Vanessa looked at her. Joan shrugged. “Maybe that’s you. Character when it counts.”

“So I have character?” Vanessa said. “That’s a nice thought. Not sure I’ve been accused of that before.”

Joan smiled. “Well, let’s see what you do, then. Just how honorable you turn out to be.”

“What did you do?”

“Hm?”

“With Bobby Simpson.”

“Oh, I helped him,” Joan said.

“And did he beat you?”

Joan laughed. “No.” And then: “I am very, very good at math.”

Vanessa threw her head back and cackled, and Joan blushed at the attention it drew. But when Vanessa raised her hand to give her a high five, Joan laughed and returned it.

—

Two days later, Joan walked into the first class on the space shuttle’s design to see that Donna and Lydia were sitting at the front. Griff was talking to naval pilot Hank Redmond and mission specialist Harrison Moreau. There were more guys she didn’t know well yet, mingling in the center. Vanessa was seated in the back.

“This seat free?” Joan asked her.

Vanessa barely looked up as she opened her notebook and grabbed her pen. “Wide open. You’re my only friend so far, Goodwin, you know that.”

“Well, as your friend, don’t call me Goodwin.”

Vanessa glanced up at her. “Oh, c’mon.”

Joan sat down. “Goodwin feels like…” Joan said, trying to explain it. “I’m not sure.”

There was a part that Joan was going to have to play at NASA. She understood that. Wearing the navy polos and khaki chinos she and Donna had gone out and bought together to fit in. Going out drinking together most nights. Hanging with the guys. Entertaining the posturing from the military side. Fine. She could sense what was expected of her. She was ready for it. But for it to extend to what should be the more honest moments…

“It feels like I’m pretending to be somebody else. I call people by their first names. I’d be playacting calling you Ford,” she said. “When really, you’re a full person, with a first name.”

Vanessa put down her pen. “Are you always this earnest?”

Joan had not meant to be particularly earnest, but this was what she was like. “Yes, I believe so.”

Vanessa shook her head and laughed.

“Look, I’ll call you Ford when it’s appropriate,” Joan said. “I’m not entirely opposed to it. I just…you know, if we’re going to be friends, let’s be friends.”

“All right,” Vanessa said with a smile. “Fine, Jo, if that’s what you want, that’s what you got.”

Joan shook her head and rolled her eyes, ready to tell Vanessa that she didn’t go by Jo. That no one had ever called her Jo in her life. But she couldn’t quite make it come off her tongue.

There is a theater above Mission Control that looms over the flight center like a mezzanine hovering over an orchestra. And when Joan first walked in and saw, through the glass, the consoles lined up in rows along the floor and the telemetry up on the screens, she felt a great sense of occasion.