Two milestones in Lucy’s life, as if nothing had happened in between, with the frame leaving no room for anything to come.
The graduation photo hung crooked in the frame. She could just see her mom hurriedly shoving it inside with one hand, typing an email with the other, while on a conference call with Singapore, Melbourne, and Dubai.
Lucy set her phone on the desk. She pulled off the cardboard backing to straighten the photo, and out fell the slip of paper behind it: a smiling baby—not Lucy, simply the picture that had come in the frame. How long had her mom kept that other child beside Lucy? Long enough to forget to print one to take its place, long enough to no longer notice that she should.
On the desk, Lucy’s phone vibrated and lit up with a text.
ValleyStart: Team assignments are in! Meet Your Mates!
Lucy’s arm shot out like a rattlesnake, and her notebook fell, knocking into one of her mom’s monitors.
“Lucy!” Abigail Katz entered the room and rushed forward in her expensive flats.
“Got it!” Lucy’s tennis-trained reflexes saved the monitor before it took down the others like dominoes.
Considering Lucy had read and reread the acceptance packet about a thousand times and been waiting for the past two months to see who she’d be spending the next five weeks with, her restraint in not jumping on the ValleyStart portal instantly was extraordinary.
It’s actually happening.
Her pulse quickened, and she was almost dizzy as she circled one way around the desk, back to the hard chair. Her mom rounded the corner from the opposite direction, adjusted the tilt of the monitor, and sat down in front of it.
With the seven-inch height difference between them, Lucy could only see her eyes. And the tiredness in them.
Lucy would never deny that Abigail Katz worked hard.
But that was all she did.
“I’m sorry, Lucy.” Abigail smoothed the ends of her chin-length bob. The barest hint of gray dusted the roots—a constant battle, waged every three weeks as she colored it back to brown. “They needed some guidance in a branding meeting that wasn’t on my schedule.”
“Right,” Lucy said.
Abigail reached into the top drawer of her desk and pulled out two protein bars. “Just a quick lunch, then, okay?”
Peanut butter. Lucy hated peanut butter. “Sure.” She peeled back the wrapping. Not even peanut butter could ruin her ValleyStart high.
“All set for tomorrow?”
“Packed the car this morning.” She bounced (just a little) in her seat.
Abigail stopped chewing. “Not an Uber or Lyft?”
“It’s ten miles.”
“Right. Ten.”
Half the number of fender benders Lucy had been in. Who has time to spend learning to be a perfect driver?
“Fine. Whatever.” Lucy pretended there was no judgment in her mom’s question and forced a bite of the peanut butter. “I’ll leave the car.”
“Better plan. You won’t need it anyway.” Abigail set her own half-eaten bar down. “You have to focus. Palo Alto High School may have been competitive, but ValleyStart’s in another league. The top startup incubator for high school graduates in the country with only sixty accepted out of—”
“Three thousand applicants, I know.” An acceptance rate of only two percent. Two. Stanford’s was four. The sole explanation . . .
Freaking Gavin Cox.
The only other applicant from her high school to make it into ValleyStart.
Lucy pushed her heels into the floor and all thoughts of Gavin where they belonged—in the past.
“I’ve been focused, Mom. I’m certainly not going to stop now.” Top ten in her class, 4.8 GPA, tennis all-star, two marathons under her belt, and still a lecture on being “focused.” Lucy regretted the bite as her stomach churned.
“Nothing wrong with reminders,” Abigail said, just as one dinged on her computer and phone in unison, the sound as familiar to Lucy as the squeak of her bedroom door.
Lucy stood.
“Wait. It’s just . . .” Abigail’s eyes slowly drifted from her three monitors to Lucy’s expertly draped off-the-shoulder tee and perfectly cuffed dark-wash jeans. “I’ve always given you freedom because you’ve shown that you can handle it. Up until now.”
Now meaning not getting into Stanford.
“But with this, with this new world you’re entering, well, I just want you to be aware of the pressures and the importance of how you present yourself.”
“Present myself? I’m not a poodle in some dog show.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean, Mom?”
“Letting off steam in high school is one thing, but now you’re an adult.”
“So I’ve heard.” Her mom had repeated the same phrase ad nauseam since Lucy’s eighteenth birthday three months ago.
“Believe me, Lucy, it’s no secret how little you’ve wanted to heed my advice lately. If and when that changes, you know where to find me.”
Right here in this same baby-poop-brown office you’ve lived in since I took my first steps . . . which, naturally, you missed.
Heat rose in Lucy’s chest, and all she wanted to do was give her mom a reminder: that the phrase was “work hard” and “play hard.” And the playing bit could yield the same—if not better—results as the working. Connections made things happen. Just ask her Pulse tee.
“Sure, Mom.” Lucy brushed her hand through her long dark hair, forgetting she was still holding the brick of peanut butter. She picked a crumb off a strand by her chin and watched as her mom slipped on her computer glasses and turned the world right in front of her eyes crystal clear, blurring everything else beyond—including Lucy.
Lucy headed for the door. “Just one small thing . . . in order to give me freedom or anything else, you’d actually have to be around.”
She didn’t wait for her mom to look up; she simply wrapped her hand around the metal knob and closed the door behind her with barely a sound, making sure she “presented herself” properly.
How am I even related to her?
Lucy only made it halfway down the hall before she slowed, leaned her head against the crap-colored walls, and tried to stop her heart from racing.
Level 7. Seven hearts was Racing.
Like everyone her age, like everyone in the world, Lucy knew the Pulse levels as well as her home address. “What’s your Pulse?” were the first words off anyone’s lips upon meeting, the first background check determining worthiness for everything from friend to blind date to party invites, probably even job offers.
The brainchild of Ryan Thompson when he was only a year older than Lucy, the app amalgamated an individual’s likes, favorites, views, thumbs-ups, and more from every major social media platform, translating it to a simple Pulse level, ranking you from zero, Dead, all the way to ten, Crushing It. Over time, as the app evolved, Level 10s became top influencers, the people everyone wanted to be or be seen with. Advertisers and the entertainment business soon realized that Level 10s’ smiling faces could increase sales and media coverage. Now 10s got complimentary everything, from the newest iPhones to dips in Iceland’s Blue Lagoon. To be a 10 was to live with all the perks.
Once Lucy and her team won the ValleyStart incubator, Pulse would be her second home for the rest of the summer. The prize of an internship at the most successful tech company in the past ten years was worth more than any amount of money.
She’d use it to her advantage. Starting now.
Lucy opened the Stanford portal and did what she’d wanted to do for weeks, since she was accepted into ValleyStart. She requested a second alumni interview. She knew it was irregular, but she explained that she had new information she was delighted to share—namely the incubator.
Lucy then lifted her chin higher
and straightened her top. As she passed by the largest office—a suite—she ran her finger along the three little letters on the nameplate: CEO.
Pulse would secure that future.
At the elevators, Lucy logged in to the ValleyStart portal to find not just the names of her teammates but her assigned mentor: Ryan Thompson.
For the first time since arriving at her mom’s office, Lucy smiled.
About the Author
Lori Goldstein was born into an Italian-Irish family and raised in a small town on the New Jersey shore. She earned her bachelor's degree in journalism from Lehigh University and worked as a writer, editor, and graphic designer before becoming a full-time author. She currently lives and writes outside of Boston. Lori is also the author of Screen Queens. You can visit her online at www.lorigoldsteinbooks.com.
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