by Ibi Zoboi
And then there she was.
He stared at her as she walked into the lobby of the computer science building with her mother, a tall woman wearing a long dark-blue dress and a light-blue hijab. The girl was tall, too, slim with dark skin and natural hair pushed back off her face with a red headband. She wore jeans and a “Will Hack for Chocolate” long-sleeve T-shirt.
Garry watched as they waited in line at the registration table and as she got her name badge and a tote bag filled with snacks and travel-size toothpaste and lotion—stuff they were giving out to everyone. And he watched them walk toward the auditorium. He knew this wasn’t her first hackathon. She hugged kids she already knew and introduced them to her mother. More than that, she looked comfortable. Unlike him.
In the auditorium, she sat with a bunch of kids and their parents during the opening remarks, where the NYU students who had organized the event discussed the goals of the hackathon, how they had gathered brilliant young minds together for thirty-six hours of innovation and collaboration and fun. Then the corporate sponsors spoke for a few minutes, talking about how excited they were to see so many talented high school students there, and how they were looking forward to what they would create with their software.
By then, there were several Black kids in the auditorium, so that helped a little, but still, Garry couldn’t help but feel nervous. He knew he wasn’t the only one there for the first time, but maybe he was in over his head. What did he know about any of this?
Another thing was becoming obvious. He was the only kid there without a parent. There was no way his father would miss a day of work to bring him all the way down to Manhattan. And then what was his father supposed to do? Wait there the whole weekend so he could drive him back to Rochester?
Of course, there was his mother, who lived close by. But no, that wasn’t an option. She didn’t even know he was there. And that was the way he wanted to keep it.
The hackathon officially began at nine o’clock that night, so after all the welcomes and pep talks, and after the parents went home, the NYU student volunteers got on the stage and started breaking everyone up into three groups, depending on the area they had signed up for—HealthTech, EdTech, or Social Justice.
One after the other, names were called for the HealthTech group and those kids left the room. The girl was still there, though. He hoped she’d chosen Social Justice like he had. But her name—Inaaya Saddiq—was called for EdTech, and then she and her friends were gone. He’d picked the wrong group.
After an hour-long hands-on demo with the new software package they had to use to create their app, and after another pep talk by the Social Justice mentors, telling the kids how injustice was a growing problem and the world needed young people like them to come up with solutions, they were brought into the large atrium, with round tables everywhere. The other groups were already there, on other sides of the room. Garry started to get excited. He had seen hackathons online, but there he was. This was what he wanted. He was really doing this.
For the next few minutes everyone in the Social Justice group had to form small teams. One of the other Black guys came up to him and said, “You a developer?”
Garry nodded.
“You good?”
Garry nodded again.
“Be on my team then,” the guy said. “We need someone who can kick ass.”
Garry swallowed hard. He kicked ass at his tech high school. But that was Rochester. This was New York City.
“I’m Marc, by the way,” the guy said.
“Garry.”
“Cool.”
They walked over to a table and Garry met the three girls on their team. Hannah was a developer, too, but she’d only been coding a couple of years. Lisa was a designer like Marc. And the other girl, Christine, was going to be the project manager and the spokesperson for their presentation.
For the next few minutes everyone pulled out their laptops and plugged them in. While downloading the new software package, Garry opened an energy drink that was in his tote bag and drank a little. He was feeling the effects of leaving home so early and traveling all day. He was tired, but he couldn’t give in to it. With his laptop logged into the Wi-Fi, he settled into the chair and tried to relax with his team.
“Okay,” Christine said after everyone was ready to get down to work. “What kind of app can we create in thirty-six hours that will change the world?”
It was after two in the morning when Garry finally looked up from his screen. Their app in progress was going to be a kind of alert you could send out to those nearby if you were being threatened by a police officer. People could be on the scene right away to witness the interaction, and the app would even record video that would immediately upload to its servers. So even if the cops took away someone’s phone, they wouldn’t be able to delete the evidence.
“The police are going to hate this,” Hannah said.
“Not if they’re doing the right thing,” Marc responded. “Anyway, we don’t hate the police. Only the ones who shoot people who look like me for no reason.”
“I like that it’s people looking out for each other,” Garry said. “It can’t hurt to have other people there to keep the police in line.”
They all nodded.
“We need something else, to make our app stand out,” Garry said. “I’m gonna check some APIs and repositories. There has to be something we can use.”
Hours later, Garry’s eyes burned from searching through the open-source code on GitHub for something he could build upon, so he closed his laptop for the first time. He noticed some of the kids were taking a break, walking outside, and he needed some air, too.
All night, his fingers had flown over his keyboard, writing line after line of code so fast, it felt like he was playing music. That was the thing about coding he loved. He could lose himself in a project. It was like he could already see the finished product in his mind. He just needed to tell the computer how to get there.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Take a half hour,” Christine said. “Eat something. You too, Hannah. Give the designers time to figure out some of their details.”
Hannah got up and headed for the table where they had some sandwiches and soda and chips. But Garry headed for the door. As he walked outside, he found himself in a group of kids all leaving together.
And she was there, too.
They all walked down the street and into Washington Square Park. It was after two o’clock in the morning and so dark outside even with the streetlights on. The weather was warm and perfect, and it felt good being out there with Manhattan surrounding them.
It was his first time being back in the city. He’d spent the first ten years of his life in Brooklyn, but that had seemed like a lifetime ago. He was a different kid then. Sad, scared, tired.
He lived with his mom in a tiny apartment in the basement of a house on Parkside Avenue. There was only one bedroom, so he had to sleep on the pullout sofa. Every night, he heard mice scratching their way into the kitchen from the backyard. When he found their holes, he plugged them with steel wool, but it was a never-ending battle. They always found their way back in.
The only time he couldn’t hear the mice was when his mother was in the bedroom fighting with a boyfriend, or crying over another broken relationship. Garry would lie on the sofa bed, hoping she’d stay in the room and not come out and take everything out on him. Blame him for why she could never keep a man. His mother never hurt him, at least not physically, but he’d been on the wrong end of her rages too many times. They terrified him, made it so he couldn’t wait until the next morning when school started. He would stay there all day if he could.
And he tried. He joined just about every club at school—the math team, the coding club, even the trivia bowl. Anything that kept him away from home. Those teams and clubs helped him realize he was smart—the exact opposite of the words his mother called him on a near-daily basis.
At school he came alive. At hom
e he died.
One day, he called his dad in Rochester and begged him to come and take him away from there. His mother was getting worse, angrier, and even school wasn’t enough to keep him from sliding into his sadness.
But his father came through. He told his mother about a school in Rochester, near his house, for kids who were good at tech. He said it was his turn to take on the burden of raising Garry. As if he was a burden. But Garry figured his father was saying whatever he had to say, just to get him out of there.
And it worked. Two weeks before middle school started, Dad drove down to get him. Garry was waiting in front of the house. He didn’t want to even say goodbye to his mother, but his dad made him.
He hadn’t spoken to her since then.
Being back in New York City for the hackathon, he leaned against a lamppost in Washington Square Park and looked around. Even though he had grown up just a few miles from there, he had never known the area around NYU. He felt like a tourist in what used to be his city.
There in the park, he watched the other hackathon kids run around, laughing. Two guys tried to climb a tree. Nobody knew what to do with their energy. Time was running out. Their break was almost over.
He saw the girl, standing not too far from him, but she was with two other girls, and they looked like they were already friends. He wanted to talk to her, but he couldn’t figure out a way to interrupt them. And what would he say, anyway?
So he just watched her, averting his eyes every few seconds so she wouldn’t see him staring at her. But there was something about her. Yes, she was pretty. Beautiful. But he was drawn to her smile, the way she covered her mouth when she giggled with her friends. He loved the way she seemed so present in the moment. Happy. She looked like she didn’t want to be anywhere other than right there.
Before he could work up the courage to say anything to her, to maybe ask her what her team was working on, they were all headed back inside the building. And they were back to their own teams—laptops open, heads down.
And that’s where they stayed for the rest of the hackathon, on opposite sides of the room, siloed in their own projects. Every so often he would look at her, see her huddled with her team, watch her grab a sandwich or a cookie from the food table, see her laughing with her friends on the way to the bathroom. He wanted to know her, but thinking about how to talk to her was taking up too much space in his brain. He needed to focus on his team, on their app.
That was what he was there for, right?
THE SECOND HACKATHON
If he were being honest with himself, Garry would admit part of the reason he made sure he came back the next summer was so he could possibly see her again, maybe even work up the courage to talk to her. He had kicked himself more than a few times in the year since he’d first seen her, but now he was going into junior year. He should be able to say hi to a girl, at least in theory.
Inaaya was there at NYU before him this time. Her mom was there, too, in a yellow hijab and long purple dress. Inaaya was dressed for the hackathon. Jeans, sneakers, long-sleeve T-shirt that said “I Code Like a Girl.”
Garry couldn’t help but smile. He liked her style. Who knew? He might even like her personality if he could ever say anything to her.
As things unfolded, Garry started to feel like he was living the previous year over again. They were broken into categories, and once again, they were in different groups. She’d chosen HealthTech that summer, while Garry had picked Social Justice again. He liked his team, and he was happy when Marc and Hannah were back. They rounded out their team with two new kids, who looked as overwhelmed as he’d probably looked the year before.
Even though they were crazy busy, this year creating a browser extension using the sponsor’s web tools, that didn’t stop Garry from glancing at Inaaya on the other side of the atrium whenever he had the chance.
The whole first night went by, and there was no time for a long break, only a couple of short naps right there at their table. There was a room set up with cots, but who had the time to sleep? There was so much to do and only thirty-six hours to do it.
It wasn’t until the second night, just a few hours before the corporate sponsors would start walking around to hear their pitches, that Garry felt he was too bleary-eyed to function. It was four in the morning, and if he didn’t get some air, he wouldn’t be able to think through the finishing touches.
While Marc and Hannah worked on the logo and the branding, he stood up and said, “I’ll be back.” And he grabbed a brownie on his way out the door.
Even though he hadn’t noticed her leaving, he actually ran into Inaaya and two other girls in Washington Square Park, taking their break at the same time. This was his chance.
Shaking off the heaviness of exhaustion, he walked right up to the group and said, “Hey, y’all needed some air, too?” It was the best he could do in the state he was in.
But it worked.
Inaaya turned to him and smiled. “You were here last year, right? I remember you.”
Garry forced himself not to show how happy he was that she’d actually noticed him. “Yeah,” he said, as cool as he could. “That was my first hackathon.”
“I’ve been doing them since middle school,” she said.
The voice in Garry’s head was screaming, C’mon, man. Say something!
“I remember you, too,” he said, and he tried to ignore the way one of her friends elbowed her.
“You do?” she asked.
He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Was she flattered? Or just irritated? But he kept talking, the sleepiness quickly being replaced by sheer terror. But he was too far into this already. “Would you like to take a walk around the park with me? I promise to get you back to your friends in a few minutes.”
Her friend elbowed her again and whispered way too loud, “Go. He’s cute.”
Inaaya hit her friend on the shoulder. “Stop it, Kenya.” Then she turned to Garry and said, “Okay.”
Walking away from the other two girls, Garry felt so unsure of himself that for a minute, he didn’t say anything. They just walked. Finally he said, “I love this park.”
“Yeah,” Inaaya said. “It’s beautiful. Especially at night.”
“I know.” He looked up at the sky through the thick trees. “It doesn’t even look like New York City when you’re here.”
They kept walking and he asked her how she got into hackathons.
“I’ve been coding since I was a little kid,” she said. “Nobody in my family understands how I got this way.”
“Your mom, she’s real supportive, though. She always comes with you, and she’s always all dressed up and—”
“Everybody notices my mom,” Inaaya said, laughing. “She’s beautiful! And she loves color—the brighter the hijab, the better.”
Garry wanted to tell her she was beautiful too, but instead he asked, “Why don’t you—I mean, do you ever—?”
“I wear it sometimes,” she said. “At the mosque, for prayers, and, like, when we visit my relatives. But I don’t think I need to wear a hijab to be a good Muslim. It’s in my heart. It’s who I am.”
Garry smiled. He liked how confident she was, how much she already knew herself.
“Your turn,” Inaaya said. “If this is too personal, don’t answer. But why do you always come by yourself?”
“That’s not too personal. It’s just that I live with my dad all the way up in Rochester. He can’t come with me because he works security at a mall, and he has to work on weekends.”
“Does he get all the stuff you do?”
Garry laughed, shaking his head. “Not at all. But he knows it’s a good thing, something smart.”
“It must be weird for our parents.” She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. “It’s like we’re coding Martians to them.”
They walked from one crisscrossed path to the other, passing a couple of people walking their dogs at that time of morning. They eventually found themselves under the huge
arch.
“Wow,” Inaaya said, looking up at the monument. “You know what I have a sudden urge to do?”
“What?” He was intrigued.
“Watch!” Then for no reason Garry could figure out, she started spinning around with her arms outstretched, laughing the whole time. There were a few men hanging out by the arch, probably getting high, and even they looked at her like she was crazy.
Garry yelled, “What are you doing? You’re losing your mind.” But her joy was contagious. He found himself laughing right along with her.
A few seconds later, she stopped spinning. “I needed that,” she said, still giggling. “Being cooped up in that room was getting to me. You should try it, Garry.”
“No, I’m good,” he said. No way would he let her see him acting a fool, not when their walk was going well so far.
On the way back to her friends, Garry found out a few more things about her. She was from Long Island, she had an older sister, and her father had died when she was little. She got a little sad when she talked about him and Garry thought about reaching out to touch her hand, maybe hold it so she knew he understood her feelings. But he resisted. He didn’t want to scare her off.
When they rejoined her friends, she told them, “Garry was a complete gentleman.”
“See,” Garry said. “Just like I promised.”
On the way back to their building, it was all Garry could do to hide his smile. He waved goodbye to them and headed back toward his team. “Where were you, man?” Marc asked. “You left us to go hang with the competition?”
“Not the competition,” Garry defended. “Inaaya.”
Marc shook his head. “Damn, it’s sad, watching a smart guy like you let a girl mess with his head.”
“She’s not like that.”
“All right, watch. While you’re sitting with your head in the clouds, thinking about her, you know what she’s gonna be doing? Winning, that’s what!”
