booster, an aerospace executive who lived in Melbourne, for tickets to the VIP viewing area. They arrived there just before nightfall. Four miles away, the impressive shuttle launch configuration. consisting of the orbiter mounted on top of an orange external tank with two solid rocket boosters on the side, stood erect against its launching tower as the final countdown began.
No observing experience in Troy's life would ever come close to rivaling his watching the space shuttle blast off that night. As he listened to the countdown being announced over the loudspeakers in the VIP area, he was eager and anticipant, but not yet in awe. The moment the engines ignited, however, filling the Florida night with reddish-orange flame and thick white clouds of billowing smoke, Troy's eyes nearly popped out of his head. But it was the combination of his seeing the giant spaceship, slowly and majestically lifting itself into the heavens riding a long slender flame, and his hearing the astonishing sound, a constant roar punctuated with unexplained pops (which at only four miles away still arrived twenty or so seconds behind the sight of the engine ignition), that really caused the goose bumps to break out on his skin, the tears to come to his eyes, and the tingle to spread through his body. Troy's intense emotional excitement lasted well over a minute. He stood beside his brother Jamie, tightly holding his hand, his back arched as he strained to follow the flame rising higher and higher and then finally disappearing in the night sky above him.
After the launch they slept again in the car. Jamie then dropped Troy at the bus station in Orlando and headed back to Gainesville for football practice. Young Troy felt that he was a new person, that he had been transformed by his experience. In the week that followed he obsessively followed the flight. Burford became his hero, his new idol. During the first two quarters of the following year, he applied himself avidly to his schoolwork. He had a goal. He was going to be an astronaut.
Little did Troy know that on a March night only seven months later he would have another experience, this one devastating and deeply disturbing, that would completely overshadow the thrill he had felt at the shuttle launch. On that later March evening, his brother Jamie would stop by his room before leaving the house around eight o'clock. 'I'm going over to Maria's, bro,' Jamie would say. 'We'll probably take in a movie.'
Maria Alvarez was eighteen and still a senior in high school. She had been Jamie's steady girl for a couple of years. She lived in Little Havana together with her Cuban family and eight siblings.
Troy had given his brother a hug. 'I'm glad you're here, Jamie. There are so many things that I want to show you. I made you a set of headphones in school '
'I want to see everything.' his brother had interrupted him. 'But tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Now don't stay up too late. Astronauts need plenty of sleep so they can be alert.' Jamie had smiled and walked out of Troy's room. It was the last thing Troy would ever hear him say.
Troy never could remember what he had heard first when he had awakened in the middle of that night. His mother's wild wail had mixed with the screech of the nearby sirens to create an imbroglio of sound that was unforgettable and terrifying. Troy had raced to the door and into the front yard wearing only his pajama bottoms. The sound of the ambulance siren was drawing closer. His mother was at the end of the short walkway in front of the house, bending down over a dark body spread partly in the street in front of Jamie's Chevrolet and partly in their yard. Three policemen and half a dozen curious bystanders were huddled around his distraught mother.
'Somehow,' he heard one of the policemen say as Troy, in a panic, tried to figure out what was happening, 'he managed to drive home. It's incredible after all the blood he lost. He must have been hit four times in the stomach ...'
His mother's cry intensified again and, at that moment, Troy put all the pieces together and recognized the body lying on its back. A chill went through him, he gasped, and then Troy fell on his knees beside his brother's head. Jamie was struggling for breath. His eyes were open but they did not seem