A Broken Kind of Life (14 page)

The lecture continued along similar lines as the day before, program structures and object-oriented structures. He found the subject matter rather fascinating and started to subconsciously apply some of the concepts to a program he’d been constructing in his head since the project had been assigned. Aaron got completely into the material and found he didn’t want the lecture to end, but too soon Dr. Mayer dismissed them. Aaron hung back as he usually did, waiting for the other students to file out so he didn’t risk any accidental contact. Spencer turned to him after he’d packed up and waved before pointing to his watch. Aaron nodded at the reminder to be on at seven.

He started to say he remembered, but then after rolling his eyes at himself, he just nodded.

“Aaron, do you have a moment?” Dr. Mayer asked as Aaron headed down the steps and toward the door. Aaron changed direction, and after letting a group of girls pass, moved to stand in front of the table that instructors used to hold their stuff during lectures. There wasn’t enough of the blond wood for it to really be called a desk—it was little more than a glorified side table, but it put an effective buffer between them. Dr. Mayer was currently using it to put away his laptop and notes. As Aaron waited, the professor looked up.

“Thanks for staying. I just wondered if Mr. Thomas talked to you today?” Dr. Mayer asked as he zipped up his bag.

“Mr. Thomas?” Aaron asked, running his hand over his short hair. Was he one of the administrators or something? He started to feel a little uncomfortable. Had he done something wrong?

“Spencer Thomas is your project partner. I asked him to introduce himself so that maybe you would feel a little more comfortable with the idea of a partner,” Dr. Mayer said with a slight frown. He appeared to be disappointed because he thought Spencer hadn’t done as he’d asked.

“Yes, I’m sorry. I don’t think he ever said his last name,” Aaron told the desk, not looking at the instructor. “We chatted on IM for a few minutes before class.” Then he decided he might as well do the thing properly. “We are meeting up online later tonight in order to get started.” Aaron scuffed the toe of his shoe along the floor, embarrassed by the gap that existed between himself and a normally functioning person. He wanted to thank Dr. Mayer for helping him to find such a good partner, but he couldn’t find the words.

“That is fantastic, Aaron!” the older man exclaimed, and then in a lower voice, almost conspiratorially, he added, “You have an incredible amount of potential as a programmer. Your code on that first assignment was some of the cleanest and most concise I’ve seen. That shows not only talent, but creativity. I didn’t want to see you stumble on a solvable problem.” Of course, this man had no idea what did or did not constitute a solvable problem for Aaron, but Aaron did appreciate what Dr. Mayer had gone through in order to help him. He also appreciated the kind words the professor had said about his potential. It had been a long time since he felt like he had any potential, any purpose, or any future.

“H
OW
was class?” his mother asked when he’d gotten in the car. As he told her about the unexpected conversations, both with the new boy, Spencer, and his professor, her face grew more and more excited. Not only had he moved forward with his project and stayed in the class, but his instructor felt he had a knack for something—something other than failure and panic. His mother said she had always known computers were the place for him, because all mothers know what’s best for their children. She also promised to have dinner out of the way early so he’d have plenty of time to get ready for his chat session with Spencer.

With an extreme effort, he managed not to roll his eyes. Jesus, she made it sound like some kind of date. If dating were even a remote possibility for him, he could see her getting excited, but he hadn’t even dated before the attack. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to; he’d just been scared. Juliette might have guessed at it, but he was pretty sure his mother wouldn’t be excited to know he was gay. But, true to her word, his mother made a quick dinner of grilled cheese and tomato soup so Aaron was in his room by a quarter of six. Opening up the file on his laptop for the project specs, he began to read.

PING

The sound of his chat notification startled him out of his thoughts, and his heart jumped into his throat. Looking down, he noticed that, without conscious thought, he’d taken a page full of notes about the project and his ideas for what they could work on. He had drawn out several crude interfaces and a few logic flowcharts for subroutines and objects to support his ideas. The more he read in the specs, the more excited he’d gotten about working on it. It had been so long since he’d been excited about anything, he almost didn’t recognize the feeling.

Aaron looked up at the screen to see Spencer’s waiting message.

SPENCER:
Hey
.

Aaron grabbed his laptop and pulled it to him, putting his hastily scribbled notes aside.

AARON:
Hi
.

SPENCER:
Have you read over the specs
?

AARON:
Yeah, I just finished. I have a few ideas about what we can do
.

SPENCER:
Me too, but they’re going to be a challenge. One of them involves using social networking APIs
.

AARON:
That’s cool. I’m up for a challenge
.

A challenging project would take his mind off less pleasant things he would otherwise be thinking. If he kept his mind busy enough, maybe he could get through this semester without a complete breakdown.

SPENCER:
Okay, the specs essentially say that we can do pretty much whatever we want so long as the program is a desktop app with a menu and your basic standard interface. The program just needs to serve some useful function, but I want to go beyond that. I was thinking about a client app that will monitor your social networking sites and respond to certain messages. Like a bot, but smarter
.

AARON:
Like what
?

SPENCER:
Maybe monitoring your account and responding to tweets like #FollowFriday. When someone tells their friends to follow you, it could automatically generate a thank-you tweet. Or it could go through all of the tweets directed at you and randomly generate #FollowFriday tweets
.

AARON:
All with the documented Twitter API? Is it pretty programmer friendly
?

SPENCER:
Yep
.

AARON:
I’ve never used Twitter, but it could send out a tweet with the song you’re listening to, or what movie you’re watching based on the metadata. We could even connect it to YouTube and tweet videos the user is watching or rating
.

SPENCER:
We could combine them into one big Twitter app
.

AARON:
It would be more work
.

SPENCER:
True, but when we’re finished, we could load it up onto a Freeware site and start getting our names out there—maybe add some stuff to our resumes
.

AARON:
That’s a great idea
.

They continued to talk late into the night about the design for their new software. Downloading a screen share program, they drew up specs and mapped out ideas to submit for their proposal. Before Aaron even realized it, it was after midnight. They had been chatting for over five hours. He couldn’t help but be a little shocked, because he didn’t even talk to his own family for five hours in a month, much less one night. Spencer was surprisingly easy to talk to, especially about programming, because he seemed to be very passionate about it, just like Aaron was.

SPENCER:
This was great, man, but I have an 8 a.m. class. Damn interpreter
. =)

AARON:
I can’t believe it’s midnight already. I’ll see you in class
.

SPENCER:
K, night
.

AARON:
Good night
.

Aaron turned off his laptop in kind of a daze, the machine hot against his legs. Setting the computer on the bed next to him, he realized he was sitting against his headboard. He didn’t really even remember moving to the bed, but he must have at some point because that was where he ended up. One word, almost foreign to him now, resonated through his head as he set the computer on the desk and started getting ready for bed.

Fun.

Talking to Spencer, planning their project, had been fun.

F
OR
the first time since he’d started college, Aaron found he was actually looking forward to going to class. The previous night had been a great start to their project, and Aaron was excited about showing Spencer the code he’d written that morning. It was elegant, and he thought some of it might even be truly inspired.

“You’re ready early today. I’m surprised. I heard you typing away last night when I went to bed,” his mother said, pulling her long brown hair into a loose ponytail as she went to the stove.

“Yeah, Spencer and I got a little carried away last night talking code,” Aaron told her as he distractedly doodled a few more logic structures in his notebook at the kitchen table. When his mother took a peek over his shoulder as she set the syrup next to her son, she saw complex diagrams with squares, diamonds, lines, and arrows. He wondered if she understood any of it.

“That looks complicated,” she said, turning back toward the counter to start mixing the waffles. Before she could measure out the mix, Aaron turned to face her.

“Mom, do we have any bacon? I’d love some bacon and eggs.” Aaron noticed that his mother held on to the measuring cup in her hand, but just barely. In the last two years, he’d never asked for anything. Whatever she made, he ate, with no enthusiasm. If they went out to dinner, he had no preference on the restaurant. He didn’t even care what kind of soda they had in the house; he drank whatever his brothers drank. It was a huge shift in his behavior, but he needed to give her some kind of hope. He didn’t want to be sent away. Since she’d mentioned earlier that she had gotten bacon at the store the day before, he thought that might be a way to fake normalcy for her. Her expression showed that she would have slaughtered a pig in the backyard at that point to give him what he’d asked for.

“Sure, honey, I’ll make bacon and eggs,” she said almost casually. He knew it was a monumental thing to her, but she looked over at him like she expected him to have changed. He sat, continuing to draw his complex shapes on the pad in front of him, not acknowledging the magnitude of the moment. His heart lightened.

With hands that trembled slightly, she made her son his bacon and eggs.

As they ate, Aaron explained the symbols and flows to his mother. It was possibly the longest conversation they’d ever had, and he could tell by her glassy gaze that she hadn’t understood a word of it. By the time Aaron went to throw on his shoes so she could take him to campus, he could see a glimpse of tears in her eyes.

“You look so much like your father. During those fleeting minutes when you’re not angry, I can sometimes see the boy I knew. You talk with such enthusiasm about this project, and about programming in general. It just… it gives me hope that my son might one day emerge from that shell where you’ve been living,” she told him with a light in her eyes that hadn’t been there in a while. Embarrassed, Aaron turned away. He couldn’t allow himself to hope, but he couldn’t bring himself to take away hers.

Once he was in the computer lab at school, Aaron continued to work out some of the design of their new program as he waited for Spencer. He’d just finished detailing the tweet object parameters when he saw his partner walking up the stairs toward him. Spencer half waved at Aaron and dropped into his seat, punching the power button on his lab PC. Aaron smirked, knowing exactly how tired Spencer was feeling because he was feeling it himself. Spencer avoided the braided security cable that connected the monitor to the table as he set his bag down next to him. Aaron watched Spencer log into chat, and Aaron quickly followed suit.

SPENCER:
I’m wiped
.

AARON:
Yeah, me too, but I have a few more ideas. Oh! And look at this
.

Aaron loaded the code he’d written from his thumb drive and turned the flat-panel monitor as far as the security cable would allow so Spencer could see it.

SPENCER:
I love the generalized parameters for the module. That will make it a lot easier to reuse. Brilliant, man
!

Aaron chuckled at Spencer’s enthusiasm, pleased that he’d made him happy. Then he stopped short. He hadn’t so much as cracked a smile in more than two years. He didn’t deserve to laugh. He didn’t deserve to be happy. Juliette couldn’t laugh, and it was all his fault. She couldn’t enjoy the joke. She was gone. He had led her to that van like a lamb to slaughter.

SPENCER:
Aaron, are you okay? You look kind of sick
?

“Aaron?”

Aaron looked up and saw that Spencer had one hand up to reach for him, most likely to put a hand on his shoulder. Aaron wrenched back so violently he nearly fell off the rolling chair. Spencer jerked back as well and stared at Aaron, remorse and pity written clearly all over his pale face.