Some companies were using their stock to snap up every hot startup they could. Yahoo bought Broadcast.com for $5.9 billion in stock and GeoCities for $3.57 billion in stock. A Spanish telecom company acquired Lycos for $12.5 billion (a few years later, they would unload it for less than $96 million—a loss of over 99% of their investment). In January of 2000, AOL bought TimeWarner in the second-largest merger in history. During the Super Bowl that month, sixteen dot-com companies ran ads. They cost two million dollars each.

The stock market soared. And crashed, in March of 2000, with stocks falling as hard as they had risen. Over the next two and half years, stocks shed over five trillion dollars in value. People flocked to bonds, and Desmond’s bearish wagers paid off. Their nine-million-dollar fortune was nineteen at the end of 2000, fifteen after taxes. He played it safe after that, diversifying and buying only a few high-quality stocks.

Every week Desmond heard about another one of his friends who had lost their job or seen their company collapse. He felt for them. The memory of xTV’s sudden collapse and his days of pork and beans in the months after were still fresh in his mind. He did the only thing he could: he took folks out to lunch, always picked up the tab, and tried to connect people with jobs when he heard about them. Their stories were horrifying.

The layoffs were nerve-wracking affairs. Large groups would be led into conference rooms and told they were being let go; consultants handed out packets with details. In some cases, the consultants even surprised the HR people conducting the layoffs by handing them a folder with their walking papers too, right after the dismissals of everyone else.

The coffee shops that had teemed with bright-eyed entrepreneurs with the next big idea, written out on a napkin, were now packed with people working on their resumes, which they tweaked and proofread and scrutinized before printing them on thick paper stock so they would stand out. Startup execs who had been worth millions on paper found themselves broke, moving back in with their parents or in-laws. Many employees whose companies had gone public never made it past the lockup period to sell any of their shares before their companies folded.

Desmond watched it all in disbelief; it seemed the world had only two extremes: charging up the hill wide open, or free falling over a cliff.

He was in his own kind of free fall. Every month he grew less optimistic about his prognosis. The medication helped. So did the sessions with Dr. Jansen. But Desmond had plateaued. He wasn’t making any real progress.

Peyton was. He watched as she changed, little by little. She took pride in her schoolwork, was near the top of her class. She was blossoming, becoming an incredible woman. She was ready for something more. That worried him. He wondered if he could ever be the man she deserved.