Page 14 of You Had Me at Hello World
“Uh,” I say again. This single syllable may demolish whatever impression Edvin Nilsen has of my intelligence.
He launches into what sounds like a prewritten script about logistics. The program is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the MIT campus. It runs eight weeks long, from mid-June to mid-August. All expenses are covered, including flights and lodging. The main component of the program is a hackathon, a competition where students team up to build technicalprojects—video games, mobile apps, hardware devices, sentient AI, whatever. One team will be awarded a hundred thousand dollars and considered for early admission to MIT.
He talks like all of this comes so easy. Like he lives in a universe where the most abundant element is not hydrogen, but money.
When I applied to Alpha Fellows, I saw that Edvin is aForbesbillionaire. A billion has nine zeroes. Three commas. Even in binary representation, it only takes thirty digits to represent a billion. Written out, it doesn’t look like a particularly big number.
But it might as well span an entire galaxy between Edvin Nilsen and me.
“So, can you confirm your participation?” he asks.
The answer should be obvious, but suddenly I picture my mom, all alone, stuck in Chinook Shore. “I don’t know.”
“You don’tknow?” There’s this edge in his voice. I can tell that he’s not somebody who is used to being toldno.
“Sorry, this is, um, a lot to process.”
“I don’t think you understand,” he says. “This is one of the most prestigious summer programs in the country. You’re the only student from Oregon we’re admitting this year.”
Wow. How is this even real? I’m tempted to ask if he’s sure he got the right Charise Tang, but I don’t want to be annoying. “I, uh. I need some time to think it through. Sorry…”
Edvin’s voice is crisp. “Okay, let us know. There are plentyof students on the waitlist. You have until tomorrow to decide.”
Tomorrow? That’s, like, zero time. “Wai—”
But he hangs up, and then I’m listening to dead air for a few seconds.
I turn around, but Lola and Zach are gone. She probably dragged him back to the restaurant. Might as well go meet them.
I walk toward the Lucky Panda. The street is wide and empty and sad in its emptiness. It’s close enough to the sea for the salt to gnaw away at the buildings, but not quite close enough for Airbnb vultures to start circling. I pass by abandoned storefronts, sidestep bottle-green glass shards on the sidewalk that nobody bothered to sweep up. Chinook Shore. The whole town feels like a sigh.
Lola is leaning against the brick wall of the Lucky Panda exterior, beneath a lamp that pins her in an orange pool of light. She brings a vape to her lips.
“Those things are liquid cancer,” I say, even though I’m not one hundred percent sure that’s true. Maybe I’m thinking of cigarettes. I’m probably thinking of cigarettes.
She exhales a thin, white wisp. “Darlin’, at least my cancer will be strawberry flavored.”
I don’t say anything else, because Lola and I have argued about her vaping before, and I lose the argument every time. Really, I would’ve thought her mom going through chemo would’ve made Lola quit, but if anything, she’s only gotten worse.
We all have our ways of coping. Hers is a Juul. Mine is—well, was—a cute guy who feels me up in his dad’s girlfriend’s car.
“What happened to Zach?”
“Begged the manager not to call the cops. You shoulda seen the blubbering. Snot and everything. He’s washing dishes for a month.” She pushes off the wall and starts walking toward the parking lot. “Quinn said we should clear out. I’ll drive ya. I put your stuff in the trunk already.”
At least Mom is fine. “Thanks.”
We climb into her car. But Lola doesn’t reach for the ignition. She’s staring through the windshield at the restaurant door, her mouth a thin line.
I shift in my seat. “Soooo… Should we go?”
Suddenly she smacks the steering wheel. “God-freakin’-dammit! Just… Why would he do that? Duh, college ain’t easy. Tough shit. But he ruined it. Why would he ruin it?”
“It sounded like maybe he didn’t have a choice,” I say.
She stares at me incredulously. “There isalwaysa choice.Always.”
I don’t know why she thinks that, given that our entire lives seem to be written by other people, but I’m not in the mood to argue about the existence of free will. This isn’t sad philosopher hour. So I repeat, “Should we go?”
