"Sorry to be awkward about it."

And he's gone. The meeting continues without him.

So it does.

A few days later Teddy find Kaitlyn when they have a moment to talk. "I wanted to tell you what was wrong the other day. If you don't mind. I was being weird about it and I might be being weird about it again now buuuut I would like to tell you. It's nothing - bad."

“If you're sure. I am naturally a nosy busybody when I have an excuse but I try to keep it down.”

"...My parents had a car wreck with my brother while he was visiting. They're all okay and I'm glad for that, but apparently hospitals are ridiculously expensive even with insurance, so. There was a small spat about that... It sounds so petty. But that's my family for you."

“—oh.

“I literally don't know what to say. Uh. 'That sucks'?”

"Yeah, pretty much. I know it seems weird to talk about this when we're not super close, but I kind of want to - tell someone. It sucks. I'm not entirely sure why you're, like, socially not supposed to talk about money? Anyway. Hopefully I can keep my scholarships."

“—isn't the general point of a scholarship to, uh, be at least independent of the money you have?”

"Yeah, but two of them are merit scholarships. One for being from a semi-rural area and one for having good SAT scores. They go away if my grades are bad."

“Oh. Right. That kind of losing them.

“Well, let me know if you need a study partner or something?”

"I might take you up on that for the next programming assignment. Pointers are weird."

“I can say some things about pointers.”

"Then we will have a productive and insightful study session. Does the basement lab at four work?"

“Sure.”

Pointers are, eventually, manageable. "I'm starting to feel like software development isn't for me. I like - tinkering, making things work, more than making things from scratch."

“But still digital things, or something else?”

"Probably still digital. But hardware stuff is neat too. Server administration maybe?"

“—I wouldn't have thought of it in those terms but that sounds like a good idea.”

"Yeah! I think it'd be interesting. More on the keeping things working side instead of the writing arcane code side. I don't think our curriculum is optimally designed for that though."

“Well, if you want to study hardware, switch to computer engineering. That doesn't really bear on administration, though.

“For what it's worth, do you want to hear about what I've learned and read running my network?”

"...Ooh, definitely. I didn't think about that. You have actual client-facing experience. So to speak."

“Keeping in mind that this is all strictly amateur …”

She sure does have a lot of thoughts on the subject.

"Amateur it may be, but it at least gives me a direction to start with. There are probably books about client management somewhere."

They discuss for a while, and then school life resumes pretty much the same.

It does! It is educational! Useful in the future! Allegedly!

Six days in the future, the open house starts. It is time to see whether their efforts produced a suitable solvable and fun challenge.

Results: mixed. Considered as a game, it really could have used some playtesting. But they can make it better for the next two days — anyone feeling enthusiastic enough to work on that on a Friday evening?

Sounds distracting. Sure, why not.

The next day it turns out a short demo/lecture of what programming is like makes it significantly easier for all the middle schoolers to figure out the game! It's almost like a tutorial, except in real life.