Rocket Girl
by Erin Pesut
In high school, when you built model rockets in the basement, you did not administer yellow wood glue with an even hand. You never attached the laser-cut balsa fins in a straight line. Even though you tried to apply them smoothly, decals curved around the rocket body, air bubbles trapped inside. Back then you were still learning the difference between a B-4 and a B-6 engine.
But once all the cars cleared out of the big parking lot down by the track, you watched the rocket you made race skyward; you chased it into whatever field it landed in. In winter, you made more, glue lines getting straighter, decals as smooth as ice. You used your bare hands to clear a space in the snow for the blast deflector shield. You lit the match, set the fuse. A flame. The spark.
You who knew where the rocket books were at the library, which aisle and how high up on the shelf. You who went to the night they had a telescope on the roof of the school. The moon. Those craters. Your heart a rapid bird in your chest. And still you didn’t know if you liked rockets “enough” to join the Rocket Club.
In a school of 4,000 students, five members, all boys, and the teacher sponsor, Mr. Maxam, his name a palindrome, he explained, on the first day of Biology class. You worried about the boys. What would they think of a girl joining their club? Could you keep up? Would you be able to contribute anything—rocket designs, inertia switches to keep the egg safe for the state-wide competition? You only knew that wide, glorious feeling of a countdown: five, four, three, two, one! Blast-off. The bird free in your chest. A terrible speed—up, up, up—until the packed parachute pulled taut and opened like a bloom.
But one day after school, after the hallways had emptied out, you showed up. Mr. Maxam’s classroom, the door open, the boys on their elbows around a lab table inside, and you said, “Hi.” You said, “I’m here for the meeting.” You said, “I’m new,” only knowing two things: you loved the way smoke lingered on your hands after a launch, and this was the only thing you hadn’t tried yet to make it happen more. They smiled. Pulled out a stool. You strode towards it.
About the Author:
Erin Pesut studied writing at Warren Wilson College and earned her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in Colorado Review, Whale Road Review, Copper Nickel, Poetry South, Cleaver, and Bracken, among other places. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and the Pushcart Prize, as well as longlisted for CRAFT’s inaugural Creative Nonfiction Award. Born in South Carolina, she now lives in Vermont. www.erinpesut.com