“What do you mean?”
“I can show you if you have time.”
I nodded.
When we reached her camp, Abigail retrieved the snowshoes and handed them to me. “I know the perfect place,” she said.
I strapped on the snowshoes and grabbed a pair of poles, wondering what we were really doing. Bob leaped in the air, trying to catch every single flake in his mouth. Every now and then he’d bark at the snow as if to say, Slow down, I can’t keep up!
“Follow me!” Abigail said.
She set out in a direction opposite from last time. Bob and I followed. Snow fell around us, but the forest’s pine-branch canopy acted like a shield. We hiked in silence. I breathed. The trees stood silent guard. I stared at their massive trunks and wondered how long they had lived there, growing and protecting.
A line of bark bulged up the side of one tree like a thick rope. “What’s this?” I asked.
“Sugar maple.”
I took off my glove and felt it—rough, but sturdy and strong. Nothing was going to knock it down.
“What caused this?” I asked, pointing to the ropelike bulge that ran up the entire tree.
“It was hit by lightning. That bulge shows the bolt’s path from tip to root.”
It was hard to imagine the power of a lightning bolt running the length of this tree. Yet here it stood, scarred but alive. I gave it a grateful pat.
We continued hiking until I was so warm I had to unzip my coat. My muscles burned and I was about to ask if we could take a rest when Abigail said, “This is it.”
We exited the protection of the forest and hiked into a snow-filled field that seemed to stretch forever. There wasn’t a branch, or rock, or anything breaking up its colorless blanket. In the middle, there was a hill with a gradual slope. Abigail snowshoed toward its peak. At the top, she lifted her face and arms to the sky, and it made me think of the sugar maple tree—scarred but still standing. When I caught up to her, she had this content look on her face that reminded me of how Dad looked on a day off, when it was just us in our pajamas settling in to do a puzzle.
“Ready?” she asked. Then she plopped down, butt first, lying in the heavy snow as if she was going to make a snow angel. “Come on, try it!”
I copied her, falling back, letting the fat, heavy snowflakes fall on my face. I giggled.
“Now put your hands up to the sides of your face. In front more. Try to keep your palms flat, making like a tunnel so you can only see up. That’s it. Now stare into the sky.”
I did as she said, concentrating on the cotton-ball snow falling directly at me like a meteor shower. Suddenly, my body felt as if it were slowly rising. Up, up, up. Levitating like in a magician’s trick. Higher and higher. But I didn’t have time to be scared because it felt right and wonderful. I was so light and free. Floating toward space. And I couldn’t help but laugh when I heard Abigail sing:
Come, Josephine, in my flying machine
Going up, she goes, up she goes
Balance yourself like a bird on a beam
In the air she goes, there she goes
Up, up, a little bit higher
Oh my, the moon is on fire
Come, Josephine, in my flying machine
Going up, all on, goodbye
Then Abigail started laughing, too. We laughed and sang because we felt so good soaring and singing through that snowstorm, and maybe no one else would understand because most people try to get out of the snow, but Abigail and I did, and we had a secret now. We could fly.
Finally, Abigail sat up, laughing and breathing hard. Her scarves had slipped back, revealing her wrinkly apple skin. “Ohhh, that was wonderful. I haven’t done that in ages,” she said.
“That was so cool! How did you make it feel like we were really flying?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. Abigail was magic.
“Well, most people don’t have the patience to try. But really, it’s perspective. When you put your hands up to the sides of your face, you block out your peripheral vision. When you focus only on the falling snow, you feel like your body is rising.”
“Kind of like the time when I was sitting in our Fiesta while Mom was in the grocery store and the car next to us started backing up. And I got scared because I thought our car was rolling forward until I looked over and saw the other car was moving, not us.”
“Your perspective can change everything,” she said.
And I knew it was true. In the other schools I’d been to in the last two years, it had never bothered me to skip school. But missing today continued to nag at me.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Abigail said.
I don’t know if it was because I felt safe out there in the middle of that snow-filled field. Maybe it was because my brain had started to freeze. But I told Abigail all about Mom and getting arrested and how scared I was that she was going to disappear on me, too.
“Ever since we left DC,” I said, “Mom keeps saying everything is going to work out when it never does. It’s like she doesn’t see the bad stuff until it’s real bad, and then she wants to pack and move.” I scooped up a handful of snow and formed it into a ball. “And she gets to make all the decisions … where we go, when we leave, when we don’t. Nothing I want matters.”
“Have you told her how you feel?”
I didn’t answer.
Abigail nodded. “Well, that would be a good place to start.”
I turned toward Abigail and suddenly she seemed smaller to me, as if the worries I had unloaded were now weighing her down.
“I know it doesn’t seem fair,” she said. “But your mom is trying to do what she thinks is best.”
“I guess. Sometimes I wish I could be more like her. She’s not afraid to say anything to anyone. She never worries that people will think what she says is dumb.” I tossed my snowball and watched it disappear into the heavy snow. “I could never be that way.”
“There is a power to quiet, too.” Abigail pulled off her scarf and rewrapped it. “The problem comes when you don’t speak at all. Then you’re letting someone else tell your story.” She stared at her snow-covered boots. “No one knows that better than me.”
Snowflakes collected on our clothes and hair and I wondered how long it would be before we were completely buried. I wondered whether anyone would even notice. Then I shook my head, sending the flakes flying. Mom would notice. Cecy would notice. Ahmad would notice.
“I’m supposed to be in school today,” I said. “But there’s this Wax Museum, and I’m … I can’t do it.”
“Ah, the famous Wax Museum.” Abigail pulled a paper bag from her sack. “Rye bread with butter?” she asked. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was until she handed it to me. “Who are you going to be?”
“Michael Collins. One of the astronauts from Apollo 11.”
“Oh, I know Mike.”
“You’ve heard of him?”
“No. I know him.”
“You know the astronaut Michael Collins? Like, you’ve met him?”
“I worked with Mike and Buzz and Neil.”
I stared at her while she brushed bread crumbs off her pants. Even though Cecy had told me what she remembered about Abigail from when she was little, I was still having a hard time matching that Abigail Jacobs with the Abigail I knew.
She noticed me staring. “You don’t believe me.”
“I … Well … um, that’s a big deal. You … What did you do?”
Abigail winced, as if it physically hurt her to remember. I worried I’d asked too many questions and she was going to disappear on me again. But after a moment she said, “Back in the sixties and seventies, I worked with some of the first computers.”
“What did you do?” I asked again.
“I wrote code.” Abigail stared blankly into the gray sky. “Computers were still relatively new and I was fascinated by them. Software engineering classes didn’t even exist yet. I learned everything on my own, then applied to work as a computer programmer in
Boston. It was a long drive from here, but we needed the money and the facility I applied to work at needed labor, so they were willing to hire women.” She gave me a knowing look. “They weren’t always so generous with us. Anyway, soon after I started, we got a contract with NASA.” She smiled. “It was thrilling. We worked long hours, but it was my team that wrote the code that instructed the Eagle first to land on the moon, and then launched it to rendezvous with the Columbia.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had seen lots of photos of the scientists who worked on the Apollo 11 moon landing. They always showed groups of men with thick glasses and short-sleeved shirts and ties. There were no women. There was no Abigail Jacobs.
“Why doesn’t anyone know about this?” I asked.
“Well, you know I’m not much of a talker.” She shrugged. “But the real reason is that it was top secret. I had high-level security clearance. The United States was in a competitive space race with the Soviet Union then. To discuss anything outside of work would have been treason. Even my husband didn’t know what I was working on.”
I really wanted to believe Abigail. I had heard about women like Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson, who helped put the first men in space. No one knew about them until the book Hidden Figures. But if people had finally learned about them, why didn’t anyone know about Abigail? I had researched her name in every possible way, but nothing ever came up about a computer programmer named Abigail Jacobs.
Then I remembered one piece of evidence that could confirm her story.
“Do you have a moon rock in your house?” I asked.
“So they are still talking about me.” She gave a weak smile. “None of that matters anymore. It’s almost like it never happened.”
We sat in silence eating our bread and butter. Then in a soft voice Abigail said, “You know, Ruby, if you’d like, you can practice your Wax Museum speech in front of me.”
I shook my head. But I thought about how easy it was to talk to Abigail. I thought maybe if she came to the Wax Museum, and sat in the front and I stared straight at her and pretended I was only talking to her … I took a deep breath. “If I did the Wax Museum, would you come?”
Abigail’s eyes darkened and the sadness seemed to wrap around her like her layers of scarves. After a few moments she mumbled, “Oh—oh dear. With everyone in town? At the school? No. No, I can’t…” She popped up. “We need to go,” she said. She snowshoed toward the woods. Bob followed immediately, diving in and out of the snow like a seal.
I stood, giving the gray sky one last glance. My face felt hot and I bit my lip. Why did my words always ruin everything? I hurried to catch up, worried Abigail was on her way back to her shed so she could lock herself inside and disappear.
As we hiked in silence, the snow turned to light flurries. After another hour or so of silence, I finally looked around and realized we’d made our way to the hill with the Moon Bench.
“How about a rest before we head back?” Abigail said as she fell onto the bench.
It was late afternoon. The storm was over and the setting sun stretched across the mountains in the distance. Even though we had hiked all day, I wasn’t in any hurry to return to an empty house or face Mom.
I fell onto the bench next to Abigail.
I don’t know if it was our hike or flying in the snowstorm, or if there was just something about the Moon Bench, but right then, I knew that I had to make a decision—either quit school or do the Wax Museum. And if I did the Wax Museum, the laughter and whispers would continue. If I did it, no matter how hard I worked, I’d probably still mess up.
Having to make this decision made me angry.
I was angry at Dad for leaving us. Angry at Mom for getting arrested. Angry at Mr. Andrews for making it so hard to get out of his stupid Wax Museum. Tears tried to escape, but I held my breath and squeezed my eyes tight.
But as mad as I was, a thought kept pushing its way into my head.
Maybe there was more than being silent and invisible. Maybe, down deep, I could be like Mom and Annie. Maybe I did have a voice.
Sitting high above the world, with the sun resting on top of the mountains, I began to feel like I really had traveled into space. The sky was turning pink and orange and purple and all those colors swirled around me and through me until they were part of me. I tried to look away, but I couldn’t, and that made me even madder because I didn’t want to be part of something so beautiful when I felt so ugly.
I leaned in to Abigail. She put her arm around me and combed my hair with her fingers. Then in a whisper she breathed my name: “Ruby Moon.”
I lifted my chin to look into her watery eyes.
“If you speak at the Wax Museum, Ruby, I will come.”
And I nodded because I knew how hard that would be for her, but I knew she would do it for me. And I thought, if Abigail could do that, then maybe I could, too. Maybe I could be brave enough to travel to the far side of the moon. Maybe I could be brave enough to speak in front of all those people.
The sun fell below the earth and the black grew and grew until the beautiful streaks of purple and orange and pink gave way to the dark. Without a word, Abigail stood and I followed her back to camp.
CHAPTER
11
I spent the weekend writing my Wax Museum index cards. Mom didn’t mention our fight or the fact that I skipped school. But she seemed really happy when I asked her to drive me to Fortin’s Babcock Library to check out every book on Michael Collins and Apollo 11. She was even happier Sunday night when I packed my backpack for school. She must have told Cecy about it, because she came over with homemade chicken soup and kept asking if it made me feel better, which it kind of did.
On Monday morning, I brought in the best set of index cards I could come up with. As I handed them in, Mr. Andrews gave me a smile and a quick nod. “Welcome back, Ruby,” he said with his crinkly eyes. “We missed you on Friday.”
When he’d collected cards from every student, he told us, “I will work diligently on these and hope to get them back to you by the end of next week for final revisions.”
Kids groaned.
“Today we are going to work on costumes,” he said. “Start by sketching your outfit. You’ll need to brainstorm items that will bring your character to life. If you’re Malala Yousafzai, what do your clothes look like? What did Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins bring to the moon? What does Sonia Sotomayor need for court? Princess Diana, how will you wear your hair?”
“Oh, I already know, Mr. Andrews.” Dakota beamed.
Of course she does, I thought.
“We have three weeks until the Wax Museum. It will go faster than you think, so let’s begin.”
* * *
Over the next week, Mom stayed busy. When she wasn’t working or meeting with Annie or trying to convince the waitresses to stand up to Chatty, she was too tired to even ask what I was doing. She didn’t know that I was spending every afternoon snowshoeing and feeding the birds with Abigail. As much as I loved spending time with Abigail, inside I was counting the days until the trial was over and we could move back to our real forever home in Washington, DC.
On the last day of January, I headed to Abigail’s after school as usual, but when Bob and I reached the NO TRESPASSING sign, I froze. A police cruiser sat parked at the bottom of her driveway, motor running. Exhaust poured from its tailpipe.
I sped toward Abigail’s camp, skidding in the fresh snow, Bob at my heels. When we reached the campfire, I was immediately relieved to see that Abigail wasn’t hurt. But something was wrong. She stood in front of her boarded-up house, wrapped in her scarves, arms crossed. Even with only a sliver of her face exposed, I could see anger flashing from her eyes at the officer, who I recognized as Prattle. Bob barked.
Prattle spun toward me. “Hold that dog!” He clutched a piece of paper and a hammer. I gripped Bob’s leash. Prattle spoke to Abigail. “It’s a new law,” he said, pointing the hammer at the boarded-up house. “I n
eed to go inside to see if it’s livable. I need to make sure you have running water and working electricity.”
Abigail fidgeted with her scarves.
“Okay, I guess we’ll have to do this the hard way.” Prattle took an awkward step onto the wide stone. His feet sank into the snow. He nailed the paper to the front door. In bold letters it read: NOTICE OF CONDEMNATION. With each blow of the hammer, the house shook.
“You have two weeks to either let us inspect this house to make sure it’s livable or you need to vacate the premises,” he said. “If you don’t, you’ll be subject to fine and arrest.”
I wanted to tell him to stop. I wanted to tell him that she was perfectly fine the way things were. Instead, I tugged on Bob’s leash and ducked behind Abigail.
“Who are you?” Prattle squinted at me.
I stared at my boots, letting my hair fall forward.
“Ruby helps me feed the birds,” Abigail said.
Prattle shook his head. “Well, maybe you can talk some sense into her,” he said to me. Then he turned and headed up the driveway toward his cruiser.
Abigail’s head dropped and I was sure she was about to disappear on me. Instead she said, “How about a snowshoe?”
* * *
As we headed into the forest I glanced over my shoulder, half-expecting Officer Prattle to return.
“Aren’t you worried?” I asked.
“Worried about what?”
“Worried about what just happened. They’re going to arrest you if you don’t fix your house and move out of your shed.”
Abigail shook her head. “They can’t,” she whispered.
Even though it was freezing, my face felt hot.
“Abigail, why won’t you live in your house?”
Abigail kept hiking.
“Where is your family?”
I thought about all the things Abigail and I had talked about: the moon, which seeds the chickadees liked best, how much she loved waking up to deer sleeping outside her shed. But, as if we had some unspoken rule, I had never asked her about her house, or about Dakota’s story, or about the name staring up at me from my snowshoes: LILLIAN JACOBS.
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