Taking Off

For Emily Easton,
who had this wonderful idea

“I have painted him a little like a poet, the head fine
& nervous standing out against a background of a deep
ultramarine night sky with the twinkling of stars.”

—Vincent van Gogh, 1888

PROLOGUE

I
have a secret, a quiet one. But I can’t tell my friend Lea or my mom and certainly not my boyfriend. I don’t think even my dad would understand. Or maybe I don’t want to tell because they would look at me funny.

The other day, while browsing in a used bookstore, I found a book of the letters of the painter Vincent van Gogh. I felt like he was a friend talking to me. In one letter, he wrote that people see him as the lowest of the low: “I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.” His words were so beautiful and honest they made me cry.

No one labels me as an eccentric, but that’s because they don’t know what’s in my heart. I keep it close.

I live in a town of engineers who worship math and science, and think solving for
x
gives insight into the soul.

- - - - -

I want to be a poet.

PART ONE

“Reach for the stars.”

—Christa McAuliffe

CHAPTER 1

I
skipped the bus because my friend Lea had promised me a ride after school. Then I found out she wasn’t going to take me home right away because she had an appointment with the dentist my mom was dating.

“You are evil,” I said, my hand out the window, palm forward, catching the breeze. I was enjoying the cool November day after a long, humid summer on the Gulf Coast.

“Yeah, sorry,” Lea said. “Hey, can you spend the night Friday?”

“I can’t. I have to work.”

“What about Saturday?” Lea asked while twisting a lock of her short hair. She had an Audrey Hepburn pixie cut, which made her eyes look bluer and wider.

Her style was the opposite of the big hair on most of the girls in the senior class. I didn’t have a real hairstyle—just long, wavy, and easy to take care of.

“I have stuff to do,” I said.

“Bogus!” she said. “Come on, Annie. My parents are having company from work.”

“I don’t know, Lea,” I said. “That means I’ll have to talk to people I don’t know.”

Lea didn’t have a shy bone in her body. It was nice having a friend who chattered through my awkward pauses when someone else was looking at me and waiting for me to reply and I couldn’t seem to put words into sentences fast enough.

Lea had been rescuing me since we were thrown together to act out two half scenes from
Romeo and Juliet
in ninth-grade English. She made me play the role of Juliet, so she could be the nurse and get the funny lines.

I’d been so nervous, not able to eat much for days before. To my surprise, it wasn’t so bad. I found I didn’t mind standing up in front of the class when the words were already written:

Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,

Take him and cut him out in little stars,

And he will make the face of heaven so fine

That all the world will be in love with night.

Forget about Romeo; I’d had a crush on Will Shakespeare after that.

“A couple of astronauts will be there,” Lea said, bringing me back to earth. “There’s this one I want you to meet.”

“Not another astronaut crush, Lea.”

“You used to have them too,” she said.

“Not like you. Anyway, remember how you want to get out of this town, where everything is space, space, space?”

We lived in Clear Lake, Texas, home of Johnson Space Center—or, as the natives called it, JSC—and its astronauts. It was officially Houston, even though Clear Lake was thirty miles from the center of the city. But Clear Lake had been kidnapped by Houston and made a part of the larger city, so the phrase uttered by Neil Armstrong on Apollo 11, “Houston, the Eagle has landed,” could be immortalized. Soon to be replaced by Apollo 13’s “Houston, we’ve had a problem.”

But that was years ago. It was now 1985, and the space shuttle had been flying for four years. The nation was excited about the new Teacher in Space program. High school teacher Christa McAuliffe had arrived in Clear Lake in September and was now in training at JSC.

“I haven’t been
as
bored,” said Lea, “with my parents’ talk-talk-talk about NASA since I met Him. In fact, now it seems rather fascinating.”

“Who’s ‘him’?” I asked.

“The Astronaut. I adore him.”

“Adore him,” I repeated. “You’ve met astronauts before.”

“This one is different, Annie. He’s so nice.”

I laughed.

“What?” she asked, widening innocent eyes. She did that so well. Then she burst out laughing. “Okay, he’s
wicked cute
. But he is nice too.”

“I still don’t know,” I said. It’d be cool to meet astronauts, but I was still wishing for an evening alone, especially since Mom had a date with Donald. This was senior year. I should be excited. But the world was crowding too close lately. I wanted time to be alone—to knit, to write poetry, to be still.

“That teacher will be there,” Lea said.

I looked at her.

“You know, Christa McAuliffe,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Come on, Annie. I never see you. You’re always hanging out with Mark or working with Mark.”

“
He
thinks I’m with you too much.”

“Ga! I can’t get you away from him.”

“I thought you liked Mark.”

“You kidding me? I love Mark. But I like you better, and he takes up way too much of your time. We only have a few months left together.”

“Six months,” I said, not wanting to think about graduation and the decisions between now and then. Lea was lucky. She knew what she wanted to do.

“So will you come?” she asked.

“No, I won’t come. You must be punished for dragging me to see Donald. He’s your dentist, not mine.”

“I don’t know why you don’t like him,” Lea said. “He’s been making my teeth pretty since I was five. See.” She flashed a smile in the rearview mirror and then to me. “He’s like family, Annie. And he’s a nice guy. Which is why my mom introduced him to your mom. Aren’t you happy your mom is dating someone nice?”

“I like him fine,” I said, pressing my lips together. Dry. I dug around in my purse for my ChapStick, which always managed to work its way down to the bottom corner. I pushed aside my empty wallet, all the crumpled-up tissues from my fall allergies, and the Scary White Envelope I’d been carrying all week.

I tuned back to what Lea was saying once I finally found the ChapStick and put it on.

“The Astronaut is beautiful,” she said, as we waited at a stoplight in a tangle of traffic. “Hey, give me some of that.”

I handed it over. “I would expect your future husband to be no less than beautiful.”

“Okay, so he’s not … really beautiful,” she said, looking in the mirror to apply. “But he’s hot.”

“So you’ve said,” I said, taking the ChapStick back. Lea tended to steal things.

I looked out the window and fidgeted, flicking the cap on and off, obsessing about the envelope. I should tear it up.

“You’re doing that stare-in-the-distance thing you do. Don’t get all think-y on me,” she said. “Now, listen, it’s important that you meet the Astronaut—”

“No.”

“—so you must come to dinner.”

“Nope.”

“Why?” she asked, exasperated.

“I’m no good at these things. I can’t ever think of what to say.”

“You’d rather sit on your couch and watch TV?”

“I happen to like TV,” I said.

“You’re a coward, Annie Porter, afraid of life.”

“I’m not a coward, I’m content.”

“You’ll like the Astronaut,” she said, turning into the parking lot. “He was in the military.”

“And that appeals to me how?” I asked.

“He’s a jet jock.”

“Okay,” I deadpanned.

“He flies jets,” she said. “Won’t it be fun talking to someone who flies jets?” She hit me again. “Won’t it?”

“I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said, rubbing my arm. “Really. And look, we’re here. We’re stopping. And we’ve parked. Can we go in now?”

“Fine.” She opened her car door. “Well, aren’t you coming in?”

“In a minute,” I said, waving her on. I hoped to miss the awkwardness of talking to Donald.

When I got into the office, I was relieved to find Lea had already disappeared into the back. I settled down into the waiting room. Ah, peace and quiet. Except for one teenager in the corner immersed in reading, which is what I wanted to be doing.

I flipped through the stack of magazines beside me and found a
People
from August. Three months old. I looked for a more recent issue, but there wasn’t one. Donald should update his magazines. I wasn’t asking for the latest
Kenyon Review
. Just a brand-new, barely read
People
.

The cover was falling off this one, and a small square was cut in the bottom where the subscriber’s address should be.
I should have brought a book of poems
, I thought, as I flipped through the limp, outdated pages. I usually didn’t leave the house without one. All that was in my purse now was the scary white envelope.

I stopped on page 28. It was an article about the teacher in space: “Christa McAuliffe Gets NASA’s Nod to Conduct America’s First Classroom in Space.”

I deliberately didn’t follow the space program. But it was kind of cool that I’d just been invited to meet someone who was in
People
magazine.

The article covered the first day in the life of the new “teachernaut.” I noticed the reporter was a little cynical about the Teacher in Space program. His tone made me defensive. After all, a high school teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, was actually going into space.
Space.

I’d always thought space was for people with science degrees, and I hated science. But here was this teacher who was going to fly alongside people like Lea’s jet-jock astronaut. And she seemed so, well, normal. She could be one of my teachers. Or could she? I wondered why NASA chose her.

I stared at her photos. In one, she was squatting down to kiss her young niece. In another, she was setting her dinner table with her husband and two kids. I could pass this woman in the mall and not think she was any different from any other mom I knew.

So weird to find this article on the day I was invited to meet Christa. Things like this made me think I was cosmically connected to something. Maybe I was just cosmically connected to
People
magazine. But I guess it wasn’t too weird the magazine was here because this
was
a NASA community. It was understandable this particular issue would be kept.

Or maybe it was a sign.

So I stole it. I put it in my purse, right next to the scary white envelope, hoping some of Christa’s daring would leap off the page and talk my envelope into mailing itself.

The door opened. Lea came out with clean teeth. Donald was behind her. He had glasses and a nice dentist smile. “Hi, Annie.” I
did
like that his bulky black glasses tilted on his face and that his smile was slightly nerdy. I liked different because I felt like I was different too.

“Hi, Donald,” I said, pushing the magazine down farther in my purse.

Then we all stood there awkwardly. Even Lea looked at a loss for words. I made rescue-me eyes at her.

“Okay,” said Lea. “Bye, Dr. Gardner.”

I gave him a wave as we left. He looked disappointed.

Lea barely missed the Mercedes on my side because she had launched back into talking about the Astronaut. She wanted to keep a journal of information about him.

“Annie, please come Saturday. You can meet him. Come
on
. You are so boring.”

She had a point. What was wrong with me? I had a chance to meet Christa McAuliffe and I wanted an evening alone with TV shows and potato chips.

I just didn’t have any motivation lately. I wanted to sit and be still, but at the same time, I was restless. I couldn’t even decide what to do after high school. Graduation was like a high, long, thick wall, like that Hadrian’s Wall the English built to keep the Scottish out, or the Scottish built to keep the English out, or I built to keep my future out.

And here Christa McAuliffe was packing her panties and going to fly on the space shuttle. If she was going to space, I could get myself off my couch long enough to meet her before she did.