USING HER SHOULDER, LUCY muscled her way through the heavy metal door that opened onto the third floor of the dorm. She did her best to ignore the cinder-block walls and tucked her chin to avoid the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights as she exited the stairwell, hauling her luggage behind her. Lucy quickened her pace, scanning the room numbers. There. 303. The door was ajar. Those fruitless ten minutes she spent searching for an elevator had knocked her off schedule. As project manager, she was the de facto team leader, and she needed to arrive first.

Thankfully she had. If only she hadn’t arrived in this room.

Mountain View U was a far cry from Stanford’s sprawling green lawns, but still, ValleyStart was the most prestigious summer incubator for high school graduates in the country—it should act like it.

But there were bunk beds. Rubber-coated mattresses. And linoleum tiles. Linoleum.

Lucy’s shower flip-flops were just upgraded to full-time use.

She rested her bags on the floor, thought better of it, and set them both down on the single desk under the window. A fleck of paint chipped off the sill and onto her leather carryall. The last new coat probably preceded even her mom’s attendance. Mountain View U was her mother’s alma mater but not where she’d met Lucy’s father. That was the software company where her mom still worked, though her dad had moved on years ago.

Lucy spied a cobweb stretching from the desk to the window and reached for her phone. She unlocked it and paused, her finger hovering over her father’s number. It was after ten at night in London. He’d probably just left his office.

Lucy stood in the center of the room, trying to imagine five weeks of living in this dark, cramped space that smelled of gym socks and desperation. It wasn’t like she expected a single or an en suite, but at least a proper wardrobe or a bed that wasn’t pee proof.

At least it was pee proof.

Oh God.

Lucy dug her notebook out of her tote bag, searching for what she’d written down about housing, positive she must have missed the ability to pay more for a room that was, oh, livable.

Her finger kept flipping, landing on the page she’d filled in last night on Ryan Thompson. She already knew everything about him, but she’d organized it into categories for easy reference: likes and dislikes, hobbies, education, Pulse origin story, childhood, and family tree. Which was missing his dad. He died when Ryan was fifteen.