The Social Code

by Sadie Hayes

  T.J. noticed Adam’s dumbfounded face, too. “I see you two have finally met.”

  “Actually, I don’t think we ever officially have.” Ted stuck out his hand jovially. “I’m Ted Bristol. What’s your name?”

  “Adam,” Adam stammered, taking Ted’s hand.

  T.J. rolled his eyes. “Adam Dory,” he said. “Amelia’s brother.”

  Ted clucked his tongue. “Well! Adam Dory!”

  Adam blinked his eyes closed, half expecting Ted to punch him.

  But instead Ted smiled. “It appears there are two extremely impressive Dorys.”

  Ted’s smile was genuine and warm, not conniving, and Adam blushed. There was always talk about Amelia, but it was the first time Adam could remember anyone ever saying he was impressive. He knew it was wrong, but he felt a weird connection with Ted.

  “So, what’s up?” T.J. asked. “Why on earth would you come to this wedding if you didn’t have to?”

  Adam’s mind was racing. If this guy was Ted, that meant Lisa was his daughter, and hadn’t he said last night that he didn’t like her boyfriend? And her boyfriend was Sundeep? Unless she was a total slut and she was kissing all sorts of boys in the gazebo. No, that couldn’t be. Lisa wasn’t a slut. She was perfect—she loved him!

  Focus!

  “It’s Amelia. The panel, I mean. You have to stop the Q&A,” Adam stammered.

  “Too late,” Ted said, showing T.J. and Adam his Android phone, where he was live streaming the conference.

  “What do you mean?” Adam grabbed the phone and stared in horror at its screen. Amelia was standing at the side of the stage, about to make her presentation. Adam glanced at his iPhone. It was 10:55 A.M., and he had three frantic texts from Amelia: “Where are you???”

  Had he been watching Lisa and Sundeep for that long? How many mimosas did he drink?

  “No! We have to stop the Q&A. They’re going to drill her on questions about juvie!” Adam rushed out. T.J. followed.

  “The ceremony starts in one hour,” Ted called. “Your mother’s going to kill you if you miss it.”

  But neither Adam nor T.J. heard as they dashed back to the stolen Porsche.

  59

  Or Can You?

  Adam raced to the side of the stage just as Amelia walked out, taking the microphone from the previous presenter. T.J. left to find Mike. Amelia was scheduled for a ten-minute presentation and a fifteen-minute Q&A. If T.J. could get to Mike fast enough, there was still a chance he could derail the Q&A.

  “Found you!” Adam turned at the sound of a familiar voice. Roger Fenway was next to him, one hand on the handle of a rolling suitcase, his face flushed. He’d obviously just come from the airport.

  “This is not going to be good,” Adam moaned. But Roger didn’t hear. He was smiling brightly at Amelia, his gem. He obviously hadn’t heard about yesterday’s disaster, Adam thought.

  Amelia took a deep breath and began to speak into the microphone. The PowerPoint presentation she’d prepared with Roger and T.J. back in Palo Alto was projected on the screen behind her, and her iPhone and all of the devices controllable by Doreye were on a table in front.

  “My very savvy business team helped me prepare a presentation,” she said. Her voice was calm and clear. “It goes through the numbers on our business, the market potential, and lots of other things I’m sure you all are interested in.”

  She used the monitor control to click quickly through all the slides, so fast no one could read them. “But I’m going to disappoint you, because I don’t want to talk about any of that today.” She clicked one more time, and the monitor went black.

  Adam glanced at Roger. What was she doing? But Roger was still focused on Amelia, beaming like a father proudly watching his son’s first Little League game. The audience was silent, and the room was thick with anticipation.

  “Instead,” she said, “I’m going to talk about honesty.”

  She paused, letting that sink in. “When I was fifteen, I did something very dishonest. First I hacked into the College Board Web site and adjusted the SAT scores of my foster brother. Then I hacked into an insurance company’s database and adjusted the sales figures of my foster father. And then I hacked into a bank and embezzled money into his account.

  “And then one day I woke up and realized that what I believed was helping the only family I ever had”—Amelia swallowed—“was actually causing innocent people to suffer. That people worthy of recognition for good test scores, worthy of commissions for high sales figures, worthy of the money they worked hard to earn, were being penalized because of what I was doing. And so I confessed, and I stopped, and I accepted my punishment and spent three months in jail.”

  No one in the audience dared to even blink in case they might miss something.

  “And I wouldn’t do it again,” Amelia said. She shook her head and laughed. “Absolutely not. But I will take what lessons I can from it, and that’s what I’d like to talk about today. You see, through that experience, I met honest people and I met dishonest people, and I learned the difference. I made a vow always to be honest, but I’ve unfortunately learned that there are still a lot of dishonest people in the world, and they don’t always get caught.”

  Amelia walked over to the microwave and opened the back panel, pulling out the chip.

  “This little chip here”—she held it up—“is the reason Doreye didn’t work during yesterday’s demo.”

  She set it aside. “It overrides radio frequencies. The person who put it there is a dishonest person. I won’t slander anyone, but given all you were able to dig up about me, I’m sure you can figure this one out, too.”

  Amelia proceeded with a flawless demo, using the iPhone to work all the devices on the table. The audience relaxed, smiling excitedly in anticipation of this stunning new product, which was working just as well as the hype had promised.

  When she was finished with the demo, Amelia turned back to the press. “I believe that, if we work together, and if we’re honest, we can take computer technology to a level none of us has yet conceived. This is just the start.”

  Thunderous applause erupted. One by one, the audience started to stand, cheering loudly. Amelia closed her eyes and let out a deep exhale. Adam could see her hands shaking.

  Then she added, “I believe there were a few questions you’d prepared. I hope I’ve addressed them adequately.” With that, Amelia walked off the stage, the crowd still applauding.

  Roger Fenway opened his arms, and Amelia fell into them. “You were absolutely brilliant,” he whispered, planting a grandfatherly kiss on the top of her head. Cameras snapped all around them, the journalists delighting in the perfectly captured moment of mentor-mentee affection.

  She stood back and smiled at Roger, her eyes bright. “Thank you so much,” she said quietly.

  T.J. ran up to her. “Jesus, Amelia! Where did that come from? You were unbelievable!” He pulled her into a hug, his face radiant with astonishment and adrenaline. “You just catapulted this thing onto a whole new level. Do you have any idea how much you owned that crowd?”

  She laughed modestly. “Thank Roger,” she said. “He gives a hell of a pep talk.”

  Amelia and Roger exchanged a knowing glance. Right after Adam had left this morning, Roger had called her to check in. After she’d babbled into the phone, he’d calmly told her she needed to wait exactly three hours to have a breakdown. For now, she had to bolster herself. “Act like it’s not you. Pretend like you’re playing the part of someone else, a fierce and intimidating woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone.” Together, they’d written what she would say and he’d instructed her to stand in front of the mirror as she practiced the speech into her phone.

  Amelia finally turned to Adam. Adam didn’t know what to say. He’d failed her, and he knew that she knew it. He’d gotten distracted worrying over Lisa, and somehow while he was gone, his sister had become … awesome.

  “You were amazing,” he finally offered.

&
nbsp; “Thanks.” She nodded.

  Adam turned to Roger. “Answering their questions before they asked them was a pretty bold strategy.”

  Roger smiled. “Well, I ain’t often right, but I’ve never been wrong.”

  Amelia laughed. “Can we please go get lunch now? I’m starving.”

  As they walked toward the dining room, Adam dug his hands into his pockets. His fingers landed on something: the flower from Lisa’s hair. He held it up and contemplated it for a moment before tossing it into the garbage can in disgust.

  60

  Here She Comes

  Patty was standing in the upstairs sitting room of the villa next to the Hibiscus Grove, looking out at the wedding guests below. Shandi was posing for pictures somewhere, and the other bridesmaids were happily drinking champagne and putting the finishing touches on their makeup.

  From here, she could see all the guests milling around on the terrace outside. She admired Lisa Bristol’s silky, gold one-shoulder dress and the little Judith Leiber clutch she carried effortlessly. She looked like a little goddess. What was she doing with that boring Indian guy? Nevertheless, Patty was jealous of Lisa. Not in a malicious way (How could you not like someone so sweet?), but in a wish-I-was-her kind of way.

  She took a sip of champagne and scanned the crowd for T.J., but she couldn’t find him. He was probably off with some newly found hot girl, she thought. She heard her phone signal a text message.

  “I need to see you immediately. Can you come to my suite downstairs? And come alone!”

  Patty almost coughed up her drink. Was Chad serious? In less than an hour he would be married to her sister. What kind of horrible person was he? She felt any lingering attraction melt. This guy was bad news.

  She was in the middle of typing an angry response when another text came through.

  “URGENT!! PLEASE!!”

  She sighed. Fine. One more meeting; but if he thought she was going to sleep with him he had another think coming. She erased what she had started to type and tapped, “On my way.”

  She crept out the side door and back through the lobby to the east wing groom’s quarters, prepping what she was going to say. She wouldn’t even enter the room, just stand outside and tell Chad, defiantly, that it was over and he needed to leave her alone.

  Before she could knock on the door, however, it swung open and Chad pulled her by the wrist into the room.

  “Chad, I cannot do this anymore,” she said, just as she’d rehearsed on the walk. “You are marrying my sister and—”

  “No, I’m not!” Chad shouted, panicking. She’d never seen him so flustered. He was freaking out.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s gone, Patty! She’s gone!”

  Patty looked at him like he was an idiot. “What is wrong with you? She’s taking photos. I was with her an hour ago.”

  “No, she’s not!” Chad was pacing back and forth in the room, pressing his hand to his temple, trying to think. “The photographer came in here forty minutes ago looking for her. She said Shandi had asked if she could leave her alone for a few minutes, and when she came back ten minutes later, Shandi was gone. The photographer thought we were having some romantic prewedding tryst. I’ve called Shandi a dozen times. I ran around the entire grounds. She’s nowhere.”

  Patty looked at the clock. It was 11:42 A.M. The processional started at noon.

  “Nothing’s wrong, Chad,” she said calmly. “She’s upstairs in the bridal suite. I just walked past her to come up here,” she lied, wondering whether Shandi actually had been in the bridal suite. “You need to go to the altar and get in place, okay? You’ll see her in, like, twenty minutes, and then you’ll be married and you’ll laugh about this.”

  Chad grabbed a bottle of water off the minibar and took a long swig. “You’re right. She probably just got distracted with all the getting ready.”

  “Exactly.”

  Chad put down the water bottle and gave Patty a hug. “You’re the best,” he said, and ran out the door.

  Patty waited thirty seconds, and then ran upstairs as fast as she could to figure out what was going on.

  61

  Competitive Advantage

  “I wanted to thank you for today.” Amelia was washing her hands in the bathroom when she heard a thick British accent perfectly articulate each word.

  The bathroom was otherwise empty. The blonde woman looked Amelia in the eyes and smirked tightly. A moment passed before she took a lipstick tube out of her oversized purse and leaned toward the gold-rimmed mirror to apply it.

  Amelia looked at the woman’s reflection in the mirror, her hands still under the running water. “What for?” she asked cautiously.

  “For putting us on the map,” the woman said, her eyes focused on her mouth in the mirror, carefully drawing the deep red to the edge of her top lip. She puckered a few times to settle the lipstick, and then she turned to face Amelia and stuck out her hand. “I’m Violet.”

  Amelia studied the woman. She couldn’t tell how old she was. She could have been twenty or thirty-five. Her wardrobe was too sophisticated for college, but her skin had the flawless glow of a teenager. Amelia shook her hand but didn’t introduce herself. Violet obviously knew who she was.

  “What do you mean?” she asked instead.

  “I mean, before this, no one knew a thing about RemoteX. We weren’t even invited to the conference. We snuck inside the day before, pretending to be hotel staff, and added our booth to the expo floor. Now, though, when people leave, all they’re going to be talking about is RemoteX. Doreye and RemoteX. Money can’t buy the kind of publicity you just got us.”

  “But they think you’re dishonest. My brother figured out how you cheated. We exposed you.”

  Violet smiled. “They think RemoteX is dishonest for now. But give me a week, maybe two, and the story will change. Besides, any press is good press.”

  Amelia was looking at her suspiciously.

  “I knew you’d never figure it out in time,” Violet said. “Your brother, however, I underestimated. He’s not as naïve as you. There’s real potential in Adam Dory.” She smiled at Amelia, but Amelia didn’t seem to register it.

  “You see, your problem is that you assume people are good. Despite all that you’ve been through, in your happy world people are incapable of acting selfishly or maliciously. You never even thought to consider that I might have done something to mess up your presentation. Instead, you worried that you’d messed up something.”

  Amelia stared at Violet in silence, studying her warily. Violet shrugged it off with a laugh.

  “Look at me like that all you want.” She turned back to the mirror and touched her hair to pull it into place. Amelia, intimidated, glanced down at Violet’s purse and saw a mess of red hair tangled underneath a wallet, a brush, and eyeliner. Each strand of hair looked like an overgrown tendril.

  “Not all of us are cute little orphans with Roger Fenway in our back pocket. Some of us have to make things happen.”

  “Were you…” Amelia’s mouth was dry and her hands still a little wet. “Why did you pretend to be a reporter at the press conference? Why did you ask me those questions about my past?” Violet dropped her lipstick into her purse and snapped it shut, hiding evidence of the wig with the red hair.

  “Why did you try to sabotage me? Who are you?”

  “See you around, Amelia.” She waved as she walked out the door. Amelia watched her leave in the reflection in the mirror.

  62

  Speech!

  Chad’s hands were clammy and his cheeks were a deep crimson. He’d been standing at the altar for fifteen minutes. The string quartet had repeated Bach’s “Air on the G String” three times, waiting for the cue to switch to the processional music so the wedding could begin.

  Chad felt everyone staring at him, looking for his expression. People were discreetly checking their watches and iPhones. The wedding was supposed to have started already. Why wasn’t any
one making an announcement?

  Chad tried to push away his worry and focus on how beautiful everything was. The guests were assembled on the lawn at the Hibiscus Grove, under a white canopy tent. The grass had been trimmed to the length of a putting green so as not to catch on women’s heels. The curved dark redwood altar was covered in white lilies—Shandi’s favorite—and looked out onto the ocean, where the high sun was gleaming over the water. Quiet bamboo fans whirred over the three hundred guests, all seated in cushioned white folding chairs. The aisle between his family’s side and hers was sprinkled with white rose petals. His eyes followed the aisle down to the French doors of the hotel’s side terrace, through which, he was sure, the ushers would soon be guiding his mother to the front row so that the ceremony could start and he could marry Shandi.

  His eyes strained to see past the doors. Where was Patty? Where was anyone? Craig, his best man, leaned over to him. “Don’t worry, man,” he said. “The longer you have to wait, the better the sex will be tonight.” Chad forced a smile, appreciating Craig’s clumsy effort to cheer him up.

  The crowd turned at the sound of the doors pushing open. Finally! Chad jumped, looking anxious.

  But it wasn’t Patty, or Shandi, or the ushers. It was … T.J. Bristol.

  Chad hadn’t known T.J. that long, but in all their encounters he’d never seen him at all discomposed. Yet here was T.J., his clothes a mess, his hair disheveled, with a distraught look on his face. From his spot at the altar, he saw T.J.’s chest rising and falling in deep breaths, like he’d just finished a sprint.

  T.J. ran midway down the aisle and stopped, looking up at Chad with eyes full of concern, and opened his mouth to speak.

  Epilogue

  From: Ted Bristol

  To: Adam Dory

  Subject: Great Meeting You

  Hi Adam,

  I hope you enjoyed crashing the wedding! Did you stick around long enough for all the drama? Poor Ron Hawkins had about five heart attacks.