Chapter 1

 

 

 

“The moon just blew up!” That was what CJ said when he came running into the house that day in June 1965. It was almost eight in the evening.

CJ was my older brother. His real name was Charles Robert Donohue, Jr., but he hated Charles, Charlie, Chuck, Bob, and Junior; CJ was the only iteration he didn’t hate from a young age. Of course I shouldn’t say anything—I go by Joey even though my birth name is Michaela Jo Donohue, but come on, Michaela? Back when they’d both been young and growing up in West Virginia, my parents had known someone who’d named her little girl Michaela, and for some inexplicable reason they’d been smitten by the name. I, sadly, have never been able to say the same. Fortunately I was a tomboy from birth, so “Joey” suited me just fine.

CJ was pretty decent, as older brothers go. He was four years older than me, but he’d never bullied me or been otherwise mean. When we were both little, he’d let me tag along on his expeditions. True, he’d once put a Jerusalem cricket—possibly the biggest, ugliest, worst-smelling insect found in all of Southern California—in my bed and laughed like crazy when I’d screamed. But he’d apologized afterward, and I frankly sort of thought Jerusalem crickets were cool—they reminded me of the big plastic bug in my Cootie game. I’d made him take the cricket back out to the dirt trail that ran between our backyard and the fenced-in, concrete-lined runoff channel we all called “the wash.”

I also liked CJ because he was always popular at school. He’d been elected class president at San Diablo High when he was still a freshman. I liked his friends and girlfriends, and (much to our scientist father’s horror) he wanted to go into politics someday. He planned on majoring in political science at college, and he was smart enough that his counselors at school figured he’d land a scholarship with no problem. CJ’s popularity was good for me, too; because people liked him, they automatically liked me. Well, at least a few did—I’ve never been as good at the handshaking and glad-handing thing. I had Debbie Curtis, who’d been my best friend since before either of us could even talk, and sometimes we hung out with Matthew Visser, who lived halfway down our block and was weird enough to be both intriguing and kind of scary…but otherwise I didn’t have a lot of friends. Not like CJ did, anyway.

1965 didn’t start off seeming so different. I was in my last year of elementary school and was looking forward to starting junior high in the fall; CJ was a high school sophomore. By June, all of the kids were out of school, with three glorious months of summer freedom before us. CJ was usually off with his friends, Mom had all of her social activities, and as for Dad…well, we never saw Dad anyway, so I’d have the house all to myself for most of the summer.

That summer had started with two events I most especially remember: On June 3^rd, Ed White became the first American astronaut to step outside the safety of his Gemini capsule and into outer space, and we watched the event on our brand-new color Magnavox television while my mother glowed with pride (and a few martinis) and told us, “That fellow wouldn’t be out there if it weren’t for your father.” What exactly Dad had to do with the space walk, I don’t think Mom had the vaguest idea. We only knew that he worked in the aerospace industry, often spending weeks out at Edwards Air Force Base in the middle of the Mojave desert.

The second big deal was the Rolling Stones. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was released in that same month, and suddenly the rock and roll music that all our parents had decided they could live with because it wasn’t going away got dirty. Every night, as the sun went down on another hot Southern California summer day, all the teenagers would saunter out to plop down on their front lawns with transistor radios tuned to station KHJ, waiting for the next play of “Satisfaction.” You could walk along the street, the sky still barely light overhead, and hear that guitar riff echoing out of dozens of tinny little handheld radios. I wasn’t quite old enough yet to hang out with the rest of them, but I liked the song (which I somehow guessed had something to do with—gasp!—sex), and I liked being able to hear it all up and down my street.

What I didn’t know then was how those two things—space stuff and teenagers—were about to intersect. Nobody knew, not even my father…and he was responsible for it.

This particular June evening, Mom and Dad and I were inside; it was one of those rare nights when Dad was not only home but was home early. Mom was washing up after dinner; Dad was scanning the newspaper, and I was rereading a Fantastic Four comic (featuring the Sub-Mariner, whom my pre-adolescent self had developed kind of a crush on). CJ had been outside with all the other teens, but he suddenly came rushing in through the front door, breathless.

“The moon just blew up!”

We all kind of stopped and looked up at him, waiting for the punch line or something; but instead he kept going. “I swear, something’s going on—there’s a huge part of the sky where the moon should be that’s all lit up and full of smoke and stuff!”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dad said, putting his paper down.

“Dad, you gotta come and see!”

I didn’t wait for Dad—I got up, went to the sliding glass doors that led out to the backyard, and ran out.

Sure enough, a big section of the sky overhead was glowing, way brighter than the surrounding areas shading toward dusk, and there seemed to be a sort of roiling rim around the glow. A few seconds later Dad joined me, and I heard him whisper, “I’ll be goddamned.”

That was weird for two reasons: first of all, nothing ever surprised my Dad; and secondly, he never used curse words.

“What is it, Dad? Is it the moon? Did the Russians blow up the moon?” We were all obsessed with the Russians, who we were convinced were determined to nuke every last American.

“No, of course not. The moon’s fine. It’s a rocket test. One of ours.”

We’d seen rocket tests before, of course, living in the cradle of America’s aerospace industry…but they were usually just tiny white trails in the sky, not huge white splotches like this.

I looked from the sky to my dad and asked, “Did you work on it?”

My dad stared at the sky for a few more seconds before turning away. I thought I heard him murmur, “This shouldn’t have happened.”

He left to go back to work right away. He didn’t even answer when Mom asked him if he wanted to take a thermos of coffee.

The next day, the smog had taken on a strange, yellow tone that I’d never seen before. It blotted out the sun and erased any blue. It made all of our eyes burn.

It was just the beginning.