Taking Off Read online

  It was only seven a.m., but we were ready to go.

  Dad had already been to the Beatmobile to get our bags and the launch pass. His hair was wet and he smelled like the sea, so I knew he’d taken another frigid morning dip, crazy man that he was.

  “Come here, Annie,” he said from the truck. He leaned out the window and gave me an awkward hug. “I’ll see you on Sunday. Clyde’s going to let me know where you are. It’s going to be a great launch.”

  “I’ll take lots of pictures,” I said.

  “I promise we’ll have the Beatmobile fixed up in no time. I’ll be on the road tomorrow.” I saw that look on the mechanic’s face again and knew it might not happen. But it didn’t matter. I just wanted to see Christa fly. I glanced at Tommy and thought how I wouldn’t mind if we were delayed getting back to Houston.

  I waved good-bye to Dad as the tow truck left the driveway.

  Tommy and I climbed in the Love Bus. We were in the way back. The seats were cracked, but covered with afghan blankets. The two German shepherds, looking like gray wolves instead of the brown and black shepherds I was used to, were in between us and their owners. The middle seats had been taken out. I was surprised to discover the dogs were brothers, not a couple. The van smelled a little like the dogs.

  Finally we were on our way, surrounded by tiny wedding couples. Tommy caught my eye as I was turning my head to look at one upside-down plastic bride and groom. He grinned. I laughed, but glanced up front to make sure Bonnie hadn’t seen.

  Tommy leaned over and said quietly in my ear, “Are you picking out one for your cake?”

  “Look at their little plastic faces. Those are not happy faces.”

  “I bet I can find a happy couple. How about this one?” he asked, pointing.

  “They looked scared.”

  “All right,” he said. “This one?”

  “Dazed.”

  “What are you doing?” Bonnie yelled back to us. It was hard to hear her. The bus was loud.

  “Just looking at your decorations,” Tommy yelled back.

  “We’ve been collecting them a long time. I should have showed you the 1930s one we have back home.”

  “Vintage wedding toppers!” I exclaimed. “Cool.”

  She turned back around in her seat, taking Clyde’s hand. I saw him smile at her.

  I felt a little giddy and pulled out my knitting to calm myself. I couldn’t be more excited. The launch. Traveling with Tommy by myself. Well, kind of. This was cool. This was the life I’d been waiting for, but didn’t know how to find. I pushed thoughts of Mark out of my mind.

  “What are you knitting?” Tommy asked, playing with the red yarn.

  “A scarf,” I said. “So are you going to tell me why you dropped out of USC?”

  “Crashed and burned.”

  “You flunked out?”

  “I flunked the classes I didn’t go to.”

  I laughed. “How many did you go to?”

  “Philosophy and water polo.”

  “Ah, life skills.”

  “Throw me on a desert island, baby.”

  “I don’t know. You seem pretty handy.”

  “I do?” he asked, with a slow smile.

  That giddy feeling bubbled up in me again. That grin of his, it was wicked and kind at the same time, like he was saying, “If you come with me, you’ll have fun, and I’ll watch out for you, but I can’t guarantee either of us will be safe.”

  If Mom found out about this … I put the thought out of my mind. She couldn’t find out. She wouldn’t. Dad sure wouldn’t tell her.

  I’d thought some of this through. Dad would be in no hurry to tell Mom about the car breaking down. I was sure he would just tell her that he saw the launch too. It was a good plan. We’d see the launch with Bonnie and Clyde. Dad would get the car fixed and drive down tomorrow. We’d drive back with him to Houston. No problem.

  Tommy was looking at me expectantly, like he was waiting for an answer.

  “I mean, aren’t you handy?” I asked.

  “I know a few things. Not like your dad. That’s a guy who could survive on a desert island.”

  Dad? How did he get into this conversation? I was surprised at how much Tommy seemed to admire Dad. Mom thought of him as a bum.

  “Did you get a scholarship to USC?” I asked. “It’s expensive.”

  He laughed. “No scholarship. Mom and Dad’s money. They both graduated from there, moved to Texas after they got married.”

  Must be nice to have money, I thought. But those were Mark’s bitter words, not mine. “Do they live in Houston?”

  “Not anymore. California.”

  “California?” I asked, looking up from my knitting. “Oh, you followed them out there?”

  “Hell, no. When they moved, I came back to Texas. Distance, Annie. I needed a few states between me and them.”

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  He laughed. “So you’re interested in my parents, but not your own?”

  I was interested in everything and everyone related to Tommy.

  “I do miss my little sister, though,” he said.

  “You have a sister? How old is she?”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Not so little,” I said.

  “Not anymore.” He looked at me. “So what’s up with your boyfriend?”

  I paused.

  “I have my own reasons for asking,” he said.

  I knew I was staring at him, but I couldn’t seem to stop. His own reasons? Well, that was nice. “What do you mean?” I asked.

  He fidgeted a little. “Just wondering if you’re serious with him.”

  My heart fluttered.

  “So I guess that’s a yes?” Tommy asked.

  “We’ve been together for a while,” I said.

  “How long?”

  “Two years.” But he nodded so quickly, I wondered if he already knew.

  “That’s a long time. Are you going away to college together?”

  I shook my head. “Mark doesn’t want to go to college. He said he doesn’t have the grades for it.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  I looked out the front window of the Love Bus. Open highway. There weren’t any windows in the back. Privacy. Then I noticed the rod mounted to the ceiling, with a curtain that shut off this end of the van. Bonnie and Clyde were surprising. “I want to go to Florida and see a teacher take off in the space shuttle.”

  “Well, we’re in Florida.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You like this teacher.”

  “I really do. I can’t explain it really. She’s pretty inspiring. I’ve never wanted to see a launch before. Even after all these years of being around NASA and the people who work there, and hearing endlessly about shuttle flights at school. But with Christa, it seems more about the human experience than NASA’s goals for the mission.”

  I knew it was partly because she was this ordinary person, a teacher. She hadn’t flown in jets or gotten a PhD in physics. She wanted to teach high school kids. She did teach high school kids. And now she was going to be flying with astronauts.

  “I don’t know much about her,” Tommy said, “but I have followed the space program. I was at Creek when the first shuttle launched. I like the idea of space exploration, seems forward thinking to look to the stars for mankind’s future.”

  I smiled. “Humankind.”

  “Right you are,” he said, yawning.

  “Tired?” I asked.

  “Mind if I sack out?”

  He fell asleep around Gainesville.

  I took out my notebook and scribbled then scratched and wrote then rewrote. I shut my notebook, frustrated. Why have words inside of you if you couldn’t make them sing—and if you kept them to yourself?

  I was on my way to seeing a schoolteacher fly, and I was mired in doubt. If she could be selected for something so extraordinary, surely I could at least try to reach for what I wanted.

  I closed my eyes. Some peopl
e lived so easily, not hesitating or hiding. I knew. I’d met Christa. She was like that. So was Lea.

  I was hesitating and hiding. I wanted to write poems, and to learn to write better poems. But most of all I wanted not to be afraid I’d reveal too much of myself if I did.

  - - - - -

  I jerked awake and looked out the window. We were pulling into a gas station mini-mart. I saw a woman with a big-shouldered, bright blue jacket stare at the Love Bus as she went into the store. A look of disapproval crossed her heavily made-up face. I wondered why anyone would be offended by the Love Bus. It was just an art car.

  Bonnie and I got out and went to the bathroom in the back of the store. The woman with the blue jacket was in front of us in line. Her hair was high and full and bleached blond. I’d never seen shoulder pads quite that big on a jacket. No way could they be her real shoulders. I was feeling tension coming from her, like she didn’t want to be standing by us. Maybe she thought art-car people were weird. Maybe she’d never seen an art car. But she kept giving us looks.

  Bonnie was unique, I knew. She was wearing a bright muumuu-type dress with large red and orange flowers. I admit she was hard to ignore.

  It was a one-person bathroom. There was no line to the men’s room, of course. Guys went in and out through their door while we waited. A stranger went. Tommy went. Clyde went. We were still in line.

  Bonnie babbled on. The shoulder-padded lady shot Bonnie looks, but Bonnie didn’t seem to notice. She was talking about how she needed to add a photo of Madonna and Sean Penn to the bus.

  “I haven’t heard any of her songs or seen any of his movies. But I do like to keep the Love Bus up to date with what’s current. And I feel sorry for that couple. All those helicopters at their wedding! They couldn’t even get married in peace. They need a spot on the Love Bus.”

  I smiled at her as she talked. Bonnie was exactly what she seemed, a very sweet person. What did it matter if her art car was more silliness than art and if she collected tacky collectibles? She was just being herself. She either didn’t know or didn’t care that she might seem a little strange to others.

  When the lady in the jacket came out, finally, she had to scoot by us. The hallway was narrow, and Bonnie was big, very big. The lady went by me first, and then stopped. She looked at Bonnie and back at me and sighed in irritation.

  “Excuse me?” I asked her. “What’s your problem?”

  “She’s in my way,” she said belligerently. “I can’t get past her.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” Bonnie said, backing down the short hallway.

  I was horrified. “Don’t say you’re sorry to her, Bonnie. She’s just rude.”

  “You’ve got a mouth on you,” the woman said to me as she huffed away.

  “Go on, Annie,” Bonnie was saying. “Your turn.” She didn’t look at all upset.

  “Bonnie—,” I said, looking off toward that woman.

  “Don’t mind her, honey. She’s not going to spoil our good time. Now go on. Go on.”

  I saw the woman glaring at us when we left the store later with our potato chips and sodas. She was sitting in a blue four-door sedan that perfectly matched the color of her jacket. And she was looking down her nose at Bonnie’s size?

  “I can’t believe that woman,” I said, opening the door to the bus.

  “What woman?” asked Clyde, looking up. He was checking the air in the tires.

  “This woman—”

  “It was nothing,” Bonnie said, shaking her head at me. She whispered in my ear, “Don’t tell him. He’ll be upset. He doesn’t like it when people aren’t kind to me.” She smiled a little.

  Tommy had gone back to sleep, so I didn’t open the chips. He’d mentioned he’d been awake most of the night with Dad’s snoring.

  We got back on the road, and Clyde started singing “You Light Up My Life,” which is a pretty ridiculous song. But he was singing it to Bonnie in this rich tenor voice so it was kind of nice.

  Tommy shifted in his seat, but didn’t open his eyes. I looked at his sleeping face. He looked so vulnerable.

  And then it hit me. I didn’t know where we’d be spending the night. We didn’t have the sleeping bags or tents with us. Would we get a hotel? With Bonnie and Clyde? I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought about this.

  I should’ve been worried about where the money was coming from, but instead all I could think about was where I would sleep and where Tommy would sleep. Would we be sleeping in the same room?

  CHAPTER 24

  About four o’clock, we pulled into the parking lot of a cheap motel in Cocoa Beach. We’d made good time, considering we had to stop to walk the German shepherds. Lunch was at a rest stop—baloney sandwiches and Cokes out of the cooler—where the dogs could roam a little. It’d been nice to be outside after so long in the car.

  Clyde parked a ways from the entrance. We grabbed our bags. “What about the dogs?” I asked.

  “I’ll wait here with them,” Clyde said as he scratched their necks. “Bonnie, you register the two of us.”

  The two of them, not the four of us. That meant Tommy and I would be together. I took a breath. Maybe we’d each have our own room. I could borrow the money from Tommy if I didn’t have enough, and Dad would pay him back.

  “Will they let the dogs into your room?” Tommy asked Clyde.

  “We’ll sneak them in,” Bonnie said. “Come on, kids. Let’s get registered.”

  Tommy held the lobby door open for me. “Do you mind if we only get one room?” he asked, looking a little shy. “Seems a waste to spend the money on two.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, but my heart was beating really fast.

  “There’ll be the two beds.”

  “Right. Right,” I said. “Two beds.”

  Only one person was working the desk, so Tommy gestured for Bonnie to go first. “Thanks, Tommy.” She told the desk clerk she needed a double. “What time does the shuttle launch tomorrow?” she asked him.

  “The launch?” he asked. “It’s been pushed to Sunday morning.”

  “Oh no,” said Bonnie.

  “You didn’t hear?” asked the clerk.

  “We didn’t see a paper,” Tommy told him, “or watch any news.”

  “The news doesn’t cover the shuttle like they used to anyway. But NASA announced the delay days ago, at a press conference. It’s not launching until Sunday.”

  Tommy laughed. “What are you gonna do?”

  The desk clerk didn’t laugh. Obviously, he thought shuttle launches were serious business. “There’s a storm over an emergency landing site,” he said dismissively.

  “Oh my,” said Bonnie. “That’s not good. For NASA or for Clyde and me. That changes our plans.”

  I looked at her. “What do you mean?”

  “We have to leave early Sunday. Clyde has to work.”

  “You could head home after the launch and make it back by Sunday night. It’d be close, though. What time does Clyde have to go to work?”

  “Let me go talk to him.” I watched her walk off toward the Love Bus. I hoped they didn’t come all this way only to drive right back.

  “We won’t have a ride to Kennedy Space Center if they leave,” said Tommy.

  “And we won’t have them either. I’ll kind of miss them.”

  “Your dad will be happy to hear that.”

  “Don’t tell him,” I said.

  “It’ll be hard to make it out to KSC without a car,” he said. “We can watch the launch from the beach, can’t we?”

  “I heard you can’t see it lift off the pad, though,” I said. “Maybe we can get a ride from someone at the motel who might be going over.”

  “Maybe,” said Tommy.

  It occurred to me Dad was rubbing off on me. I was turning into a hitchhiker and a mooch. I smiled at Tommy. “Maybe we’ll run into some good art-car people.”

  We walked out to the Love Bus.

  “This is it for us,” said Clyde. “Right, honey-baby?” he a
sked his wife.

  “Yep.”

  “You’re just going to drive all the way back?” I asked. “You came all this way for nothing.”

  “Not for nothing,” Bonnie said. “We’re going south to see Coral Castle, this coral structure built by Edward Leedskalnin when he was jilted the day before his wedding by his sixteen-year-old fiancée, Agnes Scuffs. Not exactly the love story we like, but that man understood the power of love, to spend almost thirty years carving a sculpture garden for his Sweet Sixteen out of coral rock.”

  “But can’t you stay tonight?”

  “It’s still early,” said Clyde. “We’ll get down there tonight and tour it tomorrow.”

  “I need to tell my dad where we are,” I said.

  “I’ll call my neighbor,” said Clyde. “He’ll get your dad the message.”

  “Thanks, Clyde. Here,” I said, grabbing a pen from the bus and writing down my number, remembering Christa doing this for me. “This is my number back in Houston. You need to come visit us.”

  Bonnie gave my arm a squeeze. “You have fun at that launch.”

  As we stood in the parking lot waving to the departing Love Bus, I wondered if Dad would arrive in time with the Beatmobile. Viewing the launch from the NASA causeway was supposed to be an amazing experience. It was the closest public viewing area to the launchpad.

  We dumped our bags on the floor of our room. I stood awkwardly by the door, looking around. I’d never stayed in a motel before, let alone with a guy.

  It was small, with hard beige carpet probably no dirtier than what was in my own bedroom. Nondescript, colorless art adorned the walls. Ugly, stiff-looking bedspreads covered the two double beds. I glanced over at Tommy and found he had looked up at me at the same time. I felt my face grow warm and turned toward a chair in the corner, wondering if I should go sit in it. I couldn’t just plop down on the bed.

  “Want to get something to eat?” Tommy asked.

  “Yes!” I said, a little too enthusiastically.

  He moved his bag to the bed farthest from the door. “Let me put on a fresh shirt.”

  I grabbed my purse and quickly went out our door to the balcony to wait for him. We were on the second floor with a great view of a concrete parking lot. Still, the air had that heavy sea smell, so I knew we were close to the ocean even if I couldn’t see it.