Rise by L. Annette Binder

three credits and she’d have her counseling degree.
    She had a talk with him right after the sentencing. She talked about his needs and how she was here to help and not to judge because she’d made plenty of her own mistakes. She sat at the foot of his bed and sandwiched his hand between hers. “You were trying to tell me something,” she said. “I should have listened more.” She smiled a little, but her face was serious the way it used to be in church. She hugged him, and he pulled away and that was how it went.
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    The rocket club met on Thursdays in the soccer field behind the school. Sometimes he watched them from the bleachers. They used model rockets mostly, with single-use motors no bigger than a G. No metal parts and no liquid fuel and they had less than 125 grams of propellant. And still it was something when the rockets lifted. They made a beautiful ripping sound. Mr. Duffy the physics teacher ran between the launch pads. He was checking all the igniters and the fins. He waved to Mason and when Mason didn’t come, he waved again and waited. His sweatshirt was tight across his belly. It said, “No Smoking. Unless you’re on fire.”
    â€œGet over here,” he said. “You can’t see from where you are. You have to be real close.” He set his hands on his hips and squinted, and his hair stuck to his forehead in wisps.
    Mason stood beside him and watched some sophomores get their rocket ready. Theirs was bigger than the others, and they worked around it like surgeons. Three boys and a girl in overalls, but even through the loose bib he could see the outline of her breasts. The kids were kneeling around the pad and checking the fit of the airframe against the lugs. The rocket was painted red and it said “Copperhead” along the side. “Theirs is special,” Duffy was saying. “They made it all by hand. They’ll go to nationals with that one. They’ll take an egg up 750 feet and bring it back unbroken.” He left Mason and went over to the three kids to see about the switch.
    Everybody stepped behind the orange cones that marked the safety zone. They shaded their eyes and waited. The sky was clear, but the wind was blowing from the mountains. He should have brought a jacket. He stood with the others and watched Duffy fuss with the solenoid switch. The taller boy had his arm around the girl’s waist. He pulled her close, and she leaned her head against his shoulder. Her hair looked like copper in the sun.
    Duffy started the countdown at ten instead of five. He shouted out the numbers, and everybody shouted with him. Mason joined in without meaning to. The air smelled sweet like chemicals and burning paper, and the rocket tore upward when they reached one. It was perfect the way stingrays are, perfect like eagles and diamondback snakes. It moved toward the sky with a predator’s grace.
    They caught the rocket when it floated back down. It barelymissed some trees. The red-haired girl came running. She held it high like a trophy. “Look at that,” she said. “Look how sweet she landed.” She was talking about the bulkhead and the o-rings in the chamber, but Mason wasn’t listening. Who cared if the chute deployed or if the rocket made it back. It was the fire that mattered. It was the propellant and the blast and that sweet white chemical smoke. It was better than the black cats he’d shot off last July with Bean, better even than the canister that blew up Foster’s mailbox.
    Duffy came back to where Mason was standing. He was drinking coffee from a dented thermos. “Don’t be so shy,” he said. “We could use another set of hands.” He gave Mason a serious look. “I’ve got a monster in my garage. You should come and see. The next one will be liquid fuel. Kerosene and liquid oxygen and there’s nothing that kicks better.”
    He dreamt of perchlorate and igniters. He