Excerpt from The Terranauts by T.C. Boyle, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Anyway, before I could react, Linda was sliding into the seat across the table from me, gesturing with her donut and giving me a smile that was caught midway between commiseration and embarrassment. "Nervous?" she said, and let out a little laugh even as she squared her teeth and flaunted the donut. "I see you're carbo-loading. Me too," she said, and took a bite.

I tried to look noncommittal, as if I didn't know what she was talking about, but of course she could see right through me. We'd become as close as sisters these past two years, working side by side on the research vessel in the Caribbean, the ranch in the Australian outback and the test plots here on the E2 campus, but the only thing that mattered now was this: my interview was at eight, hers at eight-thirty. I gave her a tight smile. "I don't know what we've got to be nervous about — I mean, they've been testing us for over a year now. What's another interview?"

She nodded, not wanting to pursue the point. The buzz had gone round and we'd all absorbed it: this was the interview, the one that would say yea or nay, thumbs-up or thumbs-down. There was no disguising it. This was the moment we'd been waiting for through all the stacked-up days, weeks and months that seemed like they'd never end, and now that it was here it was nothing short of terrifying. I wanted to reach out to her and reassure her, hug her, but we'd already said everything there was to be said, teasing out the permutations of who was in and who was out a thousand times over, and all we'd done these past weeks was hug. I don't know how to explain it, but it was like a coldness came over me, the first stage of withdrawal. What I wanted, more than anything, was to get up and leave, and yet there she was, my best friend, and I saw in that moment how selfless she was, how much she was rooting for me — for us both, but for me above all, for my triumph if she should fail to make the grade, and I felt something give way inside me.

From The Terranauts by T.C. Boyle. Copyright © 2016 by T.C. Boyle. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.