A l so by

CA M BR I A G OR DON
The Poetry of Secrets
CA M BR I A GOR DON

SCHOLASTIC PRESS / New York

 Copyright © 2024 by Cambria Gordon
Photos ©: cover: coker/Alamy Images, PCD Media/Alamy Images, Shutterstock.com;
cover, frontmatter, 163 diagram: Courtesy Gurleen Bal, PhD; 156: Army Air Forces
Collection, “Bombardiers’ Information File (BIF)” (item 000022), AAF Collection,
https://AAFCollection.info/items/list.php?item=000022 (accessed 12 December 2022).
Lyrics to “Jingle Jangle Jingle” and additional lyrics to “Oh Look At Me Now” reprinted
with permission from the estate of Joe Chapline and Suzanne Chapline.
“He Wears a Pair of Silver Wings”
Words and Music by Michael Carr and Eric Maschwitz
Copyright © 1941 Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. Inc.
Copyright Renewed
All Rights Administered by Reservoir Media Management, Inc.
All Rights Reserved Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC
“Oh! Look At Me Now”
Words by John DeVries
Music by Joe Bushkin
Copyright © 1941 (Renewed) by Embassy Music Corporation (ASCAP)
International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gordon, Cambria, author.
Title: Trajectory / Cambria Gordon.
Description: First edition. | New York : Scholastic Press, 2024. |
Audience: Ages 12 and up. | Audience: Grades 10–12. | Summary: As the
United States enters World War II, seventeen-year-old Eleanor wants to do something to
help her Jewish relatives in Poland, so she puts her brilliant math skills to work for the
US army to fine-tune a top-secret weapon that will help defeat the enemy.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023015636 | ISBN 9781338853827 (hardcover) |
ISBN 9781338853834 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Jewish teenagers—United States—Juvenile fiction. |
World War, 1939–1945—United States—Juvenile fiction. | Holocaust,
Jewish (1939–1945)—Juvenile fiction. | Mathematical ability in children—Juvenile fiction.
| Bildungsromans. | CYAC: Jewish youth—Fiction. | World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. |
Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Fiction. | Mathematicians—Fiction. | Coming of age—
Fiction. | BISAC: YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Historical / United States /
20th Century | YOUNG ADULT FICTION / Historical / Holocaust |
LCGFT: Historical fiction. | War fiction. | Bildungsromans.
Classification: LCC PZ7.G65435 Tr 2024 | DDC 813.6 [Fic]—dc23/eng/20230501
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023015636
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 24 25 26 27 28
Printed in Italy 183
First edition, April 2024
Book design by Elizabeth B. Parisi
For my parents
Girls can be made proficient and give good service as human computers

in the year before they graduate to married life and become experts

with the housekeeping accounts.

—Astronomer L. J. Comrie
“Careers for Girls” from The Mathematical Gazette, 1944
To the tune of Gene Autry’s “(I’ve Got Spurs That)
Jingle, Jangle, Jingle”

I’ve got differences that wiggle, waggle, wiggle

As I go smoothing crazily along.

I’ve got factors that make me wanna giggle

As I inverse interpolate along.

Oh, ­Gregory–​­Newton, oh, ­Gregory–​­Newton

How we love your ­coefficients—

Yes, we love them for computin’.

I’ve got ranges that wiggle, waggle, wiggle

And my ϕ’s waver crazily along.

But if Hitler’s nerves begin to jiggle

Then our tables can’t be very far from wrong.

—​­circa 1943, by the women of the Philadelphia Computing Section

My dearest Sky,
You know that letter I gave you for safekeeping to send to my parents in
case the worst happened? I’d like you to replace it with a new letter I’m enclos-
ing here. It says basically the same thing I’m about to tell you, but without
the classified parts.
Here goes.
I’m going to join the 5th BG on their mission. I know what you’re thinking.
You don’t want me to risk my life. Someone else can work the Norden.
You must trust me when I say this: There is no one else. And time is run-
ning out.
I want to be able to say I did everything I could to end this devastating war.
Even if where I’m going is over the Pacific and not Nazi Germany. Everything
is connected. But you already know that.
By the time you get this, I’ll be airborne. Of course, I’m terrified. But I have a
special good luck charm. I’ve written this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt on a small
piece of paper, which I will carry with me:
You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experi-
ence in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must
do the thing you think you cannot do.
Finally, I feel worthy of my guardian angel.

Yours always,
Eleanor
1.
May 1942

I used to think that only Catholics could have guardian angels. Then
my uncle Herman told me that Jews believe in them, too. I decided
that mine would be Eleanor Roosevelt, for reasons way beyond our
shared name.
Unfortunately, she has yet to show up.
“Eleanor, can you season the chicken?” calls Mom. She pokes her
head into the study, where I’m arranged in my usual spot: sitting on
the love seat, pretending to read a magazine. Today it’s an issue of Life.
One of Dad’s math textbooks is hidden behind the pages so that any-
one looking at me from the outside would think I was reading about
summer playclothes instead of doing calculus.
Mom continues. “I can’t be expected to cook the whole Shabbos
meal by myself”—​­I whisper this last part with h
­ er—“after being on
my feet all day.” It’s her refrain every Friday evening.
When she leaves, I lay the magazine on the small coffee table and
replace the math book on the shelf. Tangent vectors will have to wait.
Then I follow her into the kitchen.

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 CAMBRIA GORDON

Near Mom’s feet, my younger sister, Sarah, sits on the floor with
a screwdriver and rusty baby carriage.
“Why can’t she season the chicken?” I ask, annoyed.
“Because I’m earning money,” says Sarah. “The government is
paying for scrap metal. This old thing might become a hand grenade.”
“Season it generously,” Mom tells me. “God knows it cost me
enough ration stamps.” She chops carrots ­lickety-​­split, then starts to
measure out the rice. “You need to find a way to show your patrio-
tism, Eleanor. You’re seventeen, for heaven’s sake. Your sister is only
twelve.”
“She’s too timid to do anything,” pipes in Sarah.
“That’s not true,” I say. Even though it is.
When Eleanor Roosevelt was young, she was painfully shy and
felt like an ugly duckling. I’ve been told I look like Maxene, the middle
singer of the Andrews Sisters, so I don’t think I’m an ugly duckling,
but like a young E.R., I prefer to go unnoticed. Somehow she man-
aged to overcome those obstacles, become the First Lady, and use her
voice to fight against injustice. I guess I keep hoping that, short of
showing up on my doorstep, E.R. will send me a sign that I, too, have
a powerful woman inside me.
I hear the thump drag, thump drag of Dad’s cane and bum leg
­coming down the stairs, reminding me of yet another connection I
have to Eleanor Roosevelt. We both love men who are disabled. I pull
out Dad’s special chair at the dining table, the one with the higher

2
 TR AJEC TORY

cushion so he can get up from it easily. I give him a kiss on the cheek,
stick a straw in his water glass, and go back to dinner prep.
A half hour later the doorbell rings. Aunt Jona swoops in to hug
me like a diving pelican, squeezing my ribs against the pillow of her
breasts. Uncle Herman goes straight to the liquor, and cousins Jacob
and Lila, ­seven-​­year-​­old twins, duck under their mother’s arm and
run inside. They make a beeline for the radio. The Lone Ranger is just
beginning.
“Hi-yo Silver, away!” squeals Jacob, galloping with his sister,
making a loop of the downstairs area, through the kitchen and into
the study, where he and Lila crash into a side table, causing a lamp
to teeter. I get there just in time to prevent a disaster. Dad’s study is
a sacred space for me. Besides doubling as my secret math hideout,
it’s also where his typewriter lives, the same page yellowing in the
cartridge from his unfinished book on transcendental numbers. After
a line, he gets tired and falls asleep. I don’t think his sentences make
sense anyway.
We light the Shabbos candles and say the blessings. The chicken is
roasted perfectly, the rice has soaked up all the juice, and our victory
garden carrots taste like candy. Everyone’s talking at once. I’m quiet,
which is not unusual, but all the more noticeable in this boisterous
family of ours. Uncle Herman tells a joke about an old man who goes
to the doctor because he can’t pee. The doctor asks how old he is. The
man says ­ninety-​­three. The doctor says, You’ve peed enough.

3
 CAMBRIA GORDON

“New fr Pol?” asks Dad.

“Dad wants to know the news from Poland,” I say. This is how I
usually participate in dinner conversations. Translating Dad’s slurred
speech.
Uncle Herman hears all the gossip from his Polonia Society
meetings. Even though most of the members are Catholic, the Poles
stick together here in P
­ hilly—​­many of them live in row houses on
Manayunk Avenue, like my aunt and uncle. Unlike Mom, who mar-
ried a ­third-​­generation American Jew and moved to the suburbs
as fast as she could, her brother Herman is still tethered to the old
country.
“Shreklekh,” he answers in Yiddish. “Terrible.”
“Azriel, Roza, and Batja?” asks Mom, her voice fading, not want-
ing to ask the real question: Are they alive?
Uncle Herman shrugs. “God only knows.” He looks at me. “Have
you received anything, shayna maidel?”
“Not in months,” I answer.
My cousin Batja and I have been writing letters to each other since
my ­fourth-​­grade teacher wanted us to know there was a world beyond
Jenkintown, our little suburb of Philadelphia. She had us correspond
with a pen pal in another country. At the time, I vaguely knew about
our relatives in Poland, first cousins of Mom’s and Uncle Herman’­s —​
A
­ zriel and his wife, Roza, and their daughter, Batja, born around the
same time I was. When Mom suggested Batja for the assignment, I
jumped at the chance to get to know her better. She wrote in Yiddish

4
 TR AJEC TORY

and I wrote in English. Uncle Herman translated for me, and her
teacher translated for her. She’s never gone this long without writing.
Uncle Herman continues. “The only thing I know is what my
neighbor told me. His brother is a deputy of the Jewish Council and
managed to smuggle out a letter.” He pauses, sipping his martini,
as if to gird himself for what’s about to come. “All the Jews have to
wear white armbands with blue stars of David to identify themselves
when they’re outside the Stanislau ghetto. Three gates are guarded by
German Schutzpolizei and the Ukrainian militia on the outside, and
by the Jewish police on the inside.”
“Jesh poli?” asks Dad.
“Jewish police?” I say.
“One hundred Jews serve in the ghetto police. Can you imagine?
Having to rat on your own kind?”
Mom’s water glass trembles when she rests it on the saucer. “The
world needs to know about this. I’m going to speak to the Joint.”
That would be the Joint Distribution Committee, where Mom
used to volunteer, raising money for Russian and Polish Jews who
lost their homes in pogroms after the Great War. Her involvement in
the organization is yet another casualty of Dad’s illness, but she’s still
on their mailing list. Recently, I saw a Joint newsletter on our kitchen
counter. It showed a Nazi propaganda poster advertising that Jews are
lice and cause typhus.
“Vat else the letter say?” asks Aunt Jona.
“Twenty thousand souls are living there, smashed together in

5
 CAMBRIA GORDON

a few city blocks. Sometimes twelve people sleep in a room smaller

than this.” Uncle Herman gestures around our dining room walls.
“Everything is dirty and ­rat-​­infested and most people are sick. Those
who aren’t sick are forced to work in German arms factories. Many are
beaten if they can’t keep up the ­ten-​­hour day with no lunch, no breaks.”
Aunt Jona leans into her husband. “Vat they do vith the sick ones?”
I’ve never seen my ­joke-​­telling uncle look so sad. “This wasn’t in
the letter, but I’ve heard talk. About selections. During these aktions,
no one knows who might be useful and who might be sent to die.
The mechanics? The doctors? They certainly don’t need the ones
who worked in offices or the old and the sick.” We all bow our heads,
thinking of Azriel, who is a lawyer.
“How does a human do this to another human?” asks Mom.
It’s a question without an answer.
I picture Batja’s small hands, the ­ten-​­year-​­old ones that drew me a
picture of her farm, milking goats the only labor those fingers had ever
seen. In return, I sent her a drawing of our dog, Felix, in his doghouse,
with a talk bubble that said I woof you. I think of her now, trying to fall
asleep on an empty stomach, sharing stale air with eleven others in
one cramped room. The food in front of me is no longer appetizing.
“Whaa abo sen monnn,” says Dad. “For bri.”
“What about sending money,” I repeat. “For bribes.”
“Do you see a money tree growing in our yard?” Mom throws her
napkin down and rises to clear the plates.

6
 TR AJEC TORY

Silence around the table.

Uncle Herman turns to Dad. “What do home mortgages and trigo­
nometry have in common?”
I know he’s trying to be funny, making light of our debt, needing
a humorous release from this whole tragic situation in Poland. Dad
can’t formulate the answer to the riddle. I see his lips moving, but no
sound comes out. It’s painful to watch.
“You have to sine and cosine,” I blurt out.
Aunt Jona pats my hand. “Zei gezunt. She’s a math genius like
her father.”
I stiffen. “It’s just a dumb joke, Aunt Jona. Anyone could answer
it.” I lean over and hug Dad around the neck. “This big guy is the only
mathematician in our family.”
Satisfied that Dad won’t need any more defending tonight, I slide
my chair out. “Good Shabbos, everybody. Trudie’s waiting for me.”
At 8:30 p.m. it’s still light out. The sky is the color of a soft gray
sweater. I meet my best friend at our usual corner, halfway between
our houses.
“What took you so long?” Trudie tucks her halo of pin curls
behind her ears. “I told Don we’d be there fifteen minutes ago. He can
be so impatient.”
“We got to talking about my cousins in Poland.”
“My father says now that America has entered the war, it’s going
to be over in a few months.”

7
 CAMBRIA GORDON

“I don’t think so. The Great War lasted four years and this one’s
been going on since 1939 with no signs of letting up. The Nazis are
evil incarnate.”
“Aren’t you the Sad Sally. Brighten up. It’s the weekend, for Pete’s
sake.” She hooks her elbow through mine. “I hope Don invites me to
go to his parents’ lake house this summer. Do you think he’ll pop the
question there? Or maybe he won’t wait that long, and he’ll get on his
knee at graduation? Better yet, he might do it at Tommy Dorsey’s show
next week. Can you imagine, getting engaged in front of Frank Sinatra?”
She smiles at me. “I don’t think I’ve properly thanked you for being my
partner in crime. Don and I would never have gone steady if it weren’t
for you coming to Oswald’s with me every Friday night this year.”
Trailing after her is more like it. I’m no good at parties and I don’t
know the first thing about flirting. But I’d never leave the house if it
weren’t for Trudie. So I suppose being her sidekick is the price I have
to pay for having any kind of social life.
“Any new jokes?” she asks.
I tell her Uncle Herman’s joke about the old man who can’t pee.
She doubles over in hysterics. I always like making her laugh.
Oswald’s Drug Store is six blocks away from my house. For
twenty years, the red neon sign has become a lighthouse of sorts, guid-
ing young people to its ­sweet-​­filled shores. Trudie pinches her cheeks
and waves at Don through the glass. Then she struts in and settles on
his lap. I take the empty stool between them and one of Don’s friends,
a skinny kid named Ricky.

8
 TR AJEC TORY

The bored soda jerk wipes down the counter in front of us while
the boys argue about the Phillies. They always talk sports. Never
world events. Never the draft. Come next fall, they’ll all turn eighteen.
Maybe they’re avoiding the subject on purpose.
Trudie starts to retell my uncle Herman’s joke, but when she gets
to the part after the man says he’s n
­ inety-​­three years old, she pauses.
She can’t remember the punch line. Ever so casually, I lean over and
whisper it to her.
“The doctor says you’ve peed enough!” she exclaims.
The guys crack up and I do, too, knowing I’ve made her look
good. It’s been that way since we met in grade school. She gets the big
laugh and I get the assist without having to actually do any talking.
“I got ­center-​­field seats for tomorrow’s game,” says Don.
“Too bad I can’t go. It’s the MathMeet,” says Ricky.
I stop sipping my malted. “The MathMeet?”
“She talks!” says a third boy.
“Don’t tell me Nervous Nellie’s going to enter and actually shout
out the answers?” quips Don. I redden, hating the nickname.
Trudie pokes her boyfriend in the arm. “Don’t be mean, Don.”
“I just wondered where it was being held,” I say.
“The Women’s Club. Eleven a.m.,” replies Ricky kindly.
They go back to their conversation. Trudie goes back to the messy
work of stroking Don’s Brylcreemed hair. I go back to my straw. I
definitely do not, absolutely, under any circumstances, think about
the MathMeet.

9
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