Chapters (45)
- Cover
- Dedication
- Pulse
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY–ONE
- TWENTY–TWO
- TWENTY–THREE
- TWENTY–FOUR
- TWENTY–FIVE
- TWENTY–SIX
- TWENTY–SEVEN
- TWENTY–EIGHT
- TWENTY–NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY–ONE
- THIRTY–TWO
- THIRTY–THREE
- THIRTY–FOUR
- THIRTY–FIVE
- THIRTY–SIX
- THIRTY–SEVEN
- THIRTY–EIGHT
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- RESOURCES
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- What’s next onyour reading list?
“You can’t.” Maddie swiped at her phone and held the contact up for them both to see. “But I can.” Lucy’s jaw fell open, and Maddie said, “Why, I think I just impressed Lucy Katz.”
She had. And as the afternoon turned to evening turned to early morning, and they’d all impressed one another more times than they could count, Delia took a deep breath to steel herself and texted Eric.
Delia: I’m sorry about last night. I was scared.
Delia: I still am.
Eric: Glad I’m not the only one.
Eric: Got plans for breakfast?
A quickening of her pulse preceded Delia’s grin, and Lucy said, “Excellent! I like it too.”
“Wait, what?” Delia had missed whatever Lucy had said.
“So you don’t like it?”
“Like what?” She tried to hide her phone and then just admitted it. “Sorry, I was texting Eric.”
Lucy sighed. “Total code crushing.”
“I—” Delia just shrugged. She was. They were. And she couldn’t have been happier.
“It’s cool. I’m just mega jealous.” Lucy winked, then held out both hands. “So, here it is, our app name: Girl Empowered. What do you think?”
“Don’t answer yet,” Maddie said. She flipped to a new page in her sketchbook, wrote the words at the top, and Delia watched, amazed, as an image formed underneath. A computer monitor at the bottom with three lines coiling up.
“Power cables,” Maddie said, but didn’t need to.
Attached to each cable, the outline of a girl morphed into shape, then lines connected them back to the computer in a continuous loop. On the screen, at the bottom, she filled in something, barely readable unless you knew what you were looking for: 303. Their room number.
Delia took in the rainbow of colors on Lucy’s bunk bed turned closet, the crumpled pile of clothes and papers spilling over the end of Maddie’s bed, the San Francisco sticker peeking out from under the pillow of Lucy’s that was now hers, and then, the scuffed knees on all three of them. They were pretty badass screen queens too.
“It’s perfect,” Delia said. “Now let’s go break a keyboard.”
TWENTY–EIGHT
DATA SMOG • An overwhelming quantity of information, often as a result of an Internet search, that serves to confuse the user instead of helping one understand
THE VIBE WAS DIFFERENT. And not just for Lucy.
The first field trip, everyone was high on the newness of ValleyStart, the energy of what was to come, the buzz of a private night at the city’s hottest club—not to mention the cooler of alcohol.
This time, as the bus veered down the hills of San Francisco toward Pulse’s headquarters, the only thing high was the stakes. Demo Day had everyone heads down in laptops, bleary-eyed, exhausted from days and nights of prep that no amount of caffeine could combat.