“Hey now, someone got their beauty sleep,” Ryan Thompson said. “Feeling as ready as you look, Lucy?”

“More.” Lucy smiled, quashing her body’s reflexive flinch as his hand pressed into her in greeting, a stray fingertip accidentally gliding across the exposed skin between the bottom of her knotted tee and the top of her skinny jeans.

“That’s what I like to hear. Because I’m counting on you.” He lowered his voice. “These things are usually so boring, they leave me totally cached out. Just once I’d like a little wow.”

“Well, you’re in luck,” Lucy said, determined to build on the rapport that had begun the day before. “Wow is our team name.”

“Is that so?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Trademark pending.”

Ryan Thompson chuckled. Strategize, stylize, and socialize. So far, so good.

“Did you see that?” Lucy said after he’d gone.

“Uh-huh,” Maddie said.

Delia averted her eyes.

“Ryan Thompson thinks we can wow him.” Lucy fell into her seat. “We have to wow him.”

She watched her teammates disappear into their devices while the groups around them talked excitedly, huddling together behind a singular laptop or raiding the snack center’s free chips, sushi, and energy drinks. She chewed on her lip—the bad habit she’d been trying to break since the third grade. She caught herself and grabbed hold of her wrist instead. Around and around she spun the pink plastic wristband from the club her Pulse tee had gotten her into two nights ago. Uber-style dog grooming was not a wow. It was barely a “wuh.”

Finally, a bald man at the front of the room tapped a microphone. Lucy sat on her feet to see better. His zippered V-neck sweater marked him as a VC with a likely net worth greater than the output of a dozen small nations combined. He spoke into the mic, welcoming them all to day one of ValleyStart.

Lucy reached for her notebook and tuned out the instructions. She’d already memorized the five-week itinerary—from today’s frantic race to lay down the skeleton of their app to the mornings of classes and lectures to the afternoons of “free” time to be spent getting their idea functional and scalable. They’d be going through the stages every startup did to take its product to market, leading up to the pivotal beta test where a small sampling of users would try the app, and ending in Demo Day, when they’d showcase their revolutionary creation and impress the judges enough to win the Pulse internships that would last the rest of the summer.

Impress the judges. Impress Ryan Thompson.

Lucy’s mind whirled faster than her wristband. Then Ryan took the mic. She released the bracelet and sat up straighter. As did everyone in the room.