Chapter 27

<<Sometimes the greatest proof of love is to let her go,>> Gumps tweets.

When I see the tweet, I know who stands behind the account: Peter. And I should have known because who else could have hacked my Twitter accounts but a former government-techno-spook. But what does his tweet mean? I’ve promised to give him a day, and that’s just what I’ll do. I told Peter I was staying with Hannah.

I’ll figure it all out later; for now, I can’t believe Assured Destruction will be done today.

I wake at six, having spent the night camped out in the van with a dumpster mattress, rousing every hour to start and run the heater for ten minutes. At five I skipped the engine, hunkering under the blankets until dawn, but then the generator cranked over, rumbling to life, and an artificial dawn blazed from a high-powered light that allows the workers to start early.

I stumble bleary eyed, wrapped in my parka, into the electric light of Assured Destruction’s parking lot. I am willing to give a finger for just a sip of the double-double Tim Horton’s coffee the guy fiddling with the generator is drinking. I needn’t have worried, though. Some good Samaritan has donated coffee and a box of a hundred donuts. It rests on the tailgate of a pickup and I plunge in, polishing off my second meal of deep fried dough in twenty-four hours, this time chased by caffeine.

Luckily the plumbing still works inside Assured Destruction, and I clean up a bit before starting on my thank you gifts. I can already tell I am going to need as many as yesterday, perhaps more. All day I collect components and fiddle, making my stuff, greeting helpers, saying thank you more times than all my life combined.

The librarian chick pops by at midday and says that her daughter has already sold her pair of earrings on some website and is asking if she could have more. I didn’t know quite what to say. She liked it so much she sold it? But I am not about to insult someone who is lending me a hand. So I just shrug and tell her to help herself. She flushes as she takes two pairs. Funny thing is, I have more female workers today. Some people swing past and don’t really look like they’ve been working. One woman clicks over in four-inch heels, grabs her gift and walks back out. Someone whistles at her and another catcalls, so I’m pretty sure she is paying for her purchase.

Later, with the sun setting, my pile’s depleted and Jonny tugs me out of my cave. I’ve watched the progression of the restoration, of course, but it’s wholly another matter when the electrical is reconnected and switched on and pot lights shine through drywall that has never existed, and shelves for god knows what people expect us to sell line the walls. A slightly used cash register graces a counter so polished the reflection hurts my eyes.

At the back, Chop-chop has been brilliantly repainted with these big fangs and googly eyes by Jonny.

I step through a new door to the outside and look back.

Assured Destruction looks back at me. It’s done.

I’m not alone in wandering around, admiring the finished product. I just start laughing and crying at the same time. For their sacrifice of time and money, and for who? Me!

“Thank you,” I shout. Then I jog back inside, and flip the Closed sign to Open. I hear the cheer before stepping back out into it. It’s a full minute before it quiets.

“You know I suck at … you know … talking.” I swallow. “But I want to say thank you. To everyone. I wish my mom could be here. I’ll take her a picture right now. Right after this. It means so much to me. To us. So, yeah …” I hold my hands palms out because that’s all I have for them. “Thank you.”

It’s not enough. It can never be enough, I know. And I wonder if these are the points in people’s lives when they decide that they need to spend the rest of theirs giving back, if only in a vain attempt to return what was given to them. Maybe that’s what Annie is doing in her kitchen.

I glance back at the milling workers and notice something. Anyone with a piercing, man or woman, is wearing one of my creations. Men in heavy jackets and hard hats sport necklaces of flex circuitry; others in safety vests have headphone earmuffs.

“Good speech,” Jonny says, taking my hand in his. My fingers are already cool, but his are warm, his heart being bigger than mine. “You have to see the upstairs.”

I marvel at everything I pass. The well-oiled and restored conveyor. Chop-chop’s rumble—fully rebuilt after the heat of the fire.

“I was thinking,” I say. “Maybe if we find an old vending machine, we can hook it up to Chop-chop and people can just wander in, pay the machine, and pop their hard drive in.”

“Hacker,” he says.

“That’s not hacking,” I say.

“Sure it is.”

And maybe he’s right. The gifts, the upcycling. It’s all hacking in some ways. Hacking is just finding solutions that aren’t otherwise obvious, like turning a toaster into a toaster oven just by turning it on its side. Hacking doesn’t have to include technology. Life hacking.

We grind upward in the slow-as-it-ever-was elevator. Jonny insisted we take it for effect. I discover what he’s talking about when the doors open.

Somehow they managed to slip everything from a couple of couches to a dining room table, lounge chairs, and beanbags past me while I worked. Sure, it’s all a bit battered but I’m not one to complain, I spent a good part of the night finding a spot for my head on the dumpster mattress that didn’t stink of spoiled milk. In here it smells of lemons and sawdust. The bedrooms facing the parking lot have been refurnished too. Gone are the overhead fluorescent lights and the windows facing the living area. Funky, blown-glass pendant lights hang in not an old office, but a bedroom, with a real bed and not just a mattress on the floor. Even the heat has turned back on.

I turn into Jonny and reach up so that my fingers run up behind his ears. And then I draw him to me and kiss him.

Excitement ratchets up in me for a moment as I have the same sense of invincibility I had in the police station, on the road, when I tossed away my crutches, when I was at the peak of my mania. Kissing him, I feel as though everything will work out. That anything’s possible. And then I realize what it is I’m feeling. What my dad talked about. And maybe that scares me even more.

“I love it,” I say.

I might have said more but Jonny sweeps me up and kisses me with such tender force that words are not necessary.