Excerpt from The Story of Q – Book One

Here’s the prologue and an excerpt from the first book in my series, The Story of Q. While I wrote it with tweens in mind, I have discovered that I have an adult following too. What a pleasant surprise. So I was told to say, ages 10 and up. 🙂

Preface

While attending elementary school, I developed a real passion for science and space. While many of my friends were playing outside, I remained glued to my black and white TV set, eagerly watching the Mercury astronauts make their first brave attempts to go where no man had gone before. I even had a scrapbook (I still have it) with carefully cut out newspaper articles regarding the astronauts and their trips beyond the atmosphere. I was so enthralled that I sat in my room one day, carefully removed a piece of lined paper from my writing pad, and scribbled off a note to NASA. I don’t believe I actually expected to receive a reply from the men who made it all happen; I simply wanted to share my unabated enthusiasm with anyone who cared to listen.

So imagine my surprise when my mother and father handed me an envelope from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I was on cloud nine while I excitedly tore open that manila envelope with shaking hands. Lo and behold, they not only responded to my letter, they also included seven 8 X 10, color photographs of the original Mercury 7. I was in heaven and immediately hung their images on the walls of my bedroom, alongside my collection of dolls and pictures of rock stars. Hey, I had eclectic taste.

To this day, I maintain my love of the heavens and everything associated with them. While I never got the chance to work at NASA, I can still dream big and hope that young girls like Rachael, keep reaching towards the stars.

Excerpt from Chapter One
The Only Thing I Really Want

“Girls, are you almost ready to go?”

It was Saturday morning, Rachael’s favorite day of the week – no school and she didn’t have to get up early. It’s not that she didn’t like school, she did. Rachael was an excellent student and enrolled in several enhanced classes. She also passed her qualification test in August and was accepted into the Advanced Elementary Studies program (AES), which met every Wednesday morning at 10:00 a.m. She enjoyed learning new things and meeting new people, and shared her father’s love of astronomy (he was a professor at a local university). However, she was still a normal ten year old, and couldn’t wait for the weekends.

Rachael loved snuggling beneath her comforter, but today she needed no prodding to be motivated, as she excitedly pulled back the flowing curtains surrounding her canopy bed and jumped to the carpeted floor.

She dressed in her favorite Marlo jeans, long-sleeved baby-blue cotton shirt, and fleecy white hoodie, embellished with the words, ‘Girls Rock’, and slipped on her headphones. Her shoulders began bopping up and down in time to one of her favorite songs, ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, as she mouthed the words, with special emphasis on ‘fuh-unn’.

She found her mother singing along with the radio one day and before she knew it, Rachael herself was learning the words and joining in. She fell in love with the tune and even though it was an old song, she had to admit it was a good one.

Rachael’s room was perfect; her parents granted her birthday wish and Rachael was able to redecorate her room just the way she wanted. She got to choose everything including the paint for the walls, and recalled how much joy she had leafing through the pages of the big JC Penney catalog, picking out new furniture, window treatments and of course the fluffy white comforter with soft flecks of turquoise, green and purple. Her room reminded her of a lovely spring garden retreat, much like the one outside her bedroom window.

She didn’t miss her old room adorned in pink and white, or the twin beds with their striped bedspreads. It was so nice having a full mattress and being able to stretch out. It was the best birthday present ever.

As she looked around her spacious bedroom this morning, she remembered how many times she had practiced her speech that day…

“Mom, dad, you know I’m gonna be ten soon and well, my room is, well you know, it’s kinda childish, dontcha think?”

Her dad raised his eyebrows and let just a hint of his famous smile peer over the top of their local newspaper, the Lake Chalfont Gazette. He’d let his wife handle this one.

“And the point you are trying to make, is?” her mother inquired, while expertly adding a stack of towering pancakes to the platter of link sausages and scrambled eggs.

“Well, um, I think I’m ready for a more grown-up décor. After all, I’m gonna be a teenager in a few years”, she exclaimed, as she added a third pancake to her plate.

Her younger sister sighed across the table. It was more than a sigh — it was a super sigh!

“Jeez Rache, why do you always have to egg-aserate?”

“I don’t and it’s ‘ex-ag-ger-ate’ ”, she retorted, her voice raising a couple of notches.

“Whatever”, snapped Melanie, stabbing the sausage on her plate, accidentally causing it to fly across the table, landing next to her father’s steaming cup of coffee.

“Girls”, he pleaded. “Must we always begin each morning like this?” and turned with an exasperated, but loving glance at his wife.

“Sorry dad”, they chimed together. Rachael and Melanie exchanged smiles and tried their best to stifle their giggles, as the meal continued on in silence except for the clanging of forks and knives.

After a few minutes, Rachael resumed her well-rehearsed speech.

“Uh, anyway, I was talking about my birthday and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I know what I want”, she paused, pensively looking at each of her parents, before beginning again.

“The only thing I really want is to redecorate my room, okay?”

Please, please, please she repeated to herself, and then held her breath anxiously waiting for her parents’ reply.

“Your dad and I will talk about it this weekend, okay?” then winking at her husband, she began clearing the dishes from the oblong wooden antique table, which once belonged to her grandparents. The table sat in front of a huge bay window, with tons of soft, thick, comfortable pillows. It was a great spot to view the rainbows cast by the leaded glass. It was also Misha the cat’s favorite place in the house. The girls loved watching him stretched out and asleep on his back, with his whiskers twitching back and forth. What do cats dream about anyway, they wondered.

Rachael’s attention snapped back to the present as she heard her mother call out once more.

“Girls, are you ready to go?”