Rocket Time
"The tankfiller's finished!" Kelsie yelled. "It's rocket time!" My hoe fell on the dusty soil, and our excited cheers echoed off the canyon walls as we ran home to get ready for the trip to the rocketpad.
Everybody went. Kids like us walked fast. Adults walked slow. Only the ones patching a fuelpipe, burst during the tank filling, didn't come. I could see them in the distance when we reached the overlook. The crowd was already there, blankets laid out with food and everything. From up there we could see the rocket, surrounded by the machines that had built it over the last ten years, a safe distance back from the launch.
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We got in line with kids our age and the countdowner asked if we were thirteen years or up. Kelsie said yes and I lied and said yes, and he typed our names on a screen.
When all the kids were done, the voice picked kids. Kelsie was third, but it never called me.
Watching the blastoff with my parents, I thought of Kelsie riding that tiny sun into the sky. "Where do they go, Mom?"
She held me tight for some reason, and said, "I don't know."
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, June 18th, 2015
We hope you're enjoying
Rocket Time by
Peter A Schaefer.
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