Two Bits tosses the birthday wishes from his old man onto the bed and takes each part of the model out of the box. Sticky pages of bull's-eye markings and blue starry emblems. Red parachute attached to a plastic nose-cone with lines of white thread and an eyehole screw. Stabilizer fins stamped into a thin sheet of balsa wood. The three booster stages of the rocket itself: four feet in total of heavy cardboard tubing and almost as tall as Two Bits, standing under chalk marks drawn on the kitchen wall. The sound of other kids playing down in the parking lot echoes up the convex walls of the apartment building and into his room. He fits the three stages and the nose-cone together and blasts across the cratered moonscape of his bed.

Sometimes Two Bits plays in the schoolyard across from the parking lot. Cars park under his balcony at night.

Two Bits sits in the shade of a large oak out at the far edge of the schoolyard, his head buried in a book:

The spaceship was a melting pile of titanium alloy on the volcanic landscape of Planet X. Rocket-Ship Boy was lucky to be alive. Only those last minute gyrations at the helm had defied the planet's fierce gravity and landed the ship belly-side up in that crater. Even so, Rocket-Ship Boy was lucky to have escaped the cockpit of his ship before the explosion from his top secret rocket engines. But Rocket-Ship Boy was always lucky. It came with being a Space Ranger. In the distance he saw the outbuildings of the colony that had radioed for help. Two large sets of footprints tracked across the cracked, brittle surface of the planet, disappearing towards the colony. Rocket-Ship Boy climbed down inside one of the toe prints. The alien foot had broken through the grey crust of the planet's surface. Red veins of lava ran in cracks through the depression. It was big, whatever it was.

"Yo, Two Bits! You're dead!"
"What ...?"
Three large boys from the apartment building across the street circle around him.
"Hey, guys. What's up?"
"Your life, that's what."

Two of the boys move up to the concrete skirt around the tree, blocking out passing cars on the street. The third boy grabs Billy's book and skips it across the gravel soccer pitch.

"That's not my book! It's from school."
"Tough."

The third boy slams him against the trunk of the oak. Rough blades of bark stab through Billy's t-shirt. Billy stares at the stubble on the third boy's chin. Tears jump to his eyes as the third boy punches him in the nose. The other two boys laugh. The third boy turns to look at them.

"What's so funny?"

"Punch his zits, man."

The third boy turns back to Billy. He punches him a second time and a third time, until the sore red welts on his face split and trickle red pus.

"Far out."

"I'll show this little ..."

"Hey, man, here comes Boots."

The third boy pushes Billy back onto the tree. A big boy, bigger even than the one holding Two Bits' throat in his hand, strides across the parking lot and through the schoolyard gate. Acorns mash under the tread of his boots. His head brushes the old tree's lowest branches. The third boy lets go of Two Bits' neck, pats him on his head, straightens the torn shirt on Two Bits' scrawny shoulders.

"Hey Boots," says one of the boys.

"Whatsup?"

"Just talking to our buddy Two Bits here."

"Yeah? You finished talking?"

"Guess so, Boots. We'll see ya, Two Bits. Maybe after school one of these days."

Two Bits and Boots walk up the street, past rent-controlled apartments and brick mansions turned rooming houses. Two Bits stares at his own two feet. Touches his face with a bloody corner of his t-shirt.

"How'd the fight go?" Boots asks Two Bits.

"Not so good. They smashed my nose bad. I think it's broken."

Boots looks at his friend's face.

"Naw," he says. " It ain't broken. Just a little banged up is all." Boots offers Two Bits a cigarette.

"I knew they were going to get you today," he says.

Two Bits stops dead.

"What?"

"You gotta learn to fight back."

"But I've got a bloody nose!"

"I showed up before they hurt you. This time."

The two friends circle the block and walk back into the apartment building.

"Say," says Boots, "you like that book?"

Two Bits lines all the components up on his desk, each piece in order, from left to right, as they need to be assembled. He is very careful with the thin scrap of razor he stole from art class. Each piece must be shaped exactly right for the rocket to fly straight up. The solid-fuel cell, trailing ignition wires, is heavy in his young hands. Still, there's no room for error. The kit came with no provisions for steering the ship once it takes off. Two Bits takes the tube of fresh glue out of the birthday pack of paints and brushes. A small drop of liquid plastic oozes out as he pins the seal and sits there, a viscous drop quivering at the end of the tube. Two Bits sniffs the drop and feels a light gasoline headiness. He squeezes a small line across his hand, and holds it cupped against his nose until his head throbs and red and yellow gauze filters out the sunlight in his room. Billy falls back on his bed, watches the lights and breathes slowly through his hand. Space must be something like this: a gut-shot of queasiness from the blast-off. Dizzy colours spin along a trajectory. Nebulous clouds of light and gas hide planets and exploding stars.

Two Bits mother stands over him, looking at the trail of congealed liquid crossing his palm.

"Asleep already?"

Two Bits opens his eyes. His mother perches on the bed.

"Your teacher called today. Says you haven't been to class all week."

Two Bits stares at his mother, sitting at the end of his bed.

"She tells me Boots isn't in class either. Have the two of you been cutting again?"

Two Bits' eyes unfocus again as he stares out past his mother.

"I don't know what to do with you," she is saying. "I've called your father. We both feel that maybe you should go out and spend some time with him. You're growing older, and there's some things that maybe you can talk to him about that you can't with me ..."

"- ah, Ma! -"

"Don't 'oh, Ma!' me. It's true. You're getting too big for me to handle. I don't know how to make you go to school anymore. Things can't continue the way they've been going. So, what do you think of living with your father for awhile?"

Two Bits is silent.

"Well?"

"If I screw my eyes up just right," he says, "I can make you disappear."

Two Bits can see south over most of the city, right down to the lake, from the top of Two Bits' apartment building. The wind that blows the pigeons out over the distant treetops lifts at Two Bits' jacket and raises his hair in angry spouts until he feels that the wind just might knot itself to his head and pull him over the edge of the building. Boots drags a cinder block from a loose pile near the equipment shed across the roof, above the heads of all those people stuck in the apartments below. Two Bits looks down at the few scrabbly evergreens that grow along the base of the building. From this height, his sight draws out to the cars and few people walking on the street below, until his body sways and his feet are ready to follow his head down, down, down the side of the building, past the peeling balconies, getting a bird's-eye view into each set of boxed lives, waving at all the strangers who sit staring out of windows, until he lands on the pavement below and walks off for a donut at the corner shop where out-patients linger over their coffees and roll cigarettes from the butts in ashtrays.

"Okay, man. Grab an end."

Rocket-Ship Boy lopes across the volcanic plain. Almost at the colony's outer buildings, and still no sign of the colonists. A volcanic wind blows across the lava bed. A loose gate shivers and slams shut from behind one of the prefab colony huts. A single pair of giant veined footprints continue in a straight line to the center of the colony. Only the one pair of prints, going in. None coming back out. Rocket-Ship Boy pulls his blaster from his Space Ranger equipment belt. "Maximum Kill" setting for an alien with footprints he could sleep in.

Boots looks in the backyard, then walks back out to the driveway and waves Two Bits up. They walk around the side of the house to a basement window, glass hanging loose, at angles to the frame. Both boys crawl through.

They sit in Boots's room, a bottle of red wine raided from the small cellar on the way through the basement; half-empty between them.

"Why do we have to break into your own house?"

Boots takes a long drink from his glass.

"Your Ma ratted me out. The folks took my key away." Boots pulls a couple of magazines out of his closet, and the two boys sit, flipping through the glossy pages.

"Head abit light, TwoBitsbuddy?"

"I'm okay."

Two Bits had seen Boots' older sister Mary in the bathtub once, scrubbing away at herself with a giant sponge. Naked like that, she looked like some of the women in the magazines the boys had spread in their laps, breasts rising out of soapy water, hands down between her legs, while he was sure his heart beat loud enough that she could hear it through the keyhole. Which means she knew. It was a show. For him. Billy was in love. He would frolic in the water between her pale breasts and she would teach him the Arts of Love, all those tricks he read about in the Letters column. Two Bits had crouched at the keyhole until Boots' father had hauled him away by the ear. His hard-on ached for days.

Mary moved to B.C. six months later with her college boyfriend, which left Two Bits with Darla, the girl downstairs who taught him kissing tag between the parked cars and the scrubby pine trees around the base of their building.

Two Bits' stomach clenches. Wine burns in his belly like a chemistry kit experiment gone haywire. Everything in Boots' room stands out clearer than before, but Two Bits can no longer see each piece together, as a part of a whole. A stereo. A bed. A desk. A dresser. But was that stereo still there when he looked at the dresser?

"You're drunk," said Boots.

"So're you."

Boots speaks slowly around each word.

"Want another glass?"

They drink.

Two Bits pulls on one side of the door. Darla pulls on the other.

"Mom doesn't want anyone here when she's out."

Two Bits pulls on the doorhandle again.

"You're here," he says.

"She doesn't mean ME, silly."

"Come on, Darla. Lemme in."

"Why should I?"

"I gotta ask you 'bout something."

"What?"

"The science project, remember? You still got that map of all the stars?"

Darla opens the door a little wider.

"What'll you give me for it?"

Two Bits looks at Darla, her still boyish face, but widening hips and hard breasts starting to show through her worn yellow t-shirt. He can see the soap bubbles already, creeping up her belly. Dear Penthouse: I never thought it would happen to me....

"Lemme in. I've got something to show you."

Darla looks at the skinny little boy in a striped shirt. Mouse-coloured afro. She opens the door a little wider.

"What could you have to show me?" ...

Two Bits lies stretched out on Darla's bed. Darla has leaped up to mix grape Kool-Aid in the kitchen. There's a hot, worn spot where Two Bits and Darla rubbed together in their briefs. He can hear her in the kitchen, opening the fridge, hunting through the cupboards for clean glasses. It isn't too difficult imagining all his days like this, fooling around with Darla and talking life with Boots and reading stories all day long while the adults are at work. Still, that's not like the way it will be, what with school and all. He looks around the room, at the stuffed toys pushed to one side of the bed. A small pile of clothes in the corner. And Darla's mother's prize-winning dollhouse set up on the dresser. Two Bits opens tiny windows, peers through miniature doors. He slides the dollhouse around so the exposed backside faces him. He grabs a handful of miniatures and is out the door and up the elevator to his own apartment before Darla makes it back into the room.

The corpse of the alien lay steaming on the bare tracks of the volcanic plain. Rocket-Ship Boy slung his Mega-Disruptor and walked down the dusty, empty street past the clapboard fronts of the colony buildings. A few heads poked around open doorways, watching him pass. Rocket-Ship Boy was suddenly very tired. Legs dragged. Lungs breathed volcanic dust. Hands and feet burned from the veins of fire running under ground. Rocket-Ship Boy walked down the one street through the colony.

Two Bits climbs out the access ladder and onto the cool rooftop, a quarter-moon gash of smiling light in the dark face of sky. The rocket is already up here, resting on its fins by a makeshift launch platform behind the service shed. Two Bits opens the final stage component and double-checks his engines. He follows the wiring through each stage, to each engine. The firing sequence, like everything else, must be exact for the rocket to track properly. The red parachute fills the first compartment, so Two Bits opens the middle section and drops in the dollhouse pieces, a woodburning stove, table and chairs, a bicycle with working wheels for crossing volcanic plains, a bowl of fruit for snacking on until he can hunt up some meat in space. And for that, and for taming those frontier colonies, Billy drops a G.I. Joe mini-canon into the hold of his ship along with all his other supplies. He checks the star chart folded up inside his jacket. The night sky is a scattered confusion of stars and magnesium haze from the city, but, even so, a caravan-route of black wine sky arcs overhead, joining this planet to bright clusters in the Crab Nebula where, if anywhere, Planet X is likely to be. The rocket rests on its coathanger launching rod, aimed straight up at the blackness of the star road. Billy unravels the twin wires attached to his ship's engines, leads them around the side of the service shed to the car battery ripped from one of the cars that park under his balcony at night. He touches the wires to the two poles, and a yellow bolt of electricity lights his face in the darkness of the rooftop at night. There is a sudden flaring of blue fire at the base of the rocket, and the ship lifts, surprisingly slowly at first, off the pounded aluminum foil launch pad.