The Start-Up 3 Beautiful Code Read online

“I think some players have talents that are so exceptional they have a responsibility to use them, even if it’s hard.”

  “Then I’ll stop getting better.”

  “You can’t. It’s not in your nature.”

  Amelia felt tears welling up in her eyes again. “I don’t like this, George,” she typed.

  “You’re the strongest woman I know, Amelia. In addition to being the smartest and the most beautiful. You can do this, I know you can.”

  Her eyes hung on the word “beautiful,” and she felt a single hot tear roll down her cheek.

  She waited, feeling her heartbeat slow down. She wasn’t sure why, but she suddenly, desperately, wished George were there.

  She typed, “I wish you were here,” and stared at the blinking cursor at the end of the phrase, without clicking send.

  Just send it, she thought, her finger resting on the Enter key. But just then another message popped up in the speech bubble above virtual George’s head. “Have to sign off. Good luck tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”

  Just as well, Amelia thought, as she backspaced the line and instead sent, “I will. Thanks, George. For everything.”

  CHAPTER 13:

  Tell Me Your Secrets,

  I’ll Tell You Mine

  T. J.’s alarm went off at 5:30 a.m., but he was already awake, feeling guilty about what he’d said to his father the night before. It was unnecessarily harsh and dramatic. Ted hadn’t been trying to egg T. J. on. Probably he had only wanted to hear what had happened. Shit, he was probably even trying to have a civil conversation with T. J. and just didn’t know how to go about it in an uncompetitive way.

  T.J. pulled on a pair of shorts, laced up his tennis shoes, and headed to the hotel gym.

  He was surprised to hear someone already there, running hard on the treadmill, and even more surprised when he saw that it was Patty.

  He stepped on the treadmill next to her and started upping the speed on the belt. “Couldn’t sleep either?”

  “Nope!” she said, pulling an ear bud out of her right ear, then replacing it, politely indicating that she didn’t want to talk.

  A large mirror faced the treadmills, and as T. J. started his run, he couldn’t help but notice their impeccable form. Patty’s legs were all long, lean muscle as she pounded away at a seven-minute-mile clip, and T. J.’s chest and ab muscles glimmered—not an ounce of fat anywhere—as he ran at a slightly more reasonable eight-minute-mile pace. Say all you will about rich Atherton kids, he thought, but they had phenomenal figures. Like modern-day Greek gods.

  They were both panting heavily, staring into the mirror but not looking at anything in particular, as they contemplated their own concerns. When Patty’s machine hit nine miles, she slowed the belt down to a quick walk. T. J. followed suit.

  “Don’t stop on my accord,” she smiled, out of breath.

  “I happen to be finished too,” he said. He wasn’t about to admit that he’d just forced himself to run two miles farther than he’d intended because he had too much pride to start after and finish before a girl.

  “I was going to grab a smoothie at the juice bar after this. Want to join?” T. J. asked.

  “Sure,” Patty said. “Just going to stretch a little. Meet you there.”

  T. J. was sitting at the tiki-themed juice bar watching CNN on the television screen when Patty joined him, a wet towel wrapped around her neck. He pushed a tall glass of white foam toward her. “I ordered you a coconut-lime smoothie. It’s the best one.”

  “Thanks.” Patty took a long sip through the straw and climbed into the high chair beside him. It was delicious.

  “So what were you running so hard about?” she asked T. J.

  “I was kind of an asshole last night. Felt bad about it. Punishing myself, I guess. You?”

  “Too long a story to tell over smoothies.”

  “We could ask the bartender to put some booze in them, if that would help?”

  Patty laughed. That actually didn’t sound like such a bad idea. “Nah. I’m getting my nails done with the bridesmaids in an hour. My mother would disown me if I showed up drunk.”

  “Fair.”

  They sat for a few moments in silence when T. J. finally said, “So, you’re really not going to tell me?”

  Patty studied T. J. for a moment. She desperately wanted to tell someone. It was so difficult to hold it all in. T. J. already knew the beginning parts of it. The first night something happened between her and Chad was last spring at T. J.’s graduation party. The security cameras caught them in his father’s garage...together in the Lamborghini’s back seat. When it happened, T. J. had been a jerk about it, trying to blackmail her. Despite that, it seemed like he had grown up a lot since then. For some reason, she felt like she could trust him.

  “It’s Chad,” she said softly, looking down at her bare feet. She desperately needed that pedicure.

  T. J. sat up in his chair, his curiosity piqued. He tried not to seem too interested. “Oh?” he said.

  “It’s so wrong, T. J. I know it is. But I like him. I really, really do. And…” She couldn’t say it. She’d never said it out loud.

  “And?”

  “And I think he likes me, too.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “We went on a hike yesterday. To the waterfall. And he told me so. He said he thinks about me all the time.” Patty’s face reddened. “He said he thought maybe he was marrying the wrong sister.”

  T. J. almost choked on his smoothie. “Wow.”

  Patty shook her head, as if trying to get the whole thing out of her mind. “It’s so stupid. It’ll all be over tomorrow, no matter what. I just have to stop thinking about it.”

  “Maybe it won’t all be over tomorrow. Maybe it’s just beginning.” T. J. smiled coyly.

  CHAPTER 14:

  Panic

  Adam slept deeply until ten o’clock in the morning. The sun was streaming through the flowing white drapes at the balcony windows and he was full of the euphoria that only comes after a night of dreaming about your true love. Yesterday had been an emotional roller coaster, but everything felt right now that he knew Lisa loved him.

  Not to mention that he’d discovered the problem with their presentation yesterday. RemoteX was trying to sabotage Doreye with that chip. They had decided not to say anything until they’d had a chance to tell T. J. and Tom. Tom’s flight was rescheduled to land this morning, and T. J. would be at the Hawkins wedding all day, though he said he’d slip out after the ceremony to check in on them.

  Adam stretched his arms over his head and rolled out of bed, careful not to wake Amelia. Someone had slid an envelope under the door to the room, and he picked it up along with the free copy of the New York Times.

  Inside the envelope was a handwritten note from Mike, the conference organizer:

  Wanted to get you the questions for today’s Q&A in advance of the session. Good luck. –Mike

  Behind it was a typed list of questions submitted by the press, which they planned to ask Adam and Amelia at the Q&A. Adam felt the blood drain from his face as he read the list:

  1. What is your current relationship with the Dawson family? When was the last time you were in contact with them?

  2. Are you aware of Mr. Dawson’s upcoming release from prison? Will you reach out to him?

  3. Is Stanford aware of your criminal past? Do you worry about what will happen now that it’s public?

  4. You’re on fellowship, meaning individual philanthropists fund much of your education. Do you feel a responsibility to tell them what you did?

  5. How has Tom Fenway handled knowledge of your crime? Is he concerned about potential legal fall-out?

  6. When did you learn to hack through security walls? Have you ever done it since, for any purpose?

  7. You know how to hack into very sophisticated systems. Is that how you infiltrated RemoteX and stole their technology?

  8. Your peers have noticed that you are both wearing much
more expensive clothes than you did a year ago. How have you funded your new wardrobes? Can you honestly say that your income is “clean”?

  Every single question involved some aspect of Amelia’s past. And each was worded deceitfully. Even if Amelia’s answers to the questions were fair and honest, the way the questions were phrased made her sound like a criminal. Like the one about the fellowship: they weren’t even getting fellowships any more, but if someone in the public heard that question, all they’d focus on was this idea that Adam and Amelia were thieves taking advantage of naïve benefactors. It was appalling.

  Adam felt his heart race. He looked at Amelia, still sleeping in the plush white bed. They’d gone to bed at 3 a.m., but he’d heard her get up in the middle of the night and was worried she wouldn’t sleep. He was relieved to see her sleeping so peacefully now and dreaded having to wake her. This letter was going to devastate her all over again. But they had to figure out what to do, and fast. The panel started in an hour.

  Adam shook her gently. “Amelia?”

  She rolled over and sighed with her eyes still closed. “I think I could get used to this bed,” she smiled. She couldn’t remember them, but she knew that she’d had really nice dreams. Her smile turned into a grimace, though, when she saw Adam’s worried expression. “Oh, God,” she moaned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t freak out.”

  But she could already feel serious anxiety setting in. She just couldn’t handle any more right now. She pulled her legs out from under the covers and put on her glasses. “What is it?”

  “We got the questions for today’s Q&A. The journalists submitted them to Mike, and he slipped them under the door so we had time to prepare.”

  “And?”

  “And they’re all about your time in juvie, and your hacking abilities.”

  It felt like a nightmare. She fell into her pillow, shaking her head. “Why won’t they stop? Oh, God, Adam, I hate this all so, so much.”

  He didn’t know what to do. Amelia had always been the strong one, the one who could take a bad situation and rationally develop a plan of action. But she was in no state to solve this problem.

  His mind raced. “We have to get them to cancel the Q&A.”

  “How?” Amelia moaned from the pillow. “It’s why they all came. Adam, why did we ever do this? I just want to go home.”

  “T. J. knows Mike, right?” Adam’s mind was suddenly lucid. “And, for that matter, everyone in the press. He can convince them not to ask those questions.”

  “But he’s at the wedding, remember?”

  “You have to go get him. No,” he reconsidered. “I’ll go get him. You might run into Ted Bristol.”

  Adam scrambled to pull on a pair of shorts and a Polo shirt—one that Lisa had helped him pick out—and dashed out the door. “Don’t worry about anything, Amelia. Order some room service and take a shower and I’ll figure this out, okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”

  This was all going to work out. It had to.

  CHAPTER 15:

  Prepping and Primping

  “Oh my God, you must be so nervous.”

  Patty glanced up from the InStyle magazine in her lap and into the mirror at the very gay hairdresser wielding a hot curling iron and a coy grin. He was a super thin, bald Asian guy, dressed completely in black, including thick plastic glasses, and he’d clearly had at least six cups of coffee already this morning, or a lot of something else. “Marc, with a C,” he’d introduced himself. Patty didn’t trust hairdressers who had no hair of their own.

  She smiled politely. “Why would I be nervous?”

  “Well, it’s your sister’s big day. I mean, I’d be totally nervous that I’d ruin it.”

  Patty felt her cheeks burn. What did he know? She lifted her eyebrows and he quickly backtracked. “I mean, that I’d step on her dress or forget to grab her flowers or whatever.”

  Whew, she thought. “No, I guess I’m not really that nervous.” She went back to the article about finding the right-fitting pair of skinny jeans.

  “Ahhhh!!!!” Marc with a C squealed, dropping the curling iron in order to clap as he turned from Patty to Shandi, who had come out of her private room and was twirling in the middle of the Four Seasons salon for all to see, her veil perfectly affixed atop a knot of careful curls. Her bangs were swept gently across her forehead and her makeup was flawless. Even in the tank top and shorts she was wearing, she looked like a princess.

  The four other bridesmaids, two from college and two from Atherton, turned in their salon swivel chairs and chirped gleefully along with their respective stylists. Patty swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and called out, hoping she didn’t sound fake. “Oh, Shandi, you look so pretty.”

  Not like Shandi heard, anyway. She was already at the mirror, examining each individual curl. “Are you sure?” she asked, pointlessly. Of course, everyone insisted she was absolutely mad if she thought she looked anything less than perfect.

  Patty couldn’t wait for all this to be over. She’d gotten good enough at swimming to prove to herself that her athleticism matched that of her nationally ranked tennis-playing sister; getting into Stanford had validated that she could match Shandi academically. But when it came to looks, Patty still felt totally, utterly inferior. She felt okay when Shandi wasn’t around. She could see that her legs were shapely, her stomach flat, her skin smooth, her face not so unattractive. But the minute Shandi came back into the picture, Patty felt like a fat cow. She looked at her sister’s thin frame and high cheekbones and knew that, even if she stopped eating for a month, she’d never be as pretty.

  And all she could think about now, sitting here with her hair actually looking really amazing (maybe Marc with a C wasn’t such an idiot), was that she’d never get to feel the way Shandi felt right now, with everyone ooh-ing and ahh-ing around her. That on her own wedding day, when she ought to feel like the most beautiful woman in the world, Patty would come out of her private room, and Shandi would be sitting where Patty was sitting now, and, even in her veil, Patty would feel less beautiful than her effortlessly perfect maid-of-honor sister.

  She put down the magazine. Now was not the time to be reading about skinny jeans.

  When they were finished, the bridesmaids went up to their rooms to get dressed. Patty was following their lead when the photographer, who had been capturing the morning, asked her to stay behind. “I want to get a few shots of you helping your sister get ready. These are always fantastic.” She winked.

  Patty grimaced, looking down at the workout suit she was wearing (why hadn’t anyone warned her the photographer would be on hand?) and reluctantly followed her sister to the bridal suite, where her $7,500 ivory-lace-with-buttons-down-the-back Vera Wang dress hung from a three-panel mirror.

  The photographer instructed Patty quickly to put on her own dress while she sat Shandi on the chair at the vanity and directed her to peer into the gold oval mirror. “Just beautiful!” she kept saying.

  Patty watched miserably as she slipped on the pale-pink, empire-waist, floor-length strapless chiffon bridesmaid dress she assumed Shandi had picked out because it made her look especially like a blimp.

  “Ready?” the photographer asked Patty, who nodded. “Okay, come help your sister put on her gown.”

  Shandi slipped off her shorts and shirt, revealing the pristine white-lace La Perla bra and underwear she’d saved for today. She looked like a lingerie model, her thin hips and shoulders balanced by round, firm breasts and butt. “Here, help me climb into this before Diane snaps one of me naked.” She motioned for Patty to come over.

  Patty slipped the heavy gown off the hanger and, careful to avoid stepping on the fabric, knelt down so Shandi could support herself on Patty’s shoulder while she stepped into the dress. Patty stood behind her, carefully pulling shut the hook-and-eye clasps that lined the back, as the photographer snapped away.

  When Patty was finished, she looked over her sister’s shoulder into the mirror, scanning th
e dress from the bottom all the way up to her sister’s face. But when she got to Shandi’s eyes they were directed at Patty’s reflection, not her own. Shandi’s face was still and looked…sad.

  She was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “You are so beautiful, Patty.”

  Patty felt her skin tingle, but didn’t know what to say, and so said nothing. Shandi turned to face her, just a tiny glimmer of wetness in her blue eyes.

  “I don’t know when you went from being my kid sister to such a gorgeous, strong woman, but I’m really, really sorry I wasn’t there—or wasn’t paying enough attention—to witness it.”

  Patty shook her head and looked down at her feet, not knowing what else to do, but Shandi kept going. She reached her hands up and held her little sister’s cheeks in her hands. “Listen, you have something really special, Patty. Something I never had. You have fearlessness and decisiveness and a lust for life. And I don’t think I’ve ever told you, but I admire you so, so much for that.”

  Normally, Patty would write off any affirmative thing her sister said as a backhanded compliment, a patronizing, “Oh, you’re so lucky you have such a good appetite; I wish I could eat like you do!” kind of thing. But Shandi was actually being genuine.

  Shandi took a deep breath and turned back to the mirror.

  “Do I look okay?” she asked, really seeming to mean it.

  This Patty could answer, honestly. She whispered, “You look absolutely stunning, Shandi. Completely, completely beautiful.”

  “I’m so nervous, Patty,” Shandi confessed, swallowing hard.

  “Don’t be!” Patty said, suddenly jumping at the opportunity to be her sister’s cheerleader. “You’re going to do everything just right. And even if you don’t, no one will notice. They’ll be too busy admiring how perfect you look.”

  “Not about getting things right,” Shandi said slowly. “I mean, about the whole thing. About whether I’m doing the right thing. But I guess it’s too late.” She tried to laugh.