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, never, 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.”