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all sat, sparkly eyed, waiting for me to startle and smash a priceless antique vase or something. I steeled myself. I was sick of being a joke. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.
    ‘My presentation is on my grandparents,’ I said.
    There was an audible groan from the back of the classroom that everyone ignored.
    ‘I never met them,’ I said. ‘They died before I was born. Back when they were alive, though, everyone in the valleys knew who they were. They were famous.’
    I put the box on the floor, and opened the lid.
    ‘My grandparents were called “The Tornado Chasers”,’ I said.
    I pulled out a brown leather helmet from inside the box, and held it up. The whole class murmured with interest. The helmet had ear flaps, and a fur trim, and pilot goggles attached to the front that had been smashed many years ago. Across the side, still visible despite its age, was a picture of a spiralling tornado, the shadow of a bi-plane emblazoned across it. Underneath, stitched in rolling script, read the initials: ‘
T.C.
’
    ‘They were pilots,’ I explained. ‘
Daredevil
pilots. They used to fly stunts for shows, doing loop-the-loops and flying right over the audiences’ heads and stuff.’
    Everyone cooed. Miss Pewlish shuffled nervously in her chair.
    ‘Well, that certainly sounds very
dangerous
, Owen …’
    ‘Oh, it was,’ I said, nodding. ‘Incredibly dangerous. There weren’t many people around back then who did what they did, and they were the best in thebusiness. My grandmother even did a thing called “wing walking”, where she’d walk across the wings of the plane while it was in the air.’
    I pulled out a pile of black-and-white photos from the box, and started handing them round. The class gasped in amazement. The photos showed a plane in mid-flight, taken from the ground, my grandmother’s shadow on the wings cast against the sun.
    ‘Pretty exciting stuff,’ I said. ‘But that wasn’t the reason they were famous. That was because of something else they did. Something
much
more dangerous.’
    I paused, and looked up. The entire class was staring back at me in anticipation.
    ‘You see,’ I said, ‘they were always trying to be even more daring, to really push themselves. So they started a club called “The Tornado Chasers”, with some other daredevil pilots. It was a secret club. You couldn’t tell anyone that you were a member. Because actually, what they were doing was
life-threatening.
’
    Miss Pewlish shifted uncomfortably on her chair. ‘Er …’
    ‘Whenever a tornado landed in the valley,’ I said, meeting the eyes of my classmates, ‘and everyone else had shut themselves up safely at home – the Tornado Chasers would leap in their planes, and fly straight towards it!’
    The whole class gasped in shock, including Miss Pewlish.
    ‘They knew it was dangerous,’ I said. ‘But that was kind of the whole point – to do something that no one else would ever
dream
of doing. There used to be lots of tornadoes back then. There weren’t even any stormtraps to protect the villages – they hadn’t been invented yet. People were really frightened. But not my grandparents. They even had a motto: “We are the Tornado Chasers, and we are not afraid” …’
    ‘Lovely, Owen,’ said Miss Pewlish, getting out of her seat. ‘Well, I think that’s quite enough for today …’
    ‘Until one day,’ I continued, pulling out a newspaper from the box, ‘it all ended in tragedy.’
    I held up the newspaper, and the whole class gasped again. The cover was taken up by a giant photo of a shattered plane, hung upside down in a tree. It was surrounded by a circle of solemn policemen, their heads bowed. A helmet hung down from the cockpit by a torn strap.
    ‘One day a tornado touched down,’ I said, ‘and they flew out to meet it as usual. All five – my grandfather, my grandmother, and the three other Tornado Chasers – disappeared. No one knows what happened to them. Their