38 pages • 1 hour read
Ralph FletcherFlying Solo
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 15-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary: “12:10pm—Lunch”
Before going to lunch, the class decides that, because they don’t want the authorities to know the class has no teacher, the best way to keep the secret is to tell all the other sixth graders and make them feel like they’re in on the plan. In the cafeteria, Rachel sits with Missy, Rhonda, and Miranda, a girl from a different class. As Missy tells Miranda about how they have no teacher, Rachel listens to the other kids in the cafeteria. The whispered words felt like “little flames she could feel licking her insides” (75), and she feels “the pressure of words in her chest that wanted to get out but somehow could not come out” (75).
Chapter 16 Summary: “12:21pm—Early Dismissal”
Chapter 16 is written from Bastian’s perspective. During lunch, he tries to call home and finds out the number has been disconnected: “All at once it hit him. He was moving” (74). Bastian walks out of the school building, and nobody stops him as he thinks about how when he moves “he would go through his own kind of quarantine” because nobody will know him (75). He ends up at his best friend John’s house. John is playing hooky from school that day, and Bastian tells him he needs to come to school to help their class party since there are no adults watching them. They go back to school together.
Chapter 17 Summary: “12:30pm—Recess”
Rachel thinks about her family while at recess. Her parents used to fight a lot, and Rachel yelled at them to stop. After that, her dad moved far away to New Mexico, and Rachel now only sees him twice a year. She thinks, “If I could fly I could see my father whenever I want” (79). Rachel wishes she had never yelled at her parents to stop arguing, but she hadn’t known then that she had “the Right to remain silent” (79).
Chapter 18 Summary: “12:50pm—Blood”
When everyone gets back to class, they notice that Bastian left. Rachel thinks about how it’s the last time she’ll ever see him and how it’s also the six-month anniversary of Tommy’s death. Sky, the new kid, walks in with a big scrape on his knee. The class panics because he cannot go to the nurse without a pass. Rachel nudges Missy, and Missy cleans and bandages Sky’s knee because her dad is a doctor. Some of the boys in the class cheer that “KIDS RULE!”
Chapter 19 Summary: “1:10pm—Enrichment”
It is time for some students to go to enrichment, a class for gifted students. Rachel also used to go to enrichment, but she was dropped from the program when she stopped talking. The class debates what to do because nobody wants to go to enrichment, but they also don’t want the enrichment teacher to come looking for them. Karen ends up calling the teacher and telling him that they’re working hard on a project and want to stay in their class, which the teacher says is fine. However, Sean is supposed to go to the Resource Room to get extra help with his reading, and “it was no secret that he was a poor reader” (88). Karen begins to dial the teacher’s number when Mrs. Zemetti walks into the room to get Sean. Mrs. Zemetti compliments the class on being so well-behaved, and Karen tells her that the substitute teacher is in the bathroom. When the teacher and Sean leave, the class giggles quietly, and there is even “a small smile on Rachel’s face” (89).
Chapters 15-19 Analysis
Chapters 15-19 solidify the bond that Mr. Fabiano’s class has created by being independent. The class accepts that there is no way that somebody isn’t going to spill the secret, so they decide to tell the other sixth grade classes about how they don’t have a teacher for the day so that they are “in” on the deception. The class has a self-awareness of who they are as individuals and who they are as a class. This is shown when certain students need to leave the class for enrichment or for extra reading time like Sean. Sean is “a poor reader” (88), but it is an accepted part of who Sean is, and the class still tries to get him out of having to go to the Resource Room. Sean isn’t treated differently than the students who go to the advanced reading enrichment class.
The class once again works as a team to ensure that they don’t need adults to run their class for the day. When the new student Sky gets hurt, Missy takes responsibility and helps him clean and bandage his wound, which earns her respect from the rest of the class and makes everyone feel like “KIDS RULE” (84). Overall, the adults in the novel are easily fooled and shown to be generally unnecessary. Even when Mrs. Zemetti comes into the classroom to get Sean for his extra reading help, she easily believes that the substitute teacher is in the bathroom and compliments the class on their good behavior. It is ironic that she compliments their good behavior when the class is doing something rebellious by ruling themselves for the day. However, the students really are acting well behaved, which shows how responsible they are with their independence. They don’t want to get caught, so they work together to ensure that nothing seems amiss. By doing so, the students end up acting like adults and taking care of themselves.
Chapter 17 shows how Rachel thinks about the idea of silence. She believes that, in some way, she is responsible for her parents’ divorce because she told them to stop arguing. This goes with the idea that silence symbolizes power in the novel. Rachel believes she had the power to split her parents up with her words, and she had the power to be mean to Tommy when he was nice to her. From Rachel’s perspective, the power of her words ends up causing harm because her parents split up and Tommy dies, leaving Rachel feeling guilty and ashamed.
