by Kiley Roache
Braden grins. “But seriously, our world is faced with a disconnect. As populations grow and more and more of us live in large cities, we somehow become less connected, lost in the crowd. In a world of seven billion, you can’t know everyone, and without direction, it’s hard to know who you should be getting to know—who is worth your time.
“Take this example. You’re a young woman, and your friends invite you to a bar after class. You’re wearing a nice outfit, and you hope you might meet someone. Maybe you end up chatting with a few people at the bar, and one of them is an absolute dud, and another is not bad, just okay.”
He flips through stock images of smiling men. “Maybe when your friends are leaving, the just-okay guy asks you to stay for another drink. You could stay, or you could go to the next bar with your friends. How do you know if you should stay, or if another guy, a better guy, is at the next bar, or the other one down the street, or even at the 7:00 a.m. yoga class you were going to attend tomorrow, had you gone home early? There are 16,000 bars in New York City alone and on a Friday night, roughly half of them are filled with guys like the one you are taking to. You have no way of knowing if the guys in the bar with you are the best people, or if the girl or guy of your dreams is just down the street at the Irish pub, or any of the other thousands of places.”
A slide comes up, featuring hundreds of headshots of people, young and old, attractive and not so attractive.
“Of course, you could try online dating.” He takes a step away from the center of the room. “Dating apps aren’t much better at letting you know who the crème de la crème is. They narrow the size of the ‘room’ you’re in, but not necessarily by quality. After all, just because someone’s favorite movie is Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and yours is too doesn’t mean they’re the person of your dreams.
“But I ask you.” A flirty smile plays on his lips. “What if there was an app that could take you to a singles bar, where the party is big enough that you’re drawing from the whole world but small enough not to overwhelm you...because, with the flip of a switch, you can block out all the noise. Now you’re in a room with only the most charming, the most attractive and the brightest of all.”
He clicks a button, and most of the headshots on the screen fade to black, leaving only the supermodel-level hot people.
Around me, note cards are folded into laps and computers are closed. There is barely a sound in the auditorium besides Braden’s voice. He has captivated the room.
“So without further ado, I would like to invite you to the most exclusive party around. Ladies and gentlemen, you are invited to sign up for the most exclusive dating app in the country. You are free to find out whether or not you are—and whether you deserve—a Perfect10.”
A logo I have never seen before comes up on screen. And I must admit, it’s not half-bad.
I lean forward to see Professor Thomas more clearly. He unfolds his arms. Turning his head to the side, he studies Braden with his chin resting on his hand.
Braden begins to present the actual app, and what he shows bears little resemblance to the mess we turned in. He certainly avoids the holes of Perfect10 by putting up still pictures of what certain screens might look like and painting a picture of how one could use that page, instead of showing them how it works and revealing how much it glitches.
“Thank you.” He clicks the slide remote, and the screen goes to black. He heads back to his seat.
Professor Thomas raises his eyebrows and claps.
A few students join in, and others look conflicted, probably debating whether applauding our project will make theirs look that much worse by comparison.
I feel dizzy, and blood rushes past my ears making it hard to hear. I reach for my armrest to stabilize myself. To make sure this is real.
Braden collapses into the seat next to me. I just nod and smile awkwardly at our fans.
“How’d you fix the formatting?” I whisper. “I thought you couldn’t code.”
“I didn’t. I photoshopped the screenshot.”
Oh my gosh.
The class goes long, since a number of presentations do not stay within the time limit. When it is finally over, Professor Thomas walks to the front of the room.
“I’m posting the grades from today,” he says. “If you got below a C, don’t bother coming back. I’ll see the rest of you next week.” He pegs a piece of paper to the board and walks away without another word.
As soon as the door closes behind him, people shoot up from their seats, running toward the front of the room. We push through the crowd.
“C-plus! Thank god,” a girl close to the paper exclaims.
Another girl pushes her way in front of the paper, running her finger down the list to find her group’s name. I spot a D scribbled where her finger comes to a stop.
She lets out a shriek and falls to the floor. Her group members pick her up and shh her, practically dragging her out of the way and creating enough space for me to step forward.
I scan the list quickly, looking for our names. There are a lot of Cs and about a third of the grades are Ds or Fs, so this will be a bit of a bloodbath.
Finally, I see it.
HART, JONES, DIAZ A+
“Ohmigod ohmigod!” I jump up and down, my heels clicking on the floor.
Braden does a Tiger Woods-style fist pump.
Robbie stands totally still, eyes on the paper, as if in awe.
“This is unreal!” I say to him, grabbing his shoulders, “Last night we were praying for a C!”
“I know,” Robbie says, his voice hoarse.
I turn away from the list and practically skip as I head up the aisle, which is still clogged with people.
“Sorry, excuse me,” I say, swimming upstream and stopping when I can’t weave around a girl who keeps inching right when I go left and left when I go right. “We saw ours—we’re just trying to leave.”
The girl blocking my path looks confused. “Oh, I’m not trying to see my grade. I’m trying to talk to you guys.” She adjusts her glasses.
I’m taken aback. “What? Why?” I take a step back and bump into someone behind me. I already know it’s—
“Braden Hart.” He reaches past me to shake her hand.
Someone else taps my shoulder, but when I turn around I am met with a wall of classmates, not just one. People say my name and thrust business cards at me as if they’re asking for autographs.
“That was great!” a guy in a button-down says.
“Best project I’ve seen!” says one of the girls I recognize as having rejected me from her group the first day.
“When will it go live?” another girl asks as she throws her Louis Vuitton bag over her shoulder.
My eyebrows furrow. What is she talking about? This was just a class project. I begin to respond, “Oh, we’re not—it’s just for—”
“Before the end of the month!” a voice interrupts me. Braden reaches past me again, this time with his business card. “Send me an email and we’ll let you skip right to gold.” He flashes her a winning smile.
I feel like I might throw up.
The girl giggles and blushes as she puts the card in her bag before spinning around and walking away.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” I whisper to Braden.
“Her dad works at the biggest venture capital firm in the Valley,” he replies through teeth locked in a smile. He waves to the girl as she glances over her shoulder. She smiles and tucks the card into her purse, throwing up a call sign with her thumb and pinky.
“This, Sara Jones,” he says when she is through the door, “is how million-dollar stories begin.”
Part Two
Move Fast, Break Things
Chapter Ten
Roberto
“I just don’t know.” Sara sighs. “It’s a miracle we pulled this off
as a class project. You can’t exactly photoshop demos in the real world.” She stares at her drink.
We are toasting with red cups of cheap champagne in the main room of my suite to celebrate this morning’s success.
“Dude.” Braden is already on his second cup. “This could make our careers.”
She considers his words. “I have dreamed of starting my own company. And there are so few female founders... A dating app isn’t exactly what I pictured, but then again, Whitney Wolfe is one of my heroes, and she made Bumble.”
“Exactly.” Braden’s eyes are bright. “This is your chance to be like her—a trailblazer. Plus, we could be talking millions.”
“Really?” I ask. I picture buying my dad a big house in Atherton. Hiring the best lawyer around and figuring out a way to get my mother back to the States. Helping the people back home. I turn to Sara. “I think we should do it.”
“But people are interested in a product we don’t actually have.” She bites her lip.
“Could we have the app working by the end of the month?” Braden asks.
She runs a hand through her hair. “I mean, maybe.” She looks to me. “Do you think we could do it?”
“We’ll make it happen,” I say. I’m not sure it’s possible, but if this is a million-dollar chance, we have to take it.
“Yes!” Braden raises his glass toward us.
“Easy to celebrate when you don’t have to build the thing you made up today,” she says.
“Fair enough. Although you have to admit...” Braden extends his arms proudly. “I saved us all. MVP performance for sure.”
She makes a face and mimics him, repeating his tone back in nonsense words. I laugh and take a sip of my drink, oddly happy our little group will stay together for a while longer.
* * *
The next day, Sara and I get to work trying to put together an app that actually does what Braden said it would.
“Ah, my computer’s about to die,” I say just minutes after setting up at Sara’s. I pull the charger out of the bag and cross the room to plug in.
As I head back to my seat, I have a good view of Sara’s screen. I notice the familiar blue-and-white homepage of Instafriend, rather than the black screen with white characters that would take up the window if she is coding.
“Ooops.” She clicks the red X in the corner of the screen.
I sit down across from her and plug the charger into my laptop. “What?”
“I swear I was only checking my feed for a second.”
“Dude, do you think I care? Braden watches Jersey Shore while we work—heck, he’s not even here right now. You can check your Instafriend.” I spread my arms in a grand gesture, mocking Braden. “We are our own bosses now.”
She laughs. “Okay, cool. Because for some reason my brain is hardwired so that a step from not working to working is going on that damn site.”
“Dude, I know!” I say. “It’s like I go to my computer to work, open a browser to get my homework assignment, start typing, and boom, no matter what homework site I meant to go to, my fingers just type Instafriend.”
She shakes her head. “I know. It’s nuts.”
“Maybe we should try to work there, even if we do become millionaires from this. See if they’ll let you in on whatever mind control they did to make that happen.”
“I’ll consider it.” She laughs. “Oh, hey,” she says, “look at this.” She turns the computer so that I can see the invite page of an Instafriend event. The picture is a bunch of smiling kids holding computers. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, can I send you an invite to an information session on this program I do? It’s a coding camp for kids who might not ever have the chance to learn CS in school. I did it last year over spring break, but this time I’m a team recruiter too.”
“Yeah for sure,” I say.
She smiles and turns the screen back toward her. “Okay, I’m sending it.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
She taps her hands on the table. “Time to get to work.” She turns back to her computer and immediately melts. “Awww. Okay, we’ll work in a second, but there’s this video of a puppy inside a watermelon, and it’s eating its way out of the watermelon and it’s so tiny and omigod.”
Warmth spreads through my chest just watching her react to the video. “You think that’s cute? Have you ever seen Otters Cuddling While Floating in a River?”
Her eyes light up. “No!”
“Fantastic film.” I quickly exit from my work and pull up YouTube. “Should’ve won the Academy Award for cuteness, really. Got robbed.” I turn the screen toward her and hit Play.
She covers her mouth with her hand and makes a squealing sound.
“I know, right?” I say.
“It’s official.” She shakes her head. “Otters are cuter than puppies.”
I laugh. “There doesn’t have to be a ranking. Not everything has to be a competition.”
“Um, but then how will we know who should win the Academy Award for cuteness?”
“A valid point.” It makes me happy to hear my own joke returned by her in this new way. What seemed lame when I said it somehow seems cool now.
For a beat there is silence. We are both still leaning in close, like we had been to watch the clip, our faces just inches from each other. I notice that her eyelashes are kind of blond too. My breath catches.
Then the door swings open. “How’s it going?” Braden bursts in with a tray of coffee.
I clear my throat and lean back in my seat.
“Hard at work?” he asks. “Building the best app of the century? Making me rich and successful?”
“You’re already rich,” Sara says.
He considers this. “All right, so just successful then. Are you making me that?”
She shakes her head.
He presents us with the tray of cups. “Coffee for you, my gorgeous CS genius?”
Sara side-eyes him, but takes a latte.
I grab the other one. “Gorgeous?” I raise a hand to my chest. “Braden, you flatter me.”
Both of them burst out laughing.
There are a lot of disadvantages to being a quieter person, like being picked on in middle school or losing credit for an idea at work that was actually yours when someone repeats it during a meeting. But one great advantage is that when you do make the perfect snarky comment, the wit combined with the surprise that you were the one who said it blows the roof off the place. That’s every class clown’s folly really; they throw out a hundred jokes a day, hoping for the one that knocks the room off its collective feet. But the only way to really do that is to also have the shock value.
Braden walks us through his presentation, and I take notes on all the promises he made that we now have to deliver on. I start to get nervous when I get to the tenth item, but I remind myself that there is no option for quitting when it comes to a million-dollar opportunity. Sleep be damned.
“Oh, and one more thing,” Braden says as he stands to leave. “We’re doing an interview with the Warren Daily tomorrow night. I have a dinner, but it should be over by—”
“What?” Sara says. “No, we are not.”
“Yeah, we are.” Braden takes his phone out of his pocket and pulls up his email. “They contacted me this morning.”
“And you didn’t think to check with us before you answered?”
Braden is taken aback. “I didn’t think I’d need to. Why wouldn’t we say yes?”
“Um, maybe because we’re trying to hide the fact that we don’t actually have an app yet? And inviting the freaking press in here doesn’t exactly help with that?”
“That’s a good point.” I point to Sara.
“Don’t you think hiding from them makes it more suspicious?” Braden challenges.
“No, I really don’t. You kn
ow why? Because they would never expect anyone to be stupid enough to pitch a product they haven’t actually made.”
I laugh despite the awful truth of it.
Braden snaps back, “Is this your first day in Silicon Valley then, or...?”
“Oh, shut up.” She gestures toward him. “Let me see this email.” She turns the phone so that I can read as well. “‘...would love to speak to you about your company,’” she quotes. “Great, now it’s a company.”
“Of course it is.” Braden rips his phone from her hand and stuffs it back in his pocket.
“There isn’t even a product yet, let alone a company to sell it.” She shakes her head. “No, we can’t do this. We’ll worry about selling it when we know what it is.”
Braden shakes his head. “You’re making a big mistake.” He turns and leaves, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter Eleven
Braden
I stand outside my dorm and wait for the town car to pick me up. I don’t know why my dad still uses the same car service our family had pre-Uber. It seems stupid to have an assistant make a bunch of calls to get me a ride when I could summon a private car with just the push of a button on an app.
I remain silent during the whole ride, enjoying the calm before the storm.
The driver takes me to the parking lot of a Japanese steakhouse. In classic New Money, California style, the high-end restaurant is down the street from a Panda Express and across from a gas station.
I mutter a quick “Thank you” as I hop out of the car. My parents are already waiting when I step inside, so we greet each other for the first time in months in front of the hostess.
“Braden!” My mom pulls me into a hug, her shawl wrapping around me like a blanket.
“Hi, Mom,” I say.
“Good to see you,” my father says, extending his arm.
I nod and shake his hand quickly.
“They refused to seat us until the entire party was here,” he says, cutting his eyes at the hostess, who is about my age and probably not the one who wrote that policy.