Tasha sat cross-legged on the cracked pavement, staring at the grainy image on her tablet. The launch replayed again and again—Dr. Jeanette Epps, face calm and resolute beneath her helmet, ascending into the heavens. The first Black woman to live and work aboard the International Space Station.

“Why do you keep watching that?” her brother teased, bouncing a basketball on the uneven ground.

Tasha didn’t answer. She couldn’t pull her eyes away from the rocket, the plume of fire and smoke, the boundless sky swallowing the craft whole.

At school, they laughed when she said she wanted to be an astronaut. "You? In space? Dream smaller," the boys had jeered. Even her teacher had hesitated, then offered a patronizing, "Well, that’s ambitious, Tasha."

But watching Dr. Epps, she saw something else—proof.

That night, she pulled out the notebook she hid under her mattress. Across its pages, she’d drawn rockets, spacesuits, and galaxies. She’d listed every planet and mapped out her future.

Step one: Study harder than anyone else.
Step two: Win the science fair.
Step three: Never stop dreaming.

Her mom called from the kitchen, “Lights out, Tasha! School tomorrow.”

“Just a minute!” she called back, scribbling furiously. She sketched herself standing on the surface of Mars, her reflection in a helmet visor glowing with stars. Beneath it, she wrote, Dr. Tasha Williams, Astronaut.

Years later, when Tasha’s own rocket roared to life beneath her, she thought of that notebook. Of the cracked pavement and the teasing boys. Of Dr. Epps, who showed her what was possible.

As Earth shrank below, Tasha smiled. Someone out there was watching this launch, dreaming their own impossible dream. And she’d just become their proof.