The Anti Social Network Read online

  Ted’s eyes were crisp and angry, his jaw set.

  “And that, T. J., is when I’ll take Doreye from Amelia.”

  Chapter 18

  Two Thousand Lines of Code and Nothing to Wear

  Just opening the doors to the Gates building made Amelia’s heart rate slow to a more relaxed pace. She climbed the stairs and made her way to her favorite cubicle. There weren’t many people there, which suited her fine. The pride she felt this morning about her peers respecting her for the TechCrunch article now made her self-conscious.

  She clicked to the latest Doreye code and began typing, but she quickly found herself two hours in with a pattern that wouldn’t run. There were over two thousand lines of code and she had no idea where the error was.

  Why was she being so sloppy?

  But she knew exactly why. Her mind kept drifting back to University Café and Sundeep’s words, “I have a girlfriend.” Why had he had to show up just then? Right when she was feeling confident enough to do something so stupid? She’d been having such a great day, and then he’d gone and ruined it all. She tried to take herself back to the time before their conversation, to access the elatedness she’d felt after all the interviews. But Sundeep was like a wall, like this malfunction in her program that blocked everything from working. She hated him.

  She took off her glasses and sat back in her chair, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.

  “Amelia!”

  She slowly opened her eyes. Was that George?

  A strange new version of George stood next to her at the cubicle. Since she had last seen him at the end of spring term, he had lost about forty pounds and cut his hair.

  “George?” she said, questioningly, putting her glasses back on.

  He laughed awkwardly. “I know, I look a little different. I finally took Google up on their free personal training sessions this summer. How was your summer?” Before she could answer, he stepped in. “Of course, I already know how your summer was. I read the TechCrunch article about you. Man, Amelia, that is just so rad.” Amelia shrugged her narrow shoulders and offered a lifeless, “Thanks, George. It is exciting.”

  She glanced back at her screen, hoping he would take the hint that she wanted to be alone. But he kept going, his eyes shining above his freckled cheeks.

  “To think that I was here the night you first made the original Doreye application work! Do you have any idea how cool that is?” She smiled politely.

  “Listen, Amelia.” He took a deep breath. “I thought about you this summer—a lot. Not just because of Doreye, but because I think you’re a really . . . a really special person and I’d love to get to know you better. And I thought maybe, if you’re up for it, we could hang out . . . some time.” Instinctively, she began to turn him down. “George, I think you’re really—”

  But then, abruptly, she stopped herself. Why should she always decline?

  Sundeep had a girlfriend; Patty was in her sorority; Adam was living in a frat house now and, apparently, had a girlfriend. And all she had was two thousand lines of code that weren’t working.

  “Sure, George. I’d love to hang out some time.”

  “Really?” George tried to contain his excitement. “That’s great!” He scrambled for an idea, afraid that if he didn’t get a plan made now it might never actually happen. “What are you doing tonight?” Amelia looked at the jumbled code on her screen. It was a lost cause.

  “Nothing. I’m not doing anything.”

  “I was going to head over to the Lair to play ZOSTRA. We have a group that gets together every Wednesday. Do you play?” George was referring to the virtual reality game that had developed a cult following in the computer science community.

  “I’ve never played,” Amelia said, watching his face drop. “But I’d love to learn.”

  “Excellent!”

  Who was she kidding? Guys like Sundeep didn’t go for her. She was a computer science geek. She might as well act the part.

  Chapter 19

  Meet me at ZOSTRA

  Amelia had heard of the Lair, but she had never actually been there.

  Situated across campus from the Gates Building, it was technically a twenty-four-hour study room. Stanford was always updating the equipment in the Gates building and, whenever they did, they put all the old (meaning six to twelve months outdated) equipment in the Lair and left the space largely unmonitored.

  It had become an upper-class computer science hang, where engineers who wanted to socialize more than code came to “study.” They’d start filtering in after dinner and open a problem set. Then they would log-on to Instant Messenger and flirt with people across the room. By ten o’clock at night, everyone was usually huddled around a few monitors watching YouTube clips or two people battling against each other in Angry Birds or Scrabble.

  Wednesdays had officially become ZOSTRA nights, starting promptly at midnight.

  Amelia followed George through a painted red door and up two flights of concrete stairs to the Lair, where two guys she recognized as Computer Science TAs sat at a table collecting money and handing out player numbers.

  “Hey, guys!” George said to the two. “Do you know Amelia? Amelia, meet Tom and T-Bag.”

  T-Bag, a lean, good-looking blond guy wearing a sport coat with a pocket square, stood up and took Amelia’s hand, bowing his head to her in mock formality. “Forgive these imbeciles. Everyone calls me T-Bag, but as you seem rather sophisticated, feel free to refer to me by my Christian name, Theodore.”

  Amelia smiled with surprise. Who was this guy, with his strange European accent and ornate speech? “Very nice to meet you, Mr. T-Bag,” she said, taking his hand and playing along.

  Tom, a chubby Asian boy wearing a tie over his t-shirt, khaki shorts, and no shoes, also stood up and shook her hand. “You’re not the Amelia, are you? The one doing that device linking thing with Tom Fenway?” George swept his arms up, as though he were a magician presenting his finest act. With these guys, he had an air of confidence and charm she had never witnessed in Gates. “Indeed, she is. Gentlemen, you are in the presence of greatness.”

  “Tickets comped!” T-Bag exclaimed. “May I have the honor of getting you a drink, Madame?”

  Amelia wasn’t sure if they were mocking her or if they were seriously impressed, but it didn’t matter; there was something utterly loveable about these three. T-Bag handed her a plastic cup filled with cheap vodka and cranberry juice. “Our very finest, for the lady,” he said, and she felt her heart flutter a little as she happily took it from him.

  She and George played ZOSTRA as a team so she could figure out the rules. The game was based on avatars, which each player created and kept from week to week. The avatars challenged one another to different games and tasks—ranging from gladiator-style fencing to who-can-pick-up-a-virtual-girl-in-a-virtual-bar-first competitions—on a large screen in front of the whole room. When you won a competition, you got points that could be used to buy accessories, weapons, and superpowers for your avatar. As the night went on, the crowd got more and more drunk, and more and more into the game.

  Three hours and four vodka-cranberries later, Amelia was seated on a bean bag chair between George, T-Bag, Tom, and Tom’s girlfriend Janet, an awkwardly lanky blonde wearing a thrift-store prom dress two sizes too small for her tall frame. They made an astonishingly strange looking pair, but whenever she told a joke—which she did often, between swigs of tequila straight from the bottle—Tom watched her with a loving pride that made Amelia instinctively like them as a couple.

  “I think,” Janet said drunkenly, reaching out for Amelia’s hand, “that you are just delightful.”

  Amelia grinned into her plastic cup and took another sip. Although she barely knew them, she felt right at home with these people.

  “Don’t you think so, T-Bag?” asked Janet.

  T-Bag raised his glass. “I do, indeed. You simply must join our ZOSTRA nights and get your own avatar. Then you won’t have to continue on as that g
hastly, unrealistically muscular Italian man,” he said, referring to George’s avatar.

  “Hey!” George protested, mocking T-Bag’s accent. “I think he’s quite strapping.”

  “You straight men don’t have a clue.” T-Bag rolled his eyes, turning back to Amelia and grabbing her hand. “Trust me, darling. We’ll design her together, and she will be stunning. I am a second-life fashion genius.” She giggled tipsily. He went on. “Do you have a gay best friend yet?

  Because I would really love to be that for you.”

  “Wait,” she said. “You’re gay?”

  “Flaming.” He grinned. She grinned back. She’d never met a gay person before, but she liked him. In fact, she liked just about everything right now.

  They stayed for another half hour before saying their goodbyes. When she tried to stand up, she fell back down, giggling at herself. George put out his hand to help her up. “Let me walk you back to your dorm,” he offered.

  They walked along the narrow pathways, Amelia chatting animatedly about strategies for next weeks’ ZOSTRA. When they got to her dorm, George waited while she found her keys. “Can you get to your room okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so.” She smiled.

  “Great.” He smiled back. “I’m glad you came, tonight, Amelia. I had a really good time.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  They paused for a moment, smiling drunkenly at each other.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “See you tomorrow at Gates?”

  “I’ll be there!”

  Chapter 20

  The Inner Room

  Across campus, Adam’s lips were clenched around the spigot of a tapped keg, his hands gripping either side of the metal barrel and his legs held above his head by a couple of burly rugby players.

  “Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen,” a crowd of manically drunk coeds chanted as Adam swallowed the beer rushing out of the spigot. This was his first keg stand, and he was dominating, to use a term he’d picked up since moving into Phi Delta. The last guy had only made it to twelve and he here he was on . . .

  “Twenty four. Twenty Five. Twenty six . . . ” But then something happened. The beer went down the wrong side of his throat and he started coughing into the spigot. The rugby players dropped his legs and he landed clumsily on the floor.

  “Twenty six!” cried Chris, the Phi Delta social chair who was standing with a clipboard, recording performances. “Our reigning champion!” Everyone cheered and Adam grinned drunkenly, accepting a beer from a girl wearing a tight red dress and five-inch heels. “You were amaaaaazing!” she slurred, pushing her hand into his chest. “What’s your name?” Adam felt on top of the world as he took in the filthy kitchen, strewn with beer cans and red cups. A couple was making out against the wall in the corner. No one seemed to notice, or to care. “I’m Adam,” he said as he took a sip of the beer.

  “Nice to meet you Aidan!” She batted her eyelashes, but the concentration it required caused her to trip on her massive heels. Adam put his arm out to catch her. “Oops!” she giggled. She leaned down and took off her shoes, apparently unconcerned about placing her bare feet on the sticky, beer-drenched floor.

  “Do you want to dance?” she asked, pulling his hand toward the fraternity’s common room, where speakers were blasting a Lady Gaga remix.

  Adam closed his eyes, letting his body sway with the music in careless abandon, as they moved against each other on the dance floor. He felt her open mouth press against his and let it happen, sinking into the sensation.

  Then, as if the signal of what was going on finally reached his brain, he pulled away. “I can’t . . . ”

  “Sure you can.”

  “No, it’s not . . . I have a girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” The girl pouted and dipped her chin, her brown curls falling in front of her face. “Wait,” she said, her head abruptly popping back up. She glanced around the dance floor. “Is she here?”

  “No.”

  The girl put her hand back on his shoulder. “Then what’s the problem?” she asked, leaning in to kiss him.

  He pushed her away gently. “Well . . . I love her.” Her red lips spread into a sideways grin and she cocked her head.

  “Awww . . . that’s so cute. She’s a very lucky girl.” She turned and walked away, her full hips swinging back and forth in her tight red dress as she headed to the kitchen to find someone else to flirt with.

  Adam stood in the middle of the dance floor, surrounded by couples making out or on the verge of it. He felt unbelievably alone. Where was Lisa? He knew she had a dorm meeting and a study group, but that should have been over hours ago.

  Suddenly, he panicked. What if she was hanging out with that water polo player that lived next door, that guy with the perfectly toned body and the shaggy blond hair?

  He should call her, he decided.

  He dialed her number, but there was no answer. Maybe she didn’t hear the phone ring. He tried again. Still no answer. This time he left a message, trying his hardest to sound more sober than he was, “Lisa, it’s me. Just thinking about you and missing you. Call me.” He waited until the next song was over, and then tried again. Then one more time. Still no answer. What was going on? Where was she?

  Maybe she was online. He should go log on to his computer and check.

  He stumbled down the stairs to his room. Like all the rooms in the Phi Delta house, his was a two-room double, meaning two guys shared two rooms, but there was only one door in and out. This meant there was an “inner” room and an “outer” room. The outer room was a little bigger, but you had to deal with your roommate walking in and out to get to his room.

  Adam’s roommate, Henry, didn’t have any qualms about people walking in and out on him when he was hooking up with girls, so he’d requested the bigger outer room, and Adam had happily obliged, opting for privacy.

  Now he pushed open the room and found Henry sitting on his bed with three girls, all giggling and passing a pipe. The room reeked of pot.

  “Adam!” Henry exclaimed, so high he could hardly open his eyes.

  Henry was English and milked his Britishness for all it was worth. He wasn’t bad looking, but he wasn’t model-attractive like T. J. or Chris, the Phi Delta social chair. His thick British accent was a golden ticket for getting women, however. Sometimes Adam wondered whether the words he used, like “chap” and “bloody” and “wicked,” were even words British people used or just things he threw in to get attention.

  “Adam, meet . . . ” Henry looked around and realized he didn’t know any of the girls’ names. “Meet the girls,” he said. They giggled and smiled at Henry.

  “Want a hit?” one of the girls asked Adam.

  “No, thanks,” Adam answered, stumbling to the door of his inner room. “I’ve got to make a phone call.”

  “Adam!” Henry shouted. “Who are you calling at three-thirty in the morning? Unless it’s a pizza boy, I suggest you restrain yourself.”

  “Ooh, pizza! Can we get pizza?” one of the girls squealed.

  Adam shouted from the other room. “It’s not pizza!”

  “Don’t do it, Adam.” Henry was standing in the doorway now, looking at Adam perched on his bed with his phone in hand. “How many times have you called her tonight?”

  Adam tried to downplay it. “I only left one message—”

  “How many times, Adam?”

  “Four.”

  “Come on, mate. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “It’s none of your business,” Adam said. “Go back to your girls.”

  “No more calls tonight, Adam. You’ll regret it. Mark my words.” Adam motioned for Henry to leave the room. As he shut the door, he dialed Lisa’s number.

  He heard a sleepy voice pick up on the other end. “Hello?”

  “Lisa! Lisa, Lisa. Where are you?”

  “I’m in bed, Adam. It’s almost four in the morning.”

  “Do you want to come over?”

  “Now? I have class at ni
ne.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, sweet dreams then.”

  “Goodnight, Adam.”

  “I love you,” he said, but she had already hung up.

  Chapter 21

  No Simple Highway

  Amelia sat across from Tom at Juniper Café, a fancy Greek restaurant in Menlo Park, nibbling at the hummus plate he’d ordered as an appetizer. When she’d googled the restaurant and seen the prices on the menu, she’d realized she probably needed to dress up. She’d stopped by the Gap on the way home from the incubator and bought a simple, navy linen dress with spaghetti straps and a pair of gold braided sandals. She paid seventy dollars for the outfit—more than she could remember ever having spent on clothes—but the girl in the dressing room had told her she had to get it because it fit her perfectly. Still, she felt like an imposter wearing something other than her normal jean shorts and plaid shirt.

  That morning, they had made the decision to bring Amit, a shy sophomore from Bangalore, and Marcus, a precocious redheaded junior from Chicago, onto the engineering team. Amit had worked as a programmer in India throughout high school and was a machine at developing and replicating code; Marcus was an expert on iPhone application software and had interned at Cisco the summer before, giving him exposure to a range of products relevant to Doreye.

  They were quirky in their own ways, but Amelia liked them both very much. They would each work fifteen hours a week on tasks that Amelia would assign every Monday.

  Tom had brought her to dinner to celebrate the first hires. The restaurant was small and intimate, with only a dozen or so tables covered in white tablecloths. The dining room was dimly lit by candles and stained-glass lanterns mounted on the dark wooden walls.