When the Small Town King Met a Space Queen

I used to think my biggest challenge was building life support systems for astronauts, but then I came home.

My quiet Ohio hometown, the one I' d escaped with an MIT scholarship and a secret burning desire for a bigger life, felt smaller than ever.

I was back for a high school reunion, reluctantly, to face Matthew Scott, the boy who' d relentlessly bullied me and now owned half the town.

He thought I was still "just Gabby," a wash-up struggling with a boring data entry job, a lie I carefully maintained to protect my parents and my classified work at NASA.