Football helmets rattled skulls, big boys with big inertia. When violence closed in, the coaches scolded Billy for tossing the ball away as he’d done in playground games of Kill the Carrier. Coach Mike said adversity molds you in the shape of your heroes.
Billy had the opposite reaction. No sports molded you into a lightsaber-wielding farm boy or prodigal assistant pig keeper. He decided astronauts were the answer: adventurers sculpted by equations and star charts. And no one gave you dead arms or wedgies in the school library. Astronauts took derivatives, not fastballs to the ribs.
The gravity of actual astronauts on the cafeteria TV pulled him into its orbit. Not quite the Enterprise, the shuttle was still a marvel: gleaming white threaded with structurally sound black. In the Florida sunlight, it lit the whole cafeteria from a single screen. Billy glued his eyes to it, eating mechanically in time with the pre-launch countdown. Mission Control spoke: mellow, confident. Air exchangers and static hissed behind the tin can voices of astronauts. He’d memorized their names, even the teacher, reading them over and over on his promotional sticker. They were so cool. As T-minus ticked toward plus, pilot and commander battled jitters and sputters.
Pressure built. Rockets roared. A great white cloud of exhaust spiraled into the blue, then puffed outward like a firework made of cotton. Every voice flatlined, even Mission Control. Billy stared at that fluffy white burst, so soft and safe-looking. He peeled off his sticker, a rough velcro sound suspended in the silence.
Lenny Eusebi is a poetry and flash fiction enthusiast living near Boston. He has studied physics, designed computer games, built a career in applied science, and told many stories to his two young daughters. Inspired by the grandmasters of science fiction, he loves anything compressed and oblique and speculative.
Bravo!
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