send it soaring through the air – right towards where Mrs. Ryden was standing! She was still facing the board and didn’t even notice when Danny launched the plane. RC held his breath as the plane sailed straight for her head.

The paper airplane was only a few feet away from her when Mrs. Ryden dropped the chalk mid-sentence and spun around. Her blue eyes sparkled as she glared at the little airplane. It stopped dead in the air, then fell to the ground. RC and all of his classmates gasped.

In the silence that filled the room, Mrs. Ryden announced, “Odd. Must have been a stray gust of wind from the air conditioner.” Then she walked to the side board and wrote “Danny Centroni” in large letters and put a check mark next to it.

“But, Mrs. Ryden! It wasn’t me!” protested Danny.

Mrs. Ryden turned and looked at him. She wasn’t particularly tall or strong – in fact, she was pretty normal-looking for a teacher – but something in her expression suggested that she could flatten Danny to a pancake in about three seconds. RC shivered. A strange light came to her eyes that made him glad he wasn’t Danny just then. The light faded as she added a second check mark next to Danny’s name. “That’s for lying to me. See you for recess.”

For the first time ever, Danny didn’t argue, and he could argue his way out of detentions with the best of them. He just sat there, staring at Mrs. Ryden and looking scared.

RC felt a little creeped out himself. How had Mrs. Ryden stopped the paper airplane? How had she even known it was coming? And what had she done to silence Danny? RC didn’t know any of the answers to his questions, but he knew this: fifth grade English class wasn’t going to be quite as boring as he had feared.