Beautiful Code (3 page)

CHAPTER 1:

Lift Off

“P
lease remove your shoes, sir,” the airport agent said. Adam unlaced his Converse sneakers. He yanked off his socks and tossed them, along with his sneakers, into the gray plastic bin. The security agent rolled his eyes. “
Just
your shoes.”

Adam grabbed his socks and fumbled to put them back on. He blushed as he tried to avoid the eyes of the passengers behind him who, like the agent, all seemed to be experts at this airport security drill. Why hadn’t he just followed his sister Amelia to the line without the body scan? Naturally, she had preferred a pat-down to a government-authorized body scan (who knew what they did with the images? she had insisted), and right now a pat-down sounded far less uncomfortable than the annoyed glare of this security agent.

Adam placed his messenger bag on the conveyor belt. As it slumped against a shopping bag full of wrapped Christmas gifts, Adam felt a tightness in his chest as he remembered that there are rich, happy families who fly to Hawaii to celebrate Christmas. The holidays had always been a dark reminder for Adam that he and his sister had almost nothing to give or receive, and no family except each other.

“Do you have a laptop?” the agent asked.

“Oh. Yes.” Adam had recently inherited a MacBook Air from Amelia. Given to her by Tom Fenway, Silicon’s richest venture capitalist, as a gift for joining his tech incubator, it was by far the most expensive thing Adam had ever owned. Even weeks after Amelia gave it to him, he kept half-expecting someone to come to his door and claim it.

“Please remove it.”

“Oh, right.”

One day, Adam thought, he’d be a pro at this routine and look back and laugh. But for now, this was only the second flight he’d ever taken and his embarrassment was mixed with giddy excitement. This wasn’t just any flight: Adam and Amelia were going to Maui on a fully-paid weekend trip, courtesy of the annual Maui Waves of Disruption tech conference.

Organized by TechCrunch, the leading Silicon Valley blog, the conference showcased thirty promising young companies that would show off their products at the two-day expo. Journalists, investors, and spectators from around the globe paid big money to attend, checking out the new companies by day and networking at huge hotel parties by night.

Adam and Amelia’s start-up, Doreye, had been selected for the expo on November 15, exactly a month earlier, and Adam had hardly been able to concentrate on anything since. A free vacation was nice, but even better: Lisa was going to be in Maui the very same weekend for Patty Hawkins’s sister’s wedding. Adam couldn’t believe his good fortune: finally, fate or God or whatever was starting to make up for the shabby life he and Amelia had had until now.

He was fairly certain he had bombed all his final exams for the term, but he didn’t care. Who could think about schoolwork when he was about to be on a Hawaiian beach with the super hot love of his life?

“I think the gate’s that way,” Amelia said when he joined her on the other side of security. He couldn’t help but be impressed by his sister’s calm demeanor. Since the summer, she’d gotten comfortable presenting Doreye and dealing with the press around it, and she seemed to be treating this like just one more interview, as though flying to Maui to stay in a five-star hotel was a normal part of everyday business.

“Aren’t you even a little excited?” he asked as he zipped his bag shut.

Amelia looked up. “Honestly?” Her face broke into a huge grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited for anything.” She had been working around the clock for the past three months, struggling to balance Doreye with her schoolwork. The only break she ever took was on Wednesday nights when she went to the Lair to play VOSTRA, the virtual reality game her friend George had introduced her to. Otherwise, her autumn term had been a blur of coding, press interviews, meetings with her engineering team, class, and just enough homework not to flunk out. She and Adam hadn’t had time for movie nights or anything outside of Doreye, and she was glad they had the flight—just the two of them—to hang out a little.

She laughed as Adam pulled her into a playful hug. This was going to be such an epic weekend.

CHAPTER 2:

Hawaii 2.0

W
hen they exited the terminal in Maui, they saw a man in a suit holding a sign that read
Adam and Amelia Dory
.

The twins looked at each other. “Our driver,” Adam mouthed, with a grin. They had a
driver
. And that was after the first class seats and flight attendants who had actually known their names and handed each of them a glass of champagne and real silverware for dinner, along with a little package of socks, mints, and a tooth brush.

The Land Rover pulled into the Ritz Carlton, a magnificent white fortress surrounded by lavish tropical gardens, fountains, and palm trees. Observing that the trunks of the palm trees were wrapped with Christmas lights, Amelia wondered what it was like to sing holiday carols when it was 90 degrees outside. A beautiful Hawaiian woman wearing a white wrap dress greeted them with leis made of real flowers and led them to their room.

Their suite was airy and bright. Sunlight reflected off the teak wood walls and floor. Two queen beds with plush white comforters faced French windows that opened onto a majestic stone-carved balcony overlooking the whitest sand and bluest water Amelia had ever seen.

Amelia walked out onto the balcony. “Adam, come look at this view!”

But Adam was rummaging through his suitcase for his phone charger. He had forgotten to shut off his phone on the plane and the battery had died; he had been stressed about finding a power outlet since landing more than an hour ago. She looked back and saw him plugging the phone into the wall and furiously tapping a text message.

“Who are you so anxious to get ahold of?”

Adam looked up. “I told Lisa I’d text her when we got here.”

Amelia was afraid of that. She knew Lisa was going to be here for the Hawkins-Bronson wedding and was worried she’d be a distraction to Adam. “Are you going to see her?”

“Probably,” Adam said. Who was he kidding? He was going to see her even if it killed him. “This place is so romantic, how could we not hang out?”

Amelia swallowed. She also knew that Sundeep was here, and that Lisa had yet to break the news to Adam that she was secretly seeing Sundeep.

Amelia’s mind flashed back to that fall’s English class. Of all the classes she rarely paid attention in, the freshman Shakespeare seminar she was taking to make up for the English class she’d failed last spring was the one she paid the least attention to. Which is probably why she’d never noticed that Lisa sat a few rows behind her…until the day the professor had announced partner assignments for the final project, and she had heard him say, “Amelia Dory and Lisa Bristol, analyzing
Measure for Measure
.” Stunned, she had turned to see Lisa, whose face had gone white. Amelia had put her head in her hands. Seriously? What were the chances?

Amelia had planned to dart out of class and e-mail Lisa, hoping this whole project could be taken care of virtually, but Lisa caught up to her and suggested they meet the following evening to review the text and make an outline. Amelia reluctantly agreed.

All of the next day, Amelia was on edge. She felt jealous that Lisa got to date Sundeep, and angry that she was also cheating on her brother. Most of all, though, Amelia felt guilty that she still hadn’t told Adam the truth. She couldn’t bear the thought of his sadness and disappointment. It was the only secret she had ever kept from him.

Lisa had grabbed a large table at CoHo, the campus coffee shop, and two boys were flirting with her when Amelia arrived. Noticing Amelia, Lisa blushed and shooed them away, motioning for Amelia to take a seat at the table.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” Amelia said tartly.

“You didn’t,” Lisa said.

Silence.

“So, I was thinking…” Lisa took a deep breath and turned her attention to the text opened in front of her. Her notebook, full of diligent notes in careful handwriting, was also open, and she tapped her purple pen lightly as she spoke. “I was thinking that the analysis on
Measure for Measure
is always around Angelo and Isabella, but maybe it would be interesting to think about the relationship between Mariana and Isabella.”

Amelia hadn’t actually read the play, but she had skimmed the Wikipedia entry on her iPhone on the way to the meeting, and now she scrambled to remember who Mariana was. “Sure,” she said. “That works.”

Lisa waited for her to say more and, realizing Amelia wasn’t going to, went on. “I think we could set up an interesting dissection of the supporting female characters, and the similarities and differences between Isabella and Mariana, whose moral stances are pretty much antithetical to each other and yet, working together, the women resolve the central dilemma.” Amelia wasn’t reacting and Lisa started to realize she hadn’t read the play. “And, of course,” Lisa continued, “consider the implications of having Mistress Overdone—the prostitute—in the work. Like, is Shakespeare trying to drop a hint that we all prostitute ourselves for something, even a nun like Isabella?”

Amelia nodded absently. “Sure. That sounds good.”

“Okay,” Lisa said. She was beginning to sound a little frustrated by Amelia’s neutrality. “Well, I actually really like this stuff, so what if I take a stab at the outline and I’ll e-mail it to you?”

“Great,” Amelia said, starting to stand up. If she sat there any longer, she was certain that Sundeep would walk in and join them, and she’d have to pretend not to care.

Lisa looked at her in disbelief. Was Amelia really going to let her do this whole project? Lisa wasn’t letting her off
that
easily. “Let’s meet again later this week to talk about it,” she said.

Amelia stopped and searched for an excuse. There was nothing. She sighed. “Yeah, sure.”

By the following week, Lisa had e-mailed Amelia a thorough outline of her proposed thesis. Amelia read it on her laptop during class. It actually made the book sound kind of interesting, which led her to read the play. Well, most of it.

When they met again, Amelia had been a little more animated. Lisa had proposed that they write that Isabella used Mariana for her own gain, and, therefore, was no better than Mistress Overdone, the Madame in the local brothel. But Amelia insisted Isabella had done what was necessary to stick to her moral grounds and that made her strong and respectable. Besides, she said, Mariana didn’t have strong morals, she just wanted to get married.