“Night Launch” by Amanda Lewis

There will be no more night launches after this one. The moon, the stars, and the backdrop of space are not as unknown as they used to be. They held the lure of mystery in previous decades, when Kennedy led the charge to explore the heavens and Russia threw a satellite above our heads. We have grown tired of the spectacle outside of Earth, and we prefer to create our own right here on the ground.

In less than 3 years, the final shuttle launch will sputter into the sky. We will be sad, but we will focus on the carnage of the human spirit and the flagrancy of reality. We will put our dreams on hold for a decade, and drown ourselves in the process. That seems reasonable.

Most of my neighbors in my condo community are lined up outside, facing east. We are about eighty miles inland, but we will still expect a show of lights and there is always the possibility of tragedy to incite our public voyeurism. When I was a child, we used to stand on the hill outside of our classroom and wait for the light to plummet from the horizon. We would shout at the tiny spec of blazing fuel and smoke, until no trace of the rocket could be seen, and the shuttle safely took orbit. When the Challenger crashed, they slowly shuffled us back inside, numbed by the knowledge that we watched as human life vaporized into nothing. The teachers would choke back tears and gape at the news on the classroom television.

But maybe this is why we still watch. To see if history is made in catastrophic form, on any given day, and we can say we were there.

I don’t want to sit outside with my neighbors, or even waste time staring toward the Atlantic. I wait until three minutes before liftoff, and carry my garbage to the dumpster on the other side of the complex.

They are lined in the parking spaces with blanket seats and lawn chairs, swatting mosquitoes, facing the dense patch of wooded swamp area that serves as “conservation land,” and lies between us and the eastern horizon. In less than six months, they will search these woods for a little toddler girl murdered by her mother. The nation will watch with open mouths and angry shrieks as the maternal suspect walks free after acquittal. It is what we do best. Watch and wait and scream.

I toss the bag into the dumpster and begin my walk back home.

A little girl’s voice shouts, “There it is!”

I turn toward the east. An orange blaze shoots through the branches, turns to white, and bleeds through to our faces, up to the tops of the trees. For a few seconds, I think it’s daylight. My eyes find the source of the light, what must be the fuel burning as the rocket blares at three-thousand miles per hour out of our atmosphere. As it climbs, the light dims, and it is night again. I can still see the light of the rocket and watch as it turns to a twinkle and gingerly drifts into the stars, as though it had always been just a sliver of stardust in the night sky. The grand show, the pressure of months of planning a light show for the world, has ended with men and women strapped into the seats of a giant aluminum can, floating above the planet. We are now their sky.

I feel jealous for a second. They get to go to a place where the bullshit that we construct into days has no value.

The people have cheered and breathed awes and they are no longer spectators. They are people in a parking lot. A mother packs her blankets into a bag and shouts at a little boy who stomps over shrubs.  A teenage girl cringes away from her boyfriend who angrily backs away, muttering under his breath. A man who hasn’t shaved in weeks scratches his graying beard and slinks back into his nearly-empty living room.

But my eyes are still laced with the tiny silver dot in the sky. I don’t want to lose it. I want to hold on with them for just a few seconds longer.

I finally give up and brush through my neighbors. Shrieking teenagers, scolding old women, air-kicking children all form a web with no spider. They are the spiders.

I sigh and think of the astronauts again: clutching to the path of orbit, paralyzed by the need to breathe.

Amanda Jane Lewis is a writer living in Orlando, FL. Her work has appeared in Red Booth Review, Et Cetera Magazine, and Commas and Colons. You can connect with her on Twitter @AmandaJPrem.