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Standing in her third line of the morning, Vivian felt like a hayseed.

Most of the other pilots arrived in Sweetwater wearing the latest utility suits.

Their impressive shoulder pads and belted waists lent them a confidence she envied.

Vivian had hemmed up her skirt to fashionable knee length and carefully pressed her outfit, but nothing could hide the fact that her blouse was nearly sheer from repeated washings.

As the line snaked forward, she daydreamed about the new clothes she’d buy with her first paycheck. A utility suit of her own. Maybe some trousers and a twinset. But first she’d have to pay back Elizabeth, who’d lent her the bus fare to this stark, flat piece of Texas.

Finally, she reached the front of the line and stated her size. The airman made a note of it, handed her a paper chit, and told her she’d trade it in for two zoot suits later that afternoon. She could hardly wait. Once they were all dressed in their uniforms, she’d look the same as everyone else.

The pilots filed into an auditorium for Jacqueline Cochran’s welcome address. Tomorrow they’d begin training. No more Piper Cubs. They would get to fly real planes here. They would get to serve their country while doing it. And they would be watched.

Cochran made that point from the stage after she welcomed them to Avenger Field.

“You will be watched. You will be judged. Fair or not, the judgment will be harsher and quicker than if you were men. If that troubles you, go home and roll bandages, knit socks, plant a victory garden. Get yourself a factory job building armaments. There are plenty of honorable ways to serve your country.”

But Vivian believed, and she could tell Cochran did, too, that some ways were more honorable than others.

“Not all of you will qualify. Close to thirty-three percent of our female trainees wash out. The same rate applies for the men, by the way, so if you happen to be one of the unlucky ones, don’t let anyone tell you it’s because you’re a woman.

It won’t even mean you’re not a good pilot—just that you’re not quite good enough for our purposes. ”

The pilot next to her squished her plush shoulder pad against Vivian’s arm and whispered, “Enough chatter. When can we fly?” She smelled like Evening in Paris, the perfume Elizabeth wore. “I’m Marian Fontana. I met your sister earlier.”

Confused by the familiar scent, Vivian turned and scanned the auditorium, then shook her head. “Oh, my sister’s not—”

Jacqueline Cochran paused and trained her disapproving gaze in their direction, like a teacher hushing schoolgirls. Vivian shifted away from Marian Fontana, hoping she’d take the hint and stop whispering.

“People will be waiting for you to fail,” continued Cochran.

“And if you don’t fail, they’ll be waiting for you to demonstrate a lack of femininity.

Which is why you will take great care with your appearance.

You will keep your clothing clean and pressed.

You will keep your hair neatly combed. You will keep your faces well made up.

You will learn to drill with precision. You will attend ground school for the same number of hours as your male counterparts and master the same concepts.

You will receive the same in-flight training.

And you will never—no matter what—make any public complaint that might draw critical eyes to this program, that might allow anyone to suggest that women can’t handle the training, that women can’t fly for their country. ”

After they applauded Cochran’s speech, Vivian introduced herself to Fontana. As they joined another line, she explained that her sister was nowhere near Sweetwater and never would be.

“There she is,” Fontana said, pointing out a tall woman well ahead of them in line.

“You’re telling me you two aren’t related?

” The woman bent to accept a form and then rose to her full height again.

Perhaps she felt herself being watched, because she turned and looked straight at Vivian.

They were both a head taller than the pilots between them, which gave them a clear view.

They stared at one another for a moment, and then the woman smiled a big red-lipsticked grin.

Vivian smiled back, feeling like she was looking at herself in a mirror.

She gave a mock salute. The woman laughed and saluted back.

Then the line swept her around a corner and out of sight.

Vivian didn’t see her again until the chow line, where, once again, she was up ahead, out of reach.

Some of the girls near Vivian had already picked up their zoot suits.

“They’re men’s sizes,” said Joyce Elliot.

She shook hers out and kicked at the legs, “walking” the oversize suit back and forth.

Fontana howled. They’d need to roll the legs and arms and cinch the waist high or they’d trip all over themselves.

“So much for keeping a neat appearance,” said Elliot.

“I packed a sewing kit,” said Susan Dubarry, a serious, dimpled girl from Ohio. “Maybe we can hem the legs.” After some prodding, Dubarry confessed that she’d also packed a tool kit and a book of engine schematics, just in case they might come in handy.

“Wow,” said Elliot. “Were you a Girl Scout or something?”

Dubarry’s eyes widened. “Weren’t you?”

Elliot smirked, but Fontana said, “I was. How about you, Vivvy?”

The Shaws couldn’t have afforded the dues, but Vivian was spared from answering when a Wellesley girl said, “Fontana. Sounds Italian. Are you from New York?” Fontana was by far the most stylishly dressed pilot there.

The Wellesley girls had been sniffing around her all morning, trying to figure her out.

“Philadelphia,” said Fontana. “We’re Catholic, but otherwise pretty Main Line.” The Wellesley girls nodded as if this sentence made perfect sense. Vivian caught Dubarry’s eye and was relieved to see her shrug.

She and Fontana sat down at a table with a girl from Radcliffe, who asked if they were interested in sailing as well, “or only ships that fly.” Fontana rolled her eyes. Before Vivian could answer, the Radcliffe girl looked her over and said, “Never mind, let’s just talk planes.”

Vivian talked planes with the Radcliffe girl.

She talked planes with a ranch girl from Kansas and another from outside Sacramento.

The pilots fit one of two types. First, there were the girls who’d grown up on farms, where the family or someone nearby could afford a crop duster.

They’d learned to fly the duster, then moved on to Piper Cubs.

The second type kept horses and wore pearls.

They’d learned to fly Daddy’s plane, usually a Taylor or a Fairchild.

She’d expected the two types would keep a wary distance from one another, the way the farm girls and town girls had at her high school.

But they all seemed absolutely delighted to talk to any other girl who loved flying—regardless of where she came from.

As the day wore on, Vivian relaxed about her wardrobe.

At last, she collected her zoot suits and was directed to the barracks.

The women clumped together outside, shifting from one sore foot to another, waiting for their bunk assignments.

Vivian searched the crowd for her look-alike.

The pilots behind her jostled her back. “Hey, watch it,” muttered Fontana.

Then the tall woman appeared beside Vivian, asking, “Mind if I stand here?”

“Be my guest.” Now well practiced in the preliminaries, she offered, “I’m Vivian Shaw. Hahira, Georgia. No college. No crop-dusting.”

“Georgeanne Ector. Enid, Oklahoma. No crop-dusting. Tried college. Didn’t care for it.

You can call me George.” She smiled, her lipstick as vivid as ever.

She wore a twinset and tiny diamonds in her earlobes, and she tugged at the neck of her sweater as if it itched.

She caught Vivian noticing. “My mother told me to wear this. I hate it. Wish I’d worn a blouse like you.

I can’t wait to change into my zoot suit. ”

The next obvious question, the question everyone asked that day, was How did you learn to fly?

But neither Vivian nor George asked it. Neither of them said anything more for the moment.

The women around them practically vibrated with exhaustion.

But George exuded a sense of peace, and Vivian found herself breathing easier beside her.

More women pressed forward, pushing Vivian against George.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling back. She’d been about to say that maybe they’d be assigned to the same bay.

But then she recalled her goodbye with Elizabeth—how Elizabeth had tsk-ed that she hoped Vivian wouldn’t “come back like that .” This, no doubt, was due to Vivian opening her big mouth and hinting to Elizabeth that something about Aunt Clelia and Rosemary’s friendship seemed a tad . .. unusual.

She didn’t want George to think she was like that .

She didn’t want to frighten her away. It was a rare thing finding someone you knew you were meant to find, someone you knew right off that you’d be friends with.

Why did people only talk about lightning bolts in the romantic sense?

She stood next to George and savored the aftereffects of the strike.

Vivian and George whispered to one another in the chow line, between flight school classes, while waiting their turns for the Link Trainer.

They murmured in their cots at night until Elliot and Fontana pleaded with them to just hush already.

But they had too much to explain to each other.

Their families. Their hometowns. How they’d learned to fly.

When George told Vivian about the female barnstormer and the way her heart had opened up during her first flight, Vivian understood.

When she told Vivian about the racy atmosphere of the hangars outside Enid, Vivian, thinking of the airfields she’d visited with Louis, wasn’t surprised at all.

It was pitch dark out—cloud covered and starless—when Vivian told George about Louis.

She was soaking wet and freezing, clutching a Stearman mooring rope as fierce winds tried to rip the plane off the ground and send it tumbling across the field.

The siren had blared, and the women had zipped into their zoot suits and stumbled out into the night.

Vivian had wrapped a scarf over her mouth and nose to keep out the grit and pulled on her gloves, having learned from the first couple of storms that her hands would be raw and bleeding from the ropes by the time the storm passed over.

She told George about the picnic and how she’d cajoled flying lessons from Louis and the suitcase from Aunt Clelia.

How she ran off with Louis and took money from the cashbox to get back home.

“Because what you said about your heart opening up? I know that feeling. I had to have it too. And Louis was the only way I was going to get it.”

George didn’t respond. Vivian wondered if she’d spoken loudly enough.

Perhaps with the wind and the scarf over her mouth, George hadn’t heard her.

That was probably for the best. It was a story she should never tell anyone, even George.

George not hearing her was far preferable to George having been shocked into silence.

Far preferable to George requesting a new bunkmate and avoiding her in the chow line.

Then George’s voice cut through the wind, saying something about a girl named Helen and a boy named Frank.

The howling gale made it difficult for Vivian to follow, but in the end, she understood.

When the winds died down at last, they shook out their aching arms, peeled off their gloves, and blew on their palms. They leaned toward one another for warmth as they made their way back to the barracks.

George put an arm around Vivian’s shoulders, and that feeling of peace coursed through Vivian again.

She had offered up her worst secret and kept her friend.