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George collected two letters at mail call—one from her mother and one from Helen.

She and Frank had agreed not to write, and she chided herself weekly for wishing he would anyway.

During their last week together in Enid, her stomach had been a wreck, roiled by fears of getting pregnant and of Helen finding out about them.

She and Frank had shifted back to just talking. Mostly.

She tossed Helen’s letter in her footlocker, where it joined a clutch of unopened envelopes. There was a limit, apparently, to how good a friend she could be. She could give up Frank, but she couldn’t bring herself to read and reply to Helen’s letters.

She slit open the envelope from her mother.

Adele wrote that she was glad George was making friends—George had told her about Vivian—and warned her not to let friendship distract her from the reason she was in Texas to begin with.

She managed, with only her penmanship, to imbue the word Texas with Oklahoman disapproval.

George pulled out a sheet of stationery and began to write, telling her mother she needn’t worry.

That simply not washing out wasn’t good enough for her.

That she intended to be the best in her class.

But the words seemed too boastful. She balled up the paper and tossed it.

She was too tired to write a decent letter.

Reveille was at six, but if she wanted any time in the john before she fell in to march to the mess hall, she had to wake up by five.

Six girls to a bay and two bays to a john meant zero privacy.

She’d never spent so much time in close quarters with other women.

It felt like being surrounded by a crowd of Florences, fascinating and frazzling at the same time.

It was easier to face these Florences alongside Vivian.

Sometimes she secretly pretended they were sisters; she loved it when people assumed they were related.

She liked that Vivian was quieter than most of the others.

She was serious and diligent. “I don’t have a choice,” Vivian told her.

“They don’t want me at home.” Vivian rarely received letters.

Shoulder to shoulder, they marched to mess.

To class. To the flight simulator. All the while, George tried not to stare too hard at the class ahead of theirs: experienced trainees who wore their zoot suits with easy grace, women who no longer had to log hours in the hot, stale, cramped Link training simulator.

Women who flew solo runs. Who had priority for the bigger, more powerful AT-6s and C-78s.

If she didn’t wash out, she would be one of them soon.

The first washout of their class was Claire McNamara.

George liked Claire, who was suntanned and cheerful and full of encouragement for anyone struggling with the course material.

But Claire herself had struggled to dismantle and reassemble the Ranger engine.

And then, on her first flight with the instructor, she’d bottomed out on the landing.

The instructor had neglected to turn off his radio, and everyone in the control tower heard him yelling that she was “no pilot, and never would be.”

Claire returned to the bay in tears, packed her bag, and by chow time boarded a bus to wherever she’d come from.

“Did you see the speed of that crosswind this morning?” asked Vivian as they stood in the chow line.

“I know,” said George. “I’m glad I didn’t get called to go up today. It could have been me.”

“You’re better than she was,” said Vivian.

George hoped so. All she knew for sure was that she was a good mechanic.

On the day they’d dismantled and reassembled the Ranger engines, she’d intentionally claimed a spot on the opposite side of the bay from Vivian.

She wanted no distractions. The temptation to check her friend’s progress and compare it to her own would have wrecked her concentration.

The bay was silent and tense. Hours of no sound except for the occasional ping of a dropped screw.

George dropped nothing. She worked methodically, laying out her hardware and parts as her mother had taught her.

Once she’d tightened the final spark plug, she surveyed the room.

Vivian and Elliot, at adjacent engines, were neck and neck, and George could tell they knew it.

She checked twice to make sure she hadn’t missed any parts or hardware, then raised her hand to alert the instructor that she’d finished.

The other women sighed. Vivian’s eyes were full of envy when she looked up.

Then she raised her own hand, seconds before Elliot’s shot up.

George gave her a thumbs-up sign. She wanted Vivian to do well—just slightly less well than she herself did. She drilled herself on meteorology and Morse code, memorized control panel diagrams, and checked the flight list daily for her name. She still hadn’t been called for her first flight.

If she was better than Claire McNamara, then why had Claire been called so early?

Claire had pretended not to care that she was one of the first called, but she’d flounced all the way to the hangar.

“You’re looking for rhyme and reason in the armed forces?

” asked Vivian. “I bet they draw names out of a hat.”

If that was the case, then Vivian’s name was drawn the next day. Vivian didn’t flounce as she headed off, but George’s insides twisted up all the same. Why had she been passed over again? Maybe they’d already decided she’d never cut it as a pilot.

She didn’t mention her fears in her letters home. Her mother would only label them nonsense and not waste any time on reassurance. Instead, George wrote:

Studying hard. Still waiting for my first flight. Have you heard any news about any of the Enid boys?

Adele replied with no news of any Enid boys, but plenty about Helen.

She’s got the Keywanettes putting together care packages for the boys overseas. She’s got everyone—except me, of course—knitting socks for them. Quite a force, our Helen.

George tucked the letter away in her textbook.

She spent her minimal unscheduled time studying for her ground school courses.

But it was a beautiful day, and she found it hard to focus.

Girls sunbathed outside the barracks, pretending to study as they watched the sky.

Both for Avenger Field planes (scrutinized as potential competition) and for any male-piloted aircraft that might stray over Sweetwater.

Cochran had banned all flyovers and unscheduled landings at Avenger Field.

Whenever an unknown plane ventured through Sweetwater airspace, each girl imagined the trespassing male pilot might notice her among the other sunbathers and find some way to get in touch.

Easier said than done, but some managed it.

George wasn’t sure how. Cochran had the place pretty much on lockdown, which only fed everyone’s war-fevered desire to meet men.

George was pretty sure Susan Dubarry was seeing one of the flight instructors.

Which was forbidden, not to mention a conflict of interest, but no one was about to rat Susan out, let alone rat out the man whose clipboard might hold their fate.

“Hey, Ector, since when do you pull your nose out of a book? You expecting a flyboy?” Fontana and Elliot peered at her over the tops of their meteorology textbooks, which they’d been using to fan themselves as they basked in the premature spring heat.

“Nah,” Elliot said, smiling. She had perfect pearly-white teeth and a naturally happy disposition, which meant she often showed them off. “She’s watching for Shaw, I bet. Didn’t Shaw go up today?”

“Missing your twin?” Fontana asked.

George, who as an only child lacked experience in this sort of banter, wondered if her ears were as red as they felt.

“Honestly,” said Fontana. “It took me a week to sort you two out.”

“You been up yet, Ector?” asked Elliot.

“No,” said George, unable to keep the wistfulness out of her voice.

“Me neither,” said Elliot. “Fontana went yesterday.”

“The instructor yelled at me the entire time,” said Fontana. “I’ve never been so nervous in my life—not even my first time flying solo. I almost forgot my sweep checks before I did my chandelle. I would have washed out for sure if I hadn’t remembered in time.”

“At least you had a good landing,” said Elliot. “Our turn will come,” she added.

George thought about everything she’d have to remember up in the air. It wasn’t like Enid, where, if she made a mistake, she’d probably only hurt herself. Here the planes were so thick in the air, they sometimes had to land at other bases.

“Speaking of chandelles,” said Elliot. “Look up.” A PT-19 overhead banked into a 180-degree turn.

“Beautiful,” said Fontana. “I bet that instructor’s not yelling.”

“You think that’s Shaw?” asked Elliot.

“Don’t know,” said George. “Could be anyone, I guess.” But somehow, she knew it had to be Vivian, executing that perfect 180-degree right chandelle. The sunbathers applauded, and then, as the pilot executed a snap roll, they leaped up and whooped and waved.

“Oh, he’s yelling now,” said Elliot. George’s pride in her friend curdled to fear. An instructor would never have authorized that snap roll. If that was Vivian, she’d wash out for showing off.

George kept her ears open as she went through the chow line, listening for whispers of “washed out,” “sent home.” She nearly dropped her tray in relief when Vivian shouted, “Ector! Over here!”

“God, I wouldn’t dare,” said Vivian when George told her about the snap roll. “Maybe it was Anderson. She’s pretty full of herself after her perfect performance on the Link.” Vivian’s own flight had been uneventful. “But”—she winked—“you would have liked my chandelle too.”

Back in the barracks, they heard Anderson was gone. Washed out for the snap roll.

When George climbed into the cockpit for her own first flight, her hands trembled.

But by the time she started the engine, the routine of the preflight checklist had steadied her.

Her takeoff was textbook, her flight uneventful, her instructor, if not impressed, at least not disappointed.

A few days later, Jenssen washed out for sloppy stick and rudder technique.

LaFollette washed out for suffering air sickness on a particularly turbulent day.

Worst of all, Fontana washed out for a rough landing.

Back in the bay, Fontana crammed her beautiful clothing into her trunk. Vivian tried to help, but Fontana batted her hands away. “I can do it. I’m not a child.”

“We just want to help,” said George.

“Well, you can’t.” Fontana whipped out the door without saying goodbye, leaving her zoot suits on the bunk.

A week later, she wrote to Vivian, apologizing. “I don’t know what came over me.”

But George knew. She thought of Helen’s letters, arriving with less frequency, and still unanswered. Letters likely full of news and worries about Frank. Worries only a fiancée was entitled to. George recognized envy when she saw it.