My brother built a potato launcher. We thought it was a swell idea, using filched PVC tubing to build that plastic neck designed to shoot out those punchy little vegetables, excuse me, starches, and send them flying into the sky. The best part was on those clear solid nights when, 500 feet up into the sky, the thing burst into flames. Yeah, a flaming potato. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

Or so we thought, at 12 and 16 respectively. We brought the thing everywhere. Sunny day? Let’s launch potatoes in the park. Rainy day? We’d fandangle thing inside and point the neck of it out the window, flaming starch balls becoming stars in an overcast sky. Our own best-friend-brother-sister constellation.

We got caught one day, in the park. It was night time; one of those clear brilliant nights at the beginning of summer. You know, when it’s warm enough that you’re not shivering but not so hot and muggy that the bugs eat you alive. You can see your own breath a bit still, but you can see everything else too, not a cloud in sight for miles and you can manage without a jacket. We lived for those nights, and got more and more reckless with our prized possession.

It’s possible someone saw us shooting those potatoes out over the field, and called the police. More likely they were out there for the bums drinking and setting up bonfires that were left to die far out into the daylight. More likely they were working stiffs too sad to go home to empty wives and angry children, than bums, but either way their bonfires were more of a risk than our starch grenades which fizzled out before hitting the ground. So we thought.

We didn’t get in as much trouble as you think, yet. We got a stern talking to, and phone call home. We got our potato launcher taken away, and heads hung in seeming remorse, but mostly it was a dejected feeling of loss, and shame at getting caught.

We built a new one, but it wasn’t as good. The piping didn’t fit together quite right, and the potatoes shot out at a weird angle. Sometimes they got stuck. We pined for our confiscated work of art, but that didn’t stop us from enjoying the new one, despite its quirks. They sort of grew on us, even. It was more of a challenge to get your projectile to go where you wanted, we really felt like masters of our own game. But we avoided the park at night.

It was getting to be midsummer, about July. The bugs were out in full force now, and sometimes you could see swarms of them following the potato through the sky, like the tail of a comet arcing its way across the cosmos. When the carcass of the thing fell to the ground after its brilliant flight they would devour it like vultures of the night.

They were brilliant to watch, but the bugs got to us, and we retreated indoors more and more, huddling together at his window sill, taking turns jamming in a lumpy old man faced potato and letting it fly, scarlet, burning up the night with sheer friction. Our neighbors didn’t think as highly of it as we did.

Dirty looks and angry words failed to deter us however, and we persisted. And one night we missed. Don’t ask whose turn it was to shoot the damn thing, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. We jostled each other so much for a turn, to feel that thrill of setting our fireballs loose on the night, and maybe that’s what caused it. Maybe we just didn’t line it up enough. Maybe we just got careless, or cocky, or both. But we missed.

Most times the potato would fizzle out before its descent to the ground, sometimes a few feet after it began to plummet. This one never got the chance. Instead of arcing out over our yard and landing in a crispy pile on the back pavement, this rogue flier shot out over the neighbor’s house. Our breath caught in our throats about the same time their roof caught fire, and the thing was done.

It had been a dry summer, and the moisture starved roofing tile took to the flames as hungrily as we had. It lit up the night. The sight would have been brilliant, I think, if it hadn’t been horrifying. Police cars careened down the street, screaming. I couldn’t see them, but their sirens split my ears and their lights crashed in through my windows and splashed onto my walls, painting the room, and my brother’s face, red. Our bodies shook next to each other.

We weren’t friends after that summer. Watching that house burn was going to make or break us, there was no doubt about it. As if the bond we had before wouldn’t change. We didn’t hate each other, and we didn’t blame each other. It was on both of us. But we couldn’t go on like we had before, mindless and careless. He withdrew into himself, becoming silent and stoic. I think he felt he had to grow up fast, be responsible suddenly. It only made him angry at himself, at the world sometimes. I could hear him in the night, punching holes in his walls.

I couldn’t dwell on it too much myself. I didn’t withdraw, but I disconnected. I lost interest in people, and I lost myself in my own head. People thought I was a strange child, inclined to unpredictable fancies. I would rather play in the expanse of my own mind for hours on end, than out on the jungle gyms with kids from school or the neighborhood.

Nobody died that day, in the fire. Just us.