That Sunday after the Fourth, I was being lazy in the family room, watching cartoons at one in the afternoon, wishing I didn't have to go back to school the next day, when Corey let something slip that made me want to strangle him where he stood.

I was just lying there on the couch when he walked into the room, tossing a football back and forth between his hands. He stared at me for half a minute, me on my stomach with one arm dangling to the floor and my gaze plastered on the television like I was a zombie. I knew he was looking, but I didn't want to look back. He was in the mood to be obnoxious, I felt. After a while of my not giving him the stare back, he shoved the football under one of his arms and dove across the floor like he was making it to the endzone.

"Touchdown!" he belted, standing on his knees and slamming the ball into the carpet. He was completely blocking my view of the television, and I knew he was doing it on purpose, but I didn't feel like caring. He saw that I didn't care and stopped. Then he got real close to my face and said, "Hey Cole. Are you dead?" He poked me in the cheek. Then he pulled at my lip. "I think you're drooling."

Swatting his hand away, I said, "Stop it, dork! Leave me alone." Then I turned my face into the sofa so he couldn't mess with me. I felt like a nap anyway.

Corey sat back. I could feel his dark little eyes boring into the back of my head like screws. "Your only friend called."

"Adam?" I muttered into the couch cushion.

"Yeah."

"Just now?"

"Yep."

I turned back around. "Well why didn't you bring me the phone?"

He gave me this prissy, up-turned nose sort of look and said, "What am I, your slave? Call him back yourself. It's not so hard. Eight-seven-eight-eight-seven-seven-one."

"How do you know the number?"

"It's an easy one. How else do you think I gave the station his number when he screwed up our garage?"

"Whatever." I clicked off the TV and started to roll off the couch when my brother's words suddenly hit me. I jerked to attention. "Wait, Corey. What did you just say?"

He realized he'd said the wrong thing and started to head for the door, but I got up and blocked him. "Let me go!" he squealed. "I'll tell mom!"

"Were you the one who gave a tip-off about Adam?" I stared at him but he turned his eyes down, so I knew the answer immediately. I shook my head. "No way, Corey. No way. You wouldn't do that to my friend. Adam would never write that stuff about me. How could you think that he would? You just did it to be a little jerk, didn't you? You thought it would be funny? What, did you do it to get back at me for something?" I was fuming. My body was hot all over. I couldn't believe my own brother would turn in my only friend for something he couldn't possibly have done.

"No, Cole! I had a reason! I really did. Ask mom!"

"Mom knew you called—and she didn't tell me? I'm living in a house of traitors!"

The expression on Corey's face actually looked honest, like maybe he actually did have a reason to call on Adam. Whatever his reason was, though, it had to be wrong, because I had seen Dylan with my own eyes. I was furious. My family was against me.

Corey pressed up closer against the wall and tried to scrunch down away from me. "Stop it, Cole. I'm sorry, ok? You're scaring me."

"Oh I am, huh? Well maybe you need to be scared, Corey. Maybe you think you're something but you're not. You're dirt. No brother of mine would call the cops on my friend."

"What's wrong with your eyes?" he whimpered in a near-whisper.

I didn't say anything. Didn't know what to say.

"Like there's electricity in them . . . or . . . or something."

I could've hit him. But I didn't want to. Ok, I did want to, but that was the angry part of me and not the big brother part of me. I didn't do anything. I just growled and pushed past him, went out into the hall, and stormed out of the house.

I biked over to Adam's, although I wandered a while on the way. I decided not to tell him that it was my own brother who'd gotten him arrested for a short period of time. Adam was still kind of basking in the glow of the short fame that event had won him. Besides, I didn't want him to have any more reason to be crabby toward me. He'd probably never want to come over again if he knew my family didn't trust him.

When I reached the Nylers' house, I dropped my bike on the lawn. Adam was lazing out on the front porch steps again. He was doing absolutely nothing, which was pretty much what I'd been doing before Corey had interrupted me. His house looked dark for some reason, but maybe that was because the sun was shining so brightly around it. For a minute, Adam almost blended in with the paint because his clothes were dark, but his face and arms showed up white against the rest of the place. He had his eyes closed when I got to him, but he must've peeked earlier, because he said, "What's going on, Cole?"

"Nothing."

"Same here."

I sat down on the steps. "I don't want to go back to school tomorrow."

"You and everybody else in that torture house."

"I don't want to see Doyle again. Not after what I said."

"Yeah, well he deserved it. But I don't want to see him again either. I can't stand that kid."

We talked for a little while longer, not really saying much of anything, but after a couple of minutes this little kid came jogging up the street. He must've been seven or eight years old. Curly blonde hair, big, scared-looking eyes, sucking on a bright blue ring-pop. He ran right up to where Adam and I were sitting. The two of us just stared at him. It was like he was too scared to say anything. He stood there, his mouth turning bluer by the second, until Adam said, "Well what is it, Tyler?" Before the kid could say, Adam looked quick to me and said, "He lives down the street."

Tyler pulled the ring pop out of his mouth and said in this little kid voice, "Mrs. Nibbles is missing."

Adam and I raised our eyebrows at each other. Adam said, "Yeah? So what're we supposed to do about it?"

The kid stamped his foot. "She's my guinea pig! I was playing with her in the backyard and somebody came and took her."

Adam rolled his eyes. "She probably hid under a bush or something."

"No. It was a kid with a rocket in his hand. He came over the fence into the yard. He went into the field back there." Tyler pointed to the tall grasses beyond Adam's house. "I seen him before," the kid added, licking the slurp off his ring pop. "His name is Pete."

The same thing clicked in both my and Adam's heads at the same time. We looked at each other, and our glances said, "No way, man." Quickly, we jumped up and hurried toward Adam's backyard. The little kid followed us for about thirty seconds then noticed that the weeds came up practically over his head and stayed back. When we got to the field, we definitely did see a taller, lanky kid standing in the grass about twenty yards away. Both of us recognized him from gym. It was Pete Kristo, the guy who'd gotten shucked in juvie hall for blowing up a cat. And the little kid had mentioned Pete having both a guinea pig and a rocket. It was too weird, but we knew exactly what was going on. Pretty soon, that little pig would be soaring over our heads through the sunlit sky: the first rodent to lift-off in a rocket. Not only were Adam and I disgusted, we were also curious as heck.

We approached Pete pretty cautiously. Neither of us knew him very well, but he wasn't much of a talker. He was always real quiet in gym and just kind of did what he was told without giving any comment. He had this look about him though, like there was something going on in his head all the time whether he felt like telling anyone about it or not. He was pretty tall—five-foot-ten, I'd say—so he stood out real easy in the field. His back was to us as we came up on him. We could see he was busying himself with something.

When we were about three feet away, Adam said, "Dude, what are you doing?"

Pete nearly jumped above the weeds he was so startled. He turned and looked at us with the eyes of a maniac. We had a clear view of the work he was doing. He'd flattened out the grass in a circle that was probably four feet in diameter. In the center of the circle was a serious rocket. It was about fifteen inches long and looked like it had been assembled from various scraps of firecrackers, pipes, and bottle rockets. And strapped to it with duct tape was a fat black guinea pig, its little legs dangling in the air. The tape went all around its belly so its back was to the rocket's body. For a minute, I thought I was going to throw up. Don't ask me why.

We stared at Pete. He held a book of matches in his hands. A tool box and some video camera equipment were on the ground next to him. Finally, he spoke. "Can't you see?" he said all freaky. "I'm in the middle of an experiment. You're trespassing."

"It's a field, man," said Adam casually. "It's not private property." He waited a minute, then added, "So, uh . . . what are you planning on doing with the gerbil?"

I sighed. He knew it was a guinea pig.

Pete didn't flinch. He just stared at us like we were a couple of ignorant aliens come from Pluto. One of his eyebrows raised a little, but other than that, he was still as stone. He reminded me of an animal that was caught off-guard and trying to decide whether he should run or stay still hoping that we wouldn't spot him. Pete didn't look like the sort of guy who'd blow up a guinea pig. He looked totally normal. Tall. Blond. Short hair. Normally dressed. Standing there looking at him, I couldn't help but wonder whether he was right in the head.

For about two minutes, the only things we could hear were bugs. Then, finally, Pete spoke. "I'm busy." With that, he turned around and continued doing stuff with the weeds, taking notes on a small notepad that he held in his palm. "Busy, busy, busy."

Adam and I exchanged glances. We were both thinking the same basic thing: This guy's insane.

My instinct was to walk away. I mean, I felt sorry for that guinea pig, but I was no animal activist. I'd rather a rodent lose its life than me lose a finger or two trying to help it. Adam, on the other hand, was one for conflict. He liked to butt in on other people's business.

"You know, that thing's not going to go very far."

Pete paused, but he didn't turn to look at Adam. Then he started scribbling on his notepad again. "I've calculated the velocity of the rocket and the mass of the test subject. Speed in joules . . . the thinness of the air . . . the measurements of the circle circumference. According to my studies, the rocket should come down twenty-seven-point-two-eight feet from the center of the small cluster of thorn groves over yonder."

It was like Adam and I weren't even there anymore. Pete just went on blabbering in all his technical terms. On and on. Like some sort of freaky mad scientist.

Adam saw his chance, and I saw what he was planning before he even did it. I wanted to stop him, but it just wasn't in my nature. Instead, I took a couple of steps backward in order to get away from him. With Pete's back turned, Adam darted forward (moving with surprising speed in his oversized pants) and went for the guinea pig. Pete had guessed something was up, though, and just as Adam took up the rocket in his arms, the tall guy dove at him and caught on to one of his legs.

Tripping, Adam fell face-first onto the ground, but he managed not to land on the guinea pig. He held the rocket and squirming rodent out in front of him. Pete struggled to get to his contraption. He was holding something small and red in his hand, but before I could get a real look at it, he'd flicked back the cap of it and lit a small flame.

"Adam!" I called, still not daring to go near the mess. "He's got a lighter!"

Whether my friend heard me or not, I didn't know. All I saw was that Pete, who definitely had the upper hand in the skirmish being so tall, reached his long arm forward and held the flame to the butt of the rocket. Suddenly, Adam let go of the thing and scrunched up real small in the dirt. Even Pete flung his arms against his face and rolled over into a ball. The fizz of a fire-work sounded, and in what seemed like a cartoon-animated moment, the rocket skidded sideways and wound itself in smoky circles before shooting upward into the blue-white sky, puttering jerkily due to the weight of the porky little guinea pig duct-taped to it.

Holding a hand above my eyes to shield them from the sun, I squinted into the sky. The rocket became a black blot against the sun. It had to have gone at least fifty feet up. For a moment, it hovered motionless in the air, and then it burst. I mean, it all-out burst. The whole rocket blew up into little pieces . . . and one big piece. Just as I was starting to wonder where Tyler would bury the parts of Mrs. Nibbles, I noticed that the one big rocket piece actually resembled a small white parachute. And whatever was hanging underneath the papery bubble had to be the rodent. Whether it was dead or alive I couldn't tell.

By the time the parachute fluttered to the ground near the thorn bushes, Adam and Pete were on their feet. The three of us jogged through the weeds to see what had happened. What we found was a shaking, shivering, alive guinea pig scuttering around on its paws, trying to detach itself from its tangled lifesaver.

Adam and Pete seemed to have forgotten their small fight. Staring at the animal, Adam said, "If I'd known it had a parachute, I wouldn't have tried to stop you."

Pete nodded his head briskly, not taking his eyes from his test subject. "How could one possibly suppose that I would send a harmless creature into space without rescue apparatus?"

I raised my eyebrows when Adam replied, "Well, you did blow up a cat last year."

"Purely malicious gossip, my esteemed friend."

Adam blinked hard. "So you didn't do it?"

"I prefer to maintain my silence on the subject. Let me just assure you that I am a scientist, and as such, I must at times make difficult choices. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have many calculations to take down. New landing destination due to rocket being shifted from launch pad . . ." he muttered, starting to write more notes on his notepad. "Injuries of test subject? Appear to be slim to none. Parachute inflation proceeded with no difficulty. Must locate various debris of rocket and re-evaluate design."

And on and on he went. Once again, he'd forgotten we were there. I looked at Adam. Adam looked at me. We both knew Tyler was just going to have to wait for Mrs. Nibbles's return. There was no way either of us was going to mess with Pete anymore. As we walked back toward Adam's house, we felt an equal surge of satisfied curiosity. We had to be the only kids in Goldenrock—probably in all the Midwest—who'd seen the launching and safe return to the ground of a six-inch guinea pig, and we had Pete "The Pyro" Kristo to thank for it. Who would've guessed?