Chapter Twelve: "Cracks in the Code"
The hallway to the Computer Science Lab smelled of dust and fried samosas. Students filed in with resigned expressions, clutching laptops and printouts like battle-worn warriors. Andra followed them in slowly, her eyes already darting to the whiteboard where the words "C++ Functions & Control Structures" were scribbled in blue marker.
Computer Programming was her weakest unit.
She could sketch a building foundation to scale, analyze the tensile strength of different rebar types, even calculate water drainage gradients. But when it came to coding, her brain froze.
"Why is this harder than roofing a bungalow with bamboo trusses?" she muttered under her breath, flipping open her laptop.
Beside her, her classmate Ken chuckled. "Because bamboo doesn't give you syntax errors."
The instructor, Ms. Oduor, launched into the lesson with a laser pointer and no patience. Her tone was clipped and fast-paced, as though everyone should have been born with a motherboard in their skull.
Andra tried to keep up, typing along as fast as she could. But soon, the red error messages blinked like tiny insults on her screen.
Expected ';' before 'return'
Variable 'total' was not declared in this scope
She bit her lip, trying not to panic.
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That evening, the contrast between her two academic worlds felt even starker. In her dorm room, Kingsley was playing with Legos, constructing what he proudly called a "robot building." Andra had her drafting tools out—her sanctuary. T-squares, tracing paper, a digital stylus.
She was working on a submission for her Structural Systems class. The assignment was to design a three-story community center using locally available materials.
This? This she understood.
She sketched beam placements and considered column load factors with ease, her mind dancing with possibilities. Bamboo and red clay bricks. Reinforced slab. Ventilation shafts for passive cooling. This was her language.
Yet the moment she opened her laptop and faced her programming project—building a simple calculator using C++—her confidence dissolved.
The code stared back at her like a foreign alphabet. She sighed and whispered, "Why am I even in this course?"
Her phone buzzed again—another message from Parker. Just a "Hey. How was school?" No offer to help with Kingsley, no mention of the pending child support. Just the illusion of care.
She ignored it.
Instead, she opened a tab and searched: "How to understand basic programming if you're not tech-savvy."
It felt silly. Humbling.
But she wasn't ready to fail. Not when Kingsley was watching.