Operation Yes by Sara Lewis Holmes Page B

this crack here, ma’am?” she asked. “It might affect your work.”
    Mrs. Purdy’s hot-pink fingernails stopped tapping the register’s keys. She peered at the crack, which ran all the way up the sideof the dull gray machine. “Oh, honey, don’t fret about that. This machine’s older than Jesus.”
    She tucked back a tight gray curl that had escaped from her hairnet, smiled warmly at Melissa, and resumed ringing up her lunch. Afterward, though, she ran her hand over the side of the register and frowned.
    Melissa brought in several packages of crackers. As she carefully tucked them into the box, she wondered if Marc would get her joke.
    Shaunelle found a crack in the back of her favorite bookcase that weekend when her family left the TLF and settled into their three-bedroom base house. She smiled as she covered the crack with her collection of mysteries. She didn’t have to share a room with her sisters anymore, so no one would tell on her if she stayed up all night reading. She could invite Aimee and Martina over. Without Allison. She brought in a mini-flashlight with batteries.
    Bo wasn’t sure how great cracks were. Or mistakes. He had a golf ball he had found near the driving range that was stamped on one side with a picture of an F-15E. On the other side were the words
    Â 
    There are no mulligans in combat
    Â 
    Which meant, basically, “Don’t mess up, or you’ll die.”
    Bo knew there was one dad who hadn’t come back from his deployment. His flight suit was displayed in a glass case on the bottom floor of the base education building, surroundedby original nose art from World War II planes, photographs of Vietnam-era generals, and old drawings of the base from the 1940s. Bo always walked quickly by that case when he entered the building, on his way to the library, which was in the back of the ground floor. But he knew that it was a light tan flight suit, the color of a Middle Eastern desert, so that meant the death had been recent, not Vietnam or one of the world wars.
    He asked Miss Loupe one more question about cracks on Friday afternoon, moving up to her desk while Trey was still gathering his things.
    â€œHow do you know if a crack is good or bad?”
    Miss Loupe leaned toward him. “You don’t always know. But the first step is finding them.”
    Bo tried one more time.
    â€œDoes your dad still think you made a mistake about the Academy?” he asked.
    Miss Loupe was surprised. She looked unsure how to respond.
    â€œHe must,” she finally answered. “He hasn’t spoken to me since.”
    Â 
    That weekend, Bo’s dad offered him a ride out to the flight line, to meet some jets coming back from a deployment.
    He liked riding in his dad’s official car, a blue sedan with a white top (so everyone could see the command car coming) and an ever-squawking radio (so his dad could stay on top of flight operations) and a battered thermos of strong coffee (which his dad took everywhere) on the floor of the front seat. The thermosrolled and bumped against Bo’s feet as they turned onto the road to the flight line.
    When they reached the red lines on the concrete that marked the secured area, his dad stopped and the two of them got out to inspect the car’s tires. Anything, even a tiny rock, that stuck in the treads could get dropped on a runway and sucked down a jet engine.
    â€œWhy are there cracks in tires, anyway?” asked Bo. “Why don’t they make them smooth?”
    â€œYou wouldn’t be able to keep the car on the road, for one thing,” his dad said. “The treads help create friction between the tire and the road.”
    Bo flicked a chunk of gravel out of one deep groove. He’d just saved the Air Force millions of dollars in damage! Millions! They should pay him to do this.
    They climbed back in the car.
    â€œWhat about the planes? Do they look for cracks in