If You, Then Me, Page 2

I rolled my eyes. It would take me too long to explain to her why I couldn’t plan and throw a party for myself that evening, so instead I said, “Not possible.”

  “Go out to dinner.”

  “I can’t drive.”

  “Buy balloons.”

  I really had to work on some of these stock responses. “I’m not a child.”

  “Get a manicure.”

  “I thought you were supposed to know me.”

  “Make a cake.”

  “You know that Mom doesn’t keep baking supplies around.”

  It gave me an idea, though. I scrounged through the cabinets until I found a pouch of instant cocoa and bag of old marshmallows. I was born in the winter, and every year on my birthday my mother would make us two mugs of hot chocolate and we’d sit together on the couch and watch movies. It was one of the few nights she took off from grading papers and spent the whole evening with me. I made myself a mug and went to my bedroom.

  It was a simple room: a few magazine and newspaper cutouts of Mitzy Erst taped over my bed and my huge computer whirring beneath my desk. I’d built it myself with parts I’d found online, including the ugly brown tower case that I’d spray-painted silver to make it look new.

  I kept the lights off and pulled down the shades, revealing posters of palm trees that I’d taped to their insides. I woke my desktop and set it to California mode. The screen warmed, emitting hazy, buttery light into the room.

  “Wiser, play ocean sounds,” I said, and sank into the tangled comforter on my bed. “Tell me about California.”

  I sat on my bed, sipping my chocolate and listening to Wiser describe the crisp blue of the Pacific Ocean and the rocky cliffs lined with cypress trees, the orange sunsets and the mornings rising out of the fog. It wasn’t a huge celebration, but it was mine.

  Two

  I woke the next morning to the sound of my mother making breakfast. I sat up, wondering if I had imagined the night before, but after a quick glance through my phone history, I knew it had been true. Lars Lang had called me and told me I’d been accepted to the Foundry. I fell back into my bed and grinned until my mother’s voice brought me back to reality.

  “Xia? Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”

  It was Saturday, which meant chores. I slid out of bed and glanced around my room, wishing I had been born in the future so that I wouldn’t have to waste my time doing all my tasks manually. Click, bed made. Click, laundry gathered and stuffed in the machine. Click, dishes washed and driveway shoveled. Click, homework done.

  I didn’t know what I would tell my mother. She wouldn’t like the idea of me leaving school, even if the Foundry was technically just a different school. She’d think it was the first step to dropping out.

  I picked up my phone and dialed Lars Lang’s number. It rang for a while before he picked up.

  “Yes?”

  I was surprised by his gruff tone. “Is this Lars Lang?”

  “Yes. Who’s this?” He sounded like he’d been sleeping. I checked the clock. It wasn’t that early.

  “Xia Chan. You left me a message yesterday?”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “It’s, um, nine thirty.”

  “I’m in California. It’s six thirty in the morning on a Saturday. That’s basically airport time.”

  My throat seized. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking—”

  “It’s okay. Just give me a minute to wake up.”

  There was a long pause. I heard shuffling in the background. Dishes clanking. The beep of what sounded like a microwave. “Look,” he finally said. “It’s too early for me to do my whole spiel so I’m going to skip the niceties and get straight to the point. I love Wiser. The idea, the execution—your algorithm for scanning the user’s data to generate future outcomes is really something else. And making it the user’s future self and not some disembodied godlike voice . . . so smart. The possibilities are endless.”

  I’d never thought of Wiser in such professional terms and was surprised by how fancy she sounded.

  “The coding is pretty messy, but that’s what we’re here for. We have resources at the Foundry that you can’t find anywhere else. Not just money, but access.”

  “Xia?” my mother called. I ignored her.

  “I think Wiser could be the next big thing, and I want to help you develop it,” Lars continued. “We’d love to have you join our next class of founders. What do you think?”

  I felt such a swell of emotion that I didn’t know how to respond. I was excited and nervous and worried that he’d made a mistake, that he was accidentally calling me when he meant to be calling someone else, because how could all of his praise apply to me? No one in Worcester thought I was a genius, or even that special. The best I got was weird. I’d started programming because I was lonely and bored, because I wanted company and didn’t have any. Though I’d taken all of the coding classes my high school offered, they were pretty basic, and I’d had to teach myself the more advanced stuff from online tutorials and books that I’d borrowed from the library. How could someone like that have what it takes to get into the Foundry?

  “This isn’t a joke, is it? You really are Lars Lang?”

  He laughed. “I really am. And no, it’s not a joke.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I whispered.

  “I came here ten years ago and I still can’t believe it. Don’t worry, you’re not alone.”

  “Xia?” my mother called again. “Are you talking to someone?”

  “I’m coming!” I shouted to her. “Just getting dressed.” I turned back to the phone. “Sorry, that was my mom.”

  “It’s okay, I have one too,” Lars said. “Think about it. Let me know in a week—”

  “I don’t need to think about it,” I said, cutting him off. “I accept.”

  I could almost hear him smile. “Wonderful. I’ll have my assistant send you all the details. Oh, and Xia? Enjoy the breakfast.”

  I hung up and pressed the phone to my chest. It was real. I was going to California. Now all I had to do was convince my mother.

  “Did you do something to the microwave?” my mother asked when I sat down. She seemed to be in a bad mood that morning, though I didn’t know why.

  “No,” I said sheepishly and averted my eyes. “Why?”

  My mother was small and wiry, tightly wound. She was a practical woman, with short hair and sensible clothes. She slid half of the scrambled eggs and tomato onto my plate and sat down next to me. “It made my tea overflow. It’s never done that before.”

  “Weird,” I said, trying to sound convincing. “I can take a look at it.”

  My mother studied me like she knew I was lying. “Did you have hot chocolate last night?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I saw the packet in the trash. Whose birthday was it?”

  “No one’s. I was—” I should have told her then, but I clammed up. “I was cold after shoveling.”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “The landlady told me she saw you with no coat.”

  My mother had an incredible ability to see everything, even when she wasn’t actually there. I wondered if the landlady had also told her about my California comment, but she said nothing.

  She ate her eggs quickly. She was always in a rush. “How’s that essay going?”

  Essay. Did I have an essay due soon? I couldn’t remember. “Fine.”

  “I have to meet with a student today, and have to grade papers before then. Can you—”

  “Make sure the driveway is shoveled before you leave,” I said, finishing her sentence. “I’ll do it now.”

  I finished my breakfast and put on my coat. Outside, my mother’s car was buried under half a foot of snow. Gina was already there, shoveling out her dad’s car.

  “You’re looking uncharacteristically cheerful,” she said. “Since when do you have this much energy in the morning?”

  I glanced up at the window and lowered my voice to an excited whisper. “Since
I got accepted to the Foundry.”

  Gina gasped and stuck her shovel into the bank. “What? When?”

  “They called me last night.”

  “Of course they did,” Gina said. “I always knew you were going to be famous. I mean, you invented a thing that predicts the future. Everyone wants to know the future.”

  “Well, it doesn’t actually tell you the future,” I said. “It pretends to be you in the future and gives you advice.”

  “Right, whatever. Same thing.”

  Gina wasn’t into coding, but she always listened, even when I knew I was boring her out of her skull. Her parents ran a restaurant in town and wanted her and her brothers to take it over one day.

  “It’s not fair. Here you are, spending most of the day in the back of the class, secretly programming your phone and barely paying attention and still getting straight As and getting into tech supercamp for kid geniuses while I’m here in the front row, taking notes and still getting Bs.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not a camp, and I’m not a genius.”

  “Um, remind me again who just called you?”

  “Lars Lang.”

  “Exactly. Lars Lang. Even I know who he is.” Gina narrowed her eyes. “Wait. Does this mean you’re moving to California?”

  I paused, torn between excitement and guilt.

  “You’re leaving me here?”

  “You like it here. Everyone knows that. And anyway, you have your brothers.”

  “I hate my brothers.”

  “It’s just for a year.”

  “I know. I’m just giving you a hard time. What about school? Have you told your mom?”

  “Not yet.” I glanced up at the window. “She’s not going to like it. She’s going to say I’m dropping out.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Of course not. It’s a school. I still have to take English and history there,” I said. “I just get to take business and accounting instead of math, and computer programming instead of chemistry.”

  “But the whole point is to become the Founder and get a bunch of money so you can start a company, right? I filmed your video. I know what the Foundry is about. They put you up in a nice house with a bunch of other kid geniuses and you compete to get the top spot, which you’ll obviously get. Then they’ll give you a million dollars, which you’ll use to hire people, and once you have people and money, you’ll have a company. And you’ll be the boss, which means you’ll have to run it. It’s not like you can just leave and come back to school.”

  She had a point. Though I’d always wanted to turn Wiser into a company, it was mainly because I wanted to share her with others and because I liked the idea of getting paid to work on her all day. I honestly hadn’t put a lot of thought into what running a company day-to-day would look like, other than delivering product launches and giving interviews.

  “First of all, I probably won’t win. I’m a little worried that they made a mistake and called the wrong Xia Chan.”

  Gina rolled her eyes. “How many people here are named Xia? I mean, come on.”

  “And second of all, if I’m the boss, I can do whatever I want. I can hire someone to manage things while I’m finishing school. Look at Lars Lang. It’s not like he’s running his businesses day-to-day. And even if I do win, the company could still fail. Lots of companies fail.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not just anyone.”

  “Maybe I should emphasize the school part when I talk to her,” I said. “Pitch it more like a cool program that’ll be good for applying to colleges, instead of the whole running-a-company thing.”

  “Have you told your online boyfriend yet?” Gina asked.

  Even in the cold, I blushed. She was talking about ObjectPermanence, a boy I’d been exchanging messages with for over a year on a chat forum for teen programmers called BitBop.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “And no. We don’t talk about specific details. I don’t even know his name.”

  “Maybe he got in, too. He’s a programmer, right?”

  It had occurred to me that he could have applied to the Foundry, but the thought seemed too far-fetched. Even if he’d applied, the likelihood of us both getting in was nearly impossible. Still, for a moment I let myself imagine us meeting in person. Would I even know it was him? “There are thousands of teenage programmers online. What are the chances?”

  “But it’s possible, right? I wonder what he looks like. What if he’s amazingly beautiful?”

  My face grew hot. It got that way every time I talked about him.

  Gina winced. “Or he could be the opposite.”

  “He can’t be. He’s too funny. And nice. And smart.”

  Gina raised an eyebrow. “Everyone knows that hot boys aren’t nice because they don’t have to be, and nice boys got that way because they didn’t have anything else to go on.”

  “That’s a stereotype perpetuated by movies and magazines that assumes that there’s only one ideal form of beauty, when really, hotness is in the eye of the beholder.”

  Gina laughed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, Nietzsche.”

  “Nietzsche definitely didn’t say that, but thanks.”

  “What if he’s not even our age at all? What if he’s a pervert? A sixty-year-old man posing as a sixteen-year-old?”

  “He’s not sixty years old,” I said. “My mom is forty-three and she can barely figure out how to use her phone. Sixty-year-olds aren’t on coding forums on BitBop.”

  “I don’t know. All you know about him is that he listens to Beethoven while coding. Do you know who else likes Beethoven? My dad. And dads in general.”

  “Young people like Beethoven,” I insisted, realizing how weak of an argument it was only after it left my mouth. “Everyone knows Beethoven’s Fifth. And anyway, he told me he’s in high school. And he talks about his dad a lot and how strict he is.”

  “That’s exactly what a sixty-year-old man would say to try and convince you he’s a teenager.”

  “Or exactly what a teenager would say.”

  “What time does he normally reply to you?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The evening?”

  “So after work,” Gina said.

  “Or after school.”

  “It’s settled then. He’s a dad.”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s not a dad. And he’s not sixty.”

  “It’s your fantasy,” Gina said with a shrug. “I wonder what the other kids will be like. Do you think they’ll all be total weirdos?”

  “Why would they be weirdos?”

  “You know coding people. They sit alone all day with their computers. Very pale. Have no social skills.”

  “Do I have no social skills?”

  “Except for you,” Gina said. “Though you are pale. But it suits you. It’s part of your look.”

  I didn’t realize I had a look. “What’s my look?”

  “You know, that outfit you always wear—the black turtleneck and the black pants, like all the famous CEOs. It kind of makes you look nerdy and sickly but also smart and apathetic, like you live in a big cloudy city and drink coffee five times a day.”

  “I’m not sickly.”

  Gina held her hands up. “I’m just an unbiased observer.”

  I glanced down at my outfit, which was comprised of a black turtleneck and black pants. Mitzy Erst had once said in an interview that you should always dress as the person you wanted to be, which I’d taken to heart and replaced most of my clothes with the uniform I was wearing that morning, a uniform I’d seen so many tech founders wear onstage.

  “It’s practical and warm.”

  “I know.”

  “Your description makes me sound mean,” I said, frowning, but then felt overly conscious of the fact that I was frowning, so I tried to force a smile. But that felt unnatural and creepy, so I decided that no facial expression would be best, and made my face go blank, which ended up proving her point. Apathetic.

  “Apathetic is differ
ent than mean,” Gina said.

  “I’m not apathetic,” I insisted. “I care about lots of things.”

  “I know you do,” Gina said. “You just look detached, that’s all. It’s cool. You’re doing your own thing.”

  I squinted at her, wondering if she was just saying that to make me feel better.

  “I can totally picture you all pale and serious in your black turtleneck, standing in front of a big screen with one of those pointer things.”

  “I won’t be pale after I spend a year in California,” I said.

  “You will if you keep wearing turtlenecks. Do you think your mom will even let you move that far away?”

  “It’s not like she’s here most of the time anyway. She probably won’t even notice.” I wanted to believe it so I wouldn’t feel guilty for leaving, but I knew deep down that it wasn’t true.

  “She’s your mom,” Gina said, incredulous. “Of course she’ll notice.”

  “Maybe if I tell her they’re giving me money, she’ll let me go. Apparently they give all the fellows an expense account when we arrive.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know. His assistant is sending the details.”

  “He’s having his assistant tell you? That means it’s a lot. When restaurants have menus with no price it means it’s too expensive to print.”

  Though I didn’t think of my mother and me as badly off, I couldn’t think of a time when the stress of not having enough money didn’t permeate my mother’s mood daily. It was like a gray cloud that followed us around, threatening to open up into a downpour. It was hard to imagine what it would feel like to be finally standing in the sun. It didn’t seem possible, like the rain cloud was an inextricable part of our lives.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Gina asked.

  It was the first time I’d considered that the money would actually be mine to spend. “I don’t know. Buy a new phone, I guess.”

  “That’s it?”

  The truth was I didn’t apply because of the money. I wanted to go to the Foundry because I felt like it was the only place in the world where I’d fit in.

  “I don’t know. There are probably rules and stuff. Like we can only use it on school supplies.”