“Right over here,” Noah says, exiting his office. He pecks my lips and places his hand on the small of my back as we go to the delivery dock. Three white boxes are neatly stacked next to a pallet of leaf blowers.
Zach examines a box, leaning over on his wheelchair, then his fingers fly across his phone screen. “You sure that’s what you want?” he asks Noah as he shows him his phone.
Noah ignores the phone and scratches the back of his neck. “You know me, Zach. Don’t have to repeat myself to you. But uh… Mrs. Callaway thought it’d be a good idea. Lilyvale isn’t exactly a two-minute job.”
“Setting up the vacuum cleaners could be my project,” he tells Noah.
“Any twelve-year old can do that.”
Zach nods. “Oh, hundred percent. Now, hear me out…” he says as Noah shakes his head.
I chuckle quietly. I don’t know what Zach has in mind, but I know his tells. I saw him convince the program director at the adaptive sports school to let him try his self-made contraption at the park—and by park, I mean the ski slope equipped with ramps and jumps for daredevils—using valid arguments such as his lower center of gravity and four points of friction on the surface. What we failed to notice was the thing had hydraulic springs that propelled him higher than anyone had ever been. Of course Zach being Zach had equipped his machine with a camera streaming in real time, so when he face-planted, the entire world went through it live with him.
And when I say the entire world, I mean his parents enjoying a quiet day at the office, who’d gotten a notification on their respective phones, and went through the stomach-churning experience of increasing speed, multiple sightings of the sky, his “fuck-fuck-fuck” mutters, and then a light-gray screen and nothing for agonizingly long seconds.
Then, “I’m aliiiiiive,” something that sounded like laughter and crying, a gloved finger scraping snow off the screen, and Zach’s distorted face saying into the camera, “That was epic. Dad, did you see that? Mom?”
His mom deleted the app from her phone for a little while, and his dad thanked the program director.
So that’s Zach.
“Come on, Mister C. You know what I’m talking about. These can—and when I say can, that means they absolutely do—send mapping information to the cloud. Servers that anyone can break into.” He glances at me, hoping I’m as terrified as hemakes it out to be. “Plus the information of other connected household objects. Like, when you turn off your coffee machine and remote-start your car to warm it up from the app on your phone—it can definitely make sense of the information that you’re getting ready to leave the house and it sends it to the cloud which is a very shady place. And don’t get me started on baby monitors.”
Noah pushes his glasses up. “I know all that. Now tell me what you have in mind. With all the details this time, please.” Something passes between the two that tells me Zach is just as rogue at the computer as he is on the slopes. I can’t wait to see what he makes of his life.
“We replace the firmware and chips with our own code. I can talk to Mister K about getting their discarded Raspberry Pis or ESP32 boards.” Mister K, aka Ethan, started a cybersecurity firm with some of his fellow ex-Air Force friends and other computer geeks. He helped with a breach at the high school last year and has been helping mentor the coding club along with Noah.
Noah slaps Zach’s shoulder to signify his agreement. “I’ll need a full project description by tonight. And not just the technical details. But cost and timeline, too, as well as who’ll be on your team.”
Zach starts to protest, but Noah cuts him off. “This isn’t a one-person job, even though you could probably do it on your own. But I need this quick, and you have to build your leadership skills if you want to move onto larger projects. Ask Ethan—Mister K. He’ll tell you all about it. Actually, see if he’d be your advisor for this project.”
Zach extends his hand, shaking Noah’s profusely. “Thanks.” Then he turns to me. “You guys are the coolest. We’ll get you the best vacuum cleaners there is.”
We watch him leave, then I say, “Thank you. For Zach, I mean. This is great.”
“He’s a good kid. Gonna drive Ethan crazy,” he says, laughing.
Footsteps on the floorboards bring our attention back to the store.
“Oh hey, Marcy,” Noah says, his tone softer with a hint of hesitation.
“Mom! You came.” Somehow I’m insanely happy about it. Reading my mood, Noah says, “Coffee for you ladies? It’s actually good now.”
Noah pours us fresh coffee and helps Mom with creamers and sweeteners.
Then we take our mugs with us as we walk through the store. “Little bird told me you do the window displays now?” Mom asks. “You were always so neat and tidy and cutesy as a kid. I can see you doing that.”
Noah wraps me under his arm. “She’s still neat and tidy and cutesy. Matter of fact, she ordered us some automatic vacuum cleaners. We should get you one,” he says before excusing himself.
“That’s an idea!” I tell Mom as I admire Noah’s broad shoulders, the new energy he seems to radiate today.
“I don’t know about that.” She chuckles dryly for my benefit once Noah is in his office. “Don’t wanna get lazy.”
I link our arms. “Wait til you see how ours work, and then you can decide?” I insist as I walk her toward the staircase leading to the upper level. I’m sure she’ll like to look at the furniture.
A heady perfume lingers in the air—too heavy for the cedar and beeswax polish Dean uses. Probably just some customer passing through, but an uneasy feeling settles in my stomach.
“Sorry I didn’t get here earlier,” Mom says, pausing to catch her breath. “You could have introduced me to your new mother-in-law.”
