NOW
The banners on the wall in the giant well-lit reception room read “Welcome, Incoming Computer Science Students,” along with the New York University logo on either end. Garry smiles, staring up at the big white letters, and it’s like he finally feels like he’s where he’s supposed to be.
This reception is a lot nicer than he expected. He’s imagined a room with folding chairs and a Spotify Top 40 playlist trying too hard to loosen everyone up. But all the computer science students would be standing around awkwardly, not sure how to interact with anyone.
Exactly what he’s doing right now.
There’s a buffet with hot and cold food, and even servers walking around with hors d’oeuvres and sparkling apple cider in champagne glasses. Garry silently thanks his father for dragging him to Men’s Wearhouse a couple of weeks ago so he could have “dress slacks and a button-up shirt for college like every young man should.”
Early in the morning, he and his dad drove down to Manhattan and moved him into the freshman dorm. Garry felt different being back in New York City. This time he wasn’t here for only thirty-six hours. He was here for four years.
Now, at the reception, all he can think about is how much he wants to see her again. Scanning the room over and over, he’s starting to fear she’s not here. But she has to be. That was their plan.
“Garry, my man!” He turns around to see Marc, from their team. Marc is all height and dreads and smile. They bro-hug.
“NYU let you in?” Garry asks him.
Marc laughs. And they talk about everything, how they both applied early admission, and how much they couldn’t wait to get back here but for real, not just for one weekend every summer.
Finally Garry asks the only thing that’s on his mind. “You see Inaaya?”
“Nah. You trying to pick up where y’all left off last year?”
Garry shakes his head. “I told you, man. It wasn’t like that.”
“Okay. All right. You sticking with that?” Marc looks at Garry like he’s being ridiculous, and maybe he is. “I was there, remember?”
“Just let me know if you see her,” Garry says. He can’t deal with Marc and his questions. Not when he can hardly make sense of things himself.
He met Marc at his first hackathon the summer after freshman year, held right here at NYU, and they ended up being teammates every year. And even though they found out they didn’t live that far from one another—Garry in Rochester, Marc a little outside Buffalo—they never saw each other during the school year. Just in the summer, for the hackathons.
Now they walk around the reception for new computer science students, drinking cider and eating mini egg rolls, sharing dorm information and class schedules, but Garry can’t help scanning the room. Maybe she’s late. Maybe that’s why he can’t find her.
One thing he doesn’t do is consider the other possibility, that she chose a different college. He can’t think of that because, if he does, he knows he’ll never see her again.
THE FIRST HACKATHON
The first time Garry saw her was three summers ago. It was the first time his dad let him come to the city by himself and stay for a whole weekend “with absolutely no supervision,” even though Garry told him a million times there were going to be adults there. He had left home early in the morning, before his father woke up for work, and gotten to the Greyhound station on his own. The bus took over seven hours to get to the city, stopping in every small town in Upstate New York nobody’s ever heard of. But to Garry, the whole thing was an adventure, proof he could do things on his own, even get to New York City.
That Friday evening, after he found the right building and checked in at the registration table, he watched as all the kids arrived. He was looking. Not looking for her, specifically. But someone else Black, someone whose presence there would tell him he was in the right place, that he wasn’t going to be the only one.
And then there she was.
He stared at her as she walked into the lobby of the computer science building with her mother, a tall woman wearing a long dark-blue dress and a light-blue hijab. The girl was tall, too, slim with dark skin and natural hair pushed back off her face with a red headband. She wore jeans and a “Will Hack for Chocolate” long-sleeve T-shirt.
Garry watched as they waited in line at the registration table and as she got her name badge and a tote bag filled with snacks and travel-size toothpaste and lotion—stuff they were giving out to everyone. And he watched them walk toward the auditorium. He knew this wasn’t her first hackathon. She hugged kids she already knew and introduced them to her mother. More than that, she looked comfortable. Unlike him.
In the auditorium, she sat with a bunch of kids and their parents during the opening remarks, where the NYU students who had organized the event discussed the goals of the hackathon, how they had gathered brilliant young minds together for thirty-six hours of innovation and collaboration and fun. Then the corporate sponsors spoke for a few minutes, talking about how excited they were to see so many talented high school students there, and how they were looking forward to what they would create with their software.
By then, there were several Black kids in the auditorium, so that helped a little, but still, Garry couldn’t help but feel nervous. He knew he wasn’t the only one there for the first time, but maybe he was in over his head. What did he know about any of this?
Another thing was becoming obvious. He was the only kid there without a parent. There was no way his father would miss a day of work to bring him all the way down to Manhattan. And then what was his father supposed to do? Wait there the whole weekend so he could drive him back to Rochester?
Of course, there was his mother, who lived close by. But no, that wasn’t an option. She didn’t even know he was there. And that was the way he wanted to keep it.
The hackathon officially began at nine o’clock that night, so after all the welcomes and pep talks, and after the parents went home, the NYU student volunteers got on the stage and started breaking everyone up into three groups, depending on the area they had signed up for—HealthTech, EdTech, or Social Justice.
One after the other, names were called for the HealthTech group and those kids left the room. The girl was still there, though. He hoped she’d chosen Social Justice like he had. But her name—Inaaya Saddiq—was called for EdTech, and then she and her friends were gone. He’d picked the wrong group.
After an hour-long hands-on demo with the new software package they had to use to create their app, and after another pep talk by the Social Justice mentors, telling the kids how injustice was a growing problem and the world needed young people like them to come up with solutions, they were brought into the large atrium, with round tables everywhere. The other groups were already there, on other sides of the room. Garry started to get excited. He had seen hackathons online, but there he was. This was what he wanted. He was really doing this.
For the next few minutes everyone in the Social Justice group had to form small teams. One of the other Black guys came up to him and said, “You a developer?”
Garry nodded.
“You good?”
Garry nodded again.
“Be on my team then,” the guy said. “We need someone who can kick ass.”
Garry swallowed hard. He kicked ass at his tech high school. But that was Rochester. This was New York City.
“I’m Marc, by the way,” the guy said.
“Garry.”
“Cool.”
They walked over to a table and Garry met the three girls on their team. Hannah was a developer, too, but she’d only been coding a couple of years. Lisa was a designer like Marc. And the other girl, Christine, was going to be the project manager and the spokesperson for their presentation.
For the next few minutes everyone pulled out their laptops and plugged them in. While downloading the new software package, Garry opened an energy drink that was in his tote bag and drank a little. He was feeling the effects of leaving home so early and traveling all day. He was tired, but he couldn’t give in to it. With his laptop logged into the Wi-Fi, he settled into the chair and tried to relax with his team.
“Okay,” Christine said after everyone was ready to get down to work. “What kind of app can we create in thirty-six hours that will change the world?”
It was after two in the morning when Garry finally looked up from his screen. Their app in progress was going to be a kind of alert you could send out to those nearby if you were being threatened by a police officer. People could be on the scene right away to witness the interaction, and the app would even record video that would immediately upload to its servers. So even if the cops took away someone’s phone, they wouldn’t be able to delete the evidence.
“The police are going to hate this,” Hannah said.
“Not if they’re doing the right thing,” Marc responded. “Anyway, we don’t hate the police. Only the ones who shoot people who look like me for no reason.”
“I like that it’s people looking out for each other,” Garry said. “It can’t hurt to have other people there to keep the police in line.”
They all nodded.
“We need something else, to make our app stand out,” Garry said. “I’m gonna check some APIs and repositories. There has to be something we can use.”
Hours later, Garry’s eyes burned from searching through the open-source code on GitHub for something he could build upon, so he closed his laptop for the first time. He noticed some of the kids were taking a break, walking outside, and he needed some air, too.
All night, his fingers had flown over his keyboard, writing line after line of code so fast, it felt like he was playing music. That was the thing about coding he loved. He could lose himself in a project. It was like he could already see the finished product in his mind. He just needed to tell the computer how to get there.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Take a half hour,” Christine said. “Eat something. You too, Hannah. Give the designers time to figure out some of their details.”
Hannah got up and headed for the table where they had some sandwiches and soda and chips. But Garry headed for the door. As he walked outside, he found himself in a group of kids all leaving together.
And she was there, too.
They all walked down the street and into Washington Square Park. It was after two o’clock in the morning and so dark outside even with the streetlights on. The weather was warm and perfect, and it felt good being out there with Manhattan surrounding them.
It was his first time being back in the city. He’d spent the first ten years of his life in Brooklyn, but that had seemed like a lifetime ago. He was a different kid then. Sad, scared, tired.
He lived with his mom in a tiny apartment in the basement of a house on Parkside Avenue. There was only one bedroom, so he had to sleep on the pullout sofa. Every night, he heard mice scratching their way into the kitchen from the backyard. When he found their holes, he plugged them with steel wool, but it was a never-ending battle. They always found their way back in.
The only time he couldn’t hear the mice was when his mother was in the bedroom fighting with a boyfriend, or crying over another broken relationship. Garry would lie on the sofa bed, hoping she’d stay in the room and not come out and take everything out on him. Blame him for why she could never keep a man. His mother never hurt him, at least not physically, but he’d been on the wrong end of her rages too many times. They terrified him, made it so he couldn’t wait until the next morning when school started. He would stay there all day if he could.
And he tried. He joined just about every club at school—the math team, the coding club, even the trivia bowl. Anything that kept him away from home. Those teams and clubs helped him realize he was smart—the exact opposite of the words his mother called him on a near-daily basis.
At school he came alive. At home he died.
One day, he called his dad in Rochester and begged him to come and take him away from there. His mother was getting worse, angrier, and even school wasn’t enough to keep him from sliding into his sadness.
But his father came through. He told his mother about a school in Rochester, near his house, for kids who were good at tech. He said it was his turn to take on the burden of raising Garry. As if he was a burden. But Garry figured his father was saying whatever he had to say, just to get him out of there.
And it worked. Two weeks before middle school started, Dad drove down to get him. Garry was waiting in front of the house. He didn’t want to even say goodbye to his mother, but his dad made him.
He hadn’t spoken to her since then.
Being back in New York City for the hackathon, he leaned against a lamppost in Washington Square Park and looked around. Even though he had grown up just a few miles from there, he had never known the area around NYU. He felt like a tourist in what used to be his city.
There in the park, he watched the other hackathon kids run around, laughing. Two guys tried to climb a tree. Nobody knew what to do with their energy. Time was running out. Their break was almost over.
He saw the girl, standing not too far from him, but she was with two other girls, and they looked like they were already friends. He wanted to talk to her, but he couldn’t figure out a way to interrupt them. And what would he say, anyway?
So he just watched her, averting his eyes every few seconds so she wouldn’t see him staring at her. But there was something about her. Yes, she was pretty. Beautiful. But he was drawn to her smile, the way she covered her mouth when she giggled with her friends. He loved the way she seemed so present in the moment. Happy. She looked like she didn’t want to be anywhere other than right there.
Before he could work up the courage to say anything to her, to maybe ask her what her team was working on, they were all headed back inside the building. And they were back to their own teams—laptops open, heads down.
And that’s where they stayed for the rest of the hackathon, on opposite sides of the room, siloed in their own projects. Every so often he would look at her, see her huddled with her team, watch her grab a sandwich or a cookie from the food table, see her laughing with her friends on the way to the bathroom. He wanted to know her, but thinking about how to talk to her was taking up too much space in his brain. He needed to focus on his team, on their app.
That was what he was there for, right?
THE SECOND HACKATHON
If he were being honest with himself, Garry would admit part of the reason he made sure he came back the next summer was so he could possibly see her again, maybe even work up the courage to talk to her. He had kicked himself more than a few times in the year since he’d first seen her, but now he was going into junior year. He should be able to say hi to a girl, at least in theory.
Inaaya was there at NYU before him this time. Her mom was there, too, in a yellow hijab and long purple dress. Inaaya was dressed for the hackathon. Jeans, sneakers, long-sleeve T-shirt that said “I Code Like a Girl.”
Garry couldn’t help but smile. He liked her style. Who knew? He might even like her personality if he could ever say anything to her.
As things unfolded, Garry started to feel like he was living the previous year over again. They were broken into categories, and once again, they were in different groups. She’d chosen HealthTech that summer, while Garry had picked Social Justice again. He liked his team, and he was happy when Marc and Hannah were back. They rounded out their team with two new kids, who looked as overwhelmed as he’d probably looked the year before.
Even though they were crazy busy, this year creating a browser extension using the sponsor’s web tools, that didn’t stop Garry from glancing at Inaaya on the other side of the atrium whenever he had the chance.
The whole first night went by, and there was no time for a long break, only a couple of short naps right there at their table. There was a room set up with cots, but who had the time to sleep? There was so much to do and only thirty-six hours to do it.
It wasn’t until the second night, just a few hours before the corporate sponsors would start walking around to hear their pitches, that Garry felt he was too bleary-eyed to function. It was four in the morning, and if he didn’t get some air, he wouldn’t be able to think through the finishing touches.
While Marc and Hannah worked on the logo and the branding, he stood up and said, “I’ll be back.” And he grabbed a brownie on his way out the door.
Even though he hadn’t noticed her leaving, he actually ran into Inaaya and two other girls in Washington Square Park, taking their break at the same time. This was his chance.
Shaking off the heaviness of exhaustion, he walked right up to the group and said, “Hey, y’all needed some air, too?” It was the best he could do in the state he was in.
But it worked.
Inaaya turned to him and smiled. “You were here last year, right? I remember you.”
Garry forced himself not to show how happy he was that she’d actually noticed him. “Yeah,” he said, as cool as he could. “That was my first hackathon.”
“I’ve been doing them since middle school,” she said.
The voice in Garry’s head was screaming, C’mon, man. Say something!
“I remember you, too,” he said, and he tried to ignore the way one of her friends elbowed her.
“You do?” she asked.
He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Was she flattered? Or just irritated? But he kept talking, the sleepiness quickly being replaced by sheer terror. But he was too far into this already. “Would you like to take a walk around the park with me? I promise to get you back to your friends in a few minutes.”
Her friend elbowed her again and whispered way too loud, “Go. He’s cute.”
Inaaya hit her friend on the shoulder. “Stop it, Kenya.” Then she turned to Garry and said, “Okay.”
Walking away from the other two girls, Garry felt so unsure of himself that for a minute, he didn’t say anything. They just walked. Finally he said, “I love this park.”
“Yeah,” Inaaya said. “It’s beautiful. Especially at night.”
“I know.” He looked up at the sky through the thick trees. “It doesn’t even look like New York City when you’re here.”
They kept walking and he asked her how she got into hackathons.
“I’ve been coding since I was a little kid,” she said. “Nobody in my family understands how I got this way.”
“Your mom, she’s real supportive, though. She always comes with you, and she’s always all dressed up and—”
“Everybody notices my mom,” Inaaya said, laughing. “She’s beautiful! And she loves color—the brighter the hijab, the better.”
Garry wanted to tell her she was beautiful too, but instead he asked, “Why don’t you—I mean, do you ever—?”
“I wear it sometimes,” she said. “At the mosque, for prayers, and, like, when we visit my relatives. But I don’t think I need to wear a hijab to be a good Muslim. It’s in my heart. It’s who I am.”
Garry smiled. He liked how confident she was, how much she already knew herself.
“Your turn,” Inaaya said. “If this is too personal, don’t answer. But why do you always come by yourself?”
“That’s not too personal. It’s just that I live with my dad all the way up in Rochester. He can’t come with me because he works security at a mall, and he has to work on weekends.”
“Does he get all the stuff you do?”
Garry laughed, shaking his head. “Not at all. But he knows it’s a good thing, something smart.”
“It must be weird for our parents.” She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “It’s like we’re coding Martians to them.”
They walked from one crisscrossed path to the other, passing a couple of people walking their dogs at that time of morning. They eventually found themselves under the huge arch.
“Wow,” Inaaya said, looking up at the monument. “You know what I have a sudden urge to do?”
“What?” He was intrigued.
“Watch!” Then for no reason Garry could figure out, she started spinning around with her arms outstretched, laughing the whole time. There were a few men hanging out by the arch, probably getting high, and even they looked at her like she was crazy.
Garry yelled, “What are you doing? You’re losing your mind.” But her joy was contagious. He found himself laughing right along with her.
A few seconds later, she stopped spinning. “I needed that,” she said, still giggling. “Being cooped up in that room was getting to me. You should try it, Garry.”
“No, I’m good,” he said. No way would he let her see him acting a fool, not when their walk was going well so far.
On the way back to her friends, Garry found out a few more things about her. She was from Long Island, she had an older sister, and her father had died when she was little. She got a little sad when she talked about him and Garry thought about reaching out to touch her hand, maybe hold it so she knew he understood her feelings. But he resisted. He didn’t want to scare her off.
When they rejoined her friends, she told them, “Garry was a complete gentleman.”
“See,” Garry said. “Just like I promised.”
On the way back to their building, it was all Garry could do to hide his smile. He waved goodbye to them and headed back toward his team. “Where were you, man?” Marc asked. “You left us to go hang with the competition?”
“Not the competition,” Garry defended. “Inaaya.”
Marc shook his head. “Damn, it’s sad, watching a smart guy like you let a girl mess with his head.”
“She’s not like that.”
“All right, watch. While you’re sitting with your head in the clouds, thinking about her, you know what she’s gonna be doing? Winning, that’s what!”
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.
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 <br/> 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.
It takes a while, but Garry looks away from her and turns around. He won’t talk to her. Not now.
He thinks he gets it. Gets her. She was struggling. She was trying to figure out who she wanted to be. She just wanted to know.
Garry slowly walks back over to Marc, who’s enjoying his strawberry way too much. Garry laughs. “Something wrong with you?”
“Me? You the one asking about Inaaya all night and you find her and won’t go talk to the girl.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Garry says. “Just not now.” And it’s true. They’ll probably be in a class together, or they’ll run into each other at the library or the cafeteria. Or maybe he’ll see her at some CompSci student meeting or something.
Maybe they’ll be friends again, the kind of friends who meet and talk under the arch in Washington Square Park.
But that’s all. He knows he has to let her go. She made her decision.
And it wasn’t him.