Screen Queens

by Lori Goldstein

  “I never was—happy, that is. But to show it was to be weak in the eyes of people I put too much stock in. At the expense of the one person whose stock mattered most.”

  Lucy slid her hands forward, wedging them between those of her mom. Only their hands were together, but she hadn’t felt this close to her mom in years.

  “I didn’t think much about being one of only a handful of women doing what I was doing when I started out,” Abigail said. “I was young and smart and too headstrong not to just dive in and do the work. Back then, the company needed to survive before it could even hope to thrive. It needed great programmers, period. And I was great. I was a rising star. I mean, why else was someone at my level being brought to company dinners and investor meetings?”

  “The double X factor,” Lucy said softly.

  Her mom’s brow creased before she began nodding. “Right. Me and my C cup were proof that the company wasn’t a boys’ club. But it was, just like all the others. The first time an investor’s hand mistook my leg for his, I told my boss. He said the right thing—how sorry he was—and then casually added how everyone at the company did things they didn’t want to do for the greater good. If the company succeeded, we all succeeded.”

  “Mom, I’m—”

  Abigail squeezed Lucy’s hands between hers and kept talking. “I stayed silent after that, smiling while getting their coffee and taking their lunch orders, but I was no longer playing their game. I was playing my own. Because every meeting where I was the token female was a meeting I was able to attend that my colleagues weren’t. I learned things that would have taken me years. And so I kept on playing, tagging along to the strip club buffet lunches so as not to miss out on discussions of whose product line was the next to be funded. Not participating in late nights of drinking had career ramifications, but sitting at the bar had personal ones.” Abigail, who had been speaking at a rapid clip, slowed, her voice now almost hushed. “One night, things got out of hand with a senior male programmer and a younger woman. Fortunately I was there with another female colleague, and we stopped it. The young woman wanted to report the incident, and we agreed to go to HR together the next day. But I was held up by an emergency meeting. By the time I was out, word of a firing was spreading. Not the male employee, the young woman. The colleague that backed her up resigned a few days later after receiving a negative performance review.”

  “And you?” Lucy asked, knowing the answer.

  “The only change I effected was extracting myself from the scene.” She lowered her head, resting her eyes on their entwined hands. “I’m not proud of myself. Of some of the choices I made—for both of us . . . I was hard on you, I know I was.”

  “Right back at ya.”

  Her mom smiled weakly. “I wanted you to be like me—able to just keep your head down and put up with all the crap coming your way. But I knew you weren’t me.”

  “She’ll never be me.”

  “And that terrified me. Because I also knew what was waiting for you. But I was wrong, Lucy. I was giving you a shield when what you really needed was a sword.”

  “Ah, well, neither would have gotten me into Stanford.”

  “Screw Stanford.”

  Lucy rocked back, raising her eyebrows.

  “Sorry,” her mom said. “Yes, I did want you to go, but not for you—for me.” She sucked in her bottom lip. “I’m so sorry you inherited this from me. The truth is, I loved it here. You could be really happy at Mountain View, Lucy. After such a large high school, you might find the closer-knit community inviting. And if not, well, there’s UC Berkeley and Rice and NYU and Wellesley College—anywhere you want to go across the country. Though part of me hopes you won’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Go across the country.” She skimmed her finger along Lucy’s necklace. “Not now that we’re finally figuring out how to do this.”

  “And by this you mean . . .”

  “Be a family.”

  Of all the reasons to pivot, Lucy thought that sounded like a pretty good one. Besides, NYU, Boston? She shivered just thinking of the snow. She didn’t look good in parkas.

  (Oh, who am I kidding? If anyone can rock a parka, it’s me.)

  THIRTY–SIX

  FRIENDS AND FAMILY ROUND • A startup’s first round of capital, usually from “investors” who are family and friends

  “GUMBEROO’S LOOKING GOOD ON you, kid,” Maddie said.

  Danny was wearing every piece of gear Esmé had sent.

  “And smelling even better. Why, if I didn’t recognize these freckles . . .” Maddie leaned down and pinched his cheeks. “I’d swear a pterodactyl had flown off with my little brother. Though of course she’d drop him the second she got a whiff of those stinky socks.”

  “Hardy har har,” Danny snickered. “What makes you think the pterodactyl would be a she, anyways?”

  “What makes you think it wouldn’t be?”

  “Okay,” Danny said.

  “Okay,” Maddie said, hoping such an acceptance never became more difficult for him.

  They were almost to the end of their campus tour, and she still couldn’t believe he was actually here—and that it was all because of Lucy and Delia, though Delia had given Lucy all the credit.

  Maddie shouldn’t have been surprised. With everything that had gone on the past few days, nothing should surprise her anymore.

  One thing definitely didn’t: Sadie’s initial cold shoulder upon meeting Danny, which was entirely in character. As was Danny’s reaction: that crooked grin that no one could resist.

  Sadie was with Emma, having successfully begged her to play a couple of songs during the last few minutes of tech day camp. Maddie hoped Sadie just really liked Emma’s music, but she’d gotten to know Sadie better than that. You could take the Pulse away from the girl, but you couldn’t so easily take away what the Pulse had done to her.

  The thought of leaving in a couple of days, before she got the chance to wash off the stench of Pulse—worse than Danny’s old socks—saddened Maddie.

  As did the thought of New York. And the realization that Danny didn’t feel the same.

  “And there’s a zoo, right in the park. How bonkers is that?” he said.

  “Pretty bonkers.”

  “And Mom said there’s a rock climbing wall right in my school’s gym. And my room is bigger than yours.”

  Maddie stopped walking. “I have a room?”

  “Well, duh!”

  A room. For her. Her mom was giving her a room even though she hadn’t asked for one—hadn’t wanted one. She felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach as she remembered something her mom had said during their fight about Danny’s socks. She’d questioned whether Maddie wanted to be a part of her life. It barely registered at the time because Maddie always thought it was the other way around. That the distance between her and her parents emanated from them. But did her focus on Danny exclude them? Did she focus on Danny to exclude them?

  Suddenly she realized she’d done the same thing to Delia and Lucy when she first got to ValleyStart. If it hadn’t been for Delia asking her to go to the club and Lucy dragging her on to the dance floor, would the rest of it have happened? Picnicking on the floor of their dorm room, creating a killer app, showing the world what Pulse really was?

  Guilt crept in at the edges. Consciously or not, she was starting to think that she played a role in what had become of her family.

  Well, duh, indeed.

  Maddie took Danny’s hand—that he let her proved how much he missed her—and they walked into town. Lucy had made a reservation at her favorite Thai place because, in her words, one, it killed it on the pad thai, and two, no one, especially not Ryan Thompson, was going to dictate what she would eat. Though she said she’d likely shy away from the soup, for reasons she hadn’t told Maddie but that Maddie was certain would only b
olster the feeling she had that Lucy might be the strongest person she knew.

  The article in Teen Vogue had been trending all day.

  Her story in print for everyone to see. To judge. Things that should make Lucy Katz go into overdrive trying to compensate. But when Maddie and Danny arrived at the table with every seat filled but two, she found Lucy commanding it, impersonating Tim Corrio. She raised her hand in the air and fist-pumped “the Mad-woman!” when she saw Maddie.

  She grinned. Maddie grinned. Delia grinned. Danny cocked his head and gave his crooked grin, and Maddie rested a finger on her four-leaf clover. Faith, hope, love, and luck. One for each of them.

  Maddie believed it.

  Claire and Jeffrey told stories of Delia, like how she’d hacked into the local newspaper to retrieve the rash email her dad had sent in response to a particularly harsh review. Then Cassie told them all how she’d learned that skill: retrieving an email Cassie had sent to her crush when her cold feet had set in. Sadie stood and imitated her tap-dancing porcupine, inciting Danny to race to her side and imitate her, the two of them having a dance-off in a bid for Maddie’s attention that made her both embarrassed and a bit proud at the same time. She’d rarely been anyone’s center of attention. Lucy’s mom talked of her days at Mountain View U with several not-at-all subtle hints as to why Lucy may find it the perfect home for the next four years. And where would Maddie’s home be? Her answer had always been wherever Danny was. But was that the right answer? Would her mom be more of a mom if Maddie wasn’t?

  Nishi arrived just before dessert from the Demo Day party they’d decided to skip. She asked to meet privately with Lucy, Maddie, and Delia.

  As they stood outside the restrooms, Lucy asked, “Is this an official ValleyStart visit?”

  “No, personally sanctioned,” Nishi said.

  “What about showing favoritism?” Delia said.

  “Pfft. You three have been my favorites since the moment I decided how to assemble the teams. Couldn’t resist the chance to have the first all-girls team win ValleyStart.”

  Maddie’s heart skipped a beat. “Do you mean—?”

  “No,” Nishi said. “You didn’t win. Your presentation was excellent, the idea for your app even more so. But the bottom line is you did violate the morality clause. Even if it was ultimately for the greater—and personal—good, we can’t give you the win.”

  Lucy glanced in her mom’s direction. “I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

  “Yeah,” Delia said.

  Maddie nodded, more than a little disappointed at not getting to spend the rest of the summer at an internship with Lucy and Delia. Though the internships . . .

  “Did someone win?” she asked.

  “Of course. Everyone worked their tails off, and we’re not going to let Ryan Thompson mar ValleyStart. He’s already been removed from the program. As for the incubator, the winners will be announced shortly, though they’ll likely be disappointed. We can’t have them go to Pulse, not with all you’ve uncovered. They’ll have to be satisfied with an internship at my company.”

  “Then we lost more than I thought,” Lucy said softly.

  Nishi put her arm around Lucy’s shoulders. “You were incredible, Lucy. What you did, what all of you did . . . But I can’t help thinking that I failed you. Why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

  None of them spoke. Finally Lucy said, “I was ashamed. And I thought I could protect us, our place in the program, in everything that would come after.”

  “You wanted to protect your friends?” Nishi said.

  Lucy could barely look at Maddie and Delia, but she nodded.

  “Well,” Nishi said, “seems to me you’ve all won a lot more than ValleyStart. How I love it when I’m right. Anyway, I wanted to tell you how proud I am of each of you.” She pressed her hand to her stomach. “And get something edible. Mountain View U catering tastes as bad as the dorms smell.”

  They pulled up another chair for Nishi, and the stories continued, Danny beginning by telling them all about the pterodactyls on Martha’s Vineyard. As he spoke, Maddie uploaded the Girl Empowered logo to be the first image in the portfolio on her website.

  She looked around the table, thinking of what waited at home in Boston. Not just the cloudy skies and snow to come. But the absence of this.

  Family.

  Because family wasn’t just the one you were born to. It was the one you made for yourself.

  And remade. As new people came into your life and old ones returned. The room in New York City might have just been extra square footage, but Maddie chose to believe it was an olive branch. One, despite the people around this table (and, fine, the infuriatingly wonderful sunshine), she was ready to accept, not for Danny but for herself. So welcome back, rain and sleet and snow.

  (After all, who worries about snow when they’ve got a kick-ass parka like mine?)

  THIRTY–SEVEN

  ANGEL INVESTOR • One who invests in small startups and entrepreneurs early on to help founders through the hardest stages

  THEY DIDN’T WIN. DELIA knew they couldn’t, they wouldn’t, and yet all through dinner, she couldn’t help the nagging inside—not that she’d disappointed her parents. She’d wiped her mom’s lipstick off her cheeks enough times to convince herself of that. But that she’d disappointed herself.

  Because Girl Empowered was good and having a ValleyStart win wouldn’t just validate it but her. That she still needed such a thing bothered her, but after what happened with Lit, after she was the one who violated the morality clause, she needed it. Right or wrong, she needed it.

  “You’ve been holding out on me, Dee Dee,” Cassie said.

  Delia exited the bathroom stall and washed her hands at the sink. “How exactly?”

  “Fearsome stage presence. Not that I’m surprised, considering your mom.”

  “Really? I was okay?”

  Cassie scoffed. “If anyone’s gonna tell you the truth, it’s me.”

  “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.” They exited the restroom, and Delia asked, “So you and the usher . . .”

  Cassie held up two fingers.

  Delia’s eyebrows lifted. “Two dates? Awesome, Cass!”

  “Oh, in that case, three.”

  “Then what’s two—wait, forget I said that.”

  Cassie winked.

  Delia took a breath, knowing she couldn’t stop the blush that always did and would come. It was who she was.

  “You sure you don’t want to come back to the room for a bit?” she asked. “Maddie and Lucy would love to have you.”

  “Nah, I’m good. Got a date with Danny at the hotel. I offered a video game matchup, and he said he wanted us to call Esmé Theot. Kid’s a bit out there, right?”

  “Oh, right.” Delia attempted a poker face, picturing Cassie when the call actually went through.

  When they arrived back at the table, Nishi was talking with Delia’s parents. Everyone else had already said their goodbyes and made plans for breakfast the next day.

  Delia retook her seat, and Nishi slid a letter across the table.

  “What’s this?” Delia asked.

  “Open it, darling,” her mom said, with a lilt to her voice.

  Delia did, reading while Cassie read over her shoulder.

  “Hot damn!” Cassie exclaimed.

  “This is . . .” What is this? A job? An actual, real, no joke, serious job at Nishi’s company?

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Claire said.

  “Couldn’t happen to a better daughter of mine,” her dad said. “Oh . . . wait . . .” He winked and reached for Delia’s hand, which was trembling right along with the offer letter.

  A job. As a programmer. In Silicon Valley.

  Delia had done exactly what she’d hoped to do: go to ValleyStart and leave with a job a
t a tech company, with just a high school diploma, without going to college, without making her parents spend money that could go to the theater on her.

  But she was too late.

  “Nishi, this is . . . thank you, but—”

  “But nothing, Dee,” her dad said.

  Delia could barely look at her parents. “But I failed you both. The theater’s gone.” She faced Nishi. “This is amazing. I’m . . . wow, honestly, it’s just . . .” She dropped the “just” and forced herself to turn to her mom and dad. “I wanted to save the theater. I wanted you to not have to worry about me.”

  Claire stood and wrapped her arms around her daughter. “That is one thing you can never ask of a parent. We will always worry about you.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Delia said, breathing in her mother’s lilac perfume.

  Claire crouched in front of her. “Our decision on the theater wasn’t for you or us, it was for all of us. Your dad and I want new adventures. And since you’ll be off having your own . . .” Her mom tapped the letter. “Your own incredible ones, then we decided we’re ready for ours too. The next phase. And once we get that Winnebago, we can park right outside your doorstep for as long as we like!”

  Cassie said, “Nuh-uh, Mrs. M. Not cool.”

  “No,” Delia said, standing to hug her mom and bring her dad into it. “It is. It totally is.”

  Delia had convinced herself that saving the theater was for her parents, but it was as much for herself as it was for them. A safety net she’d thought was tied to a place. But it wasn’t. It was tied to people all along.

  When they all sat back down and Cassie had thrown napkins at the three of them to dry their eyes, Nishi spoke.

  “This is because I recognize talent when I see it. You coded two fully functioning apps, both of which surpassed the programming skills of every other project at ValleyStart. My company needs talent. But we need talent that will grow and learn. So my hope is you’ll consider a part-time schedule. One that will allow you to enroll in a college close to our offices.”

  “Like Mountain View U?” Delia asked.