Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1 (5 page)

My inventions teacher, Mrs. Romanek, stood at the front of the classroom with an anxious face. Mr. Hudson, our town’s super-inventor, sat on a tall wooden stool next to her, his foot resting on the bottom rung, which was still charred from my first and last attempt at doing a chemical experiment two years ago. The black case he always carried lay on a table behind him. Mr. Hudson came to every grade each year on Inventions Day to see all the Harvest Festival projects. He was so good at inventing and figuring things out, he was the only person in all of White Rock who didn’t have a main job of farming and a split job of teaching, running a shop, mining, being a doctor, or something like that. His main job
and
his split job were inventing and teaching. Mr. Hudson had a kind smile, and eyes that always sparkled like something thrilling was happening in his head. Today he wore a dark blue suit, probably for the council meeting this afternoon.

Mr. Hudson looked amused as he watched my noisy class, but Mrs. Romanek wasn’t happy at all. She held her grade book in one hand and rubbed her forehead with her thumb and two fingers as we all crowded into the room.

“Quiet!” she called over the clamor, and narrowed her don’t-test-me eyes at each of us. “Class, this is a busy week. I know you’re excited about showing your inventions today, the field trip tomorrow, and then the Harvest Festival. We’re wasting time, though! It’ll take most of class—before and after lunch—to get through everyone’s inventions, so put yours on your desk and find a spot against the walls to watch.”

This classroom was almost twice as big as our history classroom, and the half that wasn’t filled with desks was filled with equipment for working with chemicals, machinery for shaping wood and metal and even glass, and several bookcases of old reference books. Aaren sat his invention on the desk in front of me, and my cousin and second best friend, Carina, sat hers on the desk to my right.

Carina and I were cousins, but since I was adopted, we didn’t share any genes. And it was obvious. My dark hair hung stick-straight and thick, while her blond hair fell in soft waves down to her shoulders. My eyes were brown; hers were blue. My skin looked like I spent all day in the
sun, while hers was pale. I liked to do daring things; she liked to talk. Carina wore pants, and mine were cut into shorts, but otherwise we dressed almost identically. She looked much more girlish than I did.

We still had fun together, though. I wished I could tell her about my morning, but she didn’t know we ever jumped through the Bomb’s Breath. Like everyone else, merely mentioning it made her twitchy.

As I carried my invention, I almost dropped it when someone knocked into me. I knew before I even turned to see him place his invention on the desk in front of Carina that it was Brock. He might keep to himself, but he always let me know when he was nearby—usually with a shove, a punch in the arm, or a stomp on my foot.

Aaren, Carina, and I walked to a wall together and sat down. Aaren and I were starting to be friends with Brock, but it was still hard to figure out if Brock wanted to join us or not. He pushed his way past some people and sat beside Carina. I guess today he did want to. With such strong, squarish shoulders, Brock seemed confident, but half the time his shoulders drooped, like worries weighed them down. And then there was the way his almost-black hair fell to his green eyes that made him look shy. I could never figure out which he really was—shy or worried or confident. He pushed the hair off his forehead and leaned against the wall.
Confident
. Smug, even.

It made me want to gloat about the jump I made. As soon as I opened my mouth to speak, though, Mrs. Romanek said, “Sam Beckinwood. Please come show us your invention.”

I stared at Brock until he looked at me. I kept my eyes on his as I dramatically pulled out the band that held my hair, then grabbed my ponytail with one hand and swept the fallen hair back into it with the other hand. I did it as slowly and meaningfully as possible, but it still took him a moment to catch on to why my hair had been such a mess.

I could tell the second he figured out that I’d completed the double front flip, because he sat straight up and looked away from me. Not before I saw frustration on his face, though.

It felt like victory all over again.
Brock Sances
, I thought as I leaned back and smiled,
who’s wearing the smug look now?

My smile didn’t fade as I tuned in to Sam explaining his invention. He said it was his farm’s turn to grow peas this year, and he hated to shell them. He placed five pea-pods, unopened, each into a separate shaft of the invention he held. With his other hand, he pushed a lever and all five pods opened and the peas fell into a bowl. He said he’d made a bigger one at home, one that would do twenty pods at once. Mrs. Romanek and Mr. Hudson asked a few questions, gave a suggestion, and told him he did a great job.

Everyone in class cheered for him, especially me. It had been our turn for peas two years ago, and since then I’d always felt bad for anyone who was assigned peas.

Mrs. Romanek and Mr. Hudson walked to the second desk and called Ellie Davies. Ellie picked up the metal case on her desk, then opened it to reveal a bunch of cylinders. She explained how the metal case clamped on to the pipes that came from the water tanks behind our fireplaces, and as the warm water passed through the pipes, it heated the cylinders. She said she then wrapped the cylinders in her hair until they cooled, and it made her hair curly.

“I used to have to put curlers in my hair when it was wet,” Ellie said, “and then wear them to bed. It’s so hard to sleep in curlers! With my invention, you can put them in dry hair, and it only takes a few minutes to curl. As you can see”—Ellie bobbed her head to make her curls bounce—“they work perfectly!”

Mrs. Romanek smiled, complimented Ellie, suggested a way she could alter the clamp to make it sturdier, then moved on.

That was pretty much how it went at every desk. Each student was called over, showed his or her invention, got praise and suggestions, then everyone clapped. As they worked closer to my desk, I got more and more excited. We saw Paige Davies’s machine for separating the grain
from the chaff using beaters and a bellows, Holden Newberry’s model of an adjustable boat propeller that made steering into the pier on the river easier, and Nate Vanlue’s loud bell attached to a clock that rang when class was over.

With as much training as we’d had, everyone in my class was good at inventing, and some of them excelled at it. This was the first year I hadn’t been dying to ask one of them for help. Every project we’d done since January had been in teams, but we were on our own for our Harvest Festival inventions.
No one
could get help, not even kids in Fours & Fives. The Harvest Festival was a celebration of how much a single person could contribute, and everyone in town respected the rules. No one even asked their parents for help, because they knew they wouldn’t get it.

Twenty minutes remained before lunch when Aaren was called over to explain his invention. He showed an ancient-looking book from the town library about combining chemicals. “This has great recipes for medicines, but they all have to be cooked to an exact temperature. So I made a thermometer. I got some metal from the smith and coiled it at the bottom. When I put the thermometer in the liquid, it heats the coil, which turns the shaft hooked to the pointer. It took trial and error to get it calibrated, but now I can measure the temperature when I cook.” He gave his
I’m-talking-about-science-and-people-are-listening grin. It was such a happy grin, it made me feel bad that I didn’t listen to him talk about science more often.

“I made these yesterday when I used my thermometer while heating two chemicals.” Aaren grabbed a handful of some crystals from a bowl and held them out for us to see. Then he dropped them back into the bowl, ground them with a pestle, and showed us the powder. “When I mix this powder with a liquid to make a gel, it becomes a medicine that will keep infection away from cuts better than any herbs we use now.”

Mrs. Romanek looked as proud as if she’d come up with the invention herself.

Mr. Hudson gave a nod of approval, and said, “Aaren, you did a great job of … what, class?”

We all yelled in unison, just like we did when he was our inventions teacher in Tens & Elevens, “Working with your strengths!” And then we all cheered.

“Hope Toriella,” Mrs. Romanek called out. “Come show us yours.”

This was the beginning of inventions going well for me. Everyone quieted and sat at attention because they were excited to see my new invention, not like in years past where they watched to see how I’d fail. I walked over to my desk and picked up my knotted potato and cleared
my throat. “My mom cooks potatoes almost every night, and it’s my job to peel them. I hate it, so I made an invention to do it for me.”

My hands trembled as I picked up my potato with one hand and a stick with the other. I had sharpened one end of the stick and attached a handle to the opposite end. After a slow, calming breath, I steadied my hand and pushed the stick all the way through the potato until the sharp part poked out the other end. I carefully laid the potato between two forked pieces of wood I had nailed to either end of the flat base, both ends of the stick lying cradled on the forked parts. The potato came remarkably close to resting against the knife I’d lashed to a stick on the side, and I smiled. My theory was, as I turned the handle of the sharp stick, it would turn the potato, and as it rubbed against the knife, the knife would cut the potato skin off.

The thing about theories, though, is that real life doesn’t always follow them. Sometimes you lose your perfect potato on the way to school.

I’d spent two weeks trying to make the knife move so it would work with different-sized potatoes, but I wasn’t good at making things with my hands. If I’d used all the fancy machinery our inventions teachers had taught us to use over the years, my project wouldn’t look any better—I would probably just have fewer than ten fingers now.

It’ll still work
. I took a deep breath and turned the handle as I pushed the potato forward. One twist of my wrist, and the potato didn’t touch the knife at all. The second twist of my wrist actually worked well. I relaxed my shoulders and smiled.

I pushed the potato in a bit farther and gave the handle another twist. One of the knobby parts of the potato that rivaled my dad’s thumbs for size and sturdiness twisted from underneath and knocked the knife upward. I didn’t even have time to react, so I was still pushing when the knob cleared the knife. With the force of my push, the potato part went forward too far, the forked sticks splintered, and the handle flew out of my hand. It, along with the potato, skidded across the cement floor and came to rest right in front of Ellie.

I couldn’t move—I could only stare at the potato, and then down at where a sharp splinter of wood had lodged itself in my palm. My vision blurred as I stared at the bead of blood that slowly oozed out of my wound.

Silence crowded the room. Awkward silence. Unnerving silence. Eventually I pulled my eyes to what was even more painful than my hand—my broken potato peeler.

Mrs. Romanek looked from my invention to me, then glanced at Mr. Hudson like she was embarrassed he was in the room to witness such a spectacular failure of one of her students.

“Sometimes inventions don’t work out like you planned.” Mr. Hudson smiled his kind smile, like he understood I’d tried my best. I blinked back tears and tried to swallow the emotion pushing its way up. Not only had Mr. Hudson been my inventions teacher for two years, but he’d come to every Inventions Day since I was four. He knew my history with inventing. And at that moment, it felt like a history that was impossible to change.

“Hope,” Mrs. Romanek said.

I looked away from Mr. Hudson and tried to focus on my teacher. “Yes?”

“We’ve talked about Harvest Festival projects for months! The concept drawings I approved were better than this. And you had four weeks to work on it during Harvest Break! Did you just blow it off and throw something together at the last minute?”

Actually, it had been longer than the two months we’d worked on the project in class. I’d been planning my invention triumph since last year, when my weed-pulling invention turned disastrous. Every pair of eyes in the room focused on me, and my face burned. Was it worse to tell her I’d worked on it for so long, or would I look less stupid if I said I did it last night? In the end, honesty won out and I blurted, “I tried really hard!”

Mrs. Romanek shook her head and looked down. I couldn’t tell if she was more disappointed in me or in
herself for not producing better results from a student. After what seemed like an eternity, she looked up and met my eyes. “I’m sorry, Hope, but I can’t allow this”—she gestured toward my pile of sticks—“at the inventions show. You won’t be able to enter an invention this year.”

It felt like the ceiling collapsed on me, and all I could hear was the shocked gasps from my classmates. I stumbled toward the others, dropped to the floor, and told myself it didn’t matter. But I didn’t believe myself. Of course it mattered! And not just to Mrs. Romanek and Mr. Hudson, or to my dad, or for my grade—it mattered more than anything else to
everyone
. And I couldn’t do it.

“Carina Toriella,” Mrs. Romanek called out, her voice sounding a world away.

The pulsing of the blood in my brain was so strong and my insides were so hot, I couldn’t hear anything going on around me. I stared out the high window at the Shovel—a rock formation at the very top of the mountain that looked like a shovel without its handle—which marked the direction we went to sky jump. I wanted to go there, above the Bomb’s Breath, where I could escape everything. Where goals I spent months working on didn’t fall apart with one wrong twist of my wrist.

When Carina finished showing her invention, she sat next to me and put her hand on my knee. “It’s okay, Hope. I’m sure you’re not the only one bad at inventing.”

Maybe I wasn’t. But it definitely felt like I was the worst. Like everyone else was at least good enough.