The Anti Social Network

T
hree months had passed since the first phone call and the threats were still coming. They weren’t constant or predictable, which made them even more disturbing: two weeks would go by without a word, just long enough for Adam to think they had given up, and then he’d get a call at two o’clock in the morning. “Get Amelia back on board or we’re telling Stanford and your fancy little boss what you did,” the all-too-familiar voice would say. In a rage, Adam would yell, “You can’t prove anything!” and hang up.

Students had begun moving back to campus for the new school year.

To keep their status on campus as a student residence, the Phi Delta fraternity had to reserve two rooms for non-members, and T. J.—now an alumnus—had pulled some strings to get Adam a room there. “Basically, the fraternity picks two cool dudes who they like and want to live with, but who for whatever reason decided not to pledge last spring,” T. J. had explained to Adam.

T. J. had also explained that it would be a “great networking opportunity” for Adam. “The relationships you build in the fraternity—and these are influential guys from influential families, Adam—will take you far beyond sorority mixers. It may seem like a get-wasted-and-do-stupid-things party from the outside, but the bonds you form playing beer pong at three a.m.

are indestructible, and you’d be surprised how they’ll come into play twenty years from now when you’re trying to close some deal.” Adam liked that logic and repeated it verbatim when he told Amelia.

He didn’t need T.J. to convince him to take the room, though. He tried to hide it, but he was excited about moving into a fraternity house. And this wasn’t just any fraternity house; Phi Delta was
the
frat—the one Patty and all her friends flocked to—and everyone knew it. In one quarter, Adam had gone from dweeb in the dorm to young entrepreneur in the Phi Delta house. Sophomore year was looking great.

He was in his new room, transferring books from a moving box to the floating bookshelf above the bed, when he heard an e-mail come through on his phone. Ever since he and Amelia had started their company, Adam and his iPhone had been inseparable. Any time he heard an e-mail notification, he dropped everything, interrupted any conversation, to get to it. It could be Amelia with a new development or T. J. with an urgent question, or maybe someone from the press (okay, that hadn’t happened yet, but Tom said it would), and Adam had to be prepared to jump into action at any moment.

He opened the e-mail and, as he read, he felt the blood drain from his face.
Adam,

_ We thought you might not think we were serious, so we figured we’d share a little something we found in the study after you left_]
The Family. See attached screenshot. You and Amelia aren’t the only
clever ones around here. We need Amelia to do something for us.

You have two weeks to convince her or we’re sending this out. Your
company has a blog right? Maybe we can post the picture there.

__

Your Brothers

[__] “Hey stranger.”

Adam turned to find Lisa walking through the door. She put her hands on his shoulders and leaned down to give him a kiss on the cheek.

“Everything okay? You look upset.” She furrowed her pretty brow in concern.

Adam quickly closed the e-mail and swallowed. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.

Just—it’s nothing. How are you? How is the move going?” Lisa had been assigned to a dorm across campus with a roommate from Nigeria. She was on a co-ed floor and Adam had not been pleased to discover that her neighbor was a starting player on the men’s water polo team.

“Oh, it’s great! You know Mom; she had everything unpacked and in perfect order by lunchtime, but she chipped her nail when she was putting together an
IKEA
shoe rack, so we just went to get manicures.” Lisa flashed her hands to show freshly pink-painted tips.

Adam grabbed them and pulled her close, resting his hands on her hips. “And your roommate?”

“Seyi? She is soooo sweet. Apparently her family owns a diamond mine.

Can you believe that? She went to school in Switzerland and speaks, like, nine languages. It’s crazy.”

Great, Adam thought. Another highly intimidating rich girl. “I can’t wait to meet her,” he said.

Lisa scrunched her nose. “You know you can’t. I mean, I guess you can meet her, but not as my … I mean, you know no one can know that we see each other like this.”

Adam let his hands fall from her hips, swiveling back around in his chair to face his laptop. “Yeah, I know.” He didn’t understand why Lisa still refused to tell anyone they were together or call him her boyfriend. He’d started a company, he’d gotten into a fraternity—kind of—and he had even let her take him shopping with some of the money from Doreye so he could buy a more respectable wardrobe.

“Adam, we’ve talked about this. I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” She tilted her head to the side and eyed him carefully. “Is that what’s behind all this?”

“Behind what?”

“I feel like you’ve been distant lately, like there’s something happening that you’re not telling me about.”

He turned to face her. She was wearing short white shorts and a tight pink tank top that accentuated her full breasts and small waist. God, she was pretty. He smiled reassuringly. “It’s nothing,” he lied. “I’m just a little stressed over how busy things are getting with the start-up.” Lisa’s cell phone rang and she blushed when she saw who was calling.

“I’ve gotta take this, Adam. I’ll text you later, okay? Good luck unpacking.” She pecked his cheek and scurried out of the room, answering the phone as she turned down the hallway. “Hey! I’m just leaving somewhere. I’ll be out soon, and then I can talk … ”

“I
’m calling it a day,” T. J. said as he popped his head into the Doreye office. “Have you got everything you need?”

“I’m fine.” Amelia didn’t look up from her computer, where she was deeply engrossed in coding. After a pause, it occurred to her that this might be rude, so she stopped typing and looked up. “But thanks,” she offered.

“No prob. See you tomorrow.” T. J. waved and was gone.

Amelia didn’t care how nice he was or how much Adam adored him; she still didn’t trust T. J. Bristol.

The day after their initial meeting at the incubator, T. J. had e-mailed Amelia asking if they could meet the next morning to “make sure everyone was comfortable with the situation.” She responded grudgingly. “I’ll be at the incubator at eleven o’clock.”

T. J. was already there when she arrived, sitting in the playroom typing away on his laptop. When he saw Amelia go into her office, he got up to join her. “This still a good time?”

“As good as any.”

“Listen,” he said. “I’m going to be totally straight with you. What you did was devastating to my family. We lost millions, and I’m not sure my father will ever recover his reputation or his pride. In fact, I think there’s a good chance he’s going to retire all together.” Amelia stared straight ahead, her jaw clenched, without a hint of sympathy.

“But despite the fall-out to my family, I respect what you did. And it just proved to me how insanely talented you are and how much potential you’ve got to be a part of the next generation of Silicon Valley. You’ve got guts
and
brains
and
vision, and that’s a rare combination around here. So I want you to know, right from the start, that if I have to pick sides, I’ll take yours. I am one hundred percent behind you, Amelia. I want to see you and Doreye succeed.”

Amelia squinted her eyes. She was studying T. J., trying to figure out what it was he wanted out of this. People like him made decisions on a cost-benefit basis: they calculated what they would have to give up to get what they wanted and, if the latter exceeded the former, they made the sacrifice. So, what was the benefit T. J. had estimated from supporting his father’s nemesis? she wondered.

“You can trust me, Amelia.” T. J. flashed a smile so charismatic it made her think he should have been a politician. He was so carefully put together that he must have practiced his facial expressions in the mirror—“this is the face that communicates sympathy; this is the face that communicates happiness.” Amelia wondered if anything about him was genuine, or if it was all part of a larger calculation.

“Thanks, T. J.,” she said. She didn’t trust him for a second. “I really appreciate your explaining that. I was a little worried when Adam told me who you were.”

“I can imagine,” T. J. said. “Which is why I wanted to make sure it was all on the table from the start. Also, I haven’t told Tom, so no need to worry about that.”

“Okay,” Amelia said. She actually hadn’t thought about whether or not Tom knew. She turned to her computer, hoping he’d get the hint that she wanted him to leave.

“Incidentally, I have a lot of confidence in your brother,” T.J. said. “I’m looking forward to working closely with Adam this summer. I’m going to turn him into an all-star business guy. I see a lot of myself in him, you know.”

She almost laughed. Did T.J. really think it would make her happy that he saw himself in her brother?

“Well I don’t really like the business side, so the more you two can take care of it, the better it will be for me.” She smiled weakly. “On that note, I’m going to get going on some coding.”

“Of course,” T. J. said. “Code away!”

That went exceptionally well, he thought, as he left the room. Engineers were definitely weird, but he prided himself on being able to get through to anyone.

P
atty could not wait for sophomore year to begin. In preparation, she had started a master cleanse diet, eating only raw fruits and vegetables and drinking a daily mixture of molasses, cayenne pepper and lemon juice.

It was alternately nauseating and boring, but after three weeks, she had lost eleven pounds. To reward herself, she went to Neiman Marcus, the highest-end department store in the high-end Stanford Shopping Center, to pick out a new outfit for the first day of school. She used her mother’s account to buy a cute Marc Jacobs floral-print romper and bright-blue French Sole ballet flats. Very stylish, but not too over-the-top, and all under five hundred dollars, so her mother wouldn’t even notice the purchase when the monthly statement arrived.

She rode the escalator down to the first floor, comforted by the high ceilings, busy make-up counters, and elaborate handbag displays showcasing the newest autumn trends. There was something so pleasing about the place and its promise of fresh starts and pretty new things. It melted away all her stress.

And by “all her stress,” she was thinking about Chad. He and Patty’s older sister, Shandi, had gone on vacation together in June, and then he’d moved out of the Hawkins house and into an apartment in San Francisco for his summer internship with a private equity firm. Patty didn’t really know what “private equity” meant, but her father had been very impressed that he’d landed such a prestigious role. He had explained to Mrs. Hawkins, to her and Patty’s (secret) disappointment, that Chad’s long working hours would make it impossible for him to come to Sunday dinners any more.

But Patty knew that Chad’s internship had ended last week (she’d snuck into Shandi’s room and read her day planner) and that he’d be back on campus in a couple of weeks to start his second year of business school.

She couldn’t get their last night together out of her head. His finger touching her thigh as he wiped away the drop of ice cream – it was enough to make her want to rip off her clothes right then and there.

Patty closed her eyes, shaking the thought of Chad from her mind as she stepped off the escalator. Focus on the handbags, she thought.

She headed toward the Fendi bags, just to look, but on the way, a center display of Burberry watches caught her eye. She gasped. They were so cute! Fifty or so boxes containing the watches were stacked in a circle, with several opened on top to reveal the slender silver chain band and a small square watch face with a pale-blue Burberry plaid backdrop and tear drop crystal in the center. She had to have one.

She checked the price: $275.

She glanced around, and then, casually, she picked up one of the display watches and put it on her wrist. After admiring the way it looked on her, she lowered her arm as if to test the weight. Moving around the table, she placed the display between herself and the closest store clerk, a woman at the Kiehl’s make-up counter. Then she discreetly slipped the watch off her wrist and into her handbag. She clicked the display box closed and put it back with the others, as though she had decided that the watch didn’t suit her after all.

Patty didn’t think of herself as a “stealer,” but there was something satisfying about risking it a little. It’s not like Neiman Marcus couldn’t afford it: the watch was only $275. And she’d just made a purchase anyway.

Besides, she knew she’d never get caught. Why would anyone suspect that a well-dressed Atherton girl with a Neiman’s account would steal something everyone knew she could afford?