"Do you seriously think you're not going to get into a totally fine college."

"If I do, it'll be because I got good grades." (Also she needs So Many merit scholarships if she wants to go anywhere other than the state school, but let's not get into that.)

"I don't know if I even want to go to college. I think I might hitchhike to Alaska instead."

"What do you want to do in Alaska?"

"No idea! That's why I need to go there!"

A-Ning had quietly picked up all of their purchases and carried them to his bike. (He's surprisingly strong.)

"But then why Alaska in particular--actually we should get moving. Thank you!" 

It's not far to Brenda's house. Her yard has a crabapple tree with crabapples growing on one side and granny smith apples on the other.

Apples!

He gets off his bike and starts climbing the tree to obtain apples.

Brenda parks her bike in its usual spot in the garage and comes back to help unload the parts. "I hope you like the apples! Isn't tree-grafting neat?"

A-Ning locks up Wei Wuxian's bike and helps unload the parts.

Wei Wuxian throws an apple at a-Ning's head. (A-Ning catches it.) "It really is! Did you do it or someone else?"

"I did! I got the cutting from the guy who runs the apple orchard out west of town the year I did a report on soil composition." She lets them all in the back door, briefly transferring one of the bags of electronics to her teeth so she can get at her keys, and leads the way up to her room.

It's not a messy room, per se. There are no dirty dishes lying around, no laundry piles on the floor. Nonetheless, every flat or nearly-flat surface is covered in stuff. Books, notebooks, loose papers, and several odder things. There's a potted carnation with a half-blue half-red flower. There's a radio with its case off and its guts strewn across the top of the dresser. There's a tray with a map of the US covered in tendrils of something green and slimy-looking. There's an ant farm in the corner, clearly once inhabited but now vacant. There's an assemblage of gears and shafts built around one of those spirograph drawing kits for some inscrutable purpose. There's a big jug of water atop the bookcase, dripping from a pinhole onto a stone block with a tiny stalactite which is itself dripping onto another block with a tiny stalagmite and running from there to a collection tray on the floor.

"Sorry about the mess." Brenda nudges the slimy America under the bed, consolidates the radiosplosion, scoops several piles of paper onto different surfaces or into drawers, and clears enough floorspace for the three of them to sit and assemble stuff.

"This isn't messy. You should see my room. My room is messy. Isn't it, a-Ning?"

A-Ning nods enthusiastically.

"I'd ask you to tell my parents that if I thought it would convince them of anything," she quips.

Wei Wuxian flops on the bed. "You should tell me about your projects. All of them."

Oh gosh what an excellent thing for someone to say! And he probably means it because she can't think of anything she said that sounded too much like badgering him to listen!

"So the slime mold under the bed is solving an instance of an NP-complete problem, it's not as fast as a computer because it's not made of transistors but it's better than the actual US highway system on some metrics which is very impressive for mold, I was trying to do something similar with the ant farm but my parents were afraid they'd get out, but the artificial cave has been going for three years now and I'm hoping to take it to college with me someday, and the carnation is just early stage, I want to try cutting it into six bits and getting a full rainbow but the last one died on me so I'm working up to it, the radio was my grandma's, it fell off her balcony and died and she was gonna throw it out so I dibsied it and I've got it mostly working again but I want to get the range longer, that thing with the spirographs optically scans a design, analyzes, and reproduces it, I should really come up for a name for it that isn't "that thing with the spirographs", and I had an origami hyperbolic plane in progress but I think the radio knocked it down the back of the dresser so I might just start over."

"........wow you're extremely cool."

"Thank you!"

"Can I look at the radio? I want to look at the radio." Wei Wuxian immediately goes to look at the radio without waiting for Brenda to give her permission.

She doesn't try to stop him. What's he gonna do, pitch it out the window again? More likely he'll either make some progress or just poke around. Or knock bits into the all-consuming void which is the gap behind the dresser, but she's going to have to do another expedition back there one of these days anyway.

Wei Wuxian has QUESTIONS about the radio! What does this bit do. Why did she make this decision. He thinks it would work better if she did this other thing. 

A-Ning brought the Hunger Games and is going to read it until he's needed. 

Brenda has answers! And more questions! And they should totally do that other thing, he is so right, let's do that right now.

Obviously they should do that other thing. He's very smart and great at everything. Just ask a-Ning.