Screen Queens

by Lori Goldstein

  MADDIE HELD HER BREATH, trying not to release the venom she longed to spew at Ryan Thompson. Must have been all those cobra pics she’d viewed while online shopping. People seriously Pinterested everything.

  “Tell me,” Ryan said. “Can you stand here and not be wowed?”

  The view from Ryan’s wraparound office—five times the size of their dorm room and easily fitting the sixty-plus of them—inspired awe. Like a postcard of San Francisco with windows on three sides showcasing the icons of the city, from the soaring pyramid of the Transamerica building to the glimmering blue of the Pacific Ocean, to the arching Golden Gate Bridge, to the mounds of green mountains in the distance beyond.

  “Because if you can, then Pulse needs new headquarters.” Ryan chuckled. “Every day I step into this office, take in the view, and am full of—”

  “Shi—” Maddie started under her breath.

  Delia bugged her eyes at Maddie.

  “Adrenaline, thanks to my Pulse—both of them,” Ryan finished. “Now, since I’ve got you all captive here, let’s revisit how Pulse became Pulse.”

  Murmurs covered Delia’s whisper. “Let’s go. Now.”

  “Don’t you think we should hear this?” Maddie said.

  “Nothing he’s going to say isn’t in his PR packet.” She hiked her backpack higher on her shoulder. “We need the actual truth, not the one Ryan’s probably gotten so used to saying he actually believes it.”

  “Huh.” Maddie started behind Delia, who was inching her way to the door while everyone was occupied with Ryan and the view.

  “What?”

  “I know you think you’re just a girl from Littlewood, but whatever Littlewood’s doing, it’s doing it right.” They spilled into the hall, and Maddie let Delia take the lead. “Remember when you said you’d follow me? Well, I’ll follow you anywhere, Delia Meyer.”

  The expression on Delia’s face was one Maddie was familiar with, and so before Delia could brush off the compliment, Maddie said, “But, uh, where is that, exactly? Right now, I mean. Literally. Not figuratively.”

  “Wait a sec,” Delia said, tapping out a text to Lucy.

  Cover for us.

  Secret spy stuff? Danny would love this.

  Maddie trailed behind Delia, down the hall and into the wide atrium they’d passed through earlier with plants cascading down from living walls, one side groomed into the shape of ten hearts, the other spelling out PULSE.

  “I never thought I could feel so sorry for plants,” Maddie said.

  Delia stifled a laugh and pushed forward through the wide space, kicking into a higher gear and gesturing for Maddie to keep up. They passed the Pulse Lounge with its blood-red walls and heart-shaped beanbag chairs and hit a four-way intersection. Without a pause in her stride, Delia turned left.

  “How do you know where we’re going?” Maddie asked. “And where are we going?”

  “Developer space,” Delia said. “Remember?”

  “I remember being there, I would have just never found it on my own.”

  They rounded the corner and passed two white guys in nearly identical hoodies, Pulse tees, and jeans.

  Delia and Maddie kept walking.

  “Oh, man,” one of the guys said from behind them. “I never get tired of the views around here.”

  “Gotta love Pulse-terns,” the other one said.

  Maddie’s heart hammered her chest, and she whirled around.

  “Maddie,” Delia whispered, closing the gap between them. “Now’s not the time. Just keep moving.”

  Though she clenched her fists, Maddie did as Delia asked. “Only for you, Dee.”

  Still hanging on to Maddie’s sleeve, Delia said, “What an ass.”

  Maddie stopped, and a smile usually saved for her brother broke through. It was the first time she’d ever heard Delia curse.

  “They work here. What do you expect?” Maddie said. “Now, let’s do this . . . whatever this is.”

  “Right. Okay.” Delia pushed her shoulders back, inhaled, and whispered something about the depths before marching into the developer space and swiveling her head from side to side. She landed on a young white girl with a mass of brown curls who was wrestling her hand through them, repeatedly. Delia spread her hands through her own spirals, growing them wider, pulled her laptop out of her backpack, and approached.

  “How’s it going?” Delia asked, nerves causing her words to run into one another. “What are you working on?”

  “Complier errors. Lots and lots and lots of them.”

  “Yeah, uh.” Delia slowed herself down. “I’m on some too.”

  Maddie raised an eyebrow, and Delia mouthed, “back me up.”

  “You’re new too?” Maddie said.

  “Obvious much?” The girl’s whole body deflated. “It’s my second week. But my first was all HR and training and, oh God, I’m going to be sent back for more training, aren’t I?”

  “Is that, like, possible?” Delia said.

  “I don’t know. Is it?” She tugged her hand through her hair. “Maybe we should go ask—”

  “No!” Delia cried. “I mean, no. . . . What’s your name?”

  “Natalie.”

  “Of course, Natalie. Well, Natalie, I can’t go ask anyone anything because . . . because . . .” She held up her laptop. “I can’t log in remotely, and it’s like my third time having a problem, and if they find out . . .”

  “Hey, don’t worry. Grab a chair and let’s figure it out together.”

  “No,” Maddie said. “She can’t. She doesn’t have time.”

  “I don’t?” Delia said. “Right. Time. I don’t have time. I have all this work to do. Pulse work. But I have to be home in like . . .” She looked at her wrist, which had no watch. “Fifteen minutes. Home in Stinson Beach.”

  Eric had said that was where Emma was staying. But he never said exactly how far it was.

  “Stinson? You’ll never make it!” Natalie looked around, panicked. “Listen, that’s your laptop?”

  Delia nodded.

  “Here, give it to me.” Natalie grabbed it and quickly connected to the Wi-Fi. “You don’t even have the remote program downloaded?”

  “I did, but then it kept crashing, and so I—”

  “No matter. We’ll get you there.” Natalie’s fingers moved at the speed of Lucy’s lips, and while she downloaded the program that would allow remote access to the Pulse server, she and Delia spoke in a language foreign to Maddie but that still fascinated her. Not because of the content but because of Delia.

  Natalie closed the laptop. “Okay, so you’re logged in as me, Natalie Travest, for now, just so you can work today.”

  “You’re a lifesaver, Natalie,” Delia said.

  “Ah, we newbies have to stick together. In fact . . . maybe we could have lunch one of these days?”

  Delia sucked in a breath. “I’d like that.”

  Natalie sighed in relief.

  Maddie watched, remembering how she hadn’t wanted to be paired with Delia or Lucy at the start of the program. Now she couldn’t do this without them—and wouldn’t want to. It was a feeling she hadn’t had about anyone other than her brother in years.

  Lucy texted Maddie: You both have food poisoning from that ostrich sashimi they served.

  A bit of bile rocketed up Maddie’s throat.

  Maddie: I thought it was chicken. And cooked.

  Lucy: So East Coast. Meet us in the parking lot. I got you covered. Can’t wait to see you guys.

  Maddie:

  Maddie couldn’t wait either.

  THIRTY

  DISRUPTING • When a product services a market that couldn’t be reached before; it’s nearly impossible for an existing company to respond to a disruptive product

  “I NEED A HOTSPOT,” Delia said as soon as they c
rammed onto one long bench on the bus. Her head was bursting with what they’d managed to do. She flipped open her laptop and started pounding the keyboard. “Come on, come on.”

  Lucy scrambled to turn on the settings on her phone that would allow Delia to connect to Wi-Fi. “What happened? What did you find out?”

  “Shh . . .” Delia needed to concentrate. Compressed between Maddie and Lucy, she scooted forward for more space. She hunched over her computer, her fingers jamming letters and numbers, hoping the access would be enough to allow her to hack deeper.

  Maddie leaned around her and said to Lucy, “She’s in.”

  Lucy’s eyes widened. “She’s actually in in?”

  As Maddie began to explain to Lucy, Gavin leapt up the steps and onto the bus. He placed a hand on the back of the seats on either side of the aisle and swung his legs forward, landing beside them.

  When Maddie quickly slapped the laptop closed, Delia snapped her head up. “Maddie, I’m—”

  “Taking a break. Really, you work too hard, Dee.”

  Delia took in Gavin’s narrowed brow and slid her computer into her backpack. “Yeah, you know what, I do. Especially since things couldn’t be more on track.”

  “R-i-i-i-ght,” Gavin said in a spot-on impersonation of Ryan. Delia felt Lucy tense beside her. Gavin continued. “D-Day’s coming, and you chicks aren’t the Allied forces or the Germans. You’re the beach.”

  He high-fived his teammates, who seemed as dumbfounded as Delia. “What does that even mean?”

  Lucy looked disappointed and then said through gritted teeth, “It means we have to succeed. In all of this.”

  “We will.” Though the queasiness in Delia’s stomach seemed less sure. The confidence fueling her inside of Pulse petered out the more she thought about what she’d done and what she was about to do, which she was pretty sure was illegal no matter the intention behind it.

  She switched seats with Maddie, who’d begun filling Lucy in, talking softly to her in the French they both knew, while Delia watched San Francisco pass on by. She wanted to be here, she wanted to succeed, but like this?

  Ryan, Gavin, the guy who betrayed Maddie, the boys who insulted Delia for years, they were bullies; they didn’t care who they hurt.

  Delia leaned forward to face both Maddie and Lucy. “This girl . . . Natalie. Natalie Travest.” Delia picked up her phone, found her on Instagram, and followed her. “I don’t want her to get in trouble. I’ll hack in as far as I can and make a copy of everything I can find, but I won’t log in again.”

  “What?” Maddie said. “What if you don’t have everything? We just stop? We’re so close.”

  “I know,” Delia said. “It’s just . . . Girl Empowered. It’s not just a name to me.”

  “Me neither,” Lucy said, surprising Delia.

  Lucy looked around the bus. “It might have been . . . before all this. But now . . . it’s different. We have to be different. Change comes from us, right?”

  Maddie hesitated. “Most people wouldn’t care. Not if we get results.”

  “We’re better than most people,” Delia said.

  “Or we’re trying to be,” Lucy said.

  Delia wasn’t sure she could do it, not because she didn’t believe in herself but because confidence and arrogance were two very different things, something personified by Gavin and Ryan. “I’m going to ask Eric for help. You can trust him because—”

  “You do,” Lucy said.

  “When will you get started?” Maddie asked.

  “Tonight,” Delia said.

  * * *

  * * *

  “How can you possibly carry that much weight?” Eric asked, four days later.

  Delia plunked half a dozen books down on the library table, the noise loud enough to draw looks from their neighbors.

  “Oh, of course,” she said. “I forgot how soft you city people are. See, we Midwesterners can carry a cow into the barn while we’re milking it.”

  “You have a barn?”

  “No. But that’s what you ask? Not if we have a cow?”

  Eric grinned, and Delia’s only thought was how glad she was that her parents were coming to Demo Day. She wanted them all to meet. Because it felt strange that the people she was closest to didn’t know one another. And she was becoming closer and closer with Eric.

  Operation Flatline, aka take down Ryan Thompson, meant they were spending every minute they weren’t spending on Demo Day prep together. At this point that was about twenty-four hours a day because their work on each of their apps was done. With the presentation in two days, it was now up to Lucy for Delia’s team and Marty for Eric’s.

  Which wasn’t to say that Delia and stress were unacquainted. They were besties. Because she and Eric had yet to find anything to prove her database theory.

  Delia opened a book on SQL and read the first line. “Oh, right, I already read this one.” She closed it.

  “The whole book?”

  “Most of it.”

  “And memorized it?”

  “Most of it.”

  “And to think I almost chose a different incubator because I wanted to be on the East Coast . . .”

  “A different incubator? . . . Different . . .” A page from the book flashed in Delia’s mind. She dove into her laptop, muttering to herself.

  “Uh, Lia?”

  She didn’t look up. “That could be . . . it might be . . .” Keystrokes flew without a pause. “We’ve looked everywhere in the database for this table. We can see the name of it in the code, so why can’t we find it? But if the table’s in a different database . . .”

  “What are you talking about?” Eric said.

  Delia pushed the book toward him. “Check the index.”

  Eric flipped to the back, then to a new page, and started reading. “This way no one would even know the table exists?”

  “Except for Ryan. If I can access the objects that hook into it, I can find . . .” Delia kept working, her brain connecting faster than her fingers could move. She dug in, seeing it all so clearly, knowing it was there, if only she could find . . . if only it were . . . Oh, come on. And then, her jaw slackened. “Uh, Eric . . .” She lifted her head. “I think . . . I think maybe I found it.”

  He put the book down. “Found what?”

  “It. I found it.” A rush of adrenaline shot Delia out of her seat. “The table. Ryan’s secret list!”

  “Delia! Are you sure? That’s amaz—”

  “No, no, wait.” Her brain wouldn’t slow down. “The table . . . so it exists . . . but is that enough?” She sat back down and extended her fingers across the keyboard. “We still have to access it, get inside, and show the connections between—”

  Eric placed his hands over hers. “Hold on, one thing at a time because . . . you found it!”

  The guy at the next table shushed them.

  But Delia ignored him, taking in the pride on Eric’s face. She pushed herself back in her chair. She found it.

  A lightness buoyed her and she reached for her phone. Somehow, she’d missed a text from Maddie.

  Natalie posted a pic on Instagram. Carrying a box and waving at the Pulse building with “Bye-bye Pulse” scribbled across it. And her Pulse is Comatose.

  Delia’s stomach dropped.

  “No!” she cried, drawing rabid shushing from half the room. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of hot tears.

  This isn’t fair!

  When she opened her eyes, a blurry Eric was standing before her, reading the text on her phone. He wrapped his hand around hers and led her outside.

  “We have to tell,” she blurted out. “We can’t let her be fired because of us.”

  “Okay, just take a breath, Lia.”

  “No matter what it means.” She paced the sidewalk outside the library. “We ca
n’t . . . it’s not right.”

  “Lia—”

  “She’s innocent. I used her. I did this. I did—”

  “Lia,” Eric said again.

  “This. It was my idea and now . . . now . . .” Delia raised her hands to her temples, pressing against the pounding erupting on either side of her head. Sweat prickled on the surface of her skin, and her vision clouded. No! Not again, not again, not again.

  “Lia!” Eric cried. “Breathe, just breathe.”

  The panic in his voice ignited more in her chest and her hearing went fuzzy and she found herself reaching out, for something, anything, to stop this, to stop her body from betraying her again, like this, in front of Eric. She sank to the ground, her hands leaving her head and pushing into the concrete, the tiny pebbles of the sidewalk digging into her palms, the pain keeping her here in the moment.

  She closed her eyes tight against the world, silently repeating, “Breaths raise you from the depths,” over and over until . . . they started to. When flashes of light began to infiltrate the abyss she’d descended into, she opened her eyes.

  Not to the world.

  To Eric.

  Before her.

  Kneeling on the ground, his arms outstretched as if to catch her if she fell.

  “Lia. Lia, what can I do?”

  The tears that had ebbed began to gather once again. “Exactly what you’re doing.”

  “But I didn’t do anything.”

  “You were here.”

  “Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

  Delia’s smile was weak. “No. Hoped, maybe, but no.”

  “Hoped? But why . . .”

  “What girl wants the guy she’s desperately falling for to see her having a panic attack?”

  “You . . . what?”

  “A panic attack. At least I’m pretty sure. It was the same as the other night.”

  “That’s not the part of the sentence I meant.”

  “Oh.” Delia blushed, and a tingle spread beneath her skin.

  He flipped his hair out of his eyes, and pink colored his cheeks too. “Because I’m not falling.”