Page 38 of You Had Me at Hello World
“Char, I could cover it for you,” Khoi says.
I shake my head. The offer is nice, but he shouldn’t pay for something frivolous like this. “I want to relax, anyway.”
I sit in a shady spot beneath a tree. It’s a beautiful day, everything made clean with sunlight. Somebody could take a snapshot of Killian Court right now and slap the photo on a college brochure. I’d be just out of frame. Maybe the toes of my sneakers would make it into the background.
Everyone else acts so comfortable. They know that they were handpicked to be here, that they are deserving of all this because they are brilliant and ambitious and young. I wonder when I’ll stop feeling like I woke up in the wrong life.
Sometime later, Khoi slumps down beside me.
“I lost all my money,” he says.
“Sorry for your loss.”
“Obi is a shark.” He leans against the tree trunk and shuts his eyes.
I should ask Khoi to team up. Like, right now. I don’t have the excuse of the first checkpoint anymore. The second checkpoint is in a week.
Why is this so mortifying? Jesus. It’s like even by asking, I think I’m good enough to collab with him. The famous Khoi Astor.
But if I don’t ask, it won’t happen.
Winning is too damn important. I need to get over myself.
“Khoi,” I start. “Do you…”
He’s looking at me expectantly. Something about his gaze makes my voice catch in my throat.
Maybe he’ll laugh at me for thinking he’d ever want to be on my team. He knows exactly how much of a disaster I am at computer science; he’s witnessed it firsthand these past two weeks.
No, Khoi wouldn’t laugh. He’s too nice for that. I know, I know. He’s never given me any real reason to think he’d be an ass about it. I don’t know where my fear comes from.
“Do you want to team up with me?” It comes out as one singular gust of a question.
I’m about to do the thing I did in the conversation with Aisha—tell him it’s stupid, forget it, dismiss myself before he gets a chance to—but he grins.
“I was going to ask you!”
Relief floods me. Wow. I can’t believe that worked. And Ican’t believe I’m actually going to be teaming with him.
I’m sort of going feral inside, but I try to play it off like whatever. “Great.”
“Do you have any ideas yet? Because I had a few. There was this oneTechCruncharticle about this brain scanner that lets you beam your thoughts to dogs…”
As the midafternoon sun arcs through the sky, we brainstorm. Artificial intelligence that does your homework. A virtual reality simulator for first responders, like paramedics. An animated water-intake tracker.
I could see any of these ideas popping off. But none of them feel like my vibe. I’m not thirsty, at least not literally. I don’t own a VR headset and know squat about medical crises. And while it would be nice to have an AI cook my assignments, my grades aren’t in the desperation zone yet.
We’re riffing on the concept of Google Docs but for music composition or math collaboration or something when Dallas-or-Austin rushes past. He yells, “Brenda said that the exam scores are out!”
Chapter Eighteen
By the time Khoi and I reach Stata, there’s already a sizable crowd gathered on the first floor.
Our rankings are posted on a piece of paper taped to the wall. It’s weird. For a tech program, Alpha Fellows is still stuck in the twentieth century. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ask us to submit our final projects on floppy disks.
It’s impossible to get through the crush, so we wait near the back. I’m tempted to elbow my way to the front, but Khoi seems unbothered. “Let’s just wait. It’s not like the results are going to change within the next few minutes.”
Easy for him to say. He definitely slayed it. Meanwhile, my heart is in my ears. What if I failed? What if I did so poorly it makes Khoi rethink working with me? No, what if my scores were so trash they boot me from the program?
