Taking Off (14 page)

CHAPTER 30

W
e’d only been away from home for four days, but it felt like a whole season had passed, like Tommy was the only person I knew now, the only person in my life.

That was why it was such a shock to see Dad at the motel when we got back from the beach. We ran into the lobby, away from the rain. The weather front that had delayed the launch had finally arrived here.

“Hey there, Annie,” Dad said, giving me a quick hug.

“You look terrible, Dad,” I said, pinching my nose. He smelled and felt like rotting sandy refuse on a beach.

“I’ve been sleeping out under the stars.”

“You made it!” said Tommy. “How’s the car?”

Dad laughed. “She’s running, after I emptied out my bank account.”

“Running’s good.”

“That it is, Tommy. Thanks, son, for taking care of my girl.” Dad squinted at me. “What’s wrong? Your eyes are puffy.” He glanced at Tommy, either with a look of suspicion or just confusion; it was hard to tell.

“Sand in the eyes, Dad,” I said quickly. “Come on up to our room. The room.” I wasn’t sure how he was going to take the news that Tommy and I had been staying in a room together. I didn’t think he’d mind. He was always so laid-back about stuff.

“The motel isn’t that nice, but it’s cheap,” I said, on the way.

“And it’s got a good location,” Dad said. “Not too far from the beach.”

“Nothing’s far from the ocean here.”

“Where are Bonnie and Clyde?” he asked.

“They had to go back,” I explained. “Ready to get wet? The stairs aren’t covered.”

“Bonnie and Clyde left?” he asked, then got quiet.

Tommy was quiet too.

“Let’s go,” I said, going out into the rain and up the concrete steps. I didn’t want to look at Dad. I was thinking about the kiss with Tommy and was afraid my face would give it away. Then Dad would think something worse than just Tommy and I sleeping in the same room together.

Dad was close behind me when we went in the room. I grabbed some towels out of the bathroom and gave one to each of them.

Dad looked relieved to see the beds unmade, both of them. But his lips were still pressed together in an irritated grimace as he dried his neck and face.

“The maid service isn’t the best here,” I said.

Dad looked at Tommy. “I don’t like this. You staying here alone with my daughter? For God’s sake, Tommy, you’re twenty-two years old.”

“Dad—”

“I’m talking to Tommy.”

“You’re right, Jesse,” said Tommy, looking very guilty. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t like it, Tommy. Not at all.”

“Dad, stop talking to him about this. I’m eighteen,” I said. “I’m an adult. You talk to me about it. I make my own decisions.”

“All right, then. What were you thinking, Annie?”

“I was thinking I didn’t have much money, and Tommy offered to pay for the room. You know, Dad, you sent me off with these people you didn’t even know—”

“I thought you were safe with him.” He shot Tommy a look.

“And I was safe. Nothing happened, Dad.” There was no way I was going to tell him about the kiss. “It was fine.”

He pulled one of his hand-rolled cigarettes out of his pocket. “I gotta go for a smoke.” He left, slamming the door.

Tommy and I looked at one another.

“It’s my fault, Annie. I’m sorry. I just don’t think of you as someone in high school. You seem older than that to me.”

That made me smile. “Don’t tell my dad that, okay?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No way.”

Eventually Dad came back, smelling like smoke, quiet. At least he wasn’t so mad anymore. He didn’t bring up the subject again, but I worried he might tell Mom. But then I dismissed that fear: he wouldn’t tell her because she’d blame him for it.

“So they launch tomorrow?” he asked me. He still wouldn’t look at Tommy.

“At 9:36 a.m.,” I said. “We need to leave early, though. About 7 a.m.”

“It can’t take more than thirty minutes to get out there,” Dad said. “And it’s not going to lift off any earlier.”

“Lea’s mom said we needed to be at the gate two hours before launch because there’s going to be a lot of people.”

“But to leave at seven? I’m still on Central time.”

“Dad.”

“Fine,” he said. “Early it is.”

He didn’t mention that the launch delays would also delay my getting back to school or his getting back to work. Of course, it wouldn’t be in Dad’s nature to worry about that anyway.

It was good he was here, that there was a dad to keep Tommy and me apart. I had things to think about.

I wondered if you could be in love with one person and want to kiss and be with another. I hadn’t been thinking about what Mark had been doing these last few days. I hadn’t called him. I should be thinking about my boyfriend. Maybe it was because I just met Tommy and everything was new and different.

This trip was supposed to be about fun, an escape, a break from thinking about big decisions. It was a chance to watch someone who was brave and sure of herself reach for something beyond her ordinary life.

I wasn’t anything like Christa. I was the opposite of her. But I’d been thinking that if a teacher living a simple life in Concord just one year ago could now be launching on the space shuttle, then maybe my life could be an adventure too.

Everyone around me knew what to do next. They were making choices about their lives like it was the easiest thing in the world to slide into college or to send in an application to NASA to go into space. Even Mark was sure what he wanted, which was to marry me and live in Clear Lake for the rest of our lives.

Mark knew me so well. He knew my mom, my grandma, my cousins, my friends. He understood that part of me that loved to cross the Kemah Bridge over and over again.

But there was Tommy … he was older than I was. He was cooler. He was prettier. He listened to me. I’d even told him about my poetry. I’d never shared that with Mark.

Yes, it was good Dad was here.

Dad and Tommy settled in to watch the Super Bowl. I read, and listened to the rain outside. I hoped it would stop soon. To come all this way and not see a launch would be so disappointing. Not to mention the frustration poor Christa would feel at being delayed again. Surely it would happen tomorrow.

I also sneaked peeks at Tommy. I liked watching him watch the game and talk to my dad.

The Bears beat the Patriots by a whole bunch.

We got a cot, and Tommy insisted on sleeping on it. It was a little weird settling down to sleep in a room with not just Tommy, but Dad too. I hadn’t slept in the same room with Dad since I was a little girl. And to have another guy there. Weird.

Dad stepped out to smoke another cigarette on the balcony, which made things a little easier. I curled up in my bed and pretended to sleep. But I couldn’t stop thinking.

I needed to talk to Mark, to tell him how I was feeling, how confused I was about us. It would break his heart. But it wasn’t fair to keep this from him. It would have to wait until we got back.

I would stay away from Tommy in the meantime. I would.

Golly Moses, as Lea would say, I needed to buck up here. Here I was lying awake worried about talking to Mark, and right down the road the astronauts were probably all sound asleep, even though they were about to go for a high ride.

CHAPTER 31

T
he next morning was cold for Florida. The news said it was forty degrees.

“This is Florida,” Dad said. “It’s supposed to be warm all year.”

“The news guy said it’s usually not like this.”

“They should have launched yesterday morning,” said Tommy. “Geez.”

I grabbed a sleeping bag and some blankets. “I wish I’d brought something thicker than my jean jacket.” Tommy helped me gather things up.

We drove out to the space center with our car pass in the windshield. We weren’t in any VIP area or anything like that, but we did have a great view of the pad across the swampy water of the Banana River. We parked alongside other cars on a small strip of land and carried our sleeping bags and cooler out to a grassy area to find a spot.

Excitement was in the air. I dodged a couple of laughing kids who ran in front of me, one of them stepping on my toes.

“Well, ow,” I said.

“Sorry!” the boy yelled over his shoulder as he chased the other one.

We spread out the sleeping bags. I wrapped myself in a blanket. Almost every bit of grass was taken up by a blanket or a folding chair. People were everywhere with cameras and grins and coats. It was cold.

At the river’s edge, photographers had set up tripods. A few people had telescopes. I itched to take a look at the pad through one.

“How far away is that?” asked Tommy, looking toward the pad.

“Six or seven miles,” I told him. I sipped the hot coffee Dad had gotten for us at the diner. He’d bought a thermos full. “Will you hold my coffee? I want to take a picture.”

“Sure,” Tommy said, taking my coffee. “The shuttle is going to look very small in your photo, though.”

As I looked through the viewfinder, I knew he was right. “Still, I want a photo.” I snapped a couple of shots, then turned around and took one of Tommy while he grinned at me. That was one photo Mark wouldn’t see. But I’d show it to Lea. I had to have something left of Tommy after this trip.

Announcements were made over a loudspeaker. It sounded like some public-affairs guy at NASA. We could also hear some technical chatter going on between the launch-control center and the astronauts, who were already onboard and strapped into their seats, according to the very informative young boy standing next to me.

“They’re lying on their backs in the crew cabin,” he told me, gesturing with his hands, “and their feet are up in the air.”

Christa was a long way from her classroom in Concord. There she was, way over there, across the water, in the shuttle, on the launchpad.

“That can’t be comfortable,” Tommy said.

“No, it’s not,” the boy said very seriously.

Tommy started asking the boy questions because he did appear to be our expert here, even though he couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven.

I looked over at my father. “Dad?”

“Yep?” he asked, looking through binoculars at the pad.

“What did you tell Mom?” I asked, jumping up and down to get warm.

The question startled him a little. “You want the binoculars?”

“No, Dad.” I pulled them down from his eyes. “Stop changing the subject. What did you tell her?”

“Honey, why do you want to be worrying your mother for? Everything’s fine. I knew she’d freak if I told her the car had broken down and you’d gone on without me. She doesn’t know Tommy like I do,” he said. “She wouldn’t have understood.”

“Dad—”

“Everything was fine, right?”

“Yes, Dad—”

“And Tommy took care of you, right?”

“Dad—”

“And was a perfect gentleman, right?”

“Dad!” I called out.

I glanced at Tommy, who was obviously pretending not to be listening. I was sure Dad wouldn’t be one to think a kiss was ungentlemanly, but Tommy looked worried. Yesterday Dad had been plenty mad about the motel room.

Dad laughed. “Annie, everything’s fine. What your mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

“Okay.”

“And anyway,” he continued, “she seemed distracted.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, but I had thought the same thing.

Dad shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, looking through the binoculars again. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything else out of him.

I looked over at Tommy and he winked at me. My heart fluttered. Or was it my stomach? Something fluttered. One wink and I was feeling off balance: I was in trouble.

Then I heard the crowd groan. “What?” I asked, looking at NASA Boy. “What happened? I wasn’t listening.”

“They’re holding the countdown.”

“But,” Tommy asked, “didn’t you say they’ve got
planned
holds in the countdown?”

“What do you mean by planned holds?” I asked.

“T minus twenty minutes doesn’t mean the launch is twenty minutes away,” Tommy explained. “Because NASA counts the clock down to certain times and then holds there.”

“But they should be starting the clock again,” said the boy. “There’s a problem with the hatch.”

Dad laughed. “Seriously? They can’t close the door?”

“They closed it, but they’re not sure it’s locked.”

“How do you know all this, kid?” Dad asked.

The boy pointed to the loudspeakers.

I laughed. “I guess he listens, and we don’t.”

“My daughter knows the teacher,” Dad told the boy’s father.

“Really?” asked the dad, taking off his sunglasses. “Is she your teacher?”

“No,” I said. “I just met her twice.”

“She ate dinner with her,” Dad said.

NASA Boy was suddenly very interested in me. From the way he was looking at me, I thought he might be falling in love. “How many people were there?”

“At dinner?” I asked him.

“Yeah, were there like a hundred?” he asked, waving his arms. “Was it a big dinner with lots of people there?”

“No. There were about twelve. It was at someone’s house.”

“You are so lucky!”

“What’s Christa McAuliffe like?” his father asked.

“She’s friendly, really nice,” I said, feeling a little special.

Both the boy and his dad were nodding. The dad looked back at the shuttle. “Well, I bet she’s tired of waiting.”

The boy’s freckles were small and perfect dots sprinkled across his nose and cheeks. “Did you know there were nine shuttle flights last year? And thirteen more scheduled for this year?”

“Nope.”

“Did you know that they want to launch twenty-four a year?”

“Really. Wow.”

“I want to be an astronaut,” said the boy. “Do you?”

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t like small spaces.”

“But you’d be going into space! And you could look out the window and see the Earth. That’d make you forget about the small spaces!”

“You’re probably right.”

He rubbed his chin like an old person, looking at the shuttle in the distance. “I’d really like to go into space one day.”

Finally, NASA was satisfied the hatch was locked. But when the technicians closed it again, a pesky four-inch bolt kept them from removing the door handle.

“These things happen,” NASA Boy told me. His father gave me a quick smile over the boy’s head.

“Hey, anyone want to play cards?” I asked. “I brought some.”

“Sure!” said the kid, who just might’ve been my new boyfriend.

The five of us settled down to play Gin and War for a while, but the wind had picked up. We had to put cards under our legs to keep them from blowing away.

NASA eventually got rid of the handle—with a hacksaw and a drill, which cracked Dad up—but by that time, the winds were so high there was a possibility the shuttle wouldn’t be able to do an RTLS—Return to Launch Site abort—in the event of an emergency.

So there was one more delay while we waited for the winds to die down. The boy and his father pulled sandwiches out of their cooler. I was too nervous to be hungry.

I lay back on the sleeping bag and covered myself with the blanket. It had warmed up a little—now in the fifties—but the wind was very strong, gusting up to thirty miles per hour and keeping us cold. Tommy lay down beside me. I looked over at him and he grinned. He was so good looking it was ridiculous.

I turned over to my side and looked at him. He touched my nose. “You look like Rudolph.” Then he took his new red scarf and wrapped it around both of us. “It’s good you made it so long. It warms both our necks.”

“It’s not really long enough for both of us.”

“But isn’t this nice?” he whispered.

“Annie, you won’t believe this.” I looked up at Dad, who was pointing toward the pad. “Did you hear the announcement?” He glanced back at me quickly.

“No,” I said, jumping up, a bit worried that I’d been staring into Tommy’s eyes. I couldn’t stay away from this guy. “What’s going on, Dad?” I looked at my watch. It was just after noon.

Dad hesitated for a moment, looking at Tommy getting up, and then back at me. “I don’t think it’s going to happen, Annie.”

“What, the launch? Don’t say that.”

Even NASA Boy looked worried.

“Man, I wish they’d launch this bird,” Dad said.

The boy was shaking his head. “The astronauts have been lying on their backs for four hours.”

His father looked our way. “I don’t think they’re ever going to get this shuttle off the ground.”

Tommy and I started to listen to the public-affairs guy talking over the speaker system. The wind was really gusting. I’d drunk so much coffee, I was sick to my stomach.

And then came this:

“WE HAVE JUST HAD AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM THE LAUNCH DIRECTOR TO THE CREW AND THE LAUNCH TEAM THAT WE ARE GOING TO SCRUB TODAY.”

The crowd groaned.

“Aw, man!” the boy yelled out.

“I can’t believe that!” said his father, pouring out his coffee. “That’s it for us.”

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“We’ve got to get back to Georgia. I’ve got work.”

“Daaad,” the boy complained, his shoulders slumped. Poor kid.

We said our good-byes, and they walked off—NASA Boy dragging his feet.

“
We’re
staying,” I told Dad.

“This has been one interesting trip, Annie,” Dad said. “At least we’re not at the plant, right, Tommy?”

“True,” said Tommy. “And the trip’s had its good points.” He began helping me fold up the blankets and sleeping bags.