The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering by Jeffrey Rotter

Author:Jeffrey Rotter
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781627791533
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

11.

Dr. Padma Ridley taught us three rules of motion put down by a curly-wig man called Newton. Mostly you would have to be thickheaded not to have figured them out for yourself. If you push something, it will go until another thing gets in the way. If you want to move a heavy load, give it a good shove.

But there are moral mechanics to which old Newton’s laws don’t apply. It takes no effort at all to get a terrible sadness off the ground. Speak a few words and everyone you love will be sent away. Sign a paper and your mother dies. Tap a few digits on a keyboard and you are left lonely on the ground watching everything you care for rise up in the sky, never to come down.

I did as Bill said. He gave me no choice. Plus Faron had stolen my girl and I was petrified of eight years on the Orion. I became that man’s pupil and learned how to light a fire under Terry Nguyen’s rocket. When the day came, I broke into Launch Control before dawn armed with a Bushmaster rifle that I could not use. I sat down and with the slightest pressure of my fingertips stirred that great howling machine to scale the clouds and vanish. Up it roared. It hissed and departed this earth, scorching the launchpad black and subtracting from my life a great measure of love.

Newton’s third law says every force has its twin, equal in intensity but headed the other way. When I pushed Orion into the sky, it pushed me back. I had to run; Terry and his goons were coming for me, and they always would be. I fled Cape Cannibal and for eight years I ducked and digressed across two continents gaining velocity until this mountain in the Chilly wastelands, high among the stars, stood in my way.

It causes me no pleasure to recount the details of my flight from Cannibal after the launch. Your father did not distinguish himself on the road. I lost teeth. I disappointed people and animals, but the end was recompense enough for so shameful a journey, because this is how I came to find you, Little Sylvia.

* * *

It was a damp, hot early morning in late May when I took off running. As one sun stood upon the ocean, a second rose behind me on the Cape, a fire I had started and now had to outpace. I crawled through creek and mangrove until the ocean appeared all broad and bright. A promising vision, the world was big enough for anyone to hide in. This, of course, was an illusion. I had places to go but no clue where to begin, so I sat on the dune and thought it was time to start crying. The sound of a Vanster engine brought me to my feet. Terry was coming; he always would be; if I didn’t run, he would break me where I sat or send me down to Cuba to be with Pop.

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