“Well, no, not exactly. That’s what I want to do, but that’s a ton of work. I’d need to be coding for years before I could do that—if ever. So I’m just trying to do a baby version of it for my midterm project.”
“But if you could really do it, you think there would be a market for it?”
“Oh, yeah, definitely. Those apps are huge.”
“May I?” He takes my phone back, scrolling through the app and looking interested. “I see what you mean about these other apps. The UI isn’t very clean, either.”
“What’s UI?”
“User interface. It’s like how the app looks and works—as opposed to UX, which is all about the user experience.”
“How do you know all that? Oh, right—your brother.” An idea pops into my head. “Do you think he’d be interested in checking out a mock-up?”
“Of your app idea?” Robert looks down at the phone, scrolling through each app for a few more seconds. He looks back up at me. “Yeah—could you put one together?”
“Of course. I could do some sketches of what the home screen would look like, the feed, the user profiles, all that stuff.”
“That would be great.”
“And I’ll do a few paragraphs about the idea, too. Like the names of the other apps that are kind of similar, but why I don’t like them.”
He grins. “You never know. Doesn’t hurt to try, right?”
“Exactly. There’s always room for competition—look at Facebook after MySpace, or Lyft after Uber. You don’t have to be the first. You just have to be the best.”
“I’ll take fifteen percent as your agent, please,” he jokes.
Libby’s been pushing me to do this for ages. Even though we’re not speaking right now, I still feel her presence. She’d be proud.
My stomach flutters. I haven’t been so excited about something in forever.
I blow off studying for my exams and spend all weekend sketching out concepts instead. Late Sunday night, I’ve finally finished putting together my idea: a comprehensive DIY lifestyle app for teens. A few hours of internet research in the library helps me find templates for business plans, so I even write up a five-page document explaining the basics: the concept, who’d use it, similar apps, and a few sentences on how I might make money off it down the road. I found an article in Inc. magazine about my favorite existing DIY app, and they mentioned that they make money by forming partnerships with brands and using affiliate links. I don’t know if that would work for me, but I put it in the plan just in case, adding the idea of letting people sell their crafts through the site, like Etsy.
I email the proposal to Robert on Monday morning, who passes it to his brother, Bill. In between the madness of exams, we exchange a few back-and-forth emails that week. It certainly seems like Bill is interested, but I’m not exactly holding my breath, either.
I mean, I’m a seventeen-year-old girl. Is some investor I’ve never met really going to fund my app? Dream on.
nineteen
ROBERT: FREEDOM!!!
ME: I know—I’m SO relieved midterms are finally over. How’d you do?
ROBERT: Okay, I think. U?
ME: Decent. I hope.
ROBERT: So, listen, crazy news. Are you free tomorrow?
ME: Yeah, why? Was planning to veg—first Saturday without homework in forever.
ROBERT: Wanna go to Paris?
ME: WHAT?!?!
ROBERT: My brother wants to meet you.
ME: OMG, seriously?
ROBERT: Super serious.
ME: YES!!!
ME: Paris in the springtime!!!
ME: Shit. I don’t have any money. My parents cut off my credit cards ROBERT: He’ll fly you out. The flight is like twenty quid ROBERT: It’ll be in and out, just there for the day ME: I don’t care if I’m only there for an hour. Paris!!! Aaah!!
Saturday morning, Robert arranges for a car to pick us up and take us to Gatwick Airport. We land in Paris after a quick hour-long flight, where another car is waiting at Charles de Gaulle for us. I press my nose against the glass as we make our way into the city, craning my neck for glimpses of the Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Coeur in the distance.
“You’re acting like you’ve never seen buildings before,” Robert says, smiling at me as our car makes its way up through the southern end of the city into Paris. The wide boulevards are lined with buildings that look like cream-colored Lego blocks. Everything is uniform, elegant, picture perfect.
“Never these buildings. It’s my first time in Paris.” A few of my friends took a weekend trip to Paris with their parents when I was younger, but we just never had the money. And after Mum hit it big, we started taking yearly beach vacations to exotic, faraway places like the Maldives. Paris is in our European backyard, and yet I’ve still never been—like people who have lived in London their whole lives and never been inside Westminster Abbey.
I take in the tree-lined streets, the packs of teenage boys with skinny jeans and messy hair, the bicycles and mopeds whizzing by. Something about this place makes me feel at home.
“You didn’t tell me it was your first time!”
“You didn’t ask,” I say, smiling at him.
We make our way farther into the heart of Paris, the Eiffel Tower so close I feel like I could reach out and touch it, finally pulling up to the George V, a grand hotel just off the Champs-élysées. “My brother’s Paris office is just around the corner, so he has all his meetings here,” Robert says.
We walk into the lobby, where a floral arrangement as tall as I am is majestically displayed on a marble coffee table in the center of the room.
“Le bar, s’il vous pla?t,” Robert says
“You didn’t tell me you spoke French!” I say.
He grins. “You didn’t ask.”
The bar is charming, with soft yellow up-lighting and a total Moulin Rouge vibe. The tables have black marble tops, and the chairs are wood-paneled with maroon upholstery. His brother sits at one of the corner tables. He’s younger and more normal-looking than I expected—dressed more like a university kid than a businessman, in a hoodie and jeans. He stands when Robert walks over, throwing his arms around him and engulfing Robert in a big hug.
“You look like shit!” he says. They have the same northern accent.
“You smell like poo,” Robert replies.
Brothers are weird.
“Bill, this is Charlotte Weston,” Robert says, introducing me.