Dwight’s mom gave me a big hug. Normally, I don’t hug, but since she was crying and everything, I didn’t complain. Dwight shook my hand. I don’t like to shake hands with people, either, since they usually jam their hand into the web between my thumb and index finger and then my hand feels funny for the rest of the day. But I let Dwight do it.
Tommy looked sort of like a dead frog with its mouth hanging open. Actually, he always looks like that. But this time even more than usual!
Tommy’s Comment: I may have looked like a frog, but Harvey had that awful I’m-so-great smirk of his going full blast. But I couldn’t blame him. He deserved to do it this time. He really had figured out what the rest of us had missed. And it seemed like it should be enough to totally convince the school board that Dwight was OK, right?
WRONG!
DWIGHT’S MOM TELLS OFF THE SCHOOL BOARD
BY TOMMY
“Anyone else?” asked the superintendent. “If no one else wishes to speak, we’ll end the public comment period. Now, can I have a motion to go into closed session to discuss the disciplinary matter referred by Principal Rabbski?”
“I make the motion,” one of the members mumbled.
“Wait just a minute!”
It was Dwight’s mom.
“Uh, Mrs. Tharp, the public comment period is now closed …,” the suit guy said, but I think he could tell it wasn’t going to stop her.
“Why do you even need a closed meeting to vote on this?” she said, standing up. “These two students have made things pretty clear.”
“I think it would be best to have this discussion in a closed meeting, Mrs. Tharp,” said the suit guy.
“What is there to discuss? My son tried to warn a girl that she would lose her spot on the cheerleading squad if she got a zero—”
Principal Rabbski stood up too. “Mrs. Tharp, as I’ve explained to you, there is a pattern of behavior, including violence—”
“Please!” said the suit guy. “Stop right there, Ms. Rabbski. School policy does not permit discussion of CREF referrals in a public meeting!”
“But surely she’s going to withdraw Dwight’s CREF referral now?” went Dwight’s mom. “Aren’t you?”
She looked at Rabbski. Rabbski just sat back down and didn’t say anything.
“You mean that after what we just heard tonight, you still want to send my child to CREF?”
Rabbski just sat there.
“We’ll certainly consider what we’ve heard tonight,” the suit guy said, “but—”
We never found out what he was going to say, because Dwight’s mom went nuts.
One time Mike dragged me to one of his RightwayKidz church meetings. This wild dude was there. They called him Pastor JJ. He seemed like a nice guy until he got up and started preaching. He scared the crap out of me.
He was shouting about the end of the world and locusts with human faces and how I was going to burn in hell. And he was going nuts.
But not as nuts as Mrs. Tharp went.
“You’ll consider it? YOU’LL CONSIDER IT? Well, pardon my French, but you can CONSIDER kissing my butt.
“All night long we’ve been hearing about a boy who has tried again and again to make friends, and God knows it isn’t easy for him. But he kept on trying—reaching out in the best way he could. Until tonight I didn’t know how hard he was trying—and I am so proud of him—”
Her voice started cracking. She could barely talk. And she was wiping her eyes, almost slapping the tears away.
“Really, Mrs. Tharp, I think this would be best discussed in the conference room.”
“What more is there to discuss? He told a girl that she was going to get a zero on some assignment if she didn’t study. So he didn’t make himself clear. Well, he’s got some problems putting things into words. But God forbid you should help him solve those problems, you just want to punish him for them.”
“Well, Mrs. Tharp, there were other prob—er, difficulties,” said Principal Rabbski, trying to get a word in. “Perhaps if we can step into the—”
“Other difficulties? It seems to me that the only difficulty is that you and your staff don’t know the difference between a difficulty and a bright, creative, very special kid. Come on, Dwight, we’re going home.”
They started walking toward the door.
“Mrs. Tharp! We still need to come to a decision. Dwight can’t return to school until—”
“Return to school?!” she shouted from the doorway. “You think I’d let him go back to your screwed-up school? We’re going to find someplace where everybody doesn’t have—doesn’t have boogers for brains! Good night!”
AFTER THE MEETING
BY TOMMY
They left.
Harvey said he wanted to stay to see if the school board was going to take his advice about the video games. I told him that was very, very unlikely.
Then the tie dude told us to leave so the school board could have their closed session. By the time we got outside, Dwight and his mom were long gone.
Harvey’s house is pretty close. He said his dad would give me a ride home. So we started walking. I was pushing my bike, since he hadn’t brought his.
“It was nice of you to try and save him,” I said.
“Too bad it didn’t work.”
“Well, my case file didn’t work either,” I said.
“Yeah, well, that’s because a talking piece of green paper told you to make it.”
“Oh, yeah, I kind of forgot about that,” I said. “It’s weird, but I keep forgetting not to believe in Origami Yoda anymore.”
“Yeah, that is weird. AND stupid.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why did you try to save Dwight?”
“Darth Paper told me to.”
“Get real.”
“No, seriously. Everything that happened was part of Darth Paper’s plan. Well, mostly. We weren’t really trying to get Dwight kicked out. We were just trying to crack him—make him break down and admit that Origami Yoda was fake.”
“And Darth Paper told you to do that?”
“Of course! He’s a magic finger puppet, after all. The important thing is … it worked. Dwight confessed to the whole thing! At last, everybody sees that I was right all along.”
“Yeah, well, everybody also thinks you’re evil.”
“No, I’m not,” said Harvey. “I just tried to save Dwight! And you better put that in your case file! Plus look at this.”
He pulled out Darth Paper. He folded the helmet up. Underneath it he had drawn a face.
“Dwight was right … he was right …,” Origami Anakin croaked. “There was some good left in me.”
CONCLUSION
BY TOMMY
The next morning was Saturday. I got up around nine and checked my computer. I had an e-mail from Dwight.
Come to my house at exactly 9:45 a.m. Bring Origami Yoda!!
Underneath that was a forwarded message that the superintendent had sent his mom:
After your departure last night, the board members voted in favor of Principal Rabbski’s recommendation that Dwight be reassigned to the Correctional and Remedial Education Facility (CREF) for the remainder of the fall semester. Please contact my office to … BLAH BLAH BLAH.
That was hardly a surprise. We had totally blown it. Or maybe we had done a good job, but the school board just wasn’t listening.
I figured that Dwight must be pretty depressed and that I should definitely go over and see him. I was pretty depressed too. And I realized it wasn’t even about not having Origami Yoda around. It was about not having Dwight around. He’s always been around. Since kindergarten. And I was just now realizing what a cool friend he was. Well, “cool” isn’t exactly the right word. But Dwight is whatever it is he is. And life was going to be less interesting without him.
Plus I was worried that the CREF kids were going to destroy him.
But I wasn’t going to tell him that. I thought maybe I could cheer him up some. He was probabl
y sitting in a hole like a depressed zombie.
But when I got there, I saw Dwight in his front yard playing with those giant yo-yo things.
“Mom let me have my diabolos back!” he hollered, waving one of the yo-yos in the air.
He didn’t seem like a zombie. He didn’t even seem depressed.
“Did you bring Origami Yoda?” he asked.
“Yes, but—”
Dwight grabbed it out of my hands. He immediately put it on his finger and looked like he was having some kind of brain-wave conversation with it.
“Whew,” said Dwight. “It’s great to have him back. I’m probably going to need him at my new school.”
I was confused—as is usual when dealing with Dwight.
“New school? You mean CREF?”
“No, my mom’s decided to put me in a private school instead.”
“Private school?”
“Yeah, Tippett Academy.”
“Tippett Academy?! Isn’t that Caroline’s school?”
Dwight smiled.
And it hit me like lightning. Of course Dwight wasn’t depressed! He was getting exactly what he wanted. Good-bye, Rabbski. Hello, Caroline!
I’m not one of those people who usually goes around saying OMG, but O … M … G … ! Once again everything had worked out exactly the way Dwight wanted. Had he been planning this all along?
If it was all some kind of crazy mad-genius plan, how far back did he start it? Just at last night’s meeting? Or everything since the beginning of school?
Had the case file been part of the plan too? Was the purpose of the case file not to save him from the school board but to convince his mother that he was a good but misunderstood kid who deserved to go to Tippett instead of CREF?
If that was true, then Kellen and I—and even Harvey, I guess—had succeeded, not failed.
No, Dwight couldn’t have planned all that, could he? No, I couldn’t believe it. It was too much. Nobody could have figured out ahead of time how it would all work out.
Well, nobody except … Origami Yoda.
But Origami Yoda was fake, right? That’s what the letter said.
But wait, if Origami Yoda was fake, then why did Dwight “need” him at the new school?
“Dwight, I want a straight answer.”
“Yardstick,” said Yoda. “Straight it is.”
“No, I mean, I’m going to ask you a question and I want a straight answer. Is Origami Yoda real?”
He held up Origami Yoda: “Believe in me no more do you?”
“No! That’s a question. I want a straight answer. And from you, not from Yoda.”
“Yardstick.”
“That wasn’t funny the first time. Now, what is the answer?”
“What was the question again?”
“IS ORIGAMI YODA REAL?”
“Of course. And guess what? My mom let me have my computer back, so you can always e-mail Origami Yoda if you have questions for him to answer.”
“But I thought he couldn’t answer questions. I thought he was fake.”
“Fake? That’s mean. You’re going to hurt his feelings.”
“But what about that letter?”
“What letter?”
“What letter?! THE letter! The one where you told Harvey that Origami Yoda was just a piece of paper?”
Origami Yoda said: “Heard of a Jedi mind trick you have, hmm?”
A NEW HOPE
BY TOMMY
“Wait a second,” I said, “do you mean—”
“Sorry,” said Dwight. “I’ve got to go.”
And he picked up his big yo-yos and practically ran back to his house.
“But if you’ve got to go, why did you tell me to be here right now?” I yelled after him.
“Tommy!” called someone behind me.
I turned around. It was Sara. Her family was getting into their car. She ran over to me.
“You came,” she said. “Dwight’s emergency Yoda said you’d come, but I just wasn’t sure! I thought you were still mad at me.”
“Mad?”
“About me playing miniature golf with Tater Tot.”
“I wasn’t mad,” I said, “just—”
“Sara!” her mom hollered. “Let’s go, you two.”
“You’re coming with us, right?” asked Sara, and she grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the car. “We’re going out for brunch at Mabry Mill. You can tell me about Dwight and the school board. And I can tell you about what a jerk Tater Tot was when I beat him at Putt-Putt. And we can both talk about how awesome Robot Dreams is. And we can get chocolate chip pancakes.”
“Chocolate chip pancakes?” I asked.
“Yeah!”
I glanced back at Dwight’s house. He was looking at me from the porch and waving. I couldn’t tell from that far away, but I think he had Origami Yoda on his hand.
“Sounds great!” I said to Sara.
And it was.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank all the people who helped inspire, write, and produce this book …
The Super-Folders: Oscar, Charlie, Jack, Remi, Chad and Chad, Austin, Matthew, Matt, Derek, D.T., Jordi, Sean, Tyler, Oscar H., Jessica, Jake, Mark, Connor, Cary, Houston, Jamie, Michael, Emily, Joshua, Sam, Brandy, Mr. Schell’s class, Cooper, Jackson, Brennan, Carl, Chance, Jimmy, Lorenzo, Wes, the Paper Jedi Society, and everyone else who has made their own Star Wars Origami and shared it with me.
10-fold Darth Paper inventor Super-Folder Ben.
Star Wars Origami Masters: Chris Alexander, Won Park, and Fumiaki Kawahata.
George Lucas and the wonderful folks at Lucasfilm, who have made all of it possible, from making the movies in the first place to approving my ideas to just being nice.
My parents, Wayne and Mary Ann, my family, friends, and cohorts: Michael and Julia Hemphill, Steve Altis, Paul Dellinger, David West, George and Barbara Bell, Annell, Brian Compton, Matt Cunningham, Justin, Mrs. Moench, T.J., Linda, BNS, Cindy Minnick & Co., Paula Alston, Michael Buckley, Eric Wight, and John Claude Bemis. And all my online friends on Twitter and Clone Wars StrikeTeam.
UPS Store 3421, Pilot G2 Gel Pens, the Fort Vause Memorial String Band, and Edu-Fun Popcorn Products.
Everyone who helped get these books out there for kids to read: my great agent, Caryn Wiseman, the incredible team at Abrams/Amulet, the wonderful folks at Scholastic, the enthusiastic book reps and the indefatigable booksellers. And, of course, the teachers, principals, reading specialists, and librarians!
Jane Emmilyne Arnst, who shared the journey.
The mysterious Van Jahnke.
Jay Asher, who gave me a great idea for another case file …
And my constant collaborator, Cece Bell!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Angleberger is the author of The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, Horton Halfpott, and other books for kids. He has been a fan of Star Wars and origami for a long, long time and loves making origami Star Wars characters. Pictures of some of his foldings—along with a bunch of really awesome ones sent in by readers—are online at www.origamiyoda.com. Tom lives in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.
Tom Angleberger, Darth Paper Strikes Back
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