“Do porcupines tap dance?” Sadie held up her hand. “Don’t answer that.”

“Can we settle on a ‘we’ll see’?”

“Ugh, you sound like my mom.” Sadie turned and sashayed to the door.

Maddie watched the back of Sadie’s red-haired head disappear from sight, realizing how much fun she’d had and hoping someone back on the East Coast was feeling the same after being lucky enough to spend the afternoon with Danny.

Delia wrapped up with her student, promising to give his counselors links to websites for him to learn more, and Lucy stood among her admirers—most of them as tall if not taller than she was. But Lucy would never fade into the background.

They gravitated toward one another, each of their wide smiles growing more tentative as they studied one another’s faces, trying to discern what each was thinking. Pulse and Ryan Thompson and the internship hadn’t budged from the bottom of Maddie’s priority list, and yet . . . Lucy and Delia, their passion and talents, they were rising. Maddie wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but one thing kept repeating on a loop in her mind: win ValleyStart.

NINE

TEAMVESTING • When an investor offers a startup financing because of a belief in the team more than the actual idea

DELIA HAD SPENT HOURS talking about coding. The only other time she’d done that was when she was ten and she and Cassie had watched The Shining even after Cassie’s mom had said it was too scary for them. She’d been right.

Cassie had begged Delia to tell her a story so she could fall asleep, but Delia didn’t know any stories. But she knew programming. Despite Cassie groaning from boredom, sleep only came with the morning light. Yet that night inspired her to create Delia’s Den. The first iterations, the ones she shared with the boy in the day camp, featured a character eerily similar to the wild-eyed Jack Nicholson that had scared the crap out of her and Cassie in The Shining.

“Those kids were pretty great,” Delia said as she and her teammates (were they still?) walked from the edge of campus back to the dorm. They passed the semicircular two-story gym and the dozen women and handful of guys balancing on one foot in front of it—either an outdoor yoga class or flamingo training.

“So were those programs,” Lucy said. “My summer camp had the best—”

“Naturally,” Maddie said, but followed it with a head nod that encouraged Lucy and a wink that made Delia stifle a laugh.

“And still those were way better than the ones we had at their age,” Lucy continued. “Don’t you think, Delia?”

“I, uh, guess,” Delia said, pressing her hand to her neck and feeling the coolness of the circuit board pendant against her skin.

“Which ones did your instructors use?”

“I’m mostly self-taught, actually.”

“Really?” Lucy said.

“Really?” Maddie said.