The international boarding schools and multiple vacation houses were great. But it would be nice to have a home to be homesick for. One house and one school and one place I am from. Now I’m left just feeling sick.

By the time the call winds down, ending with my mom demanding I call once a week and not-so-jokingly insisting that my dad do the same, I am ready to be alone with my thoughts. My skin feels itchy from the inside out.

I hang up and am staring at the dark-screened phone in my hand when it buzzes for the second time. Please respond ASAP, the subject line of Sara’s second email reads.

“Jesus.” I toss my phone aside and pull one of the extra throw pillows over my face.

Chapter Three

Sara

Only 5 percent of Silicon Valley start-ups are run by women.

I read this statistic in a TechCrunch article last year, but it’s all I can think about when I walk into my Advanced Computer Science lecture, and am greeted by an auditorium full of men—most of them white—many of them in hoodies and sipping overpriced energy drinks.

The harsh, industrial cleaner smell that seems to permeate the engineering quad burns my nose as I make my way down the aisle. I sit alone in the first row and slide my laptop out of the polka-dot Kate Spade case my little sister got me for high school graduation.

Class won’t start for another five minutes, but many people are already coding away. The click of fingers hitting keys is sometimes interrupted by chatter as the boys talk amongst themselves. No one talks to me.

I check my email. Robbie responded already, saying how nice it was to meet me and thanking me for setting up the When2Meet. He seems nice. I friended him on Facebook, and it turns out he lives in my dorm too! I’d feel bad I never met him before, but with three hundred students, there are plenty of people in Dawson hall that have yet to cross paths.

I send back a smiley face emoji.

Braden, on the other hand, has completely ignored my message. I can already tell he’s gonna be one of those project partners. The ones that expect the work to be done but do none of it themselves. Not to mention way he talked to me today—calling me babe and making fun of design thinking. What a piece of work.

The door near the front of the room swings open, and a girl with a heart-shaped face walks through. She has glowing brown skin, big curly hair and fierce eyes lined with charcoal makeup. Even in the terrible florescent light of the classroom, the highlighter across her cheekbones shimmers.