Page 50 of Every Almost

"How did they even come up with?—!"

"Oh, goodness," Helen said as she watched both Frank and Charlie get lost in their clipped shouting match aboutthe ships. "And they're still going." Katie giggled beside her as Frank and Charlie talked with their hands, making motions that looked like fighter jets banking through warfare and explosions cascading across a wide area. "I think I'm going to have to be the one to drive us home," Helen confessed.

"I think that's a really good idea, Mrs. Beckman," Katie agreed, smiling up at her.

And Mrs. Beckman did drive home, because Charlie and Frank talked for the entire thirty-two miles back to Shelbyville. Frank listened to Charlie and Charlie listened to Frank, especially when he explained details she hadn't noticed in the movie that were direct copycats of propulsion figures in real life. Katie fell asleep in the front seat before they hit the county line. Seated in the back, Charlie and Frank's conversation was still going when Helen pulled into the Beckmans' driveway.

Once Mrs. Beckman had parked, turned off the engine, and stirred Katie so she could get her out of the car, they all exited and stood together outside, looking up at the sky.

"You know who you sound like right now?" Frank asked, turning to Charlie.

"Who?"

"Me. Forty years ago," Frank said. "It was the first time I saw a Dauntless on the flight deck." Charlie beamed at him. He laughed. "That's no small feeling, kiddo."

Charlie sat with that, letting the feeling that there was some part of her that was just like Frank fill her with warmth.

She looked up and saw that the stars were just beginning to show through the blue-black of early evening, faint and impossibly far away. She stared at them as if she were seeing them for the first time. Before today they'd been lights. Now they were plans.

Katie walked forward and stood next to Charlie. Blinking up at the stars, popcorn butter still on her chin, Katie studied Charlie's face in the porch light. Her sister's face was quiet and serious in a way that told Katie she understood what had just happened.

Katie didn't saymaybeand she didn't laugh. She reached out for Charlie's hand and grabbed it, holding her pinky the tightest. Charlie looked down at Katie and smiled at her sister's sleepy face, then returned her gaze to the sky.

"I'm going to build those," she said.

She meant the ships. The machines that moved through nothing and worked anyway. The impossible things that somebody had to design and somebody had to build and somebody had to understand from the exhaust port to the hull. She wasn't just dreaming. She was deciding.

"I know," Katie said. "Just make sure you take me with you when you do." And the way she said it, quiet and certain and without a shred of doubt, became the most important statement anyone had ever said to Charlie Wickett, with one condition she'd never forget.

Charlie smiled back at her little sister, a real smile, the biggest one, the kind she saved for Katie and nobody else. She reached out and ruffled Katie's hair, causing Katie to swat sleepily at Charlie's hand and duck away. When Katie made contact, Charlie grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. She held on for a long time, her arms tight, her chin on top of Katie's head, holding on when you've just decided you will never, ever let go.

Behind them, Frank wrapped his arm around Helen, and she leaned her head on his shoulder. Neither of them said a word.

Katie pushed against Charlie as they parted. "Why'd you have to get all sappy?"

Charlie laughed. "Come on, Kit-Kat," she said, pulling Katie towards the kitchen door. "I'm sure Mrs. Beckman needs our help wrangling up dinner."

"You bet I do." Helen replied, following Katie as she broke away from Charlie into the house. "We're having meatloaf!"

"Yes!" Katie said, walking through the door.

Frank gazed at Charlie and gave her a wink. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and led her towards the house.

And the two of them walked through the side door together, the stars still burning behind them in the Indiana sky.

Junior year of high school,Charlie ran out of science classes. Shelbyville High didn't have anything left to teach her, so she started taking the bus to Indianapolis on Saturdays to use the university library, reading college-level textbooks on materials science and thermodynamics while other kids her age went to football games and house parties.

When the Apple II arrived at school on a metal cart, one beige box that the science teacher guarded like a museum piece, Charlie was the first student to touch it. She learned BASIC in a week and wrote a program that calculated orbital trajectories because of Star Wars, because she needed to know how the Millennium Falconactually worked.Then she took the computer apart. Mr. Hendricks nearly passed out. She had it back together and running better by the end of the period, and that was the afternoon she understood what she was. Not just a smart girl. Not a pretty girl.

Charlie was an engineer.

But that didn't make sense to the general population of Shelbyville. The guidance counselor at school suggested nursing.

"Nursing?" Charlie questioned.

"It's a reputable career, Ms. Wickett."

"I'm aware of that Mr. Draper. One of the most incredible people I know was a nurse in World War II," Charlie deadpanned.