“SO,” MOM SAID, putting all the food into Tupperware boxes. After Benji left with as much food as he could carry on his bike ride home, after all our aunts and cousins had bundled into their cars and left, and after Laolao and Wai-Gong squeezed me tight and patted Mom and told her to call more, the house seemed so quiet I thought my voice would bounce off the walls. “Did you end up inviting our neighbor?”
“I did,” I said. I’d invited both Mr. Voltz and Benji, but only Benji had shown up. I shrugged. Mr. Voltz had been coming over sometimes to help me out with my second rocket. He’d bring Ellie, who’d curl up in the corner, a safe distance away, and she’d watch us fiddle with the wires. He’d told me stories about how growing up on a farm in Illinois and hitchhiking his way to California before he went to fight in the war. He even made Mom laugh with his jokes. When he smiled, for once, he wasn’t so scary.
I could see why Dad liked him.
“Maybe he doesn’t like parties.”
Mom shrugged. I sat at the dinner table, staring at Mom’s back. I had to ask. I blurted out, “Are we moving to San Francisco?”
Mom straightened up. She turned around. “You eavesdropped on me?”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said. “Benji and I were in the kitchen. But are we?”
She deflated a little. “No, honey.”
Whew.
“At least not yet.” She pursed her lips. “But I’m really thinking about it, baobao. It might be good for us. We’d be closer to family. I loved growing up in the city.”
My heart sank. I looked down at my shoes.
“It’s just—” I looked around the walls. I looked at the living room carpet that had softened over the years, at the walls that Dad had painted yellow so it would look more sunny. I looked at Mom’s porcelain vases on the mantel. I looked at the pencil marks on the door where we’d measured my height, in inches and centimeters, every year. We’d practically grown into this home. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
“I know.” Mom sighed and leaned against the counter. “We’re just going to think about it for now, okay?”
My mind was spinning. Moving wouldn’t just mean leaving this house, I suddenly realized. It meant leaving here. Leaving school and Benji. Leaving the park across the street and the place where Dad always stopped to show me constellations. I felt dizzy, like everything was moving too fast, too soon.
Mom reached over to give my hand a reassuring squeeze. I didn’t move. My arms stayed crossed. I didn’t look up from the ground.
Just then, there was a faint knock at the door. Mom went to answer it. I glanced up.
“My kids visited me,” Mr. Voltz said, out of breath. “They took me out to dinner, and it went on longer than I thought. I skipped dessert because I wanted to save room. Is it too late?”
He held out something in his hand with shaking fingers, and I realized that it was a hongbao, a red envelope, the kind Chinese families give to each other, filled with money, to wish each other luck and prosperity in the new year. “I wasn’t sure what to put in here, to be frank,” he said. “I got it on the way back.”
So he’d wanted to come all along. I took his red envelope and grinned at him. I looked at the containers full of leftovers and Mom’s eyes crinkled with her smile.
“No,” she said, “you came just in time.”
This time, I would make it right.
I’d taken the Expedition II apart and written down five full pages of notes after the last launch. I’d described every single moment leading up to and after I pressed the button. I’d recalculated the math. I’d double-, triple-checked the radio wires. The numbers all checked out. It had to hit 1,620 feet.
Benji and I had already started working on the science fair poster board. Regionals were less than a month away. We had to make a perfect launch. I needed this. Benji needed this—he had to keep his art class. We needed our results, and we would get them. There was no way I could mess up now. I’d made sure of that. I’d recorded every single measurement I could.
This time, Benji didn’t joke around as we set the rocket up on the stand and assembled the circuit. He just looked over and nodded, as if to say, Ready?
I stepped back and pressed the doorbell button. 1,620 feet, I said to myself, over and over again, my tracking device clutched tightly in my hand.
With a hissing sound, the rocket shot into the air.
Please work.
Twenty seconds passed. It was still in the air.
Benji and I looked at each other at the same time, eyes wide. But there was no time to waste. I trained my tracking device on the rocket, my heart soaring a little.
The radio crackled to life.
Yes!
For a split second my heart rose. This was the time—
The rocket trembled and started falling.
The signals were coming through, but the rocket was already plummeting to the ground. The nose cone popped off, and the parachute shot out, and it was all over too soon.
We were silent for a moment. Then Benji asked, tentatively, “Was that a radio signal we heard?”
I nodded.
“So . . . we did it?”
I looked up at Benji. “Not quite,” I said. “It reached nine hundred feet,” I said. “It’s supposed to reach sixteen hundred and twenty.”
His eyebrows knitted in confusion. “But the rocket still worked, didn’t it?”
I looked down and shook my head. This was the most frustrating part. When you were working on a math problem and the final numbers didn’t come out right. When you got everything right until the very last step.
Benji let out an exasperated sigh. “I mean, this is pretty good, right? Isn’t it good enough?”
He didn’t understand. This wasn’t like the Next Best Step. That was only for things that were completely out of my control. I’d built this rocket. I knew it in and out, calculated the numbers, attached the parts myself. I had to make it perfect.
Dad would have wanted it to be.
I looked up. “I think the fin wasn’t secured on tightly enough. I saw it wobble in the air. We have to do this again.”
Benji just stared at me.
“One last time,” I said. “We can’t just end on this run. Something’s missing, and the numbers aren’t working out. We’ll get it right next time.”
He just nodded. “Okay. I hope it works.”
“Me too.” It had to.