Thudding and wait-listed and this drab third-floor office in this mud-brown building in this sad little Sunnyvale office park.

So it wouldn’t be.

Tired of the edge of the chair digging into the soft underside of her knees, she scooted forward until her wedge sandals reached the floor.

Her mom was twenty minutes late.

As usual.

Lucy knew enough to show up for their scheduled lunch a half hour after its start time, but she was on time.

As always.

Lucy planned like other people breathed.

Which was why she wasn’t nervous about Stanford. It was a blip. A minor inconvenience. Nothing that an internship at Pulse wouldn’t wipe away like a hard reset on her MacBook Pro.

She stared at the gently tanned skin of her exposed ankles and wiggled her toes, enticing circulation to resume after being dangled two inches off the floor despite her heels. She pulled her pink-and-white-striped notebook onto her lap and leafed through the pages, refreshing herself on all the notes she’d taken thus far on ValleyStart, the summer tech incubator program she was about to begin. The five-week competition ended with one team winning an internship at Pulse. If she succeeded (please), she’d spend the rest of the summer at Pulse with Ryan Thompson. And Pulse, well, not even Stanford could ignore a pedigree that included Pulse.

Satisfied it was all already committed to memory, she closed her notebook and stared at the shiny gold L floating on the center of the cover—the only Hanukkah gift she’d received last year, sent in a FedEx envelope from her mom’s assistant.

She tucked it under her arm and stood, passing by windows that looked out on row after row of blue, red, black, white, and green hybrid cars lined up like Crayolas in the parking lot, the closest the office came to having a pop of color. A four-by-six double frame propped beside her mom’s three monitors was the only personalization in the room.

One side held Lucy as a baby, swaddled in her mom’s arms with her dad looking off to the side, toward the London office he’d soon head. The second photo once again displayed the three of them, this time on graduation day, just a few weeks ago. Her dad had scheduled a week of meetings before and after in order to attend.

Two milestones in Lucy’s life, as if nothing had happened in between, with the frame leaving no room for anything to come.

The graduation photo hung crooked in the frame. She could just see her mom hurriedly shoving it inside with one hand, typing an email with the other, while on a conference call with Singapore, Melbourne, and Dubai.