She tried not to roll her eyes, or he’d make a comment about that, too. But he didn’t have to say anything else. The subtext was clear: This is why women don’t belong on the shuttle. Last week, he’d asked Lydia if she was going to be bitchy if she got her period in space. Lydia had laughed, and Joan had had to clench her jaw to keep it shut.

“I almost puked my first time,” Hank said to Joan. “No shame in it.”

Joan closed her eyes. Bless Hank for trying. But she did not need to be consoled, either. She just needed everyone to shut up.

As the plane began to rise once more, Joan felt the air gain heft underneath her, and her stomach somersaulted.

Her body rose into the air. As she lifted farther, Joan closed her eyes like she had all of the other times. She’d thought that weightlessness would feel like floating in a pool. But to her, it felt more like being thrashed around in the ocean. She braced against it, but that didn’t work. She tried to think of it differently, to remember the times she’d swum past the breakers and felt the ocean lift her briefly as the waves surged and then gently brought her back down. She thought of being in the ocean with Barbara as a kid, the way Barbara had clung to her, and Joan would tell her she was okay.

Her stomach began to roil.

Joan gave up on that idea and opened her eyes. She looked at her legs and pulled them into her chest. Her stomach calmed.

“You’re gettin’ it,” Hank said.

Seconds later, the plane began to level out, but she kept her eyes open. As the weight of the air landed on her back, she looked at Jimmy. He was holding on to the padding on the side of the plane, and as he began to drop, his eyes went wide and blinked over and over again, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his breath became shallow.

Joan realized he was terrified.

And it did not excuse his attitude. But she understood, finally.

Jimmy had been told from a young age that fear and failing and trying and wanting and openness and kindness and sincerity made him weak. And because he had believed it, he’d learned to suppress all of those things. And when he saw those traits in others, he hated them because he hated himself.

Jimmy was hiding. That’s what Jimmy was doing. Lydia was, too—because she was trying to prove she could be like Jimmy. And Joan was falling for it.