But the next morning, Oma decided she needed me to take the lid off her crock, even though she has been doing the strength training course that Eli and I designed for her, so we knew she was strong enough to lift it herself.
“Mrs. S. sniffs the sauerkraut,” Eli announced. “We don’t know why she can smell things but not taste them….Will it be ready? The crowd waits in silence….What’s this? She’s asking HD to take the little plates out of the top of the crock. We’ve never seen this before! HD is pushing back, he’s saying there’s some stuff floating on the top and he’s not sure it’s a good idea to stick his hand in there. (Is it moldy, HD?) HD reports it’s not exactly moldy, he doesn’t think, just kind of weird-looking. Ah, he’s got some bacon tongs now, and he’s picking up a plate with the tongs, and lifting it out….(Careful, HD! If you break that, your mom’s going to be mad.) The first plate is safely in the sink! Now for the next one….Whoops! Good catch, Mrs. S.!”
Oma examined the sauerkraut. She floated closer and sniffed it again.
I sniffed too. It didn’t smell like old socks anymore—it smelled kind of like a pickle.
Oma looked up at me, and beamed. “We must call Mr. Ziedrich!”
“Okay, we can call him as soon as we get back from Rose’s,” I told her.
“No, no—we must call him right now!” Oma insisted.
I shrugged. “You can email him yourself and see if he can come help you while we’re gone, if you want.”
“No!” Oma said. “You must stay and help me!”
I took a deep breath, like Mom does when Asad throws a fit. Sometimes Oma wasn’t all that different.
“Here’s the thing, Mrs. S.,” Eli explained. “This morning, we’ve got to do HD’s plan, because we’ve already worked it out with his dad, and he’s been waiting to do this all year. But after that, we can help you. So, what is your plan, aside from calling Mr. Z., and us helping you? What kind of grand finale do you need for your sauerkraut?”
Oma blinked. “Well…”
But I was thinking now. “Oma, sauerkraut isn’t exactly a breakfast food anyway, is it? So really, we should try it tonight instead. What if we had a sauerkraut-tasting party, with sausages and stuff?”
“Yes!” Eli said, pumping his fist. “I’ll be your announcer, and you can make some brownies or something.”
“We could invite Mr. Z., and maybe Ms. Stevermer,” I said. Oma hadn’t interrupted yet, so I kept going. “You want everyone to taste it, don’t you?”
“Will that work for you?” Eli asked. “Because we should probably tell HD’s mom before she goes to the store, if we want that to happen.”
Oma still didn’t look that happy about it, but finally, she nodded. “I suppose it will do.”
So Dad drove me and Eli to Rose’s RadioJunkYardBirds. One thing I like about my dad is that he knows how to stay out of the way and let a person do their thing. We told him we were cool, so he went off to look at speakers and let Mei know about some leftover parts from the auto body shop, in case she wanted to buy them, and to see if she had the right kind of Harley-Davidson wheel hub in stock. Dad knows some stuff about electronics, but mostly about car electronics. (Well, and tanks, and stuff like that—that’s what he worked on in the army.)
First we went to see Grace.
I have never had more than a hundred dollars in my life before. All those twenty-dollar bills barely fit in my wallet! When we went in, I looked around at everything I could buy, and I had to grin. If I was just some normal kid, I could have bought a fancy game system and gone right home and played it.
But that’s not me. I had a plan.
“Hey, HD. Hey, Eli. You want to see something?” Grace nodded at us.
I was trying to play it cool, like I did this all the time, but I couldn’t stop grinning. “Hey, Grace. I think I’m ready to do some buying today.”
Grace’s eyebrows went up, and she gave me the nod, real slow, impressed. “So you got the job done. Nice work, HD.”
“Let’s start with the CPU we talked about, and work down the list,” I told her. “Eli, will you keep track of the project costs?”
Grace handed Eli a calculator. He turned it on and got ready.
It was pretty awesome, to be able to point to something and just be, like, “Yeah, let’s go with that one,” and watch Grace pile it all up into a stack for me to buy. At least, it was awesome until I found out somebody else had already bought the motherboard I wanted.
“I’m sorry,” Grace told me. “I was hoping we might get more in before you needed yours. This would work fine too, though.” She handed me another option. “It’s a little bit newer, it would work with your CPU and the rest of your components, and it’s getting great reviews. It’s twenty dollars more, though.”
I bit my lip. My project budget was already tight. “Eli, what would the total be if I bought that motherboard?”
Eli did some more calculating. “It’s $280.95 so far.”
“You brought your student ID card, though, right?” Grace asked.
I nodded. “Can you subtract five percent for my student discount?”
Eli multiplied my total by 0.95, because 100% minus 5% is 95%. “With your student discount, it’s $266.90.”
“Can I use a plastic-bag coupon too?” I asked Grace. (Everyone in town brings their extra bags in to Rose’s, because you get a 5%-off coupon. That way, Rose doesn’t ever have to buy from the plastic bag salesman who makes her mad, and people don’t have to worry so much about their plastic bags clogging up the ocean.)
“Sure,” Grace said. So I gave her the plastic bags we’d brought, and she gave me my 5%-off coupon.
Eli subtracted another 5%. “It’s only $253.56 now!”
“Oh yeah,” I said, and grinned.
“Don’t forget, I have to charge you sales tax too,” Grace reminded us. “That’s ten percent these days.”
Eli multiplied my $253.56 by 1.1, to add the 10%. “Oh, man—we’re up to $278.92 now!”
I sighed. “And I don’t have a case, or a monitor, or a keyboard, or a mouse yet.”
“Well, you can find a case and do your computer build, and add your peripherals later,” Grace reminded me.
“Yeah, I know,” I said.
“You might want to check the warehouse before you make any final decisions anyway,” Grace said. “Mei got some good-looking stuff in this week.”
“Thanks,” I told her. “Let’s go take a look, Eli.”
Grace smiled. “I’ll hold these for now. Bring the calculator back when you’re done.”
We passed Mei in the scrapyard, where she was unbolting a side mirror from a 1963 Impala for somebody, and she nodded at us and kept working. Dad says Mei doesn’t really do small talk.
Grace was right—there was some good stuff in the warehouse. I checked a monitor to make sure the display looked pretty good, and I asked Eli to test all the keys on the keyboard that looked the cleanest, to make sure none of them stuck or anything, while I untangled and tested a mouse.
When I had a good one, I brought it over to Eli, who finished up his keyboard and nodded. “This one’s fine,” he said. “I mean, it’s pretty dirty, but it works okay.”
“Good work,” I told Eli, and he did a tap move, and bowed. “What’s my total so far?”
Eli checked his notes, and punched some more numbers into the calculator. “With the monitor, the mouse, and the keyboard, we’re at $307.70, including discounts and sales tax.”
I sighed. “I had to buy Oma’s glue, so I’ve only got $296.06. I need a case to start the build, so I guess I’ll have to wait on the monitor for now.”
Eli shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I have some money too.”
I shook my head. I had to do this myself. “Thanks, but nah.” I walked over to the cases, leaving the monitor I’d picked behind.
There was a plain black case that I didn’t remember seeing before. I lifted it off of the top shelf and turned it around. You can’t just pick a case based on what it looks like from the front. You have to check it out to make sure it doesn’t have any broken parts or anything.
And this case? This one had a surprise for me.
“What’s that?” Eli asked, pointing inside.
“Someone left the motherboard in this case,” I told him. It looked good too.
“Will you go find Mei?” I asked, picking up the case and holding it tight. “Tell her I have a question.”
Eli nodded, and ran.
If I bought this case and the peripherals, I wouldn’t have enough left for the motherboard Grace was holding for me. Maybe it would be better to get a motherboard I knew worked, and wait for the rest.
But if this motherboard did work, I’d get a case and a motherboard for a really good deal, and I might even have enough left over for a game or something. Plus, I’d have a cool story about how I found it.
Eli came back with Mei. Mei folded her arms and waited.
I nodded at Mei. “Thanks for coming to take a look,” I said. “Seems there’s a motherboard in this case. Is it still ten dollars?”
Mei looked at the case. She looked at the handwritten sign that said ALL CASES IN THIS SECTION $10. NO EXCEPTIONS. She said, “Yep.”
“You know anything about it?” I asked.
“Guy brought it in like that a couple days ago with a bunch of other stuff,” Mei told me. “It all looked brand-new.”
Yeah, that’s what I thought when I saw it too—no dust or anything. “Is it okay if I take it in to see what Grace thinks about the motherboard?”
Mei nodded. “I’ll get you a flatbed cart for all this. You know all sales are final, so make sure you really want it before you buy it.”
I nodded. Buying stuff at a junkyard is a commitment.
Eli and I wheeled the cart back to the electronics department, me pushing and Eli pointing out potholes and making sure nothing fell off.
We waited until Grace was done helping Mrs. Alvarez set up her new laptop. After Mrs. Alvarez thanked Grace a few more times and finally left, we brought the cart up to the counter.
“Mrs. Alvarez makes really, really good brownies,” Eli told Grace.
Grace grinned. “Well, then, if she brings me more than I can handle, I know who to call. Now, what have you two found?”
I lifted up the case and set it on the counter. “Mei said we could bring it in to show you. What do you think?”
Grace peered inside. She took a screwdriver from a big mug on the counter, removed the screws from the back of the case, lining them up carefully on the counter, and slid off one of the sides. She tipped the case over so we could look down at the motherboard.
Eli’s mouth was practically hanging open as he watched her work. But I didn’t tease him, because I was pretty interested too. I mean, it’s not like I’d seen anyone actually do anything like this in real life before, even though Mr. Z. had told me all about how it works, and Harry had found me some videos and photos of people doing their builds.
Carefully she unscrewed the motherboard from the tray, lining those screws up in a different row on the counter. She lifted it out by the edges and turned it over. “Looks brand-new. Is this from that batch Mei just bought?”
“Yeah, that’s what she said,” I told Grace.
“That guy said he was testing out equipment for a magazine,” Grace said. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy a beat-up board, but I considered some of his stuff myself.” She handed me the motherboard. “You want to make sure none of the pins are bent, and that the capacitors aren’t damaged. If they look good, you’ve got a decent chance that it’ll work. Unless it’s fried, of course.”
So I held up the motherboard and checked out the pins and the capacitors. “They look good to me.” I handed it back to her.
Grace nodded. “Could be worth a try. You know it fits in the case you picked, and it’s got a good layout. Plenty of slots for your memory, if you want to add more later. And it’s a nice-looking case too—very classic.” She picked up the box for the CPU I’d chosen and read the compatibility notes. “This CPU should work fine with that board.”
Eli put the calculator down on the counter. “Can I have a piece of paper?”
Grace handed him the back of a flyer and a big flat contractor’s pencil.
Eli folded the flyer in half the long way and started checking the prices on the components again and carefully writing out two lists, one if I bought the case, one if I didn’t.
Grace handed Eli another flyer. “Better make a third list too: what you’re going to need if HD gets this home and it doesn’t work.”
Eli nodded solemnly, writing the numbers down and double-checking them.
I didn’t like changing my plan at this stage, but I didn’t really have a choice, unless I wanted to wait until they got my original motherboard back in stock. If I did that, I’d probably miss the fair. “What do you think?” I asked Grace. “Should I buy it?”
Grace shrugged. “It depends. You know the risks of buying used equipment: You can’t return it, and it might not work. If you want to play it safe, you go with a new motherboard. But then it might take you longer to buy all your peripherals and get to try out your computer.”
Eli looked up from his lists. “If you go with the motherboard in the case, you can buy everything today, and you’d have $44.93 left over. If you get the new motherboard instead, you’re going to have to earn $21.57 more for your monitor.”
He passed the lists to me, and I read through them. Then I took a deep breath. Sometimes you just have to try stuff. And if it doesn’t work out, you try again. “I’ll take the case and the monitor, and skip the other motherboard,” I said.
“Woo-hoo!” Eli shouted.
Grace smiled at me, and started ringing up the whole pile.
I got out my wallet, showed her my student ID, gave her my coupon, and counted out more money than I ever had in my life.
Grace gave me my change, and helped me screw the motherboard back in and put the case together again. “If I were you, I’d stop by the library and ask them to print out the manual for that motherboard,” she told me, writing the manufacturer and model number down.
I nodded. Mr. Z. always likes to check the manuals. “We’ll do that,” I told her. “Thanks for the help.”
“Anytime,” Grace said. “Let me know how it goes.”
“We should fill out the customer service survey for Grace, since she did such a good job,” Eli said as we pushed the cart around to find Dad.
I agreed. I never would have done that for Dennis, who used to work there.
Eli was grinning a huge grin, so I guess he was feeling like things had gone pretty well.
I guess I probably was too.