He'd bought a few cases of beer that
week and had been going through them steadily in the living room, paging
through the most favored of his books, trying to find something, though
he wasn't sure what.
Link sipped. "Summer's here," he said.
"Yeah," Alan said.
"Well, the thing is, summer. I'm going to be working longer hours and,
you know, evenings. Well. I mean. I'm 19 years old, Andy."
Alan raised an eyebrow and sat back in his chair. "What's the message
you're trying to convey to me, Link?"
"I'm not going to be going around your friend's shop anymore. I really
had fun doing it all year, but I want to try something different with my
spare time this summer, you understand?"
"Sure," Alan said. He'd had kids quit on him before. That's what kids
did. Attention spans.
"Right. And, well, you know: I never really understood what we were
*doing*..."
"Which part?"
"The WiFi stuff --"
"Well, you see --"
"Stop, okay? I've heard you explain it ten times now and I still don't
get it. Maybe after a semester or two of electrical engineering it'll
make more sense."
"Okay," Adam said, smiling broadly to show no hard feelings. "Hey," he
said, carefully. "If you didn't understand what we were doing, then why
did you do it?"
Link cocked his head, as if examining him for traces of sarcasm, then
looked away. "I don't know.
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