by Ibi Zoboi
Of course, when Inaaya’s team won later that morning, Garry had to hear Marc laughing at him, telling him how he knew what she was up to.
Garry didn’t believe him. As he watched the winning team leave the college with the sponsors, off to tour their corporate building and then have a fancy lunch somewhere, all he could think was “Why didn’t I get her number?”
THE THIRD HACKATHON
Inaaya was different at their last hackathon.
Her mom wasn’t with her this time. She was there with her friends, but there was something about the way she looked while they all checked in, the way she stood, arms folded in front of her. She was dressed in jeans and an oversize gray sweatshirt that said “Keep Calm and Hackathon.” But when she talked to her friends, her smile wasn’t the same as it was the year before.
There was a news crew on-site that day, doing a story about the hackathon. Marc practically jumped in front of the cameras, and Garry watched as he talked about how important these hackathons were and how much he looked forward to it every year. Meanwhile, Garry noticed he was doing a lot of posing for the camera. The boy had no shame.
The reporter asked Garry only one question, where he was from. “Rochester,” Garry answered, not even thinking to say Brooklyn. He was a Rochester kid now.
As they walked into the auditorium, Garry approached Inaaya. “You gonna be in Social Justice this year?” he asked her. He knew she liked to try new things. Maybe they’d finally get to work together.
“I have to,” she said, and there was a little half smile on her face. “I need to give you a chance to win.”
“Hey, that’s not right.” Garry shook his head.
By eleven o’clock that night, after all the teams had been formed and the projects begun, everybody huddled around a few laptops that were streaming the news live. The hackathon story came on at the end of the broadcast, of course. Garry sat next to Inaaya, and he felt happier than he had any right to be.
The atrium got quiet as the reporter who had been there talked about how the brightest kids from all over New York had gathered at NYU for the weekend. And sure enough, Marc’s comments had made it on air. And Inaaya was introduced as a member of the winning team from last year. She told the reporter that the hackathon helped her land an internship at a software developer that summer. Then there was a montage of kids telling the reporter where they were from. Garry made the cut, right in the middle of all the other kids. When the segment ended, everyone cheered.
“I looked good,” Marc said.
Garry crumpled up some paper and threw it at him. “You got a face for coding, man.”
Everyone laughed, and after a few minutes, they were back at work. He loved working with Inaaya, looking at her code, watching the way her mind worked. He knew she was going to be good, but he didn’t anticipate how well they would collaborate. They spoke the same language.
It was about a half hour later when Garry’s cell buzzed. It was a message from an unknown number, but when he read it, he knew who it was from. His mother.
i saw you on the news, called your dad. don’t be mad he gave me your number, i want to say i’m proud of you, that’s it.
He didn’t respond. Inside, he felt nothing but anger—at his dad for betraying his privacy and at his mother for thinking a message like that could change anything. Like the ten years he spent with her could be undone by one “I’m proud of you.”
He was glad he had their app to keep his mind off the text. He focused, wishing he hadn’t let it get to him. There wasn’t time for that.
Just like at the previous hackathon, Garry worked straight through the first night and the next day, surviving on short naps and warm energy drinks. Inaaya was quiet, and so was he.
At two in the morning on the second night, Garry sat back in his chair and felt his heavy eyes closing. That was when he heard, “Wake up, Garry. Time for our walk through the park.” It was Inaaya, and she tried to flash him a smile, but it was forced. “Let’s let the designers make this app look pretty.”
Garry sat up, suddenly alert. “We’ll be back,” he told the rest of the team.
As he and Inaaya walked away, Marc and the other teammates started hooting and making kissing noises. “Sorry you got stuck with a bunch of sixth graders,” Garry told her.
“They sound more like fifth!” Inaaya wasn’t upset, so he tried to relax as they made their way outside together.
It had rained, and the trees cast dark shadows across the park. They walked instinctively to the path they had walked the year before, toward the arch. They were quiet. Garry hoped the cool night air would help him release the tension he had been holding on to ever since he’d gotten that text.
His mother was proud of him. So what?
“You okay?” Inaaya asked, her sneakers making a slapping sound on the wet ground.
“I’m good. What about you? You’re kinda different, like not really yourself.”
She shrugged. “You know. People change.”
Now she sounded like his mother, who was good for three or four phone calls to his father a year. She always wanted his dad to tell him that she had changed, that she had done a lot of work to be a better person. But Garry never wanted to talk to her. If she had changed, fine. That had nothing to do with him.
They walked without talking until they got to the arch. And when they got there, he half expected her to spin around and laugh all the stress away again, but that didn’t happen. They stood silently in their own separate worlds.
They were alone there. The rain must have driven out the regulars. Inaaya leaned against the arch and looked around. “I love it here,” she said.
“Me too.” Then he told her something he’d been thinking about, something he hadn’t told anyone else. “I’m gonna apply here. I can’t even think of another college I want to go to.”
She smiled. “Same. I’m doing early admission. You?”
He hadn’t thought about that, but this was where he wanted to be. “Definitely.”
They stared at each other.
“Plan?” Garry asked.
“Plan,” she said.
Hearing that word, Garry could already see himself there next year, being a college freshman, having some of the same classes with Inaaya, working on projects together. It was going to happen. They had a plan.
For a few seconds, he felt good. Then the real world came back. She looked as far away as he was. Finally, he said, “C’mon, Inaaya. Tell me what’s wrong. I’m a good listener.”
“So am I,” she said. “You first.”
So he told her about the text and how he’d thought about it all night and all day. “I’m not gonna respond,” he said. “I don’t owe her anything.”
“She’s that bad?”
He nodded. “Yeah.” Then he filled her in on his mother and all her problems, how he spent the first half of his life afraid something would set her off. “I’m not over what she put me through. I know she probably had a lot of undiagnosed mental issues and I’m supposed to understand that and let it go, but—”
“You’re not supposed to do anything. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just remember that.”
She understood. The first person he told understood.
He leaned against the arch next to her and put his hand on hers for a few seconds. “What’s going on with you?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain,” she said. “It’s my mom. She and I, we used to be so close. Don’t get me wrong. We’ve always been different, but it didn’t matter. I always looked up to her, still do, and I thought she respected me for who I am, too.”
“Did something happen?” Garry asked. “She didn’t come with you this time.”
Inaaya shrugged. “I told her I wanted to come on my own. I’m almost a senior. She doesn’t need to bring me everywhere all the time. Sometimes it’s like—it feels like she’s trying to control me. Like if she holds on tight enough, she’s going to stop me from being my own person. But it won’t work.
She should know that by now.” Inaaya folded her arms in front of her.
Garry could feel her frustration. He wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what. So he just waited for her to keep talking.
“Most parents give their kids more freedom when they get older. My mom is the opposite. But at the same time, she wants me to make all these decisions about my whole life. Like, I have to choose who I want to be now.”
“What kind of decisions?”
“That’s the thing. She wants me to decide to be just like her. Traditional. She did everything her father wanted her to, but I don’t have a father, so . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Garry stared at her face as she tried, and failed, to control her emotions. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’m all right.” She got quiet again for a little while. Then she said, “It’s not just my mom. It’s me, too. It’s like, sometimes I don’t know who I’m supposed to be. I’m not a kid anymore. But I can’t figure anything out if everyone is constantly telling me what I should do.”
“I hear that,” Garry said. He really liked her honesty.
“I think it’s because I’m a developer,” she said. “I have a developer’s mind. I have to try things to see if they work. And if they don’t, that’s when I make changes.”
Garry smiled. They had twin minds.
“My mom doesn’t understand. She keeps pressuring me to make these big decisions about my life when I haven’t experienced anything yet. I haven’t run them to see what works.” She turned away from him and looked around the park. For a few seconds, she looked like she was very far away. Then she turned back to him. “I couldn’t wait to be back here.”
Garry definitely understood that, the need to be there. To be back. The thirty-six hours at NYU were the only thing he looked forward to every summer. Being in the city, surrounded by his kind of people, these hackathons felt like a magnet pulling him back every year.
And he knew as soon as he got back to Rochester he would be teaching Fun with Computers to five- to eight-year-olds at a day camp near his house. It was a decent summer job. But there were only so many ways to pry the kids away from YouTube long enough to get them excited about introductory coding projects. Anyway, he didn’t want to think about that now. This weekend was for him. “Can you believe this is our last high school hackathon?” he asked.
Inaaya shook her head. “When you say it like that, it seems so final.”
“I know,” he said. “This time next year, we’ll be getting ready to go to college.”
The small smile on her face was the most genuine one that night. “Don’t forget the plan,” she said. “I’m holding you to it!”
On the way back to their building, Garry took her hand again. And they walked back holding hands the whole way.
As Inaaya headed to the food table, Garry decided he actually did need a nap. He peeked into the room they had set up with cots, but it was crowded, not what he was looking for. He wanted to be alone, to decompress. He walked down the hall and around the corner and found an unlocked storage room. It was filled with a bunch of furniture and lamps and fans and easels. Garry set a sofa right side up and got comfortable on it. Then he closed his eyes.
Something woke Garry. It was Inaaya leaning over him. “How did you know where I—”
She whispered, “I was looking for you.”
And then she kissed him. His body was instantly awake. Garry opened his mouth and felt the heat between them, the intensity.
It was a while before she pulled her lips from his and whispered, “You’re the first guy I kissed.”
His lips were only a half inch from hers when he asked, “You sure you want—? I mean, I don’t want you doing something you’re not supposed to.” And he meant it.
Inaaya put her mouth to his ear and whispered, “I told you. I only do what I want.”
He sat up on the sofa, so they could be eye to eye, put his arm around her, and brought his mouth back on hers. He hadn’t known how much he wanted her until now.
He had to remind himself to breathe.
Inaaya’s hands made their way under his shirt, touching his stomach and back and chest. And in the dark, they fumbled out of their shirts, breathing hard and giggling in between kisses.
“You’re so beautiful,” he told her, his hands running up and down her arms and across her stomach.
He had never gone this far with a girl before. And he couldn’t believe it was happening with Inaaya. He also knew it couldn’t go any further.
Inaaya was too special.
The kissing and touching and giggling only lasted a few more minutes, until they had to scramble back into their clothes and get back to their team.
He needed to go over the last-minute details for their app, and Inaaya had to get ready for the presentation.
Garry knew those few minutes were ones he would never forget.
A little later, sitting in the auditorium with the rest of their team, Garry watched her on the stage—smart, confident, so incredibly beautiful. He waited for her eyes to find his, for them to have a shared moment, just the two of them, in the midst of everybody else.
But she never looked in his direction. She presented their app and then sat in the audience with her friends on the other side of the auditorium while they all waited to hear the winning team.
And when their team wasn’t called, and the hackathon was officially over, Garry sat there, not knowing what to do.
She’d never even looked at him.
A tap on the shoulder shook him out of it. He turned around and came face-to-face with his mother. He hadn’t seen her since that day he left home. He stood up and realized he was taller than she was now.
She couldn’t intimidate him anymore.
She looked different, dressed in a print blouse, black slacks, and flats; she looked like the other mothers in the room. And she smiled, actually smiled, and said, “I told you I changed. I’m here to show you.”
They talked for a few minutes, about nothing. He tried to explain about the hackathons. She told him she had taken a computer course at the community center. He told her about his job with the kids. She said she was working at a nursing home.
Garry listened, staring at her the whole time. Her face, especially her eyes, were softer now. They used to look wild, always searching for something to spark her rage. Now, they were just settled on him.
The conversation ended when she told him she had to get to work.
“Um, thanks, you know,” Garry stammered. The words felt strange coming out of his mouth. Was he really thanking her?
“Seeing you on the news,” she said, and laughed. “I couldn’t believe it!”
Garry shook his head. He’d only said one word on the news. Did she really come all the way from Brooklyn just for that?
“Now that you have my number,” his mother said, “if you ever wanted to talk, really talk, call me.” She took his hand, and he watched her face as tears quickly filled her eyes. “I know I wasn’t the best mother to you. I was in a bad place back then, and—” Her voice cracked and she looked down for a few seconds. Then she looked at him with those soft eyes and said, “I’m sorry, baby. Sorry for all of it. Everything.”
All he could do was nod. It was too much for him. Too much had happened in the past six hours. Now his mother was back.
After she left, Garry walked over to where Inaaya had been sitting with her friends. The auditorium was emptying out, and all around them, kids were hugging and taking pictures with each other.
That was when he realized Inaaya wasn’t there. His eyes searched the whole auditorium, but she was gone. Just like that.
NOW
Garry scans the NYU computer science students’ reception again, still looking for her. Thinking about everything that happened makes him wish for the one billionth time he had gotten to talk to her that day, after everything was over, that he had gotten her number.
He hasn’t heard her voice in over a year.
<
br /> He hasn’t seen her face either. He’s spent way too much time searching for her online, on all the apps, everywhere. But it’s as if she’s disappeared.
Garry watches as more kids arrive, but none of them are her. She’s supposed to be here with me, he thinks. That was the plan.
His phone buzzes in his pocket. A text from his mom.
you move into ur dorm? if you need anything call me or text.
Garry writes back, ok
Then he adds, thanks
Marc comes up to him with a whole tray of scallops wrapped in bacon. “One of the servers hooked me up,” he says, grinning. “You have to meet the right people around here.”
Garry reaches for a scallop.
“Dude, you have to use a toothpick,” Marc says. “Don’t they teach y’all anything in Rochester?”
They laugh. And they eat. It’s so good to be back.
A few minutes later, the director of undergraduate studies is in front of the room, speaking to the incoming students. Garry stands next to Marc, listening, still having a hard time believing he’s here for the next four years.
That’s when he sees her.
Inaaya.
She’s across the room with a friend. She might have been here the whole time, but he hadn’t noticed her. But now their eyes meet the way he hoped they would have that morning last year when she was on the stage.
He stares at her. She’s wearing a long denim skirt and an “I
for Coffee” T-shirt. But he can’t see her natural hair anymore.
She’s wearing a blue hijab.
Garry and Inaaya look at each other and he can feel himself stop breathing.
The sound of applause shakes him back into the room. The director has finished speaking. Marc elbows him and points to a server walking around with chocolate-covered strawberries. But Garry shakes his head.
He looks back to Inaaya and takes a few steps in her direction, but her eyes—they lock on his and he knows what they’re telling him.
Not now.
He takes a few more steps, then stops himself.
Everything that happened between them comes rushing back—their conversation under the arch, the pressure she was feeling, how she couldn’t decide her life when she hadn’t even lived yet, how she kissed him, the way she touched him.