Chapter 27

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Billy asks once everybody goes home.

“Yeah, just bring it here tomorrow morning at ten,” I answer.

The next day Billy shows up around noon. Right on time. The rest of our friends arrive at one. I take them to the backyard where Billy holds a bedsheet over our big surprise.

“This has been an awesome summer,” I say. “So let’s end it with a bang!”

Billy removes the sheet to reveal a big rocket with four oranges duct-taped to the nose. Everyone just stares.

Sarah breaks the silence. “What if it explodes and starts a fire?” she asks.

“It just rained,” I remind her. “Everything is soaking wet. Plus the fire department knows how to get to our house really fast.”

“Are you sure?” Trent asks.

“Positive. They’ve been here before. Trust me!”

“What if the rocket doesn’t go straight up in the air and flies toward the tree house?” Everley asks.

“Stop thinking of the worst things that could happen,” I insist. “This is going to be amazing!”

Billy explains that his family visited Florida earlier this summer. At my suggestion, he picked up the rocket parts and instructions on how to build it when they visited the NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. We’ve been secretly building it at his house ever since. We even packed some fireworks into the rocket so we could end summer break with a bang.

“So, is the idea for the rocket to shoot into the air and for the oranges to explode when the fireworks go off?” Zander asks.

“That’s right,” Billy says. “We thought it would be ap-peeling!”

“Haha!” I laugh. “Orange you glad Billy went on vacation?”

Everyone is too busy staring at the rocket to laugh, so I pull out a box of matches.

“Let’s do this!” I shout, lighting the fuse to the rocket boosters.

We all plug our ears with our fingers and start the countdown.

“5, 4, 3, 2 . . . !”

I’m excited to see what’s going to happen, but I also make a mental note to clean my ears later. My fingers smell like bowling ball.

Whoosh! The rocket shoots straight up into the air.

Just as I thought! How could Sarah and Everley have ever doubted me?

As we’re watching, the rocket begins to wobble and veer to the right.

I guess the NASA engineers who designed this rocket didn’t plan on it carrying four big oranges. How could they not have planned for that? I will never again use the phrase It’s not rocket science. Rocket science is evidently not that great.

The rocket disappears over the trees and into the woods.

Booom!

Even with our fingers still plugging our ears, we all hear the explosion. We look toward the forest but can’t see anything because of the trees.

I look at Billy. His mouth is moving like crazy, but he’s not saying anything. Zander reaches over and pulls my fingers out of my ears.

“Did you hear what I said, AB?” Billy asks. “It looked like the rocket was headed straight for our tree house! You don’t think—”

“We tried to warn you,” Everley interrupts.

We all dash through the woods. Sarah and Everley arrive first. Billy and I arrive last, just in case the girls run too fast and miss finding the rocket. Billy and I are quick thinkers like that.

Our tree house is still there! There’s some soot on the ground, but the rocket just missed The Greatest Tree House Almost Built.

“I told you shooting a rocket was a bad idea!” Sarah insists.

“No, you said it might start a fire,” I reply. “Look around! No fire. The rocket obviously exploded in the—”

That’s all I get out before a loud wheezing sound interrupts me. The others hear it too. It begins sort of like laughter, but quickly turns into coughing.

“Mr. Polvado?” I call. “Are you out here?”

Mr. Polvado’s head pops out from behind the tree house. It’s covered in orange pulp. He slowly climbs down the tree, a hammer in his hand.

“So, what were you doing up there?” I ask.

“Remember when I built the floor to your tree house?” he asks.

“Yeah, I remember when you kind of helped . . . a little,” I say. “But don’t forget about all the rocks we gathered!”

“Sure,” Mr. Polvado snickers. “I helped a little by doing everything that was important. Anyway, I was making sure I hadn’t left any tools up there when, all of a sudden, I heard a loud whizzing noise. At first I thought it might be that tree rodent. What do you call him?”

“Triple-H, but he’s actually a she and her name is Petunia.”

Mr. Polvado stares at me blankly. He does that a lot.

“Go on,” I finally say. “Then what happened?”

“Well, this strange-looking UFO flew over the trees and then . . . bam! It exploded right above the tree house. It was actually pretty amazing. At first it shot out fireworks, then this orange goop fell on me. It might be radioactive. You kids might want to back away in case antlers start growing out of my head.”

After letting out a huge sigh of relief, I tell Mr. Polvado all about our fruit rocket. He has a good laugh and some orange pulp.

“Well, it looks like you kids are making some progress down here,” he says. “I’m a very busy man, so I need to get back to work.”

“What are you working on?” I ask.

“Right now I’m working on getting away from you guys. Plus I need to go wash all this vitamin C off of me.”

Mr. Polvado gathers up his toolbox and disappears into the woods toward his house.

“Well, did you learn anything, AB?” Everley asks.

“I did!” I exclaim. “Actually, I think we all learned an important lesson today: If you’re going to launch a fruit rocket into the air, always make sure your oranges are balanced.”

“Anything else?” she asks.

“Oh, and always make sure there’s not an old man in your tree house!”

“Boys are so weird,” Sarah says.

“If we’re so weird, then how come—” I pause because I can’t think of a really good comeback. Besides, everything turned out pretty great.

The woods are safe and I’m feeling good. Well, until Everley challenges us to a frog-catching contest. Last time we caught frogs together, Everley cheated by catching all the frogs Billy and I were planning to catch.

That’s when Billy nudges me and says, “Um, AB, did you look at our tree house? Like really look at it?”

“Yeah, the roof is covered with an orange explosion!”

“Yeah, the roof does look sticky,” Billy responds, speaking in italics for some reason.

“It’s not that bad,” I say. “We can easily clean the . . . the roof?! There’s a roof? How did a roof get up there?”

We can see that our perfectly made tree house now has a perfectly built roof on it. It’s even angled so that water—or oranges—will run off of it.

That’s when it hits me. I glance around. Mr. Polvado thinks he’s hidden behind a tree, but I can still see him—grinning big and starting to cough.