Evelyn seems content with this; she sits across the table with her coffee and the newspaper, and occasionally looks up to smile at Miranda.

Miranda can have a very leisurely breakfast and still be done eating by 6:45, at which point Evelyn suggests she can have some computer time until Jeremy comes down, which probably won't be for another hour, he usually sets his alarm for 7:15 and snoozes it at least once. 

(Evelyn supervises her a little less closely this time. She leaves the door of the study open, and glances in every so often, but isn't coming close enough to read what's on the screen.) 

Is it cool if she installs Python? It's a programming language. Look at all these nice reputable websites that say it's fine. 

Mmmmmmaybe she can wait until Jeremy is up and do it with him? It's not that Evelyn doesn't trust her, it's just that one time when Jeremy was fifteen he tried to download and set up a game because his friend had it, and he had to do something fancy with an ""emulator"" because it was a Nintendo game but they don't own a Nintendo, and in the process of trying to follow the gaming forum instructions he did something that made Evelyn's files impossible to find. Jeremy's pretty good with computers now, though, he'll be able to make sure they don't break anything. 

Nintendo emulators are the worst. She doesn't have any episodic memory to back this up, of course, but she knows they're all third-party because Nintendo won't just shut up and take her money, and they're all on sketchy websites and 3/4 of them suck butt.

She doesn't say any of this. She says, "Sure, installing shi--stuff is a great source of things going wrong. I'll wait." And then she finds a Logo website that will let her get her fix in-browser and spends the next hour making the little turtle draw a Sierpinski triangle. 

Evelyn smiles at her. "Thank you for being careful with your language, I appreciate it."

As predicted, Jeremy's alarm starts going off at 7:15 on the dot. Very loudly; it's audible from upstairs even with his door shut, and beeps for a while before he presumably snoozes it. Ten minutes later, Miranda can hear thudding footsteps through the ceiling above her, and then the shower running. At 7:35, there are footsteps out on the landing and then thudding down the stairs, and a tall, lanky teenage boy with a clear family resemblance to Evelyn hurries past the study en route to the kitchen. 

- and then stops, and doubles back. "Oh, hey. You must be Miranda. Sorry I wasn't in to meet you last night, I'm Jeremy." A slightly awkward laugh. "I live here. I guess that was probably obvious." 

"Jeeeeeremy!" Evelyn calls from the kitchen. "She wants your help installing a thingy! Do you have time before school?" 

"I will if you drive me!" 

Rather than keep shouting across the living room, Evelyn pads over to join him. "I suppose that'd work. I'll have to bring Miranda along, but if we leave at 8:30 we'll definitely be home by 9 and I can't imagine the social worker will come earlier than that. And then you'll have almost a whole hour to mess around with your computer stuff. Miranda, is that all right with you?" 

"That would be awesome, thanks!" And Jeremy can sit and watch and optionally help with the acquisition of Python and a C++ compiler and VSCode whoops apparently that doesn't exist yet, she'll get emacs or something. She should definitely take this period of mandatory unemployment to pick up several new languages/tools/etc but she hasn't decided which yet so for now it's just some nice familiar ones she'll be able to contribute to OSS projects in. She has to fight the temptation to cuss at the computer on several occasions but cussing isn't strictly necessary for installing software, just helpful.

Jeremy has a little bit of advice (mostly on the existing local setup of the computer) and a lot of questions. He's so impressed. "You're super smart, you know? ...You probably get a lot of that, sorry. Where did you learn all this?" 

You must be at least a level 4 friend to unlock her tragic lack of a backstory. "Thanks! I've spent a lot of time at libraries." She's only like 90% sure that's technically true and it's totally a Gricean deceit thingy. "I don't know if Evelyn mentioned that I'm a very cagey person; it's nothing personal." Friendly smile because she's so harmless and friendly. (Does git exist? It does! Hello git her overcomplicated beloved.) "Do you like to code at all or are you more on the power user end?"

Shrug. "Clearly not like you do! I took a class last semester, my high school offers it as an elective, but we were learning C++." Another awkward chuckle. "Which is coincidentally also the grade I got. Mom was pissed." 

"Jeremy! I heard that. Language!" 

Jeremy rolls his eyes. "So-orry, Mom." He lowers his voice. "She's really anal about the not swearing, it's a whole thing. Anyway, we've still got ten minutes - what sort of thing can you do in this?" 

"Well, not much in ten minutes unless you're a lot faster than me. Eventually I want to contribute to open source software but I'll probably start with a minesweeper clone that plays itself or something . . . oh, you know what's fun and takes less than ten minutes, printing out a bunch of Fibonacci numbers." She writes a tiny python script to print out however many Fibonacci numbers she requests. Makes it recursive even though the iterative version is arguably better because she can do whatever she wants. "It's not useful but it's, you know, aesthetic."

"You're pretty cool, you know! We'd better get ready to go before Mom starts getting all stressed about it, but you should totally show me more later. I mean, if you want to." He scrapes his chair back and hops up. "Mom! I'll be ready in two minutes!" He thunders upstairs. 

Evelyn sets down her coffee. "Everything good? Let's go get your shoes on, all right?" 

What a good kid. She can't tell if he's actually interested in further interactions or just being nice and is inclined to assume the latter but if he's being nice it's nice of him. "I'd love to hang out more later!" She goes and gets her shoes on and dismisses mental checklist notifications that if she's leaving the house she should have her wallet and keys.

Her booster seat is still in the backseat. Jeremy comes running out more like five minutes later, out of breath and with a very stuffed-looking backpack swinging from one shoulder. 

"Jeremy! I know you're in a hurry, but please go back and lock the door." 

"You'll be gone for like twenty minutes!" But he grumpily doubles back and locks the door with his own housekey, before jogging out and hopping into the front seat. He's now smelling strongly of aftershave. 

"Jeremy, please set a good example for Miranda and do your seatbelt." Evelyn raises her eyebrows. "And what's with the perfume, anyway? Special day?" 

Jeremy does up his seatbelt, then lets his head flop back against the headrest and lets out a long-suffering sigh. "Mom, it's not perfume. Also, shut up." 

Evelyn pulls out of the driveway. "Jeremy, language, please."