The Night Launch

Clem had never been awake at midnight before. Not even close.

The latest he'd ever stayed up was nine forty-seven, and that was only because his little sister Ruby had flushed a sock down the toilet and the whole house went crazy for an hour.

But tonight was different. Tonight, the whole family was driving to the coast to watch a rocket launch into space. A real rocket. With real fire and real astronauts and real everything.

"Dad," Clem said from the backseat, "how much longer?"

"About two hours, buddy."

Two hours. Clem pressed his forehead against the cool window. Outside, the world was getting darker and darker. The streetlights of their town had disappeared behind them, and now there were only fields and fences and the occasional pair of glowing animal eyes caught in the headlights.

Ruby was already asleep in her car seat, her mouth wide open, her stuffed penguin dangling from one hand.

"Lucky," Clem whispered. Ruby didn't even care about the rocket. She was only four. She'd wanted to bring crayons.

Mom turned around from the front seat. "You should try to rest your eyes too, Clem. I'll wake you when we get close."

"No way," Clem said. "I'm not tired at all."

He was a little bit tired.

The car hummed. The road hummed. The warm air from the heater hummed. Everything was humming, and Clem's eyelids were getting very, very heavy, and he thought maybe he'd just close them for one second—

"Clem. Clem, honey, wake up."

Clem's eyes flew open. The car wasn't moving.

"Are we there? Did I miss it?"

"We're... not exactly there." Mom's voice had that tight, careful sound it got when things weren't going great.

Clem sat up and looked around. They were parked on the side of a dark road. Dad was standing outside with his phone pressed to his ear, walking in small circles the way he did when he was stressed. The hood of the car was propped open, and a thin curl of steam was drifting up into the night sky.

"What happened?"

"The car overheated," Mom said. "We had to pull over."

Clem's stomach dropped. "But the launch is at midnight!"

Mom looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was 11:19.

"Dad's calling for help right now, okay? Just sit tight."

Clem did not want to sit tight. Clem wanted to fly out of the car and push it all the way to the coast with his bare hands. He'd been waiting for this night for three weeks. He had a poster of this exact rocket on his bedroom wall. He'd memorized the names of all four astronauts. He'd packed his binoculars and his space notebook and two granola bars and he was ready.

And now the car was broken on a dark road in the middle of nowhere.

Dad got back in. He let out a long, slow breath.

"Tow truck's coming, but it'll be about forty-five minutes."

"Forty-five minutes!" Clem cried. "That's past midnight! We'll miss the whole thing!"

Nobody said anything for a moment. Ruby snored softly.

Dad rubbed his face with both hands. "I'm sorry, Clem. I really am. I should've checked the coolant before we left. I just—I forgot."

Clem felt a hot, prickly feeling behind his eyes. He bit his lip hard.

"It's not fair," he said, and his voice came out all wobbly.

"I know," Dad said quietly.

Clem shoved his binoculars into his backpack and yanked the zipper shut. He crossed his arms. He stared at the back of the seat in front of him and tried very hard not to cry, because he was seven and a half and he didn't want to cry about a stupid car on a stupid road on a stupid night.

But it wasn't stupid. That was the problem. It mattered so much.

The minutes crawled by. 11:31. 11:38. 11:42.

Mom was reading something on her phone. Suddenly, she grabbed Dad's arm.

"David. How far are we from the coast?"

Dad blinked. "I don't know—maybe two miles? We were almost there when the car—"

"Two miles." Mom looked back at Clem. Then she looked at Ruby, still completely asleep. Then she looked out the window at the dark road stretching ahead.

"We could walk it," she said.

Dad stared at her. "Caroline. It's eleven forty-three at night."

"It's a straight road. I can see the glow of the viewing area from here—look." She pointed through the windshield. Far, far ahead, there was the faintest smudge of light against the darkness.

"With a sleeping four-year-old?" Dad said.

"You carry her. I'll carry the bag. Clem can carry himself." Mom looked at Clem in the rearview mirror. "What do you think, Clem? Can you walk two miles in seventeen minutes?"

Clem was already unbuckling his seatbelt.

They moved fast. Faster than Clem had ever walked in his life.

Dad had Ruby over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She'd woken up just long enough to mumble, "Are we at the crayon store?" and then fallen right back asleep. Mom carried the backpack and her phone with the flashlight on, lighting up the road ahead in a bouncing white circle.

And Clem ran.

Not full-speed running—he knew he couldn't keep that up—but a steady, bouncy jog, the kind his PE teacher called "a sustainable pace." His sneakers slapped against the pavement. The night air was cool and salty, and he could smell the ocean now, which meant they were getting close.

"Eleven fifty-one!" Mom called out.

Clem ran faster.

The glow ahead was getting brighter. He could hear something now—music, and the murmur of a crowd, and a loudspeaker voice echoing across the flat land.

"Eleven fifty-four!" Dad panted, shifting Ruby higher on his shoulder.

Clem's legs were burning. His lungs were burning. A cramp was starting to pinch at his side, but he pressed his hand against it and kept going, because the sky ahead was SO bright now and the road was turning to gravel and he could see cars parked in rows and people in lawn chairs and—

"THERE!" Clem shouted.

They burst through a gap in the crowd, stumbling onto the sand of the viewing area. People turned to look at them—this wild, sweaty, gasping family appearing out of the darkness. Dad was heaving for breath. Mom's hair was everywhere. Ruby was still asleep.

Clem grabbed his binoculars and looked out across the water.

And there it was.

The rocket.

Standing tall and white on its launch pad across the bay, glowing under a tower of floodlights like the most important candle on the most important birthday cake in the universe.

The loudspeaker crackled: "T-minus two minutes and counting."

"We made it," Clem whispered.

Dad set Ruby down gently on Mom's jacket spread across the sand. Then he stood next to Clem, still catching his breath, and put his hand on Clem's shoulder.

"We made it," Dad said.

"T-minus sixty seconds."

The crowd went quiet. Hundreds of people, all standing on this dark beach, all looking at the same bright point of light across the water. Clem could hear the waves lapping at the shore. He could hear his own heartbeat.

"Ten... nine... eight... seven..."

The whole crowd counted together, and Clem counted too, his voice joining all the others.

"Three... two... one..."

The base of the rocket erupted in light—blazing, golden, impossible light. For one silent, breathtaking second, there was no sound at all, just the light growing and growing, and then—

The SOUND hit them.

It rolled across the water like thunder, deep and rumbling, shaking the sand under Clem's feet, shaking his chest, shaking the whole world. The rocket climbed, slowly at first, then faster and faster, trailing a column of fire that turned the night into day.

Clem forgot about the broken car. He forgot about the dark road. He forgot about his burning legs and his side cramp and the seventeen minutes that almost weren't enough.

He just watched.

The rocket rose higher and higher, shrinking from a tower into a star, from a star into a pinprick, until it disappeared into the darkness above and all that was left was a long, glowing trail painted across the sky.

The crowd erupted into cheers. Strangers were hugging each other. Someone was crying.

Clem looked up at Dad. Dad was looking up at the sky, and his eyes were shining.

"Dad?" Clem said.

"Yeah, buddy?"

"Thanks for not giving up."

Dad smiled down at him. "That was your mom's idea. And your legs."

Behind them, Ruby sat up on the jacket, blinking, her penguin still in her hand.

"What'd I miss?" she said.

And Clem laughed and laughed and laughed, there on the dark beach, under the streak of light that the rocket had left behind—a bright, fading trail that looked, if you squinted just right, like a road through the sky that went on and on and on.