Across the table in the ValleyStart headquarters, Delia tugged her hand through her hair for the millionth time, expanding her curls to doorway-blocking proportions. Hunched over and shielded by her laptop screen, Maddie let out a small huff every now and again, which was Delia’s cue to check out what problem Maddie had uncovered—problems they might have found earlier had Maddie not gotten sidetracked by her obsession with Pulse.

None of them had spoken about last night.

They’d barely spoken since last night.

At least the final touches to Lit could be done by pointing and grunting.

Fine. It’s going to be fine.

She sat back in her chair and played with the straw as she assessed the competition. Gavin’s eyes were rimmed with red from fatigue—or maybe from crying over unsolved bugs in his code (hey, one could hope). Eric and Marty appeared calm, cautiously confident. But most of the other teams were pointing and grunting too, downing energy drinks and looking in need of a factory reset. Burnout pervaded the room. She took comfort in it. It meant that her team was no different.

Lucy cleared her throat and slid her smoothie forward. “Either of you want this? Otherwise I’m chucking it.”

“Wasteful,” Maddie said.

Lucy forced her nostrils not to flare. “Only because they screwed up the order. They put in peanut butter, and I hate peanut butter.”

Delia’s head snapped up. “See? This is why Eric’s app’s so important. At least you won’t die from that sip.”

That Delia considered Lit to be frivolous wasn’t news. That Maddie waxed and waned more than the moon in her feeling the same about Lucy wasn’t either.

At least Lit hadn’t suffered.

Lucy wanted to scoop up pom-poms and rah-rah them all over the finish line, but she’d barely slept, and all the unknowns for tonight—from having enough users, to their app scaling if they did have enough users, to what Ryan would ask about Lit’s business plan over dinner—meant she simply couldn’t muster the enthusiasm or find the right words.

Instead, they spent the afternoon on Lit.

*   *   *

Stray booms and pops punctuated Lucy’s walk around campus. It was Fourth of July eve, and students had been setting off firecrackers and sparklers all day. Events were being held all around campus, which meant more students, which meant more potential beta testers.

It was the perfect night for their test, just as Lucy had planned. Though teams could pick any day that week to run their beta test, Lucy had specifically chosen this one.