Steering Toward Normal

by Rebecca Petruck

  Diggy rode the wave of attention, enjoying it that little bit more when he saw Wayne watching him with a sour look on his face.

  Diggy felt like a winner.

  Except that he hadn’t won anything yet.

  Pretty soon, all the people and the party got to feeling loud, even though no one was doing anything different than they were before.

  Everybody seemed to know everybody else, and everybody talked at the same time. The kids, the music, the laughter, a baby crying, someone hollering, “Give that back,” and every other person having that distinct Johnston look that announced, Family.

  Wayne wasn’t left out, though. In fact, he fit right in. The Vogls were there, along with most of their kids and grandkids—the Vogl and Johnston girls all knew one another from forever ago. But Wayne’s grandma was all about him, bringing him plates of food and talking nonstop and asking questions he didn’t get a chance to answer while she went on about how his hair was too long and he looked thin and he should come for a visit soon and stay as long as he wanted.

  Diggy grabbed a bratwurst and found a spot under a tree where he could see July.

  She wore a white sundress, her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, and she just about glowed in the sunlight. She talked and smiled with everyone around her, people drawn to her in waves. She hardly got to move from her spot, so it didn’t take long to notice that one guy didn’t move, either. He stood next to her and touched her arm every now and then or looped an arm across her shoulders as he leaned over to shake someone’s hand. He did not look like a Johnston. And July frequently smiled up at him in particular. A lot.

  Diggy didn’t like the look of him. Then he recognized him. It was the guy who took Reserve last year at the fair. The one July beat and who didn’t live around here.

  The memory should have made Diggy feel better, but the guy continued to stand way too close to July.

  “Who is that?” Wayne asked.

  Diggy hadn’t heard Wayne come up, but knew he didn’t want to deal with Wayne, and he turned away.

  Crystal stormed up to them, arms crossed. “What are you doing, Wayne?”

  “Standing here.”

  She looked ready to launch into the kid, but Diggy asked about her sheep, hoping she’d take the hint. He was not in the mood for yet another argument centered around Wayne.

  Jason found them, then a couple more kids from 4-H joined in, and they talked livestock for a while. Then someone started singing “Happy Birthday.” Mrs. Johnston and all five of July’s sisters walked out, each carrying a homemade cake lit up with candles. Wayne gave a low whistle.

  Diggy nodded, wide-eyed. “Mrs. Johnston doesn’t mess around.”

  “I bet there won’t be any left, either,” Wayne replied.

  That was all the encouragement Diggy needed to join the throng and snag at least one piece of cake—hopefully, two. It was during the cake-eating lull that Diggy realized he should give July her birthday present. He had spied a good spot in the pasture where July had raised her purple-ribbon steers. He got his stuff out of the truck and found July. With that guy.

  “Hi, Diggy,” she said, giving him a sideways hug. “I saw you and Wayne hiding out under that tree and was a little jealous.”

  She had looked for him! Diggy blushed and grinned and couldn’t actually look at her. He pushed the birthday card into her hands. “I’ve got to set up some stuff, but be sure you watch, okay?”

  He took off before she could say anything else, his head reeling from her cut-grass smell that he loved.

  When he went out into the field, the younger Johnston cousins gathered around, asking questions and generally making him nervous. This was his first level three; he needed to concentrate.

  In a rare act of actual helpfulness, Wayne talked the little kids into going back by the group so they could see better. After weeks of mutual avoidance, Diggy wasn’t sure why Wayne was hanging around him, especially considering the look on Wayne’s face when everyone was congratulating Diggy for something he hadn’t even done yet. But then Diggy remembered how happy Mrs. Vogl was, talking nonstop and fussing over Wayne like he was a little kid. Diggy decided he was okay with calling a temporary truce—he was afraid the well-meaning crowd might have jinxed his and Joker’s chances, so letting Wayne stick around was penance or something. Besides, Diggy needed the extra hands.

  The field was still mucky from the rain a couple of days earlier, and Diggy didn’t want to set anything on the ground he didn’t have to. He made Wayne hold the rocket while Diggy set up the launch pad. He pushed it deep into the soft earth. A lot of pressure would be deflected off the pad when he ignited the motors, so it had to be firm. The launch rod went even deeper into the ground, but Diggy had thought to get a two-piece rod so it would be tall enough. He slid the blast deflector on and turned to work on the rocket itself.

  Ever so gently, he opened the pouch where he’d stored the motors and pulled them out. They were a big deal—a D12-0 and E9-4. They would boost his rocket to an altitude of 2,100 feet or more—a show guaranteed to make July’s birthday the most memorable ever.

  “What’s with those?” Wayne asked.

  “Jeez, Wayne!” Diggy yelped. He had nearly forgotten the guy was there.

  “You’re holding them like glass eggs.”

  “These are D- and E-class engines.”

  Wayne cocked an eyebrow.

  “You have to be eighteen to buy them.”

  “And how did you get them?” Wayne frowned.

  “I let Ole Jib’s wife sell them to me.” Diggy pretended it was no big deal, but he had sweated it when he carried those rocket engines to the counter. Ole Jib’s wife didn’t know anything about motors, though, and rang him up like it was nothing. Diggy, however, had wasted no time getting out of the hardware store, just in case.

  “In other words,” Wayne said, “something is about to go terribly wrong.”

  “Funny,” Diggy said. “I’ve built rockets since I was nine. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I’m just saying, with all these people around.”

  “Exactly. I would never do anything I thought might hurt someone. Jeez.” Diggy was confident in the rocket’s design; he had basically made an exact replica of a level three he had found online. He knew better than to fool around with his first two-stage rocket, especially if he wanted to prove to Pop that he could do it. And especially because he wanted to give July a present no one else could.

  He carefully fitted the motors into the body tubes, then butted the two pieces together so the ejection charge from the first could ignite the second, and aligned the two sets of fins so they looked like one. Finally, the rocket was assembled for flight, mounted on the launch rod, and clips attached to the igniter leads. He tossed the bag away and handed Wayne the altitude measurer.

  “I don’t know what this is.”

  “Hold it close to your eye and sight along the top. When the rocket reaches its peak, press the slide down so we can get the angle. I want to be able to tell July how high it went.”

  Wayne didn’t look particularly confident about his role, but Diggy couldn’t worry about that. He had the launch controller in hand.

  “Mom would have liked this,” Wayne said.

  Diggy caught himself holding his breath. Wayne hardly ever talked about his mom. Diggy wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say.

  “She was always looking for stuff she could teach that would be fun, too.”

  Wayne stared at the rocket.

  Diggy raised the launch controller in the air. “A tribute,” he said softly. “To Mrs. Graf. A great teacher and a nice lady.”

  Wayne glanced at him but didn’t speak and didn’t smile, and Diggy started to feel stupid and maybe a little like a jerk until Wayne nodded. He looked at the rocket again and raised the inclinometer. “To Mom.”

  Diggy waited until Wayne nodded again, then checked to be sure no kids had roamed back into the launch area. Then he looked for July. When she waved at h
im, he began his countdown.

  Diggy began his countdown at ten instead of the usual five, counting louder as voices joined with him until he had to shout and still wasn’t heard above the crowd. “Three! Two! One!”

  Everybody started hollering. Diggy pressed the button and shouted, “Happy Birthday, July!” as the first motor lit with the usual pffft sound. But instead of lifting off, it knocked around on the launch rod, like it was caught somehow. The motor’s thrust pushed against the pad. The soft ground gave and tilted the rod until the rocket finally broke away, moving at an angle more than ten, maybe a whole fifteen, degrees off vertical.

  “Was it supposed to do that?” Wayne asked.

  Diggy moved in the direction of the rocket, which took him closer to the crowd that still shouted like everything was okay. The launch had seemed slow, but it happened in maybe three seconds. The motor still had another nine seconds of thrust, and that was only the first one.

  Six or seven seconds later, Diggy could no longer see the rocket itself but watched the pale gray corkscrew of smoke heading up at the wrong angle. The first twelve seconds ended in a poof of darker gray as the ejection charge went off, and the second motor ignited the even-more-powerful E-class engine.

  The extra burst ripped two fins free, and the rocket’s nose suddenly dipped, nearly reversing itself. The smoke tail now streaked down, something explicitly forbidden in the NAR Model Rocket Safety Code. The rocket would go a long way in nine seconds. Diggy only needed two to register that it was heading straight toward July’s house.

  EVERYONE’S SHOUTS WENT FROM HAPPY HURRAHS TO SCARED GASPS. PEOPLE grabbed little kids and each other and ran away from the house, toward Diggy, getting in his way while he and Wayne tried to race to the house, though Diggy had no idea what he’d do when he got there.

  “The ejection charge will go off first,” Diggy panted to reassure himself. He had to hope the first engine had taken the rocket high enough to make up for the second engine’s downward thrust. Once the ejection charge went off, the parachute would pop out and slow the rocket down. But the engine had a four-second delay before the ejection charge went off.

  Suddenly, someone had him by the shirt and jerked him back. “Where are you going?” Pop shouted. “You can’t do anything now but stay out of the way.”

  Diggy hated that Pop was right. He stared at the smoke tail, still headed toward July’s house but also still high enough that it might not hit anything. It didn’t matter that it was more likely the rocket would break apart than do any real damage to July’s house—Diggy had already ruined her party. If the rocket broke something on her home, too, it would make everything that much worse.

  The smoke cut off—the engine had burned out its nine seconds. But there were still four to go before the parachute deployed.

  Diggy tried to guess—was the rocket a hundred feet up? Seventy-five? He counted the four seconds at least eight times, watching the rocket drop closer and closer, like a tiny missile of birthday-party doom.

  The rocket couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the house when the ejection charge finally went off, the chute opened, and the confetti he had tucked inside poofed like a mushroom cloud. The rocket swung back and forth as it floated down, then landed almost on the sidewalk leading to July’s front door, confetti billowing prettily in the air.

  Diggy figured it was irony or something.

  “That was your level three, wasn’t it,” Pop said. It wasn’t a question, and his hand was heavy on Diggy’s shoulder. “If I had thought for even one second that you would be reckless enough to fly an untested design with a crowd like this around …”

  He let Diggy go, paced away, and took a couple of deep breaths. Pop was beyond ticked. He looked like an ejection charge ready to go off, but Diggy knew he wasn’t getting a parachute to soften the landing.

  Pop paced back, and Diggy pleaded his case. “It should have worked. I’d never hurt anyone.”

  Pop turned away, shaking his head like he was too mad to even look at Diggy. Which was horrible. Pop had been mad at Diggy plenty, but this was like he was disappointed, too, and that made it ten times worse.

  “Well, that was exciting,” July said, coming up to them.

  “I’m so sorry!” Diggy burst out, grabbing her hand. “I didn’t mean to ruin your party.”

  “It’s okay, Diggy,” she said, squeezing his hand in hers. “No one was hurt.” She laughed. “And it was certainly memorable.”

  Which was what he had been going for, but not like that. July’s being nice to him about it only made him feel worse.

  Then Wayne’s grandma arrived.

  “You are a madman!” Her German accent was thick, and she visibly trembled.

  Diggy might not have particularly liked her—she had never acted very grandmotherly in front of him—but he would never want to scare an old lady, and he could tell she had been really scared, which made him feel like the worm in an ear of corn.

  “My grandson should not be around such a person who would frighten little children and make them cry.” She put an arm around Wayne to lead him away, but he resisted.

  “Rose—” Pop said.

  “Mrs. Vogl—” July began at the same time.

  “Wayne, you come with me now.” Mrs. Vogl sounded near tears, though the shaking wasn’t quite as bad now. “You should never have been without family for so long.”

  Something in Diggy’s gut dropped. He had felt bad before, but now he felt almost sick. He had wanted Wayne to go home for a long time, but hearing Mrs. Vogl talk about Wayne’s being without family … Diggy felt like she was wrong, even though she wasn’t, really. Was she?

  Wayne pulled far enough away from Mrs. Vogl to turn around and hug her tightly. “I’m sorry you were scared, Grandma. Everything’s all right now.”

  She started crying, and July patted her back while Pop looked around and spotted Mrs. Osborn, waving her over.

  “Mom?”

  “She was frightened by the rocket,” Pop explained.

  Mrs. Osborn took over caring for her mom, and Mrs. Vogl let herself be led away, seeming embarrassed, though Diggy was the one who felt like a complete and total jerk. He had made an old lady cry. It didn’t matter that all around him most people were starting to laugh about what had happened, and a bunch of little kids were already crowded around the rocket, though Jason and Crystal kept any of them from touching it.

  Pop held his shoulder. “She was in Germany during the war,” he explained. He glanced over at the fallen rocket. “I’d better get that before the little guys figure out they outnumber Jason and Crystal three to one. Why don’t you get the rest of your gear from the field?”

  Pop headed over to the circle of kids, who quickly started in with, “How’d he do that?” and “Do it again!”

  “I’m really sorry,” Diggy said again to July.

  “It’s really okay, Diggy. Accidents happen.” She smiled. “It made me wish even more that some of my sisters had been brothers.” She looked over at two of them and waved.

  They laughed with the guy July had been hanging out with earlier. Diggy’s faint relief waned. “Who’s that?”

  “Trevor? He’s back from his first year at SD State.”

  “I think he likes you.”

  July giggled. “I think so, too.” She glanced at Trevor and blushed.

  It was mind-boggling. July didn’t giggle. She didn’t blush. She was normal, not like one of those makeup girls. Before he could stop himself, Diggy burst out with an accusatory, “Do you want him to like you?”

  His tone clearly jolted her. Suddenly, Diggy was 100 percent her total focus. And, just as suddenly, he no longer wanted to be. He tried to leave to get his rocket stuff like Pop had said, but July held his shoulders and studied his turned-away face. It was as hot as sunburn.

  She seemed to stare forever, but it was only a few seconds before she hugged him close. A full-on hug, not the sideways hug he usually got. The kind of hug she gave Wayne an
d that Diggy had been wanting. But not now. Not like this.

  He pulled away, but July was used to twelve-hundred-pound steers. He wouldn’t get loose until she let him go.

  She rested her chin on top of his head. “I’m sorry, Diggy. I didn’t realize.”

  That made it worse. He mumbled, “It doesn’t matter.”

  She leaned back. “Yes, it does.”

  He saw Pop carrying the rocket to the truck. Jason must have distracted the kids by offering “rides”—he had a kid tucked under each arm while Crystal organized who got to go next. “I’ve got to get the rest of my gear,” Diggy said.

  “I care about you a lot,” July said.

  And next she’d say, “Like a little brother.” He couldn’t let her and jerked away, slouching off in what ended up being the wrong direction, but he didn’t want to turn around and look more stupid than he already did, so he kept going.

  Wayne followed him. Diggy wasn’t sure what to make of that. Back at home, the guy spent most of his time avoiding Diggy.

  After a while, Wayne said, “I got her the same card.”

  Diggy squinted back at Wayne.

  “I saw it this morning while you were looking for a pen or something. I had already filled out the same card for her.” He shrugged. “Funny.”

  Diggy thought about July opening his and Wayne’s cards and shook his head. She would think they were crazy. “What did you get her?”

  “I found a snakeskin.” He shrugged again. “It was whole and pretty big. Kind of rainbowy. I didn’t know we had snakes out here until I found the skin.”

  “Mostly garter snakes,” Diggy said. “They won’t bother you.” Wayne was outside so much these days, Diggy forgot that he’d grown up in town. He wondered if sometimes Wayne looked around, especially when he was shoveling cow poop or something, and felt like he was on a different planet.

  Diggy caught a glimpse of July but didn’t look away fast enough. She didn’t smile and glow quite as brightly as she had when he first got there. He hated to think it was because of him. “Hang on a sec,” he told Wayne, then jogged over to the crowd that had again congregated around July.