The Social Code

by Sadie Hayes

  They heard the front door slam, and T.J. rushed by the office door.

  “Everything okay, T.J.?” Roger called from his desk.

  “Yep. Just fine!” T.J. said.

  Roger’s phone rang and he answered. “Hello?”

  Adam sat down in the chair across from Roger. He wanted to ask him how, exactly, he could prove himself.

  “Is that so? Just off the article? What’s the offer? Uh-huh. And who’s the investor? Never heard of them. Well, yes, we’d have to review the terms. If the investor wants to remain anonymous, he can’t have voting rights. Okay, send over the sheet and we’ll take a look. Thanks, Linda.” Roger had a suspicious look on his face as he turned to Adam. “Can you get your sister and meet me in the conference room?”

  Adam stood up quickly, suddenly realizing that the call must have had something to do with Doreye. “Sure.”

  Roger and T.J. joined Adam and Amelia in the conference room. Roger shut the door.

  “Well, guys, I’ve just had a phone call from a lawyer at Winger Partners. You’ve gotten your first offer.”

  “Our first offer? You mean someone wants to buy Doreye?” Adam asked excitedly.

  “But we haven’t even launched the product,” Amelia said, cocking her head with suspicion.

  “How much are they offering?” Adam asked, leaning forward in his chair.

  “Eight and a half million,” Roger answered. T.J. clucked his tongue in disgust, but no one noticed.

  “Eight and a half million?” Adam almost shouted.

  “Who is the investor?” Amelia asked.

  “A company called Proximate Investments. It’s a new fund. The individual investors want to remain anonymous—I imagine they’re VCs who are investing as individuals and don’t want to have a conflict with their firms. Linda is sending over the terms.”

  “I can’t believe we’re going to get eight and a half million dollars!” Adam was practically drooling.

  “Well, you have to build in taxes,” Roger said.

  Adam was exuberant. “Who cares? It’s still amazing! Amelia, forget everything I said about the article! This is unbelievable!”

  Amelia was silent, staring at her hands in her lap. Roger watched her with a concerned face.

  “Well?” Adam said, glancing back and forth between Amelia and Roger. “Isn’t it? Isn’t it amazing?”

  Without lifting his gaze from Amelia, Roger said, “I’d like to hear what Amelia’s thinking.”

  Amelia looked up. Her eyes were heavy. She sighed. “I know it’s probably a great deal, and God knows it would make Adam’s and my lives a lot easier.” She was afraid to look at her brother. She’d already turned down so much money, and she knew he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say. “But something about it doesn’t feel right.”

  She swallowed, glancing back down at her hands. “I mean, we’ve got so much more to do on the programming end, and there are so many more things we’ve yet to discover or develop. And I guess we could do that under another owner, but I don’t know … it’s just … it’s our first company, and I guess I’m kind of attached. I’m not ready to give it away to someone else.”

  Roger’s mouth had spread into a closed-lipped smile. Adam’s eyes were darting back and forth from Roger to Amelia, trying to understand how the hell this could be happening. Eight and a half million, and they wanted to turn it down?

  He looked at T.J. for help. “T.J., come on. Weigh in on this, please. It’s a killer offer, right?”

  Roger glanced nervously at T.J. He knew how much influence T.J. had over Adam and was worried that whatever was about to come out of his mouth would pit Adam even more firmly against his sister.

  T.J. cleared his throat. “I think Amelia is right. It’s too early to let the company go. You don’t know anything about these investors or their motives. Besides, from a purely monetary perspective, if Doreye is worth eight and a half million today, with Amelia still cracking on more code and applications, it’ll be worth a whole lot more than that in a year, maybe even in a few months.”

  Roger turned his head slightly in surprised delight. Adam looked down at the table. “Well, yeah, I guess that’s true. I mean, about the increasing value.”

  “Besides,” T.J. said, “you should always keep one offer in your pocket, right? For leverage against the next. Imagine if YouTube or Facebook had settled for their first offers. They’d never have gotten as far as they did.”

  Amelia looked up at T.J. and smiled. She didn’t love his logic, but she was glad to have his support.

  “So, we’re all okay with telling them no?” Roger looked around the room.

  “It isn’t time,” Amelia said. T.J. and Adam (albeit reluctantly) nodded.

  Roger clapped his hands. “Great. I think it’s the right decision. It also means we all know that this company is at a new level now. You don’t turn down eight and a half million dollars and start sitting on your haunches. Things are about to get exciting, guys.”

  “Roger, while we’re all here, maybe we should start talking about next steps for the team. It feels like we might be ready to hire some help for Amelia. I think Adam and I should start focusing on the sales strategy. I put together a deck for how I think we can approach it.” T.J. reached into his satchel and pulled out the pitch deck he’d put together for his father, ripping off the last page with the org chart before sliding it across the table to Roger.

  Roger flipped through the document. “Where’d you get these figures? They look really good.”

  T.J. blushed. “I’ve been doing some outside research. I wanted to get a handle on the total market size. I’ve also been researching potential vendor partnerships. If Amelia feels ready, we can start reaching out to vendors to get contracts on board for when the product launches.”

  Roger looked up from the deck. “Excellent, T.J.” He turned to Amelia. “Amelia, do you feel ready to start talking to vendors? And would it be helpful to bring on a developer or two to help you with code?”

  Amelia was taken aback: This was really happening. Vendors were going to start seeing her product. She was going to have a programming team.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think that sounds great. I’ll put up a bulletin at Gates to see if I can find any engineers who could work part time with me.”

  “Great,” Roger said. “Let’s meet again on Friday for a progress report. Sound good?”

  Everyone nodded in agreement. “Okay, then, how about some lunch? My treat.”

  As they were exiting the conference room, Roger patted T.J. on the back. “Great work, T.J. And good instincts. I’m afraid I underestimated you.”

  32

  Dos Cervezas, Por Favor

  At the end of the day, Adam and Amelia biked back to campus, following each other in silence down Sand Hill Road and onto Campus Drive. When they got to Amelia’s dorm, Adam stopped and turned to face her.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  Amelia took a deep breath. “I know.”

  Ever since they had left the conference room she had been dreading this moment. She knew she owed the conversation to him, but the thought of having to defend herself about turning down all that money made her want to cry. “Dinner at the Treehouse?”

  “Sounds good.”

  They biked to Stanford’s student union and ordered burritos at the Treehouse. Adam ordered two beers. Amelia tried to hide her surprise as he showed his ID and the cashier handed him two Coronas.

  As they walked outside with their food, Amelia whispered, “Since when do you have a fake ID?”

  “T.J. got it for me. Pretty sweet, right?”

  They sat at a picnic bench, one of a dozen lined up in the outside courtyard of the student union. The courtyard was bustling with other students laughing and drinking pitchers of beer. Amelia took a sip out of the bottle, trying to be casual about it. At this point, she didn’t want to do anything to upset Adam even more. If that meant drinking a beer, so be it.

&
nbsp; Adam unwrapped his burrito on the table. “Look,” he said. “There’s a lot that I have to say and—”

  Amelia interrupted him, blurting out, “Adam, I’m sorry, but I just can’t take it. I know how much money it is, and I know you think the money will solve all of our problems, but it’s just not going to work out if—”

  Adam touched her hand. “No, no, this doesn’t have anything to do with today. I mean, with selling or not selling.”

  “It doesn’t?” Amelia looked up, holding her breath and looking for confirmation before letting herself feel relieved.

  “No. Not that I don’t want eight and a half million dollars right now, but … Well, at the end of the day, I guess I trust your instincts, and Roger’s and T.J.’s as well. It’s not what I would have done, true. But I’m not the only one in this thing, right?”

  Amelia took another sip of her beer, which she surprised herself by actually enjoying. “Oh, that is such good news. Because you know you’re more important than any of it. I mean, we’re more important than any of it.”

  “I know. That’s why I have to tell you what I’m about to tell you,” he said. “I haven’t been honest with you lately, and, well, here goes…”

  He took a deep breath.

  “Remember the first day in the incubator when we got that call from The Family?”

  Amelia nodded.

  “Well, they’ve been calling ever since. And e-mailing. They want you to start embezzling money for them again.”

  “Tough luck,” Amelia said. “We’re done with them.”

  Adam swallowed. “That’s what we thought, but the thing is … they’ve got something against me. And they’re using it as blackmail.”

  Amelia put down her burrito. “What have they got against you?”

  “After you got caught and went to juvie … You know how we had just taken our SATs the week before?”

  Amelia nodded, not sure where this was going.

  “Well, I didn’t do so well.” He looked down. “I did okay—I got an 1880—but you got a 2310. And when you left, I sort of freaked out. Because it was awful being away from you, and I started worrying. I knew that with a score like that you’d get into an amazing college and probably get a scholarship, and I wouldn’t. And I started freaking out that we’d be separated again. So I…” He couldn’t look at her. “I used the Dawsons’ computer and traced your steps to hack into the College Board Web site and change my score.”

  He was picking at the corner of his burrito wrapper. “I only increased it to a 2150, and honestly, Amelia, if I’d had all the SAT prep courses most of the kids here had, you know I would easily have gotten that on my own. But … somehow the Dawsons found out. They have records of me doing it; they must have had some kind of a keylogger installed. And now they’re threatening to tell Stanford I cheated if I don’t get you to start embezzling money.”

  He sat looking down for what felt like an eternity, waiting for Amelia to say something.

  Amelia took a sip of her beer. She chewed a bite of her burrito. Then she took another sip of her beer. Adam stared at her anxiously.

  “Do you ever think about Mr. Dawson? What he’s been doing?”

  “He’s not doing anything, Amelia. Michael Dawson’s in jail. You put him there.”

  “He put himself there.” She bristled at the accusation. “He is a man without scruples, Adam. He didn’t care about anyone but himself, and he got a sick thrill out of gaming the system. I never knew people like that could exist—until one became my legal guardian.”

  “Why are you saying this?”

  “Because those people do exist, Adam. Michael Dawson isn’t alone, and sometimes I fear that he’s not the exception to the rule, either.” She closed her eyes and took another bite of her burrito, gathering the courage to say what she’d wanted to say to Adam for months.

  “Michael Dawson is the reason I didn’t want to start Doreye in the first place. It feels so inauthentic, so impure to create something in order to get rich. Life shouldn’t be about winning the lottery as quickly and easily as possible. Life shouldn’t be about shortcuts. It shouldn’t be about stealing … whether you’re stealing sales figures like Mr. Dawson, personal information like Ted Bristol, or SAT scores like you…”

  “Amelia, I didn’t do it because I’m a bad person; I did it…”

  “Adam, I know why you did it. And I know you’re not a bad person. But when you came to me a few months ago begging to start a company because it would pull us out of poverty, you sounded just like Mr. Dawson. The way you speak sometimes … it scares me, Adam. You’re not a bad person, but I think you are capable of becoming one.”

  They stared at each other in silence. Amelia’s words felt like stab wounds in Adam’s chest. He closed his eyes in shame, praying that Amelia was wrong but afraid that she was right.

  “How long before they tell?” she finally asked.

  “Huh?” Adam was startled out of his train of thought.

  “How long before the Dawsons tell Stanford?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Tell them I’ll do it,” she said.

  “But Amelia, you can’t! You can’t start embezzling again!”

  “I didn’t say I was going to embezzle money. I said to tell them I would.” She took another sip of her beer. The alcohol was making her feel confident.

  Adam couldn’t believe how calm she seemed. “You’re not mad?”

  Amelia smiled. “No, I’m not mad. We’ll figure it out. I’m glad you told me. I don’t want us to have secrets.”

  He grinned and picked up his burrito again. “Me either.”

  “So is there anything else?”

  He wiped a bit of salsa off the corner of his mouth. “Well, there is one other little thing. Since we’re not keeping secrets.”

  Amelia laughed. “What’s that?”

  “I’ve been dating T.J.’s sister, Lisa.”

  Amelia choked on the beer she was drinking. “You’re what? Are you kidding? Are you crazy?”

  “Amelia, I think I’m in love with her.”

  33

  Lights! Camera! Action!

  “Chad and I are going to watch a movie. Any interest?” Shandi asked Patty after Sunday dinner.

  “What are you watching?”

  “Henry and June. It’s about Henry Miller, his marriage to June, and his affair with Anaïs Nin. It’s a beautiful film, if you haven’t seen it.”

  “Sure. I’ll be right down. I’m just going to throw on some pajamas.”

  She slipped into a pair of Soffe shorts, slipped off her bra, threw on an oversize sweatshirt, grabbed a blanket, and padded down the stairs. It had been a week and a half since Chad picked her up from jail, and things had been surprisingly unweird. He hadn’t said anything, or even hinted at it in front of the Hawkinses, and she knew she could trust him not to. Plus, the fact that they had this little secret now—in addition to their other little secret—made her feel like they were secret pals, separate from the rest of the world.

  Chad and Shandi were seated in two reclining theater chairs in the middle of the movie room. Patty took the seat next to Chad and laid her blanket on her lap as Shandi started the film.

  “Mind if I share your blanket?” Chad whispered a few minutes into the film.

  “Sure.” Patty smiled.

  He lifted the armrest between them and pulled the blanket so that it covered his lap as well as hers.

  “Isn’t the cinematography beautiful?” Shandi whispered as a shot of Paris panned into Henry Miller’s bedroom, where he was lying with a naked Frenchwoman. Shandi’s eyes were glued to the screen, totally engrossed.

  The actors started having loud, bed-shaking sex. “Did Shandi mention that this film was the first one in the world to get an NC-17 rating?” Chad asked Patty, loudly enough for Shandi to hear.

  “Shhh … They only rated it that way because they were prudish and focusing on copulation rather than the artistry of presenting the affair. It’s n
ot about pornography, it’s about Henry Miller’s life, which happened to be filled and defined by a great deal of sex.”

  The film continued, chronicling naïve Anaïs Nin’s sexual education by Miller.

  Patty was blushing horribly at what was happening onscreen—two naked women were kissing in front of a casually smoking Henry Miller—when she felt Chad’s knee press against hers. Her heart jumped. He just moved in his chair, she thought. It’s not intentional. It doesn’t mean anything.

  But a moment later, she felt his hand settle on her knee under the blanket. Her heart raced, and she focused her gaze forward. Concentrate, she thought, just concentrate on the movie. Slowly, Chad’s elbow pulled back so that his hand was resting on her thigh. His thumb toyed with the edge of her shorts. He let his fingers ever so slightly stroke the skin along her thigh.

  She wondered if he could feel her pulse.

  “Oh, devastating!” Shandi shouted at the screen as Anaïs tried to capture Henry’s attention from his wife, June. “Oh, poor Anaïs!”

  34

  The Puzzle

  “Hey.” Amelia stuck her head into Sundeep’s office. “Do you have a minute?”

  Sundeep looked up from studying a large medical textbook. “Sure,” he said. “Come in.”

  Amelia sat down on the couch and exhaled.

  “What’s going on?” asked Sundeep from behind his desk.

  Amelia shook her head. “I have a problem. It’s a puzzle, kind of, that I’m stuck on. And I was hoping a new set of ears might help me think it through.”

  “Sure. Let’s hear it,” Sundeep said, leaning back in his chair.

  “Well I have a … code … that I’m working on that’s kind of complex. So, start with Node One, which has two options to follow: path A and path B. If I choose path A, the app will run smoothly. The problem with path A is that it requires me to go against my morals—path A steals user data. It’s not only immoral, but there is a ten percent chance we are discovered and arrested.”

  “You shouldn’t compromise your morals. Choose the other one.”

  “But here’s the problem: If I choose the righteous path B, no users are compromised, but there is a ninety-five percent chance the entire program malfunctions. So I’m pretty much forced to choose path A.”