INTERFACE — Day 8

By dinner, there were several hundred texts and a growing sub-reddit about Flavor of Harvard.

“Listen to this one,” Iris said scrolling Reddit. “It’s the nostalgia for me. I hope they nickname like Flav did.” She looked up. “Are we doing that?”

“I think so,” I said with a full bite of mac and cheese.

“Oh,” she added. “Another one just came in mentioning Justin Tilly. That’s the third time I’ve seen his name. Y’all know him?”

I looked to Wes who shrugged at the mention of his name. “Let me look him up.” His left eyebrow pulled up when he was in deep thought, I noticed. And he bit his bottom lip during tasks. “Ah, oh, well, damn, oh, I see!”

“What?” Iris asked. “Verdammt, use your words!”

“Coming from the girl who just cursed in German,” he laughed. “He’s a Kennedy.”

When Wes turned the phone around, my eyes widened and so did Iris’. “Is he ever,” she said. “Verdammt again!”

There was a small knock on the door. “Who is that?” I asked. “You invite anyone?”

They both shook their heads no and my southern instinct wanted to reach for a baseball bat.

“It’s probably just the RA,” Iris said before stuffing a dinner roll and pushing back her chair.

When she opened the door, Deacon stood stiff in the doorway. “Your address is in the directory,” he said, still for a moment and then he ducked past Iris to pull up a chair to the fourth edge of the table. “I’m setting up a clickable mockup wireframe now, but I’ll need visuals from the designer. Judging from clothing, I’m guessing that’ll be you.”

He motioned toward Iris who wore a flowery, floor length skirt with a bell-sleeved eyelet top and a crown braid with strategic fly aways pulled down at the edges. “Guilty!” she replied pulling her chair closer to him. “I’m most familiar with Adobe XD and I have a few sketches. What’s your email? I set up a Google Doc for real time access.”

When he told her, her thumbs worked so quickly that they went blurry. “Sent.”

“Oh,” he said clearly impressed. “Oh! You’ve already designed most of the application interfaces. This is… This is… damn.”

“She’s basically learned German after two and a half Rosetta Stone weeks,” Wes said leaning into Deacon.

“Oh stop,” she smiled. “It’s all true though so you could keep going. Alright, you’re all added on the Google Doc.”

I opened the new laptop I’d gotten the day before realizing a gaping hole in my technological intellect. As I looked around the table, I weighed my place there. Deacon’s position was easy – everything techy. Iris’ too. Deacon had taken one look at her and saw aesthetic potential. Wes was a phenomenal team builder. He made people comfortable and at ease. He’d have to take on people management. But what could I do? I ran through my strengths and weaknesses and concluded that I’d be the Gerry of the group.

My eldest brother, Gerry, had gone pre-med to Yale. While we were all at home, he’d positioned himself the leader. I couldn’t remember if he’d done it, or if it were natural, but the rest of us followed his lead. I remembered the comfort of following a confident person around the potentially dangerous farm.

I would take the lead.

But a leader can’t be shaky with technology and obviously learning the basics of a new laptop. I gently closed it and decided to stabilize my place as leader right then and there, before it was too late. It had been my idea after all.

“Iris,” I said with a tone shift. “Please take notes as I speak and track them in the Google Document, so we don’t forget our targets.” I stood to walk the living area with my back straight and shoulders in place just like my mother taught during debates in our tiny Alabama living area. “Monetization should be the first bullet. Is this application free at the nomination stage and do we charge a separate fee for each of the subsequent stages? Or is this a subscription model?”

“Freemeuim,” Deacon said seemingly okay with me standing and him sitting. “Free at first to get them hooked and then charge as much as possible.”

“In-app purchases could work too,” Wes said. “Like super likes or boosts to get their guy closer to the top.”

“That’s actually smart,” Deacon said.

“Gee thanks,” Wes replied. “Don’t sound so shocked.”

Deacon ignored his quip but spoke. “Forgo ads for now, yes?”

“Yes,” I stated with authority. “Based on the response from just today, I think we should keep partnership to a minimum until we see where we can take it on our own.”

“Agreed,” all three of them said together and I felt my position as leader being accepted.

“Iris and Deacon,” I said staring at them without slouching. “You’ll work closely together to design as our development team. Wesley, you’ll be our human resources guy, taking care of contestants, organizing numbers, emails, appointments, and running meetings. All things people related. Are you good with that as a role?”

“I am,” he replied with a sweet grin, and I felt a wave of relief he wasn’t angry I’d given him the job without asking first.

“I’ll register the business, trademarks, draft a project timeline, and setup for launch,” I said. “What’s our target launch date?”

Wes looked to Deacon, while Deacon looked to Iris, and Iris looked to me. “You tell us, Boss.”

“Two weeks,” I said mustering as much confidence as possible while having no idea if that’d be enough time to do all of that and pass our classes, too. “Two weeks may be tight, but we must strike while the iron is hot. In the meantime., upload all receipts in the shared document so we can track purchases, including dinners like this one. All company purchases can be written off.”

I resumed my chair and slowly reopened my laptop. Quiet chattering of fingers filled the air and Wes gave my knee a gentle squeeze before mouthing.

“Good job.”