I don’t comment and instead press the spacebar to wake it up. When it asks for her password, she says, “Sav, one, two, three.”
I stifle my groan and type it in. Feeling more in my element with my fingers on a keyboard again, I start nosing around, and then quickly wish I hadn’t.
“Why do you have forty-two tabs open?”
She shrugs. “I might need them, and I didn’t want to lose my place.”
Keeping my voice calm, I click on some of the tabs, noticing that several of them are playing videos that have been paused, while several others are shopping sites that have been up for weeks. When a pop-up jumps out, screaming at me that there’s a virus and I need to click the red button for help, I ask, “Do you get these a lot?”
“Yep.”
I keep my voice neutral when I ask, “And do you click on them when you do?”
Instead of answering me, she scrunches her brow and asks, “Am I not supposed to?”
I do the same thing she did and ignore her question and ask one of my own. “When was the last time you updated it?”
“It doesn’t do that automatically?”
I’m torn between cringing and wanting to laugh. Minimizing her tabs, I stare at the cluttered desktop screen. Icons litter every available surface. I see names likeFinal, Final Final, Final for Realsies, and a soft sigh escapes my lips.
“You don’t use folders?”
She points at the icons on the screen. “These are folders.”
I bite my tongue before asking, “Where do you save all your classwork?”
“On the computer.”
I laugh before I can stop it. She gives me an embarrassed smile. “I’m really bad at this, aren’t I?”
“Terrible,” I agree. I hold up her laptop. “This is a nightmare, Van. It’s going to haunt me tonight when I try to sleep.”
“Do you think you can fix it?”
“I don’t think anything can fix this,” I admit. “Maybe a sledgehammer and some gasoline. This poor thing needs to be put out of its misery. I feel guilty for stirring it back to life and making it work. It’s begging me for mercy.”
“I still need it, though,” she says. “I can’t write my papers on my phone’s screen. That’ll drive me crazy.”
“I’m buying you a new one,” I tell her. “As a hacker, this hurts me on a soul level. I can’t in good conscience allow you to keep using this.”
“No way,” she quickly says. “I can’t accept that, Niki. It’s way too much.”
I can see the stubborn glint in her eyes, and I know her pride won’t let her accept the expensive gift from me, so I say, “What if I just give you one of my old laptops? I never use it. It just sits around, but it’s still in great condition.”
She hesitates as her eyes drift down to the cracked screen on my lap. Music is softly playing from one of the million tabs she has open, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the machine starts smoking and combusts right on my lap. I don’t mention that I’m going to be monitoring her bank account because if she’s used her debit or credit card to buy anything on this thing, it’s most definitely compromised.
“Do you really think it’s going to die soon? Is there any way it could last a bit longer?”
I hate to kill the hopeful tone of her voice, but there’s no point in lying about this. “I’m begging you to not use this thing ever again. It’s riddled with viruses, and I’m honestly surprised it’s still running at all. Please let me give you my old computer.”
“I’ll borrow it,” she insists, “until I can afford to get my own.”
“You can have it for however long you need,” I tell her, knowing it’s the best I’m going to get out of her.
She doesn’t need to know that I’m hitting the Apple Store as soon as they open and buying her a brand-new computer. She needs something reliable, and the machine on my lap is definitely not it.
With that taken care of, there’s really no reason for me to be here, but I can’t bring myself to get up and leave, so instead I look around and ask, “Do you like living here and being in the sorority?”
