June leaned back in her chair. “It’s basically just Make Up and a couple of other start-ups doing presentations for a bunch of high school–aged entrepreneurs, right?”

“Right. Apparently, the CEO of Early to Tech is best friends with Lionel. So if we can really impress her, it’ll feed to Wakefield—and then we just might have EPIC in the bag.” She grinned, loving the adrenaline rush right before an event she knew she was going to slay.

June nodded. “I’m glad you’re feeling good about it.” She kept staring at Annika, now fiddling with her Darth Vader figurine.

“What?” Little niggles of worry began to replace Annika’s excitement.

“Nothing, just that … Ziggy said Break Up was invited, too. Hudson will be speaking.”

Annika stared at her. “What? Since when?”

“Apparently since forever ago. Didn’t Early to Tech, Early to Rise tell you?”

“No. They definitely didn’t tell me.”

June quirked her mouth. “But … it’s fine, right? Since you feel good about it and everything?”

Annika quickly turned back to her laptop. “Oh, no, yeah. Totally fine. Why should I care whether or not he’ll be there?” She and Hudson hadn’t spoken at all since the weird almost-kiss at the fountain on Thursday. Which was fine. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing to talk about. Period dot.

“Why, indeed? It’s just Hudson Craft, and y’all sabotage each other with every opportunity you get. No big.”

Annika glared at her. “Are you teasing me?”

June opened her blue eyes wide. “Of course not.” There was laughter in her voice. “I’m just saying, you know he’s going to be up to something if you guys are part of the same thing.”

“Oh, I know. He’s always up to something. You can’t ever have your back to him.” Annika reached into her drawer for ZeeZee and began kneading him. “But you know what’s great about Hudson? He always underestimates his opponent. And I’m not nearly as sweet as I look.” She smiled the most vicious smile she could conjure up. “So you tell Ziggy to tell Hudson that.”

June groaned. “It’s like high school again.” When she saw Annika’s narrowed gaze, she quickly added, “Okay, okay, I will. But first I’m putting the finishing touches on this code right here and then I’ll upload it to the repo.”

“Sounds good.” Pushing thoughts of Hudson and the tech forum from her mind, Annika tossed ZeeZee back into the drawer and pulled up the Word document in which she’d begun to outline the EPIC pitch.

She read through all the bullet points and then read them again. Her pulse began to quicken; her palms tingled. She could see it—she could see the direction she needed to go.