A place of myth and legend and dreams that became reality—not through wands and fairy dust but through innovation and iteration. From the back seat of the cab, signs with words Delia knew from “About Us” pages on websites and the back of product packages called to her: Bay Area, Burlingame, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Cupertino. Silicon Valley, where every day people created things that didn’t exist the day before, all from technology that didn’t exist when her parents were her age. And she’d be a part of it.

She just had to figure out how to breathe here. Which may have been easier had the room not smelled like the theater costumes at the end of a hot summer’s run.

“Settle in,” Maddie said, pointing to the bottom bunk on one side of the room. “Unless you’d prefer the top?”

She would. It seemed like it might be a little more private. But she said, “Bottom’s fine.” She laid her suitcase on the rubber-coated mattress. The introductory email didn’t say anything about sheets, did it? She turned to see Lucy opening a sealed package of silver bedsheets. “Uh, excuse me, but do you know if we were supposed to bring our own bedding?”

“Only if you have an aversion to lice,” Lucy said.

Maddie rolled her eyes and walked to the closet. “Will these do?”

Delia nodded, accepting the stiff set of sheets and thin towel. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lucy cringe. It seemed she’d already settled in with double the number of items Delia had packed. Delia had gone over the checklist a dozen times but now worried that she should have taken it as a suggestion, not a mandate. Not that she had as much in her closet at home as Lucy had brought here. At least when it came to clothes. Cable-knit cardigans and corduroy jeans in winter, denim shorts and loose tees in summer were Delia’s standard uniform. But if there was a market for a pop-up shop specializing in dissected computer parts and used programming books, Delia’s room at home would be getting high ranks on Yelp.

“You’re both unpacked, then?” Delia said.

“Almost.” Maddie’s eyes drifted over Lucy’s careful stacks. She then opened the top drawer of the dresser across from her bunk and dumped the contents of her duffel, including her tablet and sketchbook, inside, followed by the duffel itself. She tossed a Red Sox baseball cap over the post at the end of her bed. “Yup, all done.”

Lucy shook her head and tucked her own empty luggage away in the closet. “Take your time, Delia, but then we should probably start brainstorming. I heard one year they kicked things off at two in the morning.”

“In the middle of the night?” Delia said. “That’s crazy.”

“Probably illegal,” Maddie said.