Darth Paper Strikes Back Read online

  But not for doing bad stuff—just weird stuff. Like that time he brought that giant yo-yo to English class for an oral report and busted a light with it and lightbulb pieces went everywhere and the teacher evacuated the room because she thought that lightbulbs were filled with toxic gas.

  That’s why we’re always telling him to ask Origami Yoda before he does stuff. Origami Yoda would have said, “Do that giant yo-yo trick directly under a light you must not.” Or something like that.

  Anyway, that wasn’t Dwight being bad—just Dwight making a weird mistake.

  And even though what got Dwight into trouble sounds bad, we think it was just a weird mistake too. I’m sure Principal Rabbski has told you all about what Origami Yoda said to Jen. We can’t explain to you why he said that stuff about “Zero Hour” and “Doom,” but we can tell you that we don’t think he meant anything bad. And neither do the other kids at school.

  So we all got together to make this case file that has a bunch of stories that show that Dwight and Origami Yoda have not gone over to the Dark Side! They are the good guys!

  Sincerely,

  ORIGAMI YODA AND THE BRAT

  BY KELLEN (AS DICTATED TO TOMMY)

  Dear School Board Members,

  This shows the way that Dwight and Origami Yoda help us solve problems, even though it actually happened over the summer, not at school. In this case, Origami Yoda saved the life of a small child!

  Because otherwise I was going to strangle the little brat!

  I’m just kidding, of course! I wasn’t really going to kill him or even hurt him. That was the problem. He was too small to beat up.

  Everybody would have said I was a monster for picking on a little kid.

  He may be little, but he’s got a big, nasty mouth.

  All this happened at the Vinton skate park this summer. My mom would drop me off there on her way to work and pick me up on her way home. I had spent months begging and pleading for this arrangement and had done a million random chores to show that I was “responsible and mature enough.”

  It should have been paradise. Hanging out with my friends, practicing tricks, getting junk food and Mountain Dews at the Qwikpick right across Route 24.

  The whole problem was that the Brat lived nearby and just walked over. You never knew when he was going to show up. And once he was there, he would never, ever leave!

  Here’s how my summer started:

  I was dying to show Lance and Murky my 50-50 grind. I’d been working on it every chance I could get.

  I drop into the bowl, get great compression, and come up for the grind. But instead of the board grinding the lip, it slipped sideways too fast. My feet came off, and I fell back into the bowl, cracked my shin just under the knee pad, scraped the heck out of my left hand, and clonked my helmet pretty hard.

  I’m lying there for a second, wondering if I’m dead, when this loud, high-pitched, obnoxious voice comes screeching across the bowl: “Dude, you suck.”

  I look up and see this tiny figure silhouetted against the angry summer sun. It was the Brat!

  Lance and Murky—who should have been jumping into the bowl to see if I was OK—started giggling.

  What was the rest of the summer like? Basically like that, over and over again. Try to practice something hard, and if you don’t land it every time, it’s “You suck!” or “Fail!” If you do nail a trick, the Brat is like, “That wasn’t so high” or “Tony Hawk does it better.”

  You can’t get away from him. As you know, it’s the only skate park in town, and it’s pretty small. There’s the bowl, a couple rails, and a mini quarter pipe for beginners. That’s it. Whatever you do, he’s always right there to see it and complain about it.

  And here’s the worst part. The Brat couldn’t actually skate. He just walked around with a helmet and pads and a board, which didn’t have a scratch on them!

  It doesn’t do any good to tell him off, either. He goes, “Don’t get mad at me just because you bailed!”

  Everybody hated him, but I think I hated him most because he seemed to rag on me more than on anybody else.

  So, anyway, after a couple weeks, I was ready to whack him in the head with my board.

  “You can’t do that, stooky,” said Murky while we were getting Mountain Dews at the Qwikpick with Lance. (“Stooky” is a Murkyism. It means kind of like “dude.”) “He’s obnoxious, but he’s just a little kid.”

  “Plus, I think he can probably beat you up, man,” Lance added.

  “Very funny, Lance,” I said. “Obviously, I’m not going to hit the little brat, but I’ve got to do something. I’m actually thinking of going to day camp with my sisters,” I said.

  “Day camp? Are you serious?” asked Lance.

  “You’d go crazy there,” said Murky.

  “Well, I’m already going crazy here. I can’t take that brat anymore. What am I going to do?”

  overheard your problem. I think Origami Yoda can help.”

  “What the heck?” Murky was half saying, half laughing.

  But Lance and I were like, “Shhh, dude, Origami Yoda is totally Jedi wise.”

  “Origami Yoda, what can I do about the Brat?” I asked. I told him what had been going on.

  “What did he do, teleport?” said Murky.

  “Actually, he’s probably in the bathroom,” said Lance.

  The men’s room door was closed. Lance checked it. It was locked.

  “Are you in there, Dwight?” I yelled.

  No answer. We waited a few minutes to see if he would come out, but he didn’t. So we paid for our stuff and left.

  When we got back to the park, the Brat was being a brat like usual.

  “You got to do it,” said Lance. “Origami Yoda is always right.”

  “Yeah, I know, but if I teach him to skate, he’ll just keep coming!”

  “Maybe he’ll fall on his butt and run home crying and never come back,” said Murky. “Problem solved.”

  Well, I did teach him, and he did fall on his butt and cry. But he didn’t run home.

  We kept working on it. Every morning before the place got crowded, I’d help him do dropins off the mini quarter pipe. Once he learned that, I taught him to ride up the ramp and come back down. Then how to do a Rock ’n’ Roll on the lip.

  You might think I’m going to tell you that he learned fast and got really good, but he didn’t. The truth is, he sucks. But I never tell him that. And he never tells me I suck anymore, either.

  Harvey’s Comment

  How come there’s always a story about Dwight in the bathroom?

  My Comment: Great … Harvey just has to have the case file so he can add his “scientific” comments to it, and this is what we get: bathroom jokes.

  That reminds me … The Brat reminds me of someone. Let’s see … a kid who just stands around and complains and insults people all the time? I just can’t think who that reminds me of … (cough) Harvey (cough).

  In fact, the next story is all about the complaining and the insults, with the extra-annoying bonus of Darth Paper!

  ORIGAMI YODA AND THE HUMMINGBIRD HAWK MOTH

  BY SARA

  Dear School Board,

  It’s weird that I’m the one who’s going to tell you this story, but in a weird way I’m the one who caused it. Sort of a butterfly effect. That thing about how a butterfly flapping its wings somewhere can cause a snowstorm somewhere else? You know what I’m talking about? Actually, I guess you’d call it the “moth effect” for this story.

  What happened was that on the first day of school Mrs. Porterfield, our biology teacher, let us choose which table we’d sit at. Each table has two seats, and whoever you sit with is going to be your partner on stuff.

  So, when I walk in the room, most of the chairs are taken, but nobody is sitting with Dwight. It’s no surprise that no one was sitting with him. I don’t say that to be mean, because he IS a friend of mine. I’ve gotten to know him by living next door to him. But most normal people don�
��t know him and don’t really want to know him.

  So I was willing to sit with him and I was moving in his direction, but then Amy popped up from a desk at the front of the room and called my name. She had saved a seat for me.

  I could have kept going and sat with Dwight and this story never would have happened. But that would have been really rude to Amy, so I turned and went back to sit with her, which was just a tiny bit rude to Dwight, but he didn’t even seem to notice.

  So when the last person came to class, the seat next to Dwight was the only seat left. And guess who the last person was? Harvey.

  Now, most people would have just accepted it and sat down next to Dwight. They would have complained about it later, but they wouldn’t have said anything in front of Dwight.

  Not Harvey.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” he says really loud. “Is that seriously the only seat left?”

  Frankly, I think most people were glad it was the last seat, because for them sitting with Harvey would be even worse than sitting with Dwight.

  “Harvey, please take your seat,” said Mrs. Porterfield.

  “This isn’t a permanent seating arrangement, is it?” he whined. “I’m not going to be stuck here all year, am I?”

  “I’m sure I could find a seat for you in Principal Rabbski’s office,” said Mrs. Porterfield.

  She turned out to be pretty good at making jokes like this.

  Harvey made this big, ridiculous sigh and flopped down next to Dwight.

  “Just don’t bug me,” he said to Dwight.

  “Actually,” said Mrs. Porterfield, “we’re all going to be bugging each other a lot for the next few weeks. Can anybody guess why?”

  Nobody could guess.

  “Because our first unit is going to be insects. And we’re going to be going outside a lot to collect insects while the weather is still nice.”

  “Nice?” whined Harvey. “It’s ninety-five degrees out there.”

  “Once again, Harvey,” Mrs. Porterfield said, “I’d like to point out that if you find the principal’s office more comfortable, I can arrange for you to spend a lot of time there.”

  I was starting to like Mrs. Porterfield. Maybe she would be the person who was finally able to get Harvey to shut up.

  The next day we started our bug “collections.”

  Mrs. Porterfield said that when she was learning biology, people had jars of poison that they used to kill the bugs they caught. Then they used pins to stick them in boxes.

  Apparently, the school system had decided that the poison wasn’t safe and neither were the pins. Plus Mrs. Porterfield said it is a lot easier to appreciate nature when it is still alive.

  So she had a digital camera with this weird attachment on it. When you caught a bug, you put it in this little plastic bubble, and the camera took a close-up photo of it. Then you could let the bug go and put the bug’s picture on a Flickr page she set up for our class.

  “If you each catch at least three bugs, we’ll have seventy-five pictures. But the hard part is catching seventy-five DIFFERENT bugs. We don’t want seventy-five pictures of the same kind of ant.”

  I’ve noticed that when Dwight uses Origami Yoda, he talks a little bit different depending on whether Yoda is giving an order, stating a fact, or predicting the future. This was definitely the more spacey prediction voice.

  is true that hummingbird hawk moths are somewhat uncommon. However, a student last year did catch a regular hawk moth.”

  Each team got a net, and we all went out back to look for bugs around the edges of the soccer field. It was pretty hot out there, but it was fun.

  “If you catch a bee, just keep it in your net until I can help you with it!” called Mrs. Porterfield as we all started running around. Everybody except Dwight and Harvey, that is. They were still standing by the doors arguing over who would get to use the net.

  Amy and I were the first team to catch a bug. It was a butterfly. Mrs. Porterfield took a picture of it and said we’d use a field guide to identify it later.

  “It’s an orange skipper,” said Harvey.

  “OK, Harvey,” said Mrs. Porterfield. “You need to catch your own bug instead of interrupting the other teams.”

  “How can I catch my own bug when Dwight won’t let me have the net?”

  Mrs. Porterfield sighed, and I was so glad that I wasn’t stuck with Harvey.

  It went on like this for the whole week. Everybody catching bugs and Harvey complaining and trying to identify other people’s bugs and saying, “You’ll never catch a hummingbird hawk moth” to Dwight over and over and over.

  Dwight turned out to be the best bug catcher. I noticed that instead of running around he moved really, really slowly and then suddenly—swoosh!—he’d catch one.

  But even though Dwight caught seven different kinds of butterflies and a praying mantis, he didn’t catch a hummingbird hawk moth.

  When Dwight caught something, Harvey would paw at the net and then shout: “A yellow swallowtail. I told you it wouldn’t be a hummingbird hawk moth!”

  We all got sick of hearing it. I mean, Harvey seemed to think that the only thing any of us cared about was whether Dwight caught a hummingbird hawk moth or not.

  By the end of the week we DID care. Amy and me and some of the others were all trying to catch one too, so that we could secretly give it to Dwight.

  But by Friday no one had even seen one. In fact, I really wasn’t sure what they looked like.

  Then, with like ten minutes to go, we’re all running around trying to catch one and Dwight is just standing still, holding his net. Harvey had given up on taking turns with Dwight and was trying to catch bugs with his bare hands by flipping over rocks.

  All of a sudden there’s this buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz and a WHIP with the net, and Dwight’s got something. He calmly walks over to Mrs. Porterfield.

  Now, some kids didn’t care, but Amy and me and a couple others were dying to find out if it was a hummingbird hawk moth. Whatever it was, it was huge and still buzzing. Mrs. Porterfield was having some trouble getting it out of the net into the camera thing. Then she does, and it sits in the bubble completely still, and it’s amazingly beautiful, with shiny clear wings and this weird long coiled-up nose and a big fat, fuzzy body.

  “What is it?” asks Harvey, trying to look over my shoulder.

  “It’s a hummingbird hawk moth, Darth Smarty-Pants,” says Mrs. Porterfield.

  The next day, Mrs. Porterfield hung up a printout of the picture of the hummingbird hawk moth, and it’s still hanging up there. And Harvey has finally shut up—at least in biology class.

  Harvey’s Comment

  That is totally not the way it really happened. But you’re not interested in the truth anymore. Here’s the truth: Anybody who got stuck with Dwight as a lab partner would end up complaining.

  My Comment: Dwight seems like a good partner to me. He caught a lot of bugs. And you both ended up getting an A on the bug collection.

  I just wish it had been me sitting with Sara. I barely get to see her this year!

  ORIGAMI YODA AND THE NON-VIDEO GAME

  BY MIKE

  Dear School Board,

  Every morning me and my friends Lance, Hannah, and Murky spend the time before school on the computers in the library playing this awesome online game: Clone Wars StrikeTeam. We all play at the same time and have to cooperate to win.

  Other kids, like Harvey, Remi, and Ben play stuff too, or check e-mails or whatever. It’s a fun way to start the school day.

  Or at least, it was!

  Oh, and we also learned valuable lessons about teamwork, planning, math, hand-eye coordination, and other important skills that aided in our education and probably improved our performance on the Standards of Learning tests.

  Then one day about a month ago, we go into the library and there are signs all over that say:

  NO E-MAIL

  NO CHAT

  NO FACEBOOK

  NO VIDEO GAMES!!
!

  We sat down to play anyway but couldn’t get on to the website. That’s when Mrs. Calhoun came over and told us that the new library policy was no games. She said the Clone Wars site had been blocked, and so had some others. She also said that if we found a game site that wasn’t blocked, we couldn’t play that either, and if she caught us, she’d throw us out of the library.

  I started to argue with her, which was a bad idea because sometimes I get worked up when I get in an argument.

  Mrs. Calhoun sent me to the office to see Principal Rabbski. Rabbski said she was disappointed to see me crying over video games and that maybe some inschool suspension time would help me calm down. I tried to explain the difference between mad tears and boo-hoo tears. Nobody ever listens!

  Rabbski told me this wasn’t the librarian’s decision anyway—it was you school board members who had made that policy.

  So, first of all, we would like you to change the no-games policy. The games we play are very strategic and educational. Kind of like chess, just with lightsabers and stuff.

  Second, I’ll tell you what happened next.

  While I was in ISS, I realized that I should have gotten Origami Yoda’s advice before I did anything.

  I got out of ISS in time for lunch, and me and Murky went over to see Dwight.

  “Chess is not boring,” said Dwight.

  “Well, compared with Clone Wars StrikeTeam, it is. And don’t forget they already banned card games. No Magic, no Pokémon.”

  We went by his room after school. He told us that when he was a kid back in the 1970s, you couldn’t play video games at school because they didn’t have computers. And they hadn’t invented Pokémon back then, either.