Though she’d stopped drawing book covers years ago, that night she drew one for Danny, featuring the scene he loved most: the kids bathing in the fountain, scooping up coins.

Thoughts of Danny led her to the tech day camp and to Sadie.

“And she lives!” Sadie cried when Maddie walked in the door.

Some of the weight she’d been carrying immediately lifted. “Watch it, squirt, or I won’t open up my bag of designer tricks.”

“Speaking of . . .” Sadie eyed Maddie’s messenger bag. “Might want to think of being humane and leave that for the rats to nest in full-time. Carrying that will make you tumble from 10 as fast as Emma Santos.”

Maddie plunked her bag right in Sadie’s line of sight. “Emma Santos? From ValleyStart?”

“One and the same.”

“How do you know Emma?”

“I don’t. But I’ve been following her on Pulse.” Sadie made a face. “No thanks to you. Had to get the roster list myself.”

Maddie’s eyebrow lifted. “Did you hack into the system?”

“I could have, surely.” Sadie tossed her red hair. “But I just asked Ms. Kapoor. She said it’s on the website. Who would have thought to look there?”

“Who’d need to?” Maddie said.

“Anyone with a Pulse.” Sadie smirked. “If only they had an incubator for kids my age. It’s not right, I tell ya. Because, I mean, ValleyStart and Ryan Thompson and Pulse—it’s like all the best Gumberoo books combined.” Her smile faded and she spoke softly. “You know I almost met her?”

“Who?”

“Esmé Theot,” she said with awe that Maddie was glad to hear wasn’t reserved just for Pulse and Ryan Thompson. “My mom promised to take me to her signing in San Francisco a couple months back. We were gonna have dinner after—and not at one of those places with a lame kids’ menu.”

“What happened?”

“Avocados.”

“Avocados? I didn’t know you could get food poisoning from avocados.”

“No, not food poisoning. Runaway avocados. Some truck headed for Napa Valley got in an accident. No one was hurt, but the road was covered. Took so long to clean up that we missed the signing. Mom was really upset, saying she should’ve taken the whole day off, not just half. She took off the next day though, and we watched all the movies together with a big bowl of guacamole.”

Maddie could barely remember a time when her mom would have done that for her. She knew she’d never done it for Danny.

As Sadie settled back into the coding program, Maddie helped, getting lost in it, enjoying the break from Lucy and the incubator and all things Pulse. When the counselors announced it was time to start wrapping up, she was surprised at how much time had gone by.

Sadie grabbed her phone to text her brother about pickup and then dove back into Pulse.

Maddie groaned.