I was determined to do my part. I’d stagger around the ranch carrying hay bales that were almost as big as me and spent an entire summer building a fence around the property, with me holding the stakes and JD patiently whacking them into the ground with a sledgehammer. I wanted to fit in but it became obvious when we had relatives over that I was some sort of misfit. Everyone else talked in big, room-filling voices while I sat timidly looking up at them with big eyes. It was only much later that I realized that my family talked non-stop about the weather, or sports, or who was dating whom, but they never talked about the important stuff, like feelings. Especially the men. My pop never talked about how hard it was for him, being confined to a wheelchair after being a rancher his entire life. And years later, when JD lost his wife and child, he never talked about it, either. He’d learned from his pop that you just man up and get on with it.

JD tried patiently to teach me to ride but I just didn’t have that way with animals everyone else in our community seemed to have. He’d effortlessly swing himself up into the saddle and instantly bond with the horse; I’d struggle to get on, cling on too tight and make the horse skittish. All the other kids in my school had learned to ride as soon as they were walking so it was another thing that made me stand out as the quiet, weird kid. Add in that I was more interested in math and science than boys and dresses and I was mercilessly bullied by the other girls.

By the time I was twelve, I was so desperate to fit in that I got up before anyone else one morning, snuck out to the stables and saddled up a pony, determined to learn to ride and not wanting to take any more of JD’s time. I barely got out of the stall before I came off and broke my leg in three places. While I was at home healing, my mom bought me a gift to cheer me up: an electronics kit.

It was like she’d shown me a secret door, right there in my bedroom, to a world I never knew existed. I fell in love with the puzzle of building circuits, using logic and rules to make power and light and information flow in intricate, synchronized dances. Finally, there was something my weird brain was good at. Within days, I’d gone far beyond the simple circuits the kit was made for and started devouring books on electronics from the local library. By the time I was thirteen, I was bringing in extra money for the family repairing people’s phones and laptops.