Aaron (15 page)

Chapter Eight

 

W
HEN Aaron entered the lab, he was surprised and a little disappointed to find he wasn’t alone. As he climbed up, past row after row of empty seats, his attention was focused on the boy that was sitting in the seat next to the one Aaron sat in. For a moment, he considered moving to the other side of the aisle, but then decided that someone else would just sit next to him anyway, and sat down his stuff at his regular seat. Briefly, he wondered where the boy’s interpreter was. Aaron turned on his workstation, watching the screen as he waited for it to boot. He was startled completely out of his thoughts when the boy next to him said his name.

“Aaron,” he said in a slow, measured timbre, his pronunciation slightly different than Aaron was used to. He looked over at the boy and noticed for the first time that he was relatively short-statured, just like Aaron. His shaggy brown hair was in naturally curled disarray because of the slight humidity, and his nose and cheeks were dusted sparingly with freckles. Aaron did something he would normally never do: he met the boy’s gaze. He wasn’t sure what had made him do it, but he found the other boy’s hazel eyes were full of kindness and wonder rather than judgment.

Aaron merely nodded in response.

“My. Name. Is. Spencer.,” the boy said in a very slow, punctuated speech. The words sounded only slightly off from what someone would expect as a standard cadence, but in his panic, Aaron hardly noticed. “I. Am. Your. Project. Partner..” Spencer handed Aaron a piece of paper with his e-mail, cell phone number, and instant messenger contact information. Printed in neat block writing below that was a note that read, “It is easier for me to work like this if that is okay with you?”

In response, Aaron quickly turned around with panic fluttering in his chest and created an account on the site Spencer used for instant messaging. He sent him a chat invitation and waited while Spencer responded. It only took a minute for the first chat window to pop up.

SPENCER: Thanks, this makes things easier for me.
AARON: Me too.

Aaron typed in his e-mail address and cell phone number, breathing a sigh of deep relief that he’d drawn this boy as a partner, and that Spencer had sought him out. Had Aaron believed in fate, he might have chalked this pairing up to that, but he didn’t. Believing in fate would mean that what happened to him, what happened to Juliette, was supposed to happen, and he didn’t think God was that cruel.

AARON: How did you know who I was?

SPENCER: Dr. Mayer told me, plus you were the only one whose name he didn’t call besides mine. It would have been a process of elimination, anyway.

AARON: What did he tell you about me?

 

SPENCER: Nothing really, just that you keep to yourself, but that he thinks we will work well together. And I don’t have to use my interpreter.

Aaron didn’t have any reply to that, because he knew exactly what it was like to rely so completely on others to be able to function. Other students were starting to file in now, taking their places among the graduated rows of computers on their Formica tables. He checked his screen as another message came up.

SPENCER: You want to chat later and talk about the project? We should start deciding what we want to do, and maybe put a plan together.

AARON: That’s a good idea. Around 7:00?
SPENCER: Cool.

It occurred to Aaron as he saw Spencer’s translator making her way up through the throng of other students, that he had just done what he had set out to do. Well, actually, Spencer had really done most of it, but regardless, it was done. He had met and actually talked to his partner, gotten contact information, and set up a time for them to work later. A warm glow of accomplishment, one that he hadn’t felt in a very long time, blazed in his chest. He thought it might be pride.

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, 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.

Maybe, in time, he would find he did.

“
H
OWwas 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 didn’t want to, he was just scared. Juliette may 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.

Aaron

 

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 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 the tweets directed at you and randomly generate #FollowFriday tweets.

AARON: All with the documented Twitter API? I heard it’s 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.