I Love You, Michael Collins

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  The announcer on TV said you had splashed down several hundred miles from Pearl Harbor. I know about Pearl Harbor from school. It is a place in Hawaii where a terrible thing happened. I guess now, though, it’s a place where good things can happen, too. That’s funny, isn’t it? How even when there’s bad, in the very same place there can be good?

  As soon as what was left of Apollo 11 made that big splash in the Pacific Ocean, a terrific cheer went up in our living room, so loud it must have rivaled the one at Mission Control in Houston. Bess cheered and Eleanor cheered and my mom cheered and even my dad, who actually said, “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!” The only people not cheering were Buster and me.

  That’s because of something Buster had told me the day before: Even if you survived reentry, even if none of the other million things that could go wrong didn’t, no one really knew what the recovery ship would find when they opened the hatch. No matter how many of those million things had gone right, one thing could have still gone wrong and you’d all be dead inside there.

  So as the others cheered, again I felt Buster’s hand take mine, and I was so grateful for it, and for the goodness and the friendship and the sheer decency and the everything that is him, and then Buster and I just watched, together, as if no one else in the world were there, as the men on the USS Hornet opened the hatch.

  And, oh, Michael Collins, there you were, there all of you were coming out of the hatch, safe and alive, and finally, Buster and I could cheer, too, which we did, even jumping up and down and hugging while we did it.

  Buster says you’ll have to go right into quarantine, in case you picked up germs on the moon, and that the quarantine could take a while. But I’m not worried about that part. You’ve made it this far, and there is just no way that any moon germs can stop you now.

  “That Neil Armstrong,” my dad said. “No matter what a person thinks about the space race or the government spending so much money on it, he really is an American hero, isn’t he?”

  I thought about this and how Buster had once explained to me that what was most important to him about Apollo 11 was that, unlike the comic-book heroes that he would always still love, these astronauts were real, live superheroes, and I knew Buster was right. And I thought about what you real, live superheroes had shown me.

  Back when this all started—with Mrs. Collins my teacher asking the class what we all wanted to be when we grow up, the boys saying astronauts and the girls wanting to marry astronauts—do you remember me telling you about that, and about how funny I thought it was that the boys all wanted to be the thing and the girls all wanted to marry the thing? And how I wanted to do neither, yet I didn’t know what I did want to do?

  Well, I still don’t know.

  But I’ll tell you this:

  If we can do this, if we can put a man on the moon, then there’s more than just the black-and-white, the two paths those kids see. If we can do this, the sky’s the limit. No, scratch that, because obviously that’s not a limit anymore—you all broke that limit! If we can do this, then anyone can do anything.

  I can do anything.

  Someday I will figure out what I want to do. And I’ll also figure out how to stay and go at the same time. By that I mean it occurred to me that in order to stay with the ship for Armstrong and Aldrin, you had to leave Mrs. Collins your wife and Kate your daughter, and your other children, behind. So I think now there must be ways to go off into the world and have adventures, to do the work that is important to you, while still somehow staying with those who matter most. Perhaps it is in how you conduct yourself and how you hold people in your heart. And home should not hold you back.

  I saw my dad cover my mom’s hand with his then, just like Buster had covered mine, and I figured that must be what fixed them.

  My dad had finally found romance.

  Still, that didn’t stop me from saying: “Maybe he is, but Michael Collins is the best one.”

  My dad tore his eyes away from what was happening on the TV and turned to me, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Why would you say that, sweet pea?”

  “Because he is,” I said, and I didn’t even care that I knew Bess was rolling her eyes at me again. I’d just say what I needed to say.

  “Sure,” I said, “it’s fine for people to go off and have adventures, it’s fine for men to walk on the moon. But they couldn’t have done what they did if they hadn’t had him to wait for them, if he hadn’t stayed with the ship. How would they have come home again? Because, sure, getting there was a fine thing. But that would have been nothing if they hadn’t been able to get back. Michael Collins did that, and I’ll bet you anything that those one hundred and eighty-four people who graduated ahead of him at the cadet academy are just kicking themselves right now for ever thinking they were better than he is. Because nothing, none of this, would have come out right if it wasn’t for him.”

  “I didn’t know you felt so strongly about this,” my dad said.

  I couldn’t believe I’d spoken that way to him. I’d never spoken that way to my dad, or anybody, not in my whole life.

  “Well, I do,” I said, folding my arms against my chest.

  “Huh,” my dad said. “I never thought about it like that.”

  And you know what, Michael Collins? None of them tried to tell me I was wrong about what I’d said, not even Bess.

  “You haven’t even hugged us hello yet,” my mom said then.

  Immediately, I saw the error of my ways and I flew into her arms and then my dad’s because of course I was glad, so glad, to have them both back. A part of me was still mad at them for leaving me in the first place, but the relief and the glad more than outweighed the mad.

  “Did you have fun while we were gone?” my dad said, ruffling my hair.

  “What did you do while we were gone?” my mom said. “No one was ever home whenever we tried to call, or else the line was busy.”

  Of course they’d tried to call. How could I have ever doubted it? They loved me. They’d always loved me.

  I thought about all the times I’d taken the phone off the hook. I would bet anything that whenever I was out of the house—just my luck—that was when one of them had tried to call. And I also realized that all four of them hadn’t so much abandoned me as that each one thought someone else had been looking out for me. My parents thought Eleanor had been here the whole time. Eleanor thought Bess was here. Even Bess had figured I’d just call Eleanor and she’d come home.

  Of course, you and I both know that wasn’t the case.

  But what would be the point in telling them that now?

  Maybe someday we’d talk about it, but not today.

  I’d been fine.

  I am fine.

  Then I thought about how everything that happened was a little bit like nesting dolls. Do you know what those are, Michael Collins? Since you have a daughter, Kate, who is just my age, which is still ten, you might. But if not, I will tell you.

  Nesting dolls are a set of wooden dolls, with each one being smaller in size, nesting inside one another—just like the name would have you think—from smallest to largest. I thought then how, in our family of nesting dolls, one at a time, they’d all been taken apart and away, even Campbell, until all that was left was me. And how now they’d all come back together again.

  Because we were together right then, Michael Collins. In that moment, we were.

  I knew it might not last, couldn’t, wouldn’t.

  Eleanor would go away again soon.

  Bess would go away to college or for some other reason before too many more years passed.

  As for my parents, sure, they were back together now. They even looked happier that way than they had in a very long time. My dad told me later they’d decided that in the fall my mom would go back to school and then maybe get a job she would like, something other than just taking care of our home.

  I thought that would make her happier. Certainly, my dad did. But who ever
really knew? They’d come apart once. It could always happen again.

  For now, though, for this one moment, we were back together again, and all of us, the whole country even, were together in wishing you well, all at the same time. And it was the most amazing thing to feel that, to feel the oneness of it.

  But I couldn’t explain all that. It was too much to try to say, and besides, no one would ever understand it except for you.

  And Buster.

  It seemed to me then there was only one thing that really mattered.

  “I stayed with the ship,” I finally said. “I stayed with the ship.”

  Sincerely yours,

  Mamie

  December 14, 1969

  Dear Mamie,

  I’m sorry it’s taken so long to reply, but as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, I’ve been a little busy. This is the first free moment I’ve had in a very long time.

  Thank you so much for all your kind letters.

  I wanted to be sure you knew how appreciated they have been. And I also wanted to be sure someone told you:

  You did a great job.

  I know you said you don’t want to be an astronaut—or marry one!—but if you ever change your mind, NASA would be lucky to have you, because you are amazing.

  Really, Mamie, you did a great job.

  From My Whole Family to Yours,

  Wishing You the Merriest of Christmases,

  Michael Collins

  Author’s Note

  I was just seven years old when the astronauts walked on the moon, which, if you do the math, makes me even older now than Mamie’s parents are in the book, the parents Mamie thinks of as really old. Despite all the years that have passed since then, I can still remember the excitement of staying up late with my brother, Seth, and our parents to watch it happen. I can still remember the excitement of that whole period in history, and I hope I have conveyed that in this book.

  The excitement was real, but while I have read a lot about Apollo 11, it’s important to keep in mind that this is a work of fiction. This means that in spite of my best efforts, it is entirely possible that I have made some errors. Should you discover any, I hope you will forgive me because, like Buster, I’m not a rocket scientist!

  Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  Danbury, Connecticut

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a village to launch a book out into the world from where it begins in an author’s head. For this particular book, I would like to thank the following villagers:

  Laura Whitaker, for letting me hear the phone line crackle between us when I first shared this idea with you, and for so much more.

  Margaret Ferguson, for seeing Michael Collins the way I see Michael Collins; for being an astonishing editor and a charming correspondent; and for saying those four little words every author longs to hear—“I love this book”—and then going it one better by adding, “This book makes me happy.”

  Farrar Straus Giroux, for publishing this book, thereby making it possible for me to say, “I’ve had a book published by Farrar Straus Giroux!”

  Lauren Catherine, Bob Gulian, Andrea Schicke Hirsch, Greg Logsted, Rob Mayette, and Krissi Petersen Schoonover, for mutual writing support whenever we can on Friday nights.

  Greg Logsted, for always believing.

  Jackie Logsted, for being even better than the moon.

  Finally, thank you to readers everywhere. Like Buster, you are good and decent and everything, and I am so grateful.

  Suggested Reading

  Collins, Michael. Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut’s Story. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1994.

  Floca, Brian. Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11. New York: Richard Jackson Books, Atheneum, 2009.

  Stein, R. Conrad. The Story of Apollo 11: First Man on the Moon, 2nd ed. New York: Children’s Press, 1992.

  Thimmesh, Catherine. Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

  Wallace, Karen. Rockets and Spaceships. New York: DK Readers, 2011.

  Wilkinson, Philip. Spacebusters: The Race to the Moon. New York: DK Readers, 2012.

  I also recommend doing Wikipedia searches for “Michael Collins” and “Apollo 11.”

  About the Author

  LAUREN BARATZ-LOGSTED is the author of more than a dozen books for adults and young readers, including The Twin's Daughter, Crazy Beautiful, and the Sisters 8 series, which she cowrites with her husband and daughter. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Thank you for buying this

  Farrar, Straus and Giroux ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Begin Reading

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Suggested Reading

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

  An imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010

  Text copyright © 2017 by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2017

  eBook edition, June 2017

  mackids.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Baratz-Logsted, Lauren, author.

  Title: I love you, Michael Collins / Lauren Baratz-Logsted.

  Description: First edition.|New York: Margaret Ferguson Books / Farrar Straus Giroux, 2017.|Summary: In 1969, as her own family is falling apart, ten-year-old Mamie finds comfort in conducting a one-sided correspondence with the least famous astronaut heading toward the moon on Apollo 11.|Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016038109 (print)|LCCN 2017008448 (ebook)|ISBN 9780374303853 (hardcover)|ISBN 9780374303877 (Ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Project Apollo (U.S.)—Juvenile fiction.|Apollo 11 (Spacecraft)—Juvenile fiction.|Collins, Michael, 1930—Juvenile fiction.|CYAC: Project Apollo (U.S.)—Fiction.|Apollo 11 (Spacecraft)—Fiction.|Collins, Michael, 1930—Fiction.|Space flight to the moon—Fiction.|Family problems—Fiction.|Letters—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.B22966 Iak 2017 (print)|LCC PZ7.B22966 (ebook)|DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038109

  Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by e-mail at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  eISBN 9780374303877