Page 2 of The Light Year (Stardust Beach #6)

. . .

Barbie

Jo Booker is holding Barbie’s hands so tightly in her own that they have become one knotted mass of fingers and white knuckles.

The women sit, side by side, eyes trained on the radio before them as if they can somehow will their husbands’ images into view, rather than just the dead air that the audio provides.

Dave Huggins, NASA’s official photographer, is crouched in one corner, face hidden by his camera. He is quietly snapping shots of the scene. Both women have long since ceased to hear the click of his shutter.

“Mission control to Gemini,” Arvin North’s scratchy voice says. Barbie’s hands tighten involuntarily on Jo’s as they wait to hear a response. None comes.

“They are currently at one full revolution per second,” comes another voice from mission control. Barbie glances at Jo and sees a tear sliding down her perfectly placid face. All the blood has drained away in the mere minutes it’s taken for their husbands to go into a catastrophic roll in space.

The elation they’d both felt as the men successfully docked Gemini with the other space shuttle was quickly replaced by fear as Bill’s voice had come through the radio, letting mission control know that they were in a roll.

The women's joyous hand-holding had morphed into them hanging onto one another for dear life.

“Jo,” Barbie rasps, tugging at her friend’s hands now, trying to pull her back from wherever she’s gone mentally. “They’re going to be okay, aren't they?”

Jo turns to her with haunted eyes. Her pupils are fully dilated, and she looks as though they’ve already gotten the final, terrible news that their husbands won’t be coming home.

“Jo?” Barbie tries again, freeing one of her hands and pressing it to Jo’s pale cheek. “They’re going to come out of this. They have to.”

In her own words and tone, Barbie hears desperation.

There is no alternative outcome for her: Todd will return to Earth safely.

He has to. They have three little boys and a whole life ahead of them to live—together.

She will not leave Cape Kennedy today without word that her husband is alert and making a safe return.

From the first time they met, Todd had been her safe place, her love, her protector. Life without him is not an option.

Barbie loses herself in Jo’s blank stare for a long moment, flashing back on a life that’s already been so rich and full. She sees Todd walking down the hall of her high school, books under his arm, looking apprehensive as he assessed the other students who lined the shiny hallway.

“Who’s that?” Barbie’s best friend, Catherine, had whispered, nudging Barbie with a sharp elbow.

“I heard he’s our new scholarship kid,” Octavia said.

Octavia, the first among them to get a car of her own and to lose her virginity in the back of it (to Bryant Parker, no less, who they all knew was Octavia’s third cousin, even if she hotly denied it), curled her lip in outward distaste, though her eyes sparked with curiosity and desire as she took in the handsome blonde boy.

“Probably poor as dirt, but he looks like a great kisser.”

Barbie watched him with interest. He held his head high, a tentative smile on his lips as he searched the numbers over the doors, looking for his next class.

Without thinking it through, Barbie peeled away from Catherine and Octavia, walking over to the boy and offering him her own tentative smile.

This was a forward move, to be sure, but it was also 1954, and the times were changing.

After all, this wasn’t the twenties or thirties, when Barbie’s mother would have been chastised endlessly and called “loose” or “fast” for approaching a strange boy; this was a new era.

Eisenhower was in office; schools were being desegregated; Bill Haley and the Comets were on the radio; the US was developing the first atomic submarine.

But for all of that, there was still one line that was difficult to cross: that of class.

And, without question, Todd Roman wasn’t one of them.

His school uniform looked like those of the other boys, but something about the way he wore his hair, or the unstudied way he tied his necktie, gave away his lack of a pedigree.

But Barbie didn’t care. The moment she was standing in front of him, her books clutched to her heaving bosom as her heart raced, she saw his straight, white smile, and knew he was the one.

“Hi,” Barbie said breathlessly. “You look lost.”

“I was, but I think I just got found.” Todd’s smile grew even wider, and from any other guy, this would have seemed like a put on. But when Todd said it, it sounded genuine. And funny. Barbie laughed out loud at his unexpected good humor.

“Where are you headed?” she asked, bending forward to try to read the class schedule he held in his hand. It was upside down, and she reached for it, glancing at the neat cursive of the school secretary. “Ah. Mr. Woods. He teaches American Lit. I’m on my way there myself.”

“Can I tag along?” Todd asked.

Barbie nodded eagerly. “You can,” she said. “I’m Barbara Mackey.”

“Barbara Mackey—my guardian angel.” Todd eyed the rest of the kids as they watched Todd and Barbie with suspicion.

She’d broken free of the pack and done the unthinkable: attached herself to a total stranger, an outsider, a newcomer. And she loved the way it made her feel.

“You can call me Barbie,” she said, her heart going soft as she looked into his trusting eyes.

“And you can call me your biggest fan.” Todd gave her a look that said he knew what he was up against in this new environment. “But everyone else calls me Todd Roman.”

“Todd,” Barbie said, falling into step beside him as they made their way to Mr. Woods’s room. “Todd Roman. I like the sound of that...”

“Roman?” Arvin North’s voice crackles on the speaker again, and Barbie is yanked out of her reverie. She drags her eyes away from Jo’s as the door of the room opens. A man stands there, his name tag swinging on a lanyard around his neck.

“Mrs. Booker. Mrs. Roman,” he says, looking at them with gravity.

“Mr. North has asked that I remove the radio from the room for the time being. We’ll update you as soon as we know more.

” He makes a move to take the radio, but Jo snaps out of her trance as he does, and she looks up at him with sparks in her eyes.

“No, you will leave it,” Jo says, holding up a hand. The man, clearly not used to taking orders from a woman, stops. He looks at them uncertainly, and then back at the door as if reinforcements might appear there. “We have a right to know what happens to our husbands as it happens.”

The man appears to be on the cusp of making a decision, though it’s unclear which way it will go. He takes another step towards the radio.

Jo stands. “I said leave it,” she insists. “I’ll deal with Arvin North later.”

The man looks at her with disbelief. “Ma’am,” he says half-heartedly.

Jo walks to the door and holds the knob. “We’re fine in here, thank you,” she says. The tear that had snaked down her face was now dried, leaving a light trail of mascara in its wake.

With the man gone, Jo sits again and takes Barbie’s hands, this time more gently. She’s back, and she takes a deep breath, shaking her head and sitting up straighter.

“Barbie,” Jo says, rubbing her lips together before she speaks. “Our men are going to fix this. I know it in my heart.”

Barbie watches her friend’s face, and something about Jo’s certainty brings her a sense of peace. She exhales and lets her shoulders drop slightly as she sits back against the stiff cushions of the couch. “Okay,” Barbie says, nodding. “Okay.”

Dave Huggins repositions himself in the room, reminding them he’s still there. He’s a master at blending into the scenery, and as they’ve sat there together, he’s continued to snap photos, but as unobtrusively as possible.

“Gemini to mission control,” comes Bill’s voice. He sounds a million miles away. “Booker here.”

A cheer goes up from mission control. It’s been nearly a minute of absolute radio silence from space, and everyone on the ground has feared the worst.

“Booker,” Arvin North says with force. “I need you to put all your attention towards roll thruster number eight. Can you do that?”

Bill mutters something unintelligible.

“Commander Booker,” Arvin North says loudly. “Stay awake. Stay focused. Roll thruster eight has been firing continuously, and we think it’s causing the roll. I need you to shut it off.”

There are sounds from space that the women can’t quite identify, but they’re both on the edge of their seats as they wait for Bill to manage this feat—whatever it may entail.

“I,” Bill says. “I can’t.”

“You can. You must.”

Bill is breathing heavily. “Number eight,” he rasps. “Okay.”

The conditions in space are unimaginable for Barbie, and she is absolutely desperate to hear her husband’s voice.

Todd has said nothing for quite some time, and this makes her incredibly uneasy.

But for the moment, it’s easy to focus all her attention on what Bill is doing and to hope it works so that he can stop the roll.

“Have you located the thruster?” North asks, guiding Bill as if he’s leading a blind person through a task. “It’s going to be to the left on your panel. A string of square buttons that runs vertically. Number eight will be at the bottom.”

“I see it,” Bill says. He sounds strained and distant. “I got it.”

For a long, tense moment, everything hangs in the balance.

There is silence in the room, as Barbie, Jo, and Dave Huggins all wait.

Mission control is quiet. The only noise is a wailing from down the hall, where Barbie’s youngest son, three-year-old Huck, has been left in the care of a young secretary charged with watching him.

“Mommmmyyyy,” Huck cries. He sounds more tired than aggrieved, and Barbie pushes his cries from her mind as she waits. Even the pleas of her youngest child aren’t going to pull her from this seat until she knows what’s going to happen to Todd and Bill.

“Prepare to disengage… roll thruster eight,” Bill says with obvious difficulty. It touches Barbie’s heart to hear him using the formal protocol when all anyone wants is for him to push the damn button.

Barbie and Jo hold their breath.

“Roll thruster eight is disengaged,” comes Arvin North’s voice.

Instead of cheering, there is a pause from mission control as they wait to see whether this will do the trick.

Time ticks by slowly, and Vance Majors says a few words to Todd and Bill that are clearly meant to keep the dialogue going and to not leave the men alone as they wait to see what happens.

“Roll speed is slowing,” North says. “We are now rolling at about half the speed we were before turning off the thruster.”

This should be a cause for celebration, but everyone remains subdued.

“Roll has reduced to one revolution every five-point-two seconds,” North says. And then after a long pause: “Roll reduced to one revolution every ten seconds.” They wait for what feels like an eternity. “Roll has ceased.”

Now, finally, mission control breaks into wild applause and cheering, and Barbie turns to Jo.

They have the same look in their eyes, and without speaking, Barbie knows Jo is just as happy as she is about the maneuver, but also just as fearful that one or both of their husbands has suffered terribly and may not make it home.

Jo opens her arms and Barbie falls into them. Dave Huggins snaps a few shots of them embracing, though from a slight distance, so as not to interrupt their moment.

“They did it,” Jo says, reaching up to swipe at the tears Barbie hasn’t even realized are streaming from her own eyes. She laughs as Jo’s thumbs brush against her cheeks.

“Bill did it,” Barbie says. In this moment, Bill is an absolute hero to her. Whatever he did up there is going to bring their men home, and they’ll deal with everything else once Gemini lands safely. “I just want to hear his voice,” she whispers, so only Jo can hear. “I want to hear him awake.”

“You will,” Jo promises, just as Huck begins to wail from down the hall again. “Go get your little guy, and we’ll entertain him in here while we listen.”

Gratefully, Barbie rushes out the door. All she wants is to feel Huck’s warm, squirmy body in her arms, to feel his tear-stained face against her cheek. All she wants is to hear Todd speak, for him to be alert, for him to be home.

All she wants is for her world to be whole again.