The Anti Social Network Read online

  “Your breakfast is going to get cold.”

  She jumped when she heard a voice behind her. She didn’t have to turn around to know that the voice belonged to Sundeep, the former Stanford medical student who was working on a medical device start-up. Tom had brought him into the incubator five weeks ago.

  “Oh,” Amelia said, blushing. “I’m sorry, I got distracted.” She pulled the bowl of oatmeal out of the microwave, tucked her chin down, and squeezed past Sundeep.

  “Wait,” he said. “I need to eat breakfast, too. Why don’t you take a break from whatever you’re doing and we can eat in here together?” Sundeep was one of those rare people who radiated warmth and kindness. His bright blue eyes always seemed to be smiling, and his six-foot one-inch frame seemed like it was made for hugging. He was originally from Mumbai, but his family had immigrated to the United States when he was eight so his father could go to medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. Sundeep had followed in his father’s footsteps and been accepted to medical school at Stanford. Last year, however, against his parents’ wishes, he had deferred medical school to work on creating a new type of contact lens that would treat glaucoma. His goal was to find a way to produce the lenses at a low cost, so that they would be affordable for people in India, where glaucoma was the third leading cause of blindness, affecting over twelve million people.

  Amelia had learned all of this by reading about Sundeep online. She didn’t know why, but he made her horribly self-conscious. It was like his eyes could see straight into her and she simultaneously wanted to fall into his arms and run away as fast as she could.

  “Oh, I should really get back to work,” Amelia said.

  “What difference will ten minutes make?” Sundeep smiled. “Come on, we’ve been working next to each other for over a month now, and I don’t think we’ve had a single conversation. I feel like I hardly know you.” Clearly, he wasn’t as into Internet stalking as she was.

  Amelia blushed and laughed self-consciously. “There’s really not much to know.”

  “Well, then it won’t take very long to fill me in.” He smiled and pulled out a chair.

  Reluctantly, she sat down.

  “Where did you grow up?” he asked.

  “Indiana.”

  “That’s got ‘India’ in it. Look how much we already have in common!” Sundeep said.

  Amelia smiled. “So how are the lenses coming?”

  “How do you know about my lenses?”

  “Oh, I . . . Well, I read about them, or about you, online.”

  “You googled me? I’m flattered. You’re supposedly the next Mark Zuckerberg or Larry and Sergei, and you’re googling me?” Amelia blushed, not quite sure what to say.

  Just then Tom stuck his head around the corner.

  “Amelia!” He was ecstatic. “Amelia, I just got off the phone with TechCrunch. They want to meet you and learn more about Doreye.

  They’re looking for companies to attend their Mobile Conference in Maui this December and are considering you guys. It would be terrific press and a great way to meet other companies for contracts. I told them we’d meet them at University Café. Can you be ready in fifteen?” Amelia felt her stomach contract with nervousness. TechCrunch wanted to meet her? To talk about Doreye? Where was Adam?

  “Yeah, of course, Tom. I’ll just get my things. Do I need to bring anything?”

  “Just your ideas. We’ll talk about what to say in the car ride over.”

  “Adam’s not here, though.”

  “Let’s just do this one you and me. We’ll get Adam in on the next one.” She looked at Sundeep. “Sorry to rush out.”

  “No worries,” he said, smiling. “It sounds like things are about to heat up around here.”

  “Oh no, it’s just a routine interview, I’m sure,” Amelia said.

  “Not if Tom’s involved,” Sundeep said.

  Chapter 5

  The Losing Streak

  “Do I only get one phone call?” Patty asked after they had snapped a mug shot, fingerprinted her, and left her in a locked room with white concrete walls and grim fluorescent lighting for nearly an hour.

  Officer Mark smiled at her. “No, that’s just what they say in the cop TV

  shows. We’ll let you use the phone until you get through to someone who can come pick you up.”

  She had managed not to cry, which she thought was very grown up of her, but she knew the minute she saw her parents she would start. How was she EVER going to explain this to them? They were going to take away her credit card for sure and maybe the car. But they wouldn’t . . . they couldn’t . . . could they?

  She swallowed hard as she dialed her home number from Officer Mark’s desk phone. She twirled the cord nervously as she listened to the phone ring once. Twice.

  “Hello? Hawkins residence.”

  Oh my God. Was that—?

  “Chad?” Patty breathed into the phone.

  “Patty?” He sounded cheerful. “Hey! What’s goin’ on?”

  “Chad! I didn’t realize you were—” Patty glanced at Officer Mark, who was giving her a this-is-not-a-catch-up-with-old-friends-call look and she paused. “Listen, Chad, I’m in . . . Well, I’m in some trouble.”

  “What is it? What can I do?”

  “I’m at the police station. Can you come pick me up?”

  “Of course.” He didn’t hesitate. “I’ll leave right now. And don’t worry, your parents aren’t supposed to be home for another two hours.” She hung up the phone.

  Twenty minutes later, Chad smiled politely and shook Officer Mark’s hand. “Where do I need to sign?”

  How did Chad know he had to sign forms? Had he done this before?

  Patty wondered about this as she watched him fill out the forms. He was taking responsibility for her release from jail as though he were making a routine bank deposit.

  “All set!” He turned to Patty. “Ready to go?” Patty was silent as she walked to Chad’s Land Rover and climbed into the passenger seat. She kept her gaze out the window so she didn’t have to look at him.

  They drove without speaking. It was the middle of the day and traffic moved quickly. Patty stared out at the trees lining the side of the road.

  Sunlight moved through the branches and glanced out at her from among the leafy shadows.

  “When I was a freshman in college,” Chad said, “there was this huge Carolina-Duke basketball game on a Saturday, and we were drinking aggressively from, like, eight a.m. for it. And around two, right when everyone was starting to filter into the Dean Dome for the game, my suitemates and I decided it was a good time to go streaking.” Chad started to laugh. “But we didn’t want anyone to know it was us, you know? So we pulled on ski masks and stripped down and ran out of our dorm in this big victory lap. And as we were coming back to the dorm, there was this cop standing, blocking the door, and he handcuffed all four of us—not because we were streaking but because, get this—it’s against the law in North Carolina to wear a ski mask in public. So we got hauled into the station, wearing nothing but our ski masks, and had to sit there for hours, naked, until we sobered up.” Patty gave him a weak smile. She could feel the tears welling up in her eyes.

  They pulled into the Hawkins driveway. Chad turned off the engine.

  “What I’m trying to say, Patty, is that it happens to all of us. We all do stupid things—well, except maybe your sister—and in a few years, I promise you’ll be laughing at yourself.” She was looking at him, wanting to believe what he said, but she couldn’t keep the tears from trickling down her cheeks.

  He reached up with his right hand and wiped a tear from under her eye with his thumb. “And you know what? I think the fact that you push the envelope makes you pretty special. This one’s between you and me, so long as you promise not to change yourself to fit their mold, okay?”

  Chapter 6

  Can You Hear Me Now?

  Tom glanced sideways at Amelia and gave her a reassuring nod. The two journali
sts from TechCrunch were seated opposite Tom and Amelia at a corner table in University Café, their notebooks and four orange-strawberry-coconut smoothies between them. They had just asked Amelia to explain Doreye’s functionality.

  Throughout the summer, Tom had encouraged Adam, Amelia, and T. J. to keep quiet about Doreye. The Valley was full of replicators, he’d told them, and if you started talking about your idea too soon, there were leeches that would try to mimic it. Not well enough to replace you, but just well enough to sue you after you got big, claiming it was their idea. Or they’d buy up URLs or patents they anticipated you’d need down the road and then charge you excessively for them. You had to watch out, all the time, especially at places like University Café.

  But now, Tom had explained to Amelia in the car on the way over, it was time to start talking. Not too much. Too much hype created unreasonable expectations, or so much demand that you couldn’t fulfill all the orders and customers got upset. It was a tricky balance, he explained, but this is where he could be useful.

  Amelia took a deep breath. She started slowly. “Well, the basic idea is that Doreye can see other products. It’s an application that detects other devices, and then accesses their frequencies so that you can control them through Doreye.”

  “So, for instance, I could . . . ?” The male reporter, a dark-haired guy in his twenties who looked like the guy from the old “I’m an Apple” commercials, prompted.

  “You could turn off the radio with your iPhone. Or open your garage.

  Or turn on the oven in your kitchen on the drive home from work.”

  “That’s the first phase,” Tom interjected. “Tell them about phase two.”

  “So, that’s the basic platform. And it’s nice because Doreye is programmed to pick up everything automatically—you don’t have to enter any information for each of your appliances, it just detects them and works automatically. Phase two, though, from an engineering standpoint, is actually a lot easier. It allows you to tag certain items—your keys, your wallet—with a tiny, almost invisible micro-sensor. Then, when you press a button on your phone, the micro-sensor will beep and the GPS unit in your phone will show you exactly where it is.”

  “And phase three?” the other journalist, who clearly got her style guidance from the Twilight series, dressed in skinny jeans and a Bella-esque plaid shirt, asked. “Is phase three seeing through walls?” Tom met her smile. “Might be! We’re keeping phases three and four quiet for now, but I assure you, they’re big.” The reporters smiled at each other. “This is great stuff,” the guy said.

  “I mean, this brings a whole new level of control to your iPhone. The elimination of three remotes in your living room would be useful enough, but with all the other applications, it feels so . . . futuristic. I love it.” Amelia smiled. Tom beamed.

  “And how about you, Amelia? What is your story?” Amelia blushed; she didn’t like talking about herself. “Oh, I’m not that interesting. I mean, I’m just a computer science major at Stanford. I just finished my freshman year.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “Indiana.”

  “Have you worked on a lot of other stuff before?”

  “I’ve dabbled a lot on my own, but no, nothing public or anything.

  Tom’s the one who convinced me to do something for the public.” Over the summer, her resentment of Tom for dragging her into a business had started to lessen. He was so kind and supportive of her that it was hard not to fall under his spell.

  “Your parents must be thrilled. Have they been out to see the incubator?”

  “Oh, I don’t have parents. I never knew them.”

  “Who’d you grow up with, then?” the girl pressed. It was a leading question to which the journalist already knew the answer. Doreye’s technology was fine, but a pretty girl engineer with a pathetic foster kid background was the real thing, a front-page story.

  Amelia was taken aback by this question. She wanted to get back to Doreye. “I grew up in foster homes.”

  The girl scribbled something in her pad. “Great, great.” Amelia wasn’t sure what that meant.

  “Just one more question: where’d you come up with the name?” the guy asked.

  “It’s kind of a play on our last name and the ‘eye’ of the product,” Amelia said, a little sheepishly.

  “Our?”

  “My brother, Adam, and I. Adam’s the head of business development.

  I’m just the engineer,” she said.

  “So I think that gives you a sense of what Doreye is all about . . . ” Tom said.“Yes, Mr. Fenway. This has been really helpful. We’ll definitely get a blurb out about the company over the next week.”

  “Excellent! Just let us know what else you need.” Tom stood up to shake the journalists’ hands and Amelia followed suit.

  Amelia shot a quick text to Adam: “Just had our first interview with TechCrunch! Doreye’s going to be in it this week . . . ” Tom ushered Amelia toward the door and whispered, “Hold onto your seat, Amelia. Things are about to get big.”

  Chapter 7

  Songs To Fill the Air

  Amelia felt surprisingly light and happy as she rode back to the Incubator with Tom.

  “See, Amelia?” said Tom. “I told you starting a business with your idea wasn’t such a bad thing.”

  “Maybe you were right,” Amelia said.

  Tom turned up the radio. “Do you like the Grateful Dead?” Amelia cocked her head. “Um . . . I don’t think I’ve ever heard them.” Tom almost stopped the car. “You’ve never heard the Dead?! Oh, Amelia. We’ve got to get you educated. Let’s start with ‘Ripple’.” He flipped through tracks on the dashboard and started singing along to a song. The sound of the guitar was pretty and mellow; it made Amelia think of floating along a river in a canoe.

  Sundeep was outside the office talking on his cell phone when Tom and Amelia pulled into the lot. When he saw them, he hung up and shouted,

  “How’d it go?”

  Tom glowed. “Amelia was perfect. Completely nailed it.” Sundeep held the door for her. “I want to hear all about it.”

  “So long as you both get some work done today. Remember, I’m paying you kids . . . ” Tom joked as he headed in the opposite direction, toward his office.

  Sundeep smiled broadly as he walked with Amelia back to her office.

  “So, it went well?”

  “Yeah, I think so. They really seemed to like the idea, and, you know, I’m starting to think this business thing might not be so bad after all. If we get a lot of users on this, it’ll actually give me more bandwidth to do more interesting coding I’d never really thought about how much more complex and exciting the engineering gets when you have a lot of users.”

  “Totally! That’s how I feel about these lenses. If I can get them to market and get a lot of people using them, that gives me a channel to get people other things they need, like food and dental care and access to information.

  Business gets a bad rap, but really there’s a lot of good and exciting stuff that can come out of it.”

  Amelia bit her lip as she looked at his smiling eyes. Sundeep blushed.

  They stood like that for a moment, not knowing what to say, when Amelia’s phone rang. Startled, she looked down.

  “It’s Adam, I’d better take this,” she said to Sundeep.

  “Of course, I’ll . . . see you later then.”

  “Hey Adam!” Amelia answered cheerfully as she watched Sundeep walk through the playroom to his office.

  “You had an interview with TechCrunch?” Adam asked sternly.

  “Yeah! Tom and I just got back from University Café.”

  “You went without me?” His voice was shaking.

  Amelia tried to backpedal. “Well, it was super last-minute. Tom gave me fifteen minutes to get ready.”

  “Why didn’t you call me, or text? I could have met you there.”

  “I didn’t realize it was such a big deal.”

  “Not a
big deal? This is our first interview with TechCrunch. How could you not think it was a big deal?” She was silent.

  Adam’s hurt started to morph into anger. “Amelia, I’m the head of business development for this company. This is my domain. The press is part of the business side, not the engineering side. This should have been my interview.”

  “Your interview? And here I thought this was our company. I didn’t realize you were so interested in splitting things up. Especially since you haven’t been to the office in . . . what, three days? Is that what you call contributing?”

  Adam was fuming. He hadn’t been in the office because he’d been trying to sort out the blackmail. If she only knew how much stress he’d been under for her sake.

  “Things are complicated right now, Amelia. Trust me, you’re going to feel sorry for saying that.”

  “You know what I’m sorry for, Adam? I’m sorry I just did something I didn’t even want to do to help a company I didn’t even want to start so that you could get a little closer to your little start-up dream. And you have the nerve to get mad at me. You should be thanking me.” Amelia was surprised by her anger.

  “I’m going back to coding. I’ll see you later.” She hung up the phone.

  Adam lay on his bed with his iPhone on his chest, staring at the ceiling.

  How could Amelia have done the interview without him? Adam wondered again. And why hadn’t Tom insisted he be at the interview? He felt a well of anxiety building in his stomach. What if Tom didn’t see his value? What if he just wanted Amelia and had only let him join because Amelia insisted on including him?

  He looked at his iPhone. After getting off the line with Amelia, he had texted Lisa about coming over. Fifteen minutes had passed and there was no response yet. Great. Now he had two things to stress about: the start-up and his girlfriend.

  He typed a brief second text— Hey u there? —and then flung his phone out of reach to keep himself from sending any more messages. He didn’t want to come across as desperate. Eyes closed, he listened intently for the bright “ping” of an arriving text. But the minutes crawled by with no such reassurance. Why wasn’t Lisa texting him back? And whom had she been talking to when she left his room this morning? He loved her so much.