Page 32 of Time Stops With You

“So what?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Josiah says, turning away again.

I make a ‘go on’ gesture. “I want to know.”

Josiah starts speaking cautiously but the more he goes on, the more his eyes light up with excitement. “He won the Programmers Python Award four years straight.And he won the Global Coding Contest. With the prize money, he started his own company.”

“What’s the Global Coding Contest?”

“A competition with over two hundred thousand programmers from all over the world.”

I squirm in my chair. A competition that size is hard for my brain to even picture.

“His first company failed, so he did some contract work for NASA. Once, he was at a NASA camp with other programmers and someone dared him to re-program an old, broken moon-landing robot. He did and they kept his programming and sent the robot on a space exploration.”

“Alright, so he’s smart.” I tilt my chin up, struggling to regain the momentum that I had at the beginning of this conversation. “Smart people can still be dangerous.”

“He’s a good person.”

“By whose standards?” I grunt.

“He wants to change the world.”

“All he’s doing is making lots of money, Josiah. That’s not exactly leaving a dent in ending world hunger or achieving world peace.”

“He’s going to make pilot-less planes.”

Sounds like the plans of a greedy capitalist who wants to put hardworking pilots out of their jobs. I roll my eyes. “I’m not convinced.”

“You don’t understand,” Josiah snaps. “Why don’t you ever listen to me?”

“Because you’re achild.You don’t know how the world works.”

“I’m not a child. I’m eleven!”

“And I’m your guardian while you’re here.” My stomach coils with stress. “Josiah, you’re not the little orphan Annie waiting for a Mr. Warbucks. And I’m no Cinderella looking for a prince. In fairytales, it’s perfectly reasonable for strange men to randomly pop into someone’s life and throw money at them. In the real world, people like that are highly suspicious. Rich or poor, no one chases after a child without a reason. A really bad reason.”

“Hehasa reason. He’s dying and he wants a legacy.”

My eyes bug and I slam on the brakes. “He told you that he’s dying? Did he mention it that day? Did you lie to me when you said that you didn’t have a chance to talk with him before I came home?”

Josiah shakes his head. “It’s in his book.”

I really need to read this book.

A car honks behind me.

I drive forward again, my mind racing. “Josiah, are yousureyou and Ronan Cullen didn’t talk for long in the living room?”

“No.” The word is laced with annoyance.

“And you didn’t overhear what we were talking about after you went to your room?”

He remains quiet.

“Josiah,” I bark his name.

My brother purses his lips in thought and then says smartly, “I think you should marry him.”

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