I didn’t think I was going to be able to eat anything. Not with my computer all busted like that. But Mr. Z. said he needed some more coffee to get his brain going, so after I unplugged everything again, we went down to the Maple Falls cafeteria for a snack.
Mr. Z. got his coffee, and Gladys decided Eli and I needed to try her special cinnamon rolls. They were almost as big as our heads. Since she was watching us, I took a bite, just to be polite. It was pretty good. Somehow I ended up eating the whole thing while Mr. Z. and I went over the list of steps, what I’d done so far, how to double-check them, and what it would look like if something was busted.
After that, we washed our hands again and dried them off really well, and went back to the project room to try again.
First I sniffed the case. Nothing smelled like smoke or electricity gone wrong. Mr. Z. said that was a very good sign that I hadn’t fried anything.
Then I started from the beginning of my instructions, double-checking each step. I pushed down gently on the CPU fan, and the memory card, and everywhere the power supply was connected.
Meanwhile, Mr. Z. walked around the table, checking my work from all angles. Suddenly he stopped, and smiled. “HD, I think I see the problem. Come, stand right here, and tell me what you observe.”
I went around the table to where he was standing, looking at the back of my case. “I see all the ports that the keyboard and stuff plug into, only they’re not plugged in right now. I can kind of see the case fan through the air holes, but it isn’t moving. I see the power cord plugged into the power supply—oh!” I grinned at Mr. Z. “And the power switch on the power supply is in the ‘off’ position!”
So I plugged everything back in again, and switched on the power supply.
And this time—it lit up! The fans whirred to life, and the computer beeped!
“It’s alive!” Eli yelled, pretending to be Dr. Frankenstein.
“It sure is,” I said. “But we’re not done yet, Eli.”
So Eli got back to work cleaning up the keyboard and the mouse, and I went back to my checklist.
Time to power it back down and unplug everything, and to clip my wristband on again so I could install my solid-state drive. I lined it up in the bracket and screwed the sides into the case. Then I had to check the tiny, tiny writing so I could get it hooked up to a data port on the motherboard, and then to the power supply.
Then…more tiny, tiny writing, and more connectors! It was time to hook everything else up too—the LED indicators on the case, the USB port, all of that stuff. Mr. Z. said that even back when his eyes were better, that part took him the longest.
Next was the part Mr. Z. said took him the second longest: cable management. All that stuff I had to hook up had cables running all over the place, and you can’t just leave them lying around where they might get in the way of the fans. Besides, it looks like a rat’s nest, and that’s no good. So I used some cable ties and some plastic twist ties to get everything organized.
I unclipped my wristband and checked out the keyboard and mouse that Eli had cleaned up for me. They looked really good—almost brand-new. “Nice,” I told him. “Thanks, man.” I hooked them up, then put the sides back on the case and screwed them in.
Now there were check marks next to every single step, except for two.
Power it all up.
Have fun with your BRAND-NEW COMPUTER!!!
I couldn’t stop smiling. It was sitting right there, just like I’d imagined: my own computer.
“Go ahead and plug it in,” Mr. Z. told me.
So I unclipped my anti-static wrist strap, took a deep breath, and plugged in the computer I built. And then I came around, and I pushed the power button on the computer and on the monitor.
The indicator lights came on. I held my breath.
The computer made a little noise, and then another…And then words appeared on my computer monitor! The BIOS screen appeared, exactly like it was supposed to! Everything worked!
Eli and I pumped our fists and jumped around for a minute while Mr. Z. pressed the intercom and asked Gladys to bring us some ginger ale in fancy plastic glasses so we could have a toast. Then he walked down the halls inviting everyone around to come see what we built. He introduced us as his friends HD, the maker, and Eli, the scientist. I tried to play it cool, kind of. But everyone was so impressed that I had built a whole computer from parts I bought myself that I couldn’t help but grin.
“Imagine what it’s going to be like at the fair!” Eli said happily.
I pictured myself in front of everyone I knew, explaining they could build one too, as long as they were careful and double-checked everything, and wore an anti-static wrist strap so they didn’t accidentally electrocute their components. Harry would give me the nod, and maybe do another special handshake, and Grace and Rose and Mei would cheer, and Ms. Stevermer might make a note in her notebook, and my parents would be prouder than they’d ever been. And I was pretty sure that by the time I walked into middle school next year, everyone was going to know who I was, and what I could do.
I smiled.
When Dad came to pick us and the computer up, he said we were going straight to Frank’s Diner to celebrate. Mr. Z. had a pool tournament, though, and couldn’t join us.
“Thanks, Mr. Z.,” I told him. “This was pretty much the best project ever.”
“Oh, I am sure the next one you dream up will be twice as exciting,” Mr. Z. said, smiling. “And I will be twice as happy to help.”
At the diner, Frank made me and Eli wear paper birthday crowns, even though it wasn’t our birthdays, and took a picture of us with my computer on the table. “For the wall,” he said, nodding seriously.
Frank’s wall is covered in photos of everyone who comes to the diner: Little League teams in uniform waving hot dogs, and the girls’ karate team pretending to chop the diner tables in half with their hands, and the cast of The Music Man hovering around the biggest ice cream cake Frank ever made, still in their costumes. Not to mention photos to show that Frank’s two-foot-long sub sandwich is longer than a new baby, and people pretending to feed burgers to their prize-winning giant cabbages, and all that. I liked knowing my computer would be up there too.
After we finished the grilled cheese–BLT hybrid that I invented, and Eli’s plain grilled cheese on sourdough, with mayonnaise instead of ketchup for his fries, Eli looked at me. “You know what sounds really good right now?”
I grinned. “A brownie.”
Dad laughed, and got up to go talk to Frank. “Just don’t let your oma hear you say that.”
I was feeling good about things when we pulled into our garage and lugged everything inside. But as soon as we came in, before Mom could even tell me congratulations, the ghost said, “Hans Dieter, we have a problem.” She floated over and dropped a piece of paper right into my hands.
“Marietta, please let HD in the door first,” Mom said, sighing.
But Oma just kept floating right in front of my face.
I read it silently. I guess Mom and Oma had had a conversation while we were at the diner.
Oma: When will the Pickle Parade happen?
Mom: I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of the Pickle Parade. There’s the Veterans Day Parade—Hans Peter and I usually drive some of the older veterans in that.
Oma: Do you never attend the fair?
Mom: Of course we attend the fair. Hans Peter enters a car every year, and I enter vegetables I’ve grown. I’ve got a giant kohlrabi that’s coming along really well this year, as long as we keep those goats away from it.
Oma: But you don’t watch the winners drive through town in the Pickle Parade?
Mom: I’ll need to check, but I don’t think they do that anymore.
Oma: But how does the town honor the winners?
Mom: Well, they award a blue ribbon to the winning entries—I’ve got one for last year’s giant cabbage, and Hans Peter won his three years ago for the restored Volkswagen Beetle.
Oma: But what about the Pickle Prize?
Mom: I’m not familiar with the Pickle Prize.
Oma: It’s a golden trophy with a marble base, etched with the past winners of the pickling contest. The winner and her family ride through town in the mayor’s car. The winner wears the Pickle Queen’s corsage and her best hat, and carries the Pickle Prize.
Mom: I’m afraid I’ve never heard of that happening.
Oma: I must win the Pickle Prize.
Mom: Well, HD is doing everything he can to help you with that. But not everything is about winning, right?
Oma: I must win.
I sighed. Mom had already told her that things had changed, but she wasn’t exactly taking it well. What was I supposed to do—tell the mayor she had to have a Pickle Parade and drive my great-great-grandma the ghost around if she won? And tell everyone they were supposed to wave back and cheer, even though they couldn’t see her?
Mom walked right through the ghost and gave me a big hug. “Never mind that right now—this is your time to celebrate! Now show us what you built.”
Mom doesn’t love computers the way I do, but I appreciated her changing the subject. So I set up the computer and all the peripherals in the family room. The ghost fell silent as the computer booted up.
I’d done it a few times already, but I still held my breath as the computer beeped and hummed to life, and I still smiled when the BIOS screen came up.
But before I could explain what was going on, or how I put it all together, the ghost wanted to know where her sauerkraut application was for the fair.
“We got that too, Mrs. S.,” Eli told her.
But it was hard to hear her answer, because Mom was explaining to Asad that no, we couldn’t watch TV right now, we were right in the middle of something very important to his brother, and didn’t he want to see what the computer did? And Asad was asking whether he could play Minecraft on my computer, so I had to tell him no, it wasn’t really set up to play games, or anything yet, since I’d just built it this afternoon.
“Then what’s it good for?” Asad asked.
I sighed, and turned the computer off again.
Mom tried to stop me, but then Asad knocked his water all over her, and Dad went for paper towels, and Eli was trying to answer Oma’s questions about the Pickle Parade. They didn’t even notice when I unplugged it all, put it back in the box, and took it downstairs to my room.
I put the box in the corner, and sat down on my bed. Mom and Dad must have let Asad watch his program, because he didn’t come down to bug me, and Oma probably hadn’t finished with Eli yet. Usually I love having time to myself to do maker stuff. But right then I didn’t feel like making any notes for new project ideas. Yeah, sure, I still needed to figure out a plan for some software so my computer would do something. But I’d worked really hard on it, making my plan, earning all that money, doing my build. I just wanted to enjoy this part a little bit longer before I got back to work.
I stared up at my posters until they swam a little, and sniffed back my feelings. I bet Shuri’s first computer ran half of Wakanda.
There was a tap at my door, and then Mom came in. When she saw my face, she came over and gave me a hug. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”
I shrugged. “It’s okay, Mom—you don’t have to pretend to be all excited about my project.”
She gave me a look. “Of course I’m excited about it! Just because you’re growing up doesn’t mean I have to stop being excited about everything you do.”
I turned away. “It’s not like it’s that hard.”
“Maybe not for you, but I’ve never built a computer,” she said. “Honey, I’m sorry your brother and your grandma didn’t respect your time tonight. But I’ll tell you what: Why don’t I find out if Asad can spend the day at the fair with his friend Liya when your presentation is scheduled, and we can celebrate your computer properly? We could invite Mr. Ziedrich, and Grace, and that librarian you’re always talking about….”
“I’m not always talking about Harry,” I told her. “We just have some things in common.”
She nodded. “Like computers, I bet. So, how does that sound?”
“Well, they might have their own stuff to do,” I told her. “I told Harry he should enter his cookies this year, and Mr. Z. is bringing Rodgers and Hammerstein.”
“But if they are available, is it something you would like to see happen?” Mom asked.
I didn’t tell her that’s pretty much how I always dreamed it would be, ever since I thought up this project. I just nodded.
But I think she guessed how I felt about it anyway.