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First 4 pages of CHAPTER 1
TIME FOR SPACE

"I don't know, maybe you just missed one," Rodney responded, trying with all his might not to blink.

"What?" His little sister whined, "I didn't blink! I didn't blink!" Teresa was her real name, but everyone knew her as Chance.

"Yeah, but you turned to glance over at me."

"How would you know," Chance needled, "if you were really looking up the whole time?"

Rodney smiled. His sister posed a great question, but he had a great answer. "I used my peripheral vision."

"Right. And I suppose you have x-ray vision too."

"Everyone has peripheral vision. It's what you see outta the corner of your eye, while you're lookin' at somethin' else."

"Looking at somethin' else?" Chance repeated skeptically. She dropped her chin into the palm of her hand and shook her little head. "Twinkle twinkle little star," she invited, narrowing her eyes as if to propel her vision even further through mom's antique window into space. The imperfections in the icy plate glass made the stars waver as if they were floating on top of a rich, dark blue lake.

Looking up into space as they were, Rodney imagined himself and Chance to be two little chicks, heads cocked back, mouths open, waiting to be fed. "Chicken and stars," he mumbled as his neck began to stiffen.

"What?" Chance snorted.

"Chicken and stars." Rodney repeated matter-of-factly.

Chance took her eyes from the sky for another brief moment to grimace at her spacey older brother. She knew him too well to ask for any further clarification on this last utterance. Her patience waned like the glowing moon. "Come on already, how long before we see a shooting star?"

"Oh! There goes one!" Rodney popped, finger erect as an arrow.

Chance quickly boomeranged her eyes back to the sky, but it was too late. "Where? Where? Did I miss it?"

Rodney chuckled, "Just kidding."

"Dork!" Chance jabbed back with her tongue, she smacked Rodney with a couch pillow and marched toward her room, "Anyway, it's late and I've got music school tomorrow – dork!"

Rodney did not respond. He didn't watch her walk away and he didn't blink. "This is my school, right here."

Chance protested from atop the stairs, "What's so great about shooting stars anyway?"

"They're not actually stars," Rodney muttered to himself while reflecting upon one particular shooting star that had crashed into Earth. He'd found it in a nearby garden and remembered how sad that rock looked while out of the sky. A fish out of water. A flame lost from the wick. Words without anyone to say them or think them. "They're skipping stones splashing across a shiny pond. Spark-making horseshoes tossed across blacktop." Rodney's eyes, one of them silver, one blue, glossed over in memory.

A star twinkled out in front of the windowpane reminding him to stay vigilant. He looked up the stairs with his peripheral vision toward Chance. "Don't you want to see sparks fly?"

Having heard no further response from his little sister, Rodney grabbed his point of view with both pupils. He clutched the Little Dipper's handle with his line of sight and slung it around like a lasso. The lasso whipped about the sky waiting to catch anything Rodney's eyes cast at. A butterfly net, a dream catcher. To swing the lasso, he rocked his head back and forth as if he were riding a horse – a brown horse with a streaming maple-colored mane and tail. Pah-dump. Pah-dump. The horse trotted anxiously around the Appleseed's living area. It snorted impatiently and threw its head wildly in an attempt to jerk the tight reins out of Rodney's hands. Rodney looked down and away from the window. He blinked for the first time in forty-seven minutes and a shooting star skipped by.

"Whoa!" Rodney shouted to the animal. But the horse would not be calmed.

A framed glass photo of Rodney and Chance vibrated off the coffee table. The rug tore from its track strip. Dad's favorite chair overturned. "Whoa, Horsey!" Rodney pulled the reins. The horse backed away from the wall slowly, spilling water from a vase, the long stemmed roses floating to the floor. The horse snorted again, aimed itself directly towards the 5 x 8-foot plate glass window, stomped with one front horseshoe against the patterned carpeting and charged the window. The leather reins tore from Rodney's hands; his fingers trembled like wineglasses under which a tablecloth had been sharply pulled. Afraid for his life, Rodney wrapped his arms around the horse's neck as the steed broke into the sky amidst shattering glass.

Eyes closed, breath held, Rodney braced for impact -- but there was none. Soon enough his lungs needed another breath; by that time, he was ready to brave a peek. To his surprise and relief, there was no terrible fall from the second story window. There were no cut or broken horse legs. There was no terrible mess in the street. Instead, the street grew narrower, like the space between elevator doors as they close. The street's lights grew tinier and tinier; the space between them narrowed too, until the lights of the neighborhood quickly blurred together like a small star shimmering.

With the height, the brisk night air began to thin. Rodney hugged the now galloping horse to warm his cold adolescent chest. He took long deep breaths. In contrast to all that horsing around, stomping, and then the smashing of the window, the silence now fell like snow. Rodney opened his eyes wide and watched his town disappear into a continent and then a globe. The view was so dizzying so amazingly awesome, that the shivering cold couldn't break his gaze.

"Soon we'll be out of air," He thought to himself. "Hey, Horse, soon we'll be out o' air. You better go back."

But the horse charged on as if it had spotted a point in the sky that beckoned home with a whistle -- a sweet high-pitched whistle that only horses hear. With the speed of a hummingbird, that winged whistling shot through the galaxies then echoed off the corners of the universe and fell into his taut tall horsey ears like the eight ball. Rodney's breaths became longer. He sucked with all his might. Mr. Jugglested, the choir teacher, would have been impressed. Still, very little O2 found lodging in Rodney's lungs. Lung muscles he didn't even know he had became tight, sore, aching. The space between air molecules widened, and Rodney became dizzy. He sucked, but the sky offered him only a punctured straw. His blood pushed against the inner walls of his skin. Still, he could not close his eyes. The visual experience seemed to provide more than enough fuel to keep his body operating. Well, it seemed that way, anyway, until about 200 miles above ground when the horse broke completely free from Earth's atmosphere.

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:

Rodney Appleseed
"I love this book, but then again, I wrote it :)" Ross, the actual author

"If my son wrote it, it must be good, but then again, I'm the author's mother." Mary, the author's actual mom.

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