The Anti Social Network Part 2

"Yeah! Tom and I just got back from University Cafe."

"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 pa.s.sed 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 rea.s.surance. 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.

They hadn't had s.e.x yet, hadn't even gotten close, to be honest, but that was okay with him. He'd wait forever if he had to. Of course, he hadn't used the "L" word yet, and neither had she, but he knew she felt the same way. She was just cautious because school was about to start and she didn't want to miss out on the freshman experience because she had a soph.o.m.ore boyfriend.

Thirty minutes. Still nothing.

It was dark outside when he woke up. Lisa had finally texted, almost an hour and a half after his texts: Sorry. Out with the fam. Tomorrow? Sleeping @ house. Will be here in a.m.

Sure. B there at 10. Sweet dreams. Miss you, he texted back, feeling his heart sink. Adam had desperately wanted to see her tonight.

He had decided it was finally time to tell her the truth about his and Amelia's past.

Chapter 8.

Mergers and Acquisitions "I'm considering buying this company. What do you think?" Ted asked T. J. as he slid his iPad across the breakfast table and took a sip of his coffee, watching T. J.'s face.

The iPad was opened to a TechCrunch article on Doreye. T. J. began reading: An Eye for Success By now we all know about superstar entrepreneur and investor Tom Fenway's pet-project incubator, and we've all been anxiously awaiting news about what's coming out of the playful tree house on Sand Hill Road. Fear not, dear reader, we've got our first glimpse, and it's looking bright.

The company is called Doreye, and it's setting a new standard for syncing all your devices into a central control panel. Everything, from your television to your cable box, DVD player, garage door, and even your stove, could all be controlled by the Doreye app on your iPhone.

And just for kicks, Doreye is throwing a few micro-sensors into the package, which you can stick onto your keys or your wallet for instant location mapping, straight from your iPhone.

Who is behind all this? Amelia Dory, who despite growing up without parents in the Indiana foster care system, got accepted to Stanford on a full scholars.h.i.+p. She's a hardcore nerd; during our interview, she made three Star Wars references, but behind her smudged gla.s.ses her eyes glowed with an innocent, undeniable pa.s.sion to change how we interact with the world around us.

Right now Amelia has her twin brother on biz dev (cute, right?), but we figure Fenway will bring in someone legit to run the business soon enough and keep Amelia on the computers cranking out the Next Next Big Thing. Stay tuned.

T. J. put down the iPad. When had TechCrunch interviewed Amelia, and why hadn't Tom told him about it? Isn't that the sort of thing he was responsible for helping with?

Over the past three months, T. J. had become increasingly worried that his job didn't have the responsibilities it ought to. At first he'd done pages of a.n.a.lysis on Doreye's market potential and constructed a thorough marketing plan that he'd presented to Tom. Tom had barely looked at it before asking if he'd mind sharing it with Adam. Next, he'd tried to get in with Sundeep, the new guy who clearly had no business sense, but Sundeep had politely told T. J. that his customer acquisition strategy model wasn't exactly applicable in rural Southern India. Lately, out of desperation, T.J.

had been hanging out at Facebook and Google headquarters trying to spot engineers who might join the incubator, but he'd had little luck. He was starting to feel like a lackey, not an entrepreneur.

"So, what do you think?" asked T.J.'s father. "I bet Tom would sell it to me, don't you?"

"Why would you want to buy Amelia Dory's company?" T. J. asked morosely.

"Why wouldn't I? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Or, if you can, own them."

T. J. didn't disagree with that logic. He took another bite of his Fiber One cereal. As much as he hated to admit it, his father did have good ideas.

"You've been working with them, right?"

"Yeah, sort of," T.J. said.

"Maybe we could put you in as CEO."

T.J. almost choked on his cereal. He could feel his heart beating faster.

"Really?"

"Why not? I think you'd make a great CEO." T. J. blushed. He wasn't sure his Dad had ever given him such an important compliment.

"Well, I can definitely find out more for you," T.J. offered, trying to sound nonchalant. "Just let me know what information you need and I'll do some a.n.a.lysis. Tom's pretty tied up with other things so I've got some bandwidth during the day."

Ted had flicked to another news article on his iPad, but he looked up at his son for a moment. "Sure, T. J. Think you could put together a pitch deck for me by tomorrow?"

"Definitely!" T. J. crowed. Then, aware that he'd sounded too eager, he adopted what felt like a more professional tone. "I'll check my calendar and e-mail you a confirmation this afternoon."

"Great, son. Would be fun to work together on this." A few hundred feet away, Adam parked his bike behind a tree and crept around the back of the Bristol house. Through the kitchen window, he could see Ted and T. J. eating breakfast. He ducked down and slipped through the back door and up to Lisa's bedroom.

Lisa was seated at the vanity in a pink bathrobe, curling her hair. "Hey, you," she said without taking her eyes of the mirror.

"Hey," Adam said. "How are you?" He walked over and kissed her shoulder from behind. "You look beautiful." She smiled and held his eyes in the mirror.

"So, look," Adam started, determined not to lose the courage to say what he wanted to say. "I know you think I've been acting funny lately, and you're right: I have. And I want to tell you the reason." Lisa put down the curling iron and turned on the stool to face him.

Half her hair fell in neat curls down her shoulders, and the other half was tied with a ribbon, sectioned off and waiting to be curled.

Adam loved watching her get ready. There was something very s.e.xy about seeing her natural perfection become even more glamorous with lip gloss and hairpins.

Focus, he told himself. He had her attention now. He had to do it.

He grabbed the desk chair and pulled it next to her vanity stool, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

"Okay, here goes. Amelia and I grew up in these inst.i.tutions, sometimes called group homes, that are like modern-day orphanages. To be fair, they weren't terrible places. It's not like in d.i.c.kens, with giant creepy buildings full of hundreds of kids eating cold gruel and all that. There were usually no more than a dozen of us, and we spent most of our time at school. But being bounced around from place to place every year or so took its toll. It was hard to feel like we ever belonged anywhere." Lisa swallowed and nodded her head in sympathy. "I'm sorry," she said.

"I was adopted so young that I don't really remember what it was like not to have a family. I can only imagine."

"Well, getting a family is actually where the trouble started," Adam said."What do you mean?"

"One day, when we were nine, Amelia and I found out that a foster family wanted to take us in. I guess based on our school records-neither of us ever got in trouble-we were an appealing pair. So, three weeks later, we packed up to go live with the Dawsons. They seemed nice enough.

They had three kids of their own, two boys and a girl, aged eleven, thirteen, and fifteen. Instead of calling themselves "the Dawsons," they referred to themselves as "The Family," and talked constantly about what was expected to be part of "The Family." I guess we should have realized that was weird, but at the time we were so happy to have someone want us, you know, that we didn't think anything of it."

Adam took a deep breath. He was conscious of how much he was talking and worried that Lisa would lose interest. But she was still looking at him intently.

"Anyway, within a few days the niceness stopped and The Family started to ignore Amelia and me. They weren't mean; they just ignored us. They didn't buy us new clothes, didn't offer to help with anything. We found out later that Mr. Dawson, who was an insurance salesman, had a serious online gambling problem and had lost a lot of money. They had taken us in because it was a huge tax break that essentially offset his gambling debts.

They didn't actually want us."

Lisa leaned forward and held his hands. "I'm sorry."

"That first Christmas, the Dawsons bought a used computer. The kids were thrilled but quickly started fighting over it, and so the parents made a schedule that dictated who got to use the computer and when. Naturally, Amelia and I weren't included." Adam felt the bitterness behind his voice and wondered if Lisa could sense it. "Anyway, that enthusiasm lasted for about a month before they got bored and bought an Xbox instead. So, Amelia started using the computer. She loved it. She got totally addicted.

She'd come home from school and stay up all night in front of it. No one knew what she was doing and no one really cared as long as she stayed out of the way."

Adam exhaled, steeling himself for the next part of the story.

"Two years later, the oldest Dawson son got in a big fight with his parents for bombing the SAT. They were screaming at each other in the kitchen, Mrs. Dawson crying that he'd never get into college. They didn't have much money and had pinned all their hopes on their kids. Finally, Mr. Dawson dragged his son to the computer and told him to pull up his score. He thought his son was lying so he wouldn't have to go to college.

Amelia was at the computer and they told her to log off. Jacob pulls up the score report and, sure enough, he's gotten a 1280. They were still screaming at each other and Amelia's standing there, wanting it to stop-she always hated yelling-so she says, quietly, that she could change it, if they wanted."

"She could change it? But SAT scores are, like, impossible to access."

"Yeah, well, that's what everyone thought. Mr. Dawson laughed in her face. But the son knew that Amelia was really smart and was always on the computer and he said they should give her a shot. So Amelia hacked into the website right then and there and showed them. She changed his score to a 1850."

"That's incredible!" Lisa's eyes were wide. "Did he end up going to college?"

"Yeah. The guidance counselor flipped, she was so excited. His grades still sucked, but he got into Indiana State and left the next year."

"Wow," Lisa said.

"After that, the Dawsons started paying a lot more attention to Amelia.

Amelia was so sweet and innocent-she just wanted to help and be noticed and feel appreciated, you know? One day Mr. Dawson asked her if she could hack into his company's system and increase his sales figures, said he was afraid he was going to lose his job and just needed a little boost. He said he didn't have to be the top salesperson or anything, just needed a higher figure. But he was paid on commission, so he was essentially asking Amelia to help him embezzle money. Then a few months later, he directed Amelia to the bank and had her move money out of the company's bank account into another account. He made up some story about holding accounts for future sales or something, and Amelia didn't think much about it until a year later when she read an article in the newspaper about a "mystery hacker" who was stealing money from the State Insurance Bureau. She realized it was her and freaked out. She came to me unsure about what to do. I told her just to stop, to tell Mr. Dawson that they changed the security codes and she couldn't hack in anymore. But being Amelia, she insisted on telling the authorities the truth."

"Oh my G.o.d. What happened?"

"Well she called the police and told them everything. And the next week, they arrested Mr. Dawson and he was sentenced to six years in white-collar prison. They gave Amelia the lightest sentence possible, but she spent three months in a juvenile detention center. That was the only time we've ever been separated."

Adam paused.

"Obviously, we couldn't live with the Dawsons anymore. Part of the deal Amelia struck involved our being placed in another foster home. So I was moved to another state and lived there until Amelia could join me. The authorities were really good about keeping our whereabouts a secret from the Dawsons. But at the beginning of this summer, right after we started working at the incubator, we got a phone call from Jacob, the older son.

They found us, I guess because of the Doreye website. Mr. Dawson is about to be released from prison, and they're saying we 'owe them' for ruining The Family. I've been getting e-mails and phone calls all summer trying to blackmail us into embezzling money for them again."

"But how can they blackmail you? What have they got against you?" Lisa asked.

"I don't know," Adam lied, looking down at his hands. "But these people are crazy. They'll do anything."

"Adam, you have to go to the police."

"I can't."

"Why not? You haven't done anything wrong."

"But everything is going so well right now; I don't want to screw things up by getting involved in some investigation. Can you imagine how bad the press would be for Doreye? I just need them to go away, and I don't know how to make them stop calling."

He looked down at his shaking hands. Lisa reached out and clasped them hard between hers. "I know you'll do the right thing, Adam. And I'm really glad you told me. Maybe it'll be better now that you've gotten it off your chest. It's hard keeping secrets." He looked up at her beautiful smile and warm eyes. "Yeah," he said. "It is." He smiled, then leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers in a deep kiss. He started to pull her toward the bed, but she stopped him, glancing at the clock on her radio alarm. "I've got to get to a lunch on campus."

"That's okay," Adam said, twirling one of her curls in his finger and smiling at her. "We'll pick this up again later. Thanks for being here for me." "Of course. I know you'll figure things out." Adam gave her one last kiss, and then crept out of the room and down the back staircase, feeling like an enormous weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Chapter 9.

Tea for Two Amelia was pacing back and forth in the office, biting her fingernails.

This was not good, not good at all.

She had just read the article posted on TechCrunch and was freaking out about how Adam would react to the last paragraph. She hadn't talked to him yet today, and he still wasn't in the office. He must have read it and now he was avoiding her.

She was furious. How could they have written such a thing? Neither she nor Tom had said anything to imply Adam wasn't up for the job. It was total fiction, and it would hurt Adam deeply. Didn't they have any respect for his feelings? Didn't it occur to them how writing something like that would affect their relations.h.i.+p?

This was just one more reason why she hadn't wanted to get involved in a start-up.

"Is everything okay?"

Amelia jumped. Sundeep was standing in the doorway. He must have seen her pacing.