Read Sky Jumpers Series, Book 1 for Free Online

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 hisI’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 clearedmy 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