The Continuing Adventures of Rocket Boy

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This is the first story I wrote after a long break from short fiction. I'd had very little time for writing for several years. Our kids were being born, my wife was getting tenure, and we had a mortgage for the first time, which meant I really needed to work full time. What writing time I had I put into a novel that failed to sell. 

Meanwhile, this story was brewing. Several of the ideas and scenes were in my head for years. But I didn't sit down to write it until I realized what the ending had to be.

When I was sixteen, my best friend, Stevie, built his own spaceship. In a certain light, at a certain angle, it was beautiful: A rough cylinder over twenty feet tall, balanced on four thrusters, braced by stubby delta wings. The body and wings were warped plywood. The thrusters were four 50-gallon steel drums, painted black, rimmed in aluminum foil. Later, police determined that Stevie had packed one of the drums with plastic milk jugs full of hydrogen peroxide distilled down to hydrogen monoxide—homemade rocket fuel. People heard the explosion as far away as Boone, five miles west.

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