Screen Queens

by Lori Goldstein

  “Exciting, right?” she called to Maddie, who’d lagged behind since leaving the dorm, her fingers flying across her phone at four times the rate of her feet. And her words not flying at all. She gave an “uh-huh” without looking up.

  Going to be fine.

  Lucy pressed on, and she and Delia reached the entrance first. The “Sponsored by Pulse” on the welcome sign sent chills down her spine. She squeezed Delia’s hand. “Let’s all cross the threshold together.”

  Like newlyweds, beginning their marriage, which is what this would be for the next five weeks. It all started with this. The team whose app had the most functionality at the end of the twelve-hour hackathon would receive an advantage: a one-on-one session with last year’s incubator winners.

  They needed it. Lucy needed it. Because Lucy needed Stanford. And this internship was her ticket off the wait list and onto the perfect blades of grass that not even her mother’s heels had sunk into.

  As she waited for Maddie, Lucy craned her neck to peer through the glass door. Her pulse quickened. There he was. Broad shoulders that narrowed in a perfect V down to a trim waist and a butt as round as a peach and as tight as her mom’s Spanx.

  Ryan Thompson.

  She’d recognize his behind—she’d recognize him from behind—even in a sea of Silicon Valley elite.

  “Let’s go! Early bird, and all!” Lucy tried to channel that bird and sound chipper, but she was growing impatient waiting for Maddie. Finally, they were all together, and a surge of energy propelled Lucy through the door. “I want to volunteer to present first, just in case Ryan doesn’t stay for the whole thing.”

  “Ryan?” Maddie said in the harsh Boston accent that made Lucy cringe from her professionally plucked eyebrows to her Bikini So Teeny polished toes. “One five-minute convo and you’re on a first-name basis?”

  “Shh!” Lucy halted. She swore she saw Ryan’s shoulders tense. When she was positive there wasn’t a break in his swaggered stride through the lobby, she waved the girls forward. “This way.”

  Signs pointed them in the right direction, but Lucy had memorized the student center layout a week ago. Still holding Delia’s limp hand, she moved through the stucco building, keeping her eyes on Ryan’s muscular back. When she turned the corner, she increased her speed, fueled by the appearance of Gavin Cox.

  Freaking Gavin Cox.

  She’d successfully avoided him yesterday and was aiming to make that a two-day streak.

  The drag on her forearm and the squeal from beside her caused her to fail.

  Delia tripped. Indoors. On a flat surface.

  This must be how Jobs felt around Woz.

  Lucy shoved her butterfly-frame sunglasses tight against her face, but it was too late. She’d been seen. Which meant she’d failed. She hated failing. She never did. One of the few things she could credit to her mom, who’d taught her the only way to avoid it was by being in total control. But this incubator was a team program.

  And one member of her team was currently holding the sole of her ratty tennis shoe in one hand and rubbing her coccyx with the other.

  Gavin strode up to Lucy with a smug grin on his face. His wet mop of curls hung limp along his lightly sunburned cheeks and that patchy hipster beard his DNA knew he was too immature to grow.

  “Li’l Lucy.” He patted her on the head. “They relax the height requirement for this ride?”

  She gritted her teeth. Being five feet nothing, Lucy was used to being treated like a dachshund or a two-year-old. But this was Gavin’s paw on her fresh blowout.

  On the floor, Delia narrowly missed being stomped on by smartphone zombie Maddie’s foot. Her big . . . large . . . ginormous foot. Sasquatch had nothing on Maddie’s hooves. At least Lucy wouldn’t have to worry about either of her roommates borrowing her Louboutins. Being nearly six feet, Maddie had little chance of squeezing in more than her big toe, and being, well, Midwestern, Delia had little chance of telling a Louboutin from a leprechaun.

  Fine. It’s. Going. To. Be. Fine.

  Gavin smirked. “Stellar cohorts you got there, Lucifer.”

  “Yes,” Lucy said, eyeing the two tall, thin white guys behind Gavin, the three of them decked out in the Silicon Valley uniform of nondescript jeans, a white tee, and expensive sneakers. She reached down to grasp Delia’s elbow. “In fact, they are. Don’t be too intimated, Cox.”

  Blood boiling, Lucy marched down the hallway ahead of what she was trying to convince herself were her stellar teammates. She could feel Gavin’s thick fingers on her scalp and the phantom tingle in other places she should have never let them go. She jammed a “delete all” on the memory, nuking it from her brain. Step by step, Lucy breathed, calming herself by visualizing the endgame. Which would start here, in the vast study hall turned hackathon headquarters. She paused under the arched entrance feeling very small.

  Table upon table was filled with Gavin-esque seventeen-to-nineteen-year-olds in hoodies and those same plain white tees, all waiting to be emblazoned with a Facebook-Google-Apple-Uber-Lyft-Twitter-eBay-LinkedIn-Airbnb-Snapchat logo—or, better yet, their own.

  The testosterone nearly choked her. Or maybe it was the stench of old french fries and Axe body spray.

  “There,” Delia’s meek voice said. “Twenty-two. That’s us.”

  Lucy searched the area surrounding their designated table. “Damn,” she muttered. The judges’ table—Ryan’s table—may as well have been in Reno. She could barely see the top of his head, that sandy-brown “natural” tousle she was sure took an hour to achieve. (And was so worth it.)

  “Does anyone notice what I’m noticing?” Maddie said, pushing her aviators back on her head. It was the first time she’d looked up from her phone all morning.

  Finally. Lucy was relieved that at least one member of her team also realized what a complete disaster their placement was.

  “What?” Delia said.

  “The double X factor,” Maddie said.

  Lucy and Delia didn’t respond.

  “As in chromosomes?” Maddie said. “Girls. Chicks. You know, boobs.”

  Delia swiveled her head. “Oh, well, it’s not that unexpected. And hey, at least there won’t be a long line for the bathroom.”

  Maddie stared blankly, and Delia seemed to shrink. Maddie addressed Lucy. “We’re all together.”

  “Yes!” Lucy said. “On this side of the room. How are we supposed to gauge Ry—the judges’ reactions from all the way over here?”

  Maddie’s face twisted like the smell of french fry had finally hit her. “No, the teams. They assigned us—a coder, a designer, and a . . .” Her eyes floated to Lucy.

  “Project manager,” Lucy said.

  “Uh-huh. The teams should have nothing to do with gender. And yet look at this. Is there even a single coed group here?”

  Lucy searched. “There’s one.” She set her tote on the white laminate table and pointed across the room to two guys and a girl with a heart-shaped face and smooth tawny-beige skin that made Lucy wonder if she’d remembered to pack her extra-strength pore cleanser. The girl rested something—a guitar case?—on the floor as she settled into a chair across from her teammates. Lucy squinted. “Hey, Delia, isn’t one of those guys the cutie you were trying to hook up with last night?”

  Sriracha-red painted Delia’s cheeks. “I wasn’t . . . he’s like my coworker.” Her usually soft voice dropped even further as she looked at him. “We were just talking.”

  “Tip for you, Delia: ‘just talking’ doesn’t walk you to your door,” Lucy said.

  Maddie folded her tall frame into the seat. Her knees bumped the underside of the table as she extracted her monster laptop and her sketchbook out of her messenger bag. “They underestimate us.”

  Lucy stood on tiptoes to evaluate the room and the handful of girls in it, which included Nishi Kapoor as the only female
judge. Her slight “I hope so” slipped out. Delia’s head bobbed like she heard, but she sat down without saying anything.

  What? An advantage is an advantage. The less someone expects of you, the more you can impress them.

  Which got Lucy thinking back to the previous night’s discussion about the app that would be core to their incubator startup project. Something they were passionate about.

  She eyed the sketchbook, open to the logos Maddie had been working on last night.

  How they had settled on an Uber-style dog-grooming service still eluded her. It was the only idea they could all agree upon, the most vanilla of all the concepts they’d floated.

  And that was the problem.

  Lucy was about to give Delia and Maddie the same real-world lesson her mom had given her when she was ten about average not getting you listed in Forbes, when something swept across her lower back.

  Not something. Someone.

  “Hey now, someone got their beauty sleep,” Ryan Thompson said. “Feeling as ready as you look, Lucy?”

  “More.” Lucy smiled, quashing her body’s reflexive flinch as his hand pressed into her in greeting, a stray fingertip accidentally gliding across the exposed skin between the bottom of her knotted tee and the top of her skinny jeans.

  “That’s what I like to hear. Because I’m counting on you.” He lowered his voice. “These things are usually so boring, they leave me totally cached out. Just once I’d like a little wow.”

  “Well, you’re in luck,” Lucy said, determined to build on the rapport that had begun the day before. “Wow is our team name.”

  “Is that so?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Trademark pending.”

  Ryan Thompson chuckled. Strategize, stylize, and socialize. So far, so good.

  “Did you see that?” Lucy said after he’d gone.

  “Uh-huh,” Maddie said.

  Delia averted her eyes.

  “Ryan Thompson thinks we can wow him.” Lucy fell into her seat. “We have to wow him.”

  She watched her teammates disappear into their devices while the groups around them talked excitedly, huddling together behind a singular laptop or raiding the snack center’s free chips, sushi, and energy drinks. She chewed on her lip—the bad habit she’d been trying to break since the third grade. She caught herself and grabbed hold of her wrist instead. Around and around she spun the pink plastic wristband from the club her Pulse tee had gotten her into two nights ago. Uber-style dog grooming was not a wow. It was barely a “wuh.”

  Finally, a bald man at the front of the room tapped a microphone. Lucy sat on her feet to see better. His zippered V-neck sweater marked him as a VC with a likely net worth greater than the output of a dozen small nations combined. He spoke into the mic, welcoming them all to day one of ValleyStart.

  Lucy reached for her notebook and tuned out the instructions. She’d already memorized the five-week itinerary—from today’s frantic race to lay down the skeleton of their app to the mornings of classes and lectures to the afternoons of “free” time to be spent getting their idea functional and scalable. They’d be going through the stages every startup did to take its product to market, leading up to the pivotal beta test where a small sampling of users would try the app, and ending in Demo Day, when they’d showcase their revolutionary creation and impress the judges enough to win the Pulse internships that would last the rest of the summer.

  Impress the judges. Impress Ryan Thompson.

  Lucy’s mind whirled faster than her wristband. Then Ryan took the mic. She released the bracelet and sat up straighter. As did everyone in the room.

  “Welcome, welcome, welcome. And now, the p-i-i-i-tch.” Ryan drew out the word. “Ah, nothing rattles to the core like that simple five-letter word. Nerves. Fear. Humiliation.” Lucy was sure if she were closer, she’d have seen that same mischievous grin he wore in her dorm room. “But this is a no-pressure environment. And if you believe that, I’ve got a hip programming language called FORTRAN to sell you.” He laughed, though, Lucy noticed, with less gusto than he had with her. “Okay, okay, seriously, this is easy stuff. Just get on up here, outline your team’s project in sixty seconds or less, and you’re good to go.” He clapped his hands together. “Now let’s get started. Hmm, you know, we usually go in numerical order, but let’s just say that this morning . . . I’m feeling twenty-two.”

  Lucy’s heart stopped. This was exactly what she wanted, and yet . . . was she actually going to do this? They’d brainstormed pet grooming half the night. She dropped her feet to the floor. But this was Pulse. She gently pushed back her chair, feeling all sixty pairs of competitor eyes on her.

  This was Ryan Thompson.

  She had to wow.

  She quickly turned back to her table. “Do you trust me?”

  “No,” Maddie said.

  “Yes,” Delia said.

  “Majority rules,” Lucy said, inventing their team precept on the spot.

  She brushed her dark hair over her shoulder and weaved through the tables to reach Ryan. Confidence was not something Lucy lacked. Today was no different. Still, after accepting the microphone, warm from Ryan’s hand, she stood close to him, figuring it couldn’t hurt to absorb some of his own three-comma-club, billion-dollar confidence by osmosis.

  “Right,” she said. “So you’ve heard of Uber. Lyft. Waze. They get you places. We aim to get you to the right ones.” Lucy glanced at Maddie and Delia. They knew she was off message. But they had no idea just how far. Yet.

  She cleared her throat. “Because nothing’s worse than showing up first at a party.” Now deliberately avoiding her teammates, Lucy surveyed the room and this lot whose last party probably had a bouncy house. “Or getting to a club that’s more fossilized than a tyrannosaurus bone. Or a show where the band’s dedicating the whole night to Barry Manilow covers.”

  Pulse. Ryan Thompson. And WOW.

  Lucy placed one hand on her hip and pressed her heels into the floor, lengthening her torso as much as she could. “Like Waze, our app will rely on crowdsourcing, letting our users give you a heads-up if that party’s a do or a don’t. If the bar’s full of hotties or hot messes. If the bouncer’s particularly ornery. If it’s an under-twenty-one night or a senior citizen early-bird dinner.” Confidence brimmed with each sentence she uttered. Now, as she drew to a close, she paused and looked up. Exposed wood beams crisscrossed the vaulted ceiling. She smirked as the line that would clinch it came to her. Then she turned so she could see Ryan. “Uber, Lyft, they pick you up. We hook you up.”

  Ryan grinned as he took the microphone back from her. “And what are you called?”

  He tilted the mic toward her, and she hesitated, distracted by a glimpse of Nishi looking a bit surprised. Lucy blinked and refocused on Ryan. Looking directly at him, she said, “Lit.”

  The way his lips stretched wider, Lucy knew she’d done it. She’d wowed Ryan Thompson. Adrenaline powered her feet back to her table. They may as well give her the noncompete now. The internship was hers. No one could deny what she’d just done.

  Except, maybe, her teammates.

  The moment Lucy touched her chair, Maddie attacked. “That’s not what we agreed on.”

  “First, lower your voice.” Lucy dropped into her seat and leaned across the table. “Second, where were you in the ‘we’ last night? You barely participated. You only care about the design. You said so a million times.”

  “I care because she cares.” Maddie glanced at Delia, who was pastier than usual.

  Her normally downcast eyes were staring at Lucy with shock and disbelief.

  Raw, real emotion. A rarity in Lucy’s world. It unnerved her. Almost made her want to take it all back. But even if that “almost” wasn’t there, it was too late. Ryan liked it. Ryan expected it. And really, pet grooming? Poodle coifs and bowties on ferrets weren’t going to get any
of them into Pulse. Or her into Stanford.

  “Listen,” Lucy started slowly, focusing on Delia, knowing they couldn’t do this without her. “I’m sorry. But we have to stand out. I mean, look at them.” She jutted her chin to the room. To Gavin, even though she didn’t intend to. “We have to be bold.”

  “But I don’t go to bars,” Delia said.

  “You don’t need to go to them to code them.”

  “But I’m only seventeen. . . . If my parents think they sent me here for this . . .”

  “We’ll extrapolate. Movie theaters, malls, the application’s endless, really.” Lucy realized her statement that was simply meant to convince Delia was actually true. She’d been thinking cities, sure, but college campuses, amusement parks, even that town fair thing Delia had fried cornholes or corndogs or whatever at for the past two summers. “This could actually work.”

  “Maybe,” Maddie said. “But not without me.” She scraped her chair against the floor.

  “Wait. Just wait.” Delia wrung her hands, eyes fixed on the table. “I never thought I’d get to a place like this. If this is what we’re doing, then so be it. I’ll code the crap out of it.”

  Maddie stayed in her seat, and relief began to regulate Lucy’s hammering heart.

  “But, Lucy?” Delia’s voice was weak and strong at the same time.

  “Yes?”

  Finally, she lifted her head. “You put an ‘i’ in ‘team’ again, and I won’t just let Maddie go. I’ll follow her.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Eight hours later, and the only thing working was the shimmering effect at the edges of Lit’s launch screen. It looked killer, Lucy had to hand it to Maddie. But it had taken her all day. The other teams were way ahead of them; she’d seen Ryan trying out the skeleton apps of at least a half dozen teams. He’d been at the table of Delia’s cute coworker and the girl with the perfect skin three times. Apparently Ryan didn’t share Lucy’s contempt for bringing a guitar to a hackathon. He’d strummed what she’d only realized was the theme to Jaws after the girl corrected his notes. Lucy had looked her up: Emma Santos, a solid Pulse 5. One level higher than Lucy.