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Sean and I have never had a reason to talk much. Frankly, he has no reason to be this nice to me. Savannah has me suspicious of everyone who used to seem harmless.
“Trying,” Sean says under his breath with a glance at McNair, and the two of them snicker, as though the idea of Sean not succeeding is ludicrous. “Nah, I was just playing the new Assassin’s Creed.”
“Why would you put yourself through that after getting killed so early in Howl?” McNair asks innocently.
“Thanks so much for the emotional support.”
I tap my dead phone. “I can Venmo you some—”
Sean’s eyebrows shoot up. “What? No, no, you definitely don’t have to do that. I’d have failed my French final without Neil. I owe him one. Or seven.” I don’t have a chance to point out that him helping me isn’t the same thing as helping McNair before Sean swipes a pair of thick glasses from the worktable and puts them on. “May I see the patient?”
Biting back a laugh, I surrender my phone. Neil said he explained the whole situation when we were driving over, but if it’s odd for Sean to see the two of us together, he doesn’t say anything.
“So what exactly happened?” Sean asks, gently placing my phone on the table and rummaging through a drawer before extracting a cable and plugging it in. He plugs the other end into his main computer.
“It died while installing an update. And then it wouldn’t turn on.”
“Hmm.” Sean hits a few keys, and the phone’s screen turns blue. “This shouldn’t be too hard.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Great.”
“Thank you,” Neil says, and flashes me an encouraging smile.
My fingers are twitchy. I kind of hate that I’m so married to my phone that even ten minutes without it sends me into withdrawal. Madison’s target, though—I have that. Brady Becker. Guess he’s still alive.
“I can’t imagine what all of this is worth,” I say, gazing around the lab.
“Most of the tech, I found used and restored it.” Sean hunches over my phone, black hair falling into his face. “I made Neil a new computer for his birthday last year.”
I gape at him. “That’s… incredible.”
Neil makes a vaguely nonhuman
sound next to me. “You should probably let him work.”
“I can multitask.”
“Actually,” Neil says, “multitasking is a myth. Our brains can only focus on one high-level task at a time. It’s why you can drive and listen to music at the same time but you couldn’t take a test and listen to a podcast simultaneously.”
“No mansplaining in my lab, please,” Sean says.
“I wasn’t—” Neil starts, but then he goes silent, as though realizing that’s exactly what he was doing. When I peek at him, he’s staring at his shoes.
After that, we let Sean work in silence. Every so often, he mutters a curse or takes a swig from an energy drink on his table.
“I think I’ve got it,” Sean says fifteen minutes later, unplugging my phone and swiping through a couple more settings. “None of your data should have been impacted. Now we cross our fingers, and…” All three of us peer at it, waiting for the home screen to appear. And there it is, the photo of Kirby, Mara, and me and the pattern of familiar icons. “Voilà! Good as new.”
“You’re a genius,” I say. “Thank you, thank you!”
“I also changed the settings so it won’t continue the update until next week, so you can finish the game without it interrupting you.”
“Oh my God, I love you,” I say, and Sean blushes. “Thank you so much. Again. You know Two Birds One Scone? Come in next week and I’ll give you a free cinnamon roll.”
Sean takes off his glasses. “She isn’t that bad,” he stage-whispers to McNair.
“Not all the time,” he admits.
I clasp my heart. “I’m touched,” I say, imitating McNair.
