In the third grade at Tommy’s birthday party, Dwight laughed so hard at a joke, his mouthful of juice sprayed all over the cupcakes. Sometimes Tommy finds Dwight lying down in odd places, like in front of the library encyclopedias. Dwight once was sent to retrieve something from the PE equipment room and was discovered pounding on its door, shouting: “Squirrels! Come save me!” (43).

Dwight wore the same t-shirt for a month because he got it for free. He also wore a cape until the principal told him to stop it. He cracks his knuckles loudly at awkward moments. When Tommy and his friends are nice to him, he often ruins the moment by saying something stupid. He sometimes just sits and stares like a “hypnotized chicken.”

The number-one worst thing he ever did was when an Indigenous American man visited the school to talk about his culture, and Dwight asked what Indigenous people wore as underwear before Columbus.

Tommy can’t figure out why Dwight does all these things. He can be completely normal, and he’s really good at origami. Also, he pulls straight-A’s, but only in math.

Cassie enrolled in the school in January. By springtime, she still doesn’t have any friends. She heads, not for the library, but straight to class. There, she accidentally knocks over a bust of Shakespeare. Fearing Mr. Snider’s wrath, she collects the pieces and hides them in her backpack. Near the end of class, Mr. Snider notices the bust is missing; he says that if it’s a prank, the sculpture must be back in class by morning.

On the bus that afternoon, Cassie as usual sits with Dwight—nobody wants to sit with him, and she has nowhere else to sit. Promptly he says: “To be in the backpack or not to be in the backpack, that is the question” (50). Speaking in a Sherlock Holmes accent, he explains that Cassie’s books are in her lap but her backpack is full, apparently with Shakespeare’s head. Mr. Snider probably noticed it, too.

Cassie shows Dwight that the bust is broken. Yoda says: “New one you must make” (53). Cassie is skeptical, but she obtains some Play-Doh and, using the broken pieces as a guide, manages to sculpt a red-and-blue version. She presents it to Mr. Snider the next morning: He bursts out laughing and declares her new version more valuable than the old one.

Harvey comments that he thought the Play-Doh bust depicted “Robert E. Lee’s horse” (54). Tommy says Yoda’s wisdom seems to have come from Dwight. Tommy’s opinion of Dwight rises—for a time, at least.

Everyone’s going to the new vampire movie except Lance, whose parents won’t let him see R-rated films. He asks Yoda for advice, and Yoda says: “Stinks movie does” (56). Lance says he thought Dwight wanted to go, and Dwight says he does, and he believes it will be “awesome.”

A lot of kids go to the movie, but everyone decides it’s awful. Harvey writes that Dwight must have read a bad review or simply guessed right; Tommy just wishes he’d listened to Yoda.

Marcie wants to win the local spelling bee so she can advance toward the national contest and win prizes. She thinks that the sixth graders’ obsession with Origami Yoda is stupid. However, she’s looking for an edge in the spelling contest, so, on the bus going home, she asks Yoda what word she’ll need. Yoda says he’ll give her the answer the next day: “Far into the future I must look” (60). Dwight puts away the puppet. Marcie calls him a “fartface” and turns away.

The next day on the bus, Yoda greets her with: “Mulked learn to spell you must. Forget not the T” (60). She asks how to spell it; Dwight tells her to look it up for herself. She does so later and learns it’s spelled “mulct.” At the spelling contest, she loses when she misspells vestige. The word mulct never appears in the test. Marcie feels like an “idiot” for trusting Yoda.

Harvey crows that finally others are realizing that Origami Yoda is a fraud. Tommy, though, thinks the puppet pulled a fast one on Marcie, who had insulted Dwight, by giving her a wrong word—”Mulct” means to punish or trick someone.

On the field trip to the zoo, Mr. Howell tells students not to buy snacks from the refreshment stands. Quavondo Phan believes this rule doesn’t cover vending machines. He and a few other kids hurry over to one, where Quavondo puts some quarters in. Mr. Howell yells at the kids to stop it. Quavondo tries to get the coins to return but can’t, so the teacher lets him finish the purchase.

He gets a small back of Cheetos, but everyone else wants some. The other children crowd around him and grab at the package, so Quavondo quickly dumps all the Cheetos into his mouth. Harvey calls him “Cheeto hog,” and the nickname sticks. Soon, everyone shuns him.

Quavondo asks Dwight for advice from Origami Yoda, but Dwight is reluctant. Suddenly, Yoda says: “Cheetos for everyone you must buy” (67). Dwight covers his mouth to stop Yoda, but Yoda continues to advise: Quavondo must buy large bags of Cheetos for everyone and distribute them at the assembly the following day.

Quavondo protests that there’s no food allowed in the gym, and he’ll get in trouble. Yoda says trouble is even better. That night, Quavondo spends the $50 his grandfather gave him, plus a few more dollars borrowed from his brother, to purchase 116 bags of Cheetos. The next day, he crams them into two backpacks and his coat pockets and totes them to school.

Everyone heard about the advice and ask Quavondo about the Cheetos. He doesn’t know how to hand them out without getting stopped by a teacher, so he asks Yoda, who says: “Speed must you have” (71). The assembly is during seventh period. At the end of sixth, Quavondo darts from the classroom, grabs the Cheeto supply from his locker, rushes to the gym, and starts handing them out as kids enter. Soon there’s a crush of eager hands. Quavondo finally backs away from the pile, saying to take just one, and that there’s enough for everybody.

Soon all the kids are eating Cheetos. Quavondo gets sent to the office, where he receives in-school suspension and must write a report on nutrition and an apology to the assembly entertainer, hygiene specialist Mr. Good Clean Fun. At the gym, teachers quickly squelch the eating, and most of the Cheetos get thrown away. But it works: The kids stop calling Quavondo the Cheeto Hog.

Harvey says that Dwight just wanted a free bag of Cheetos. Tommy says that Yoda’s advice was spot-on, and the entire exercise, including the punishment that followed, restored Quavondo’s reputation.

Several times, Tommy asks Dwight to contribute a chapter to his case study, but Dwight always refuses. Instead, he gives Tommy several in-school suspension slips from the bottom of his backpack, slips that never got signed by his parents. One appears to be folded into what looks like an Origami Chewbacca.

Each slip is authored by Mr. Howell, and each lists Dwight’s offense as “other.” One slip says Dwight refused “to remove finger puppet during Pledge of Allegiance” (76); another claims Dwight was asked to work a math problem at the blackboard but instead ate the chalk; still another gives Dwight detention because he doesn’t get slips signed and returned.