Free The Hunt by Jennifer Sturman

he protested. “In fact, we were pretty nerdy. And why are you so surprised I was in a fraternity?” The light finally changed, and we hurried across the street.
    Because fraternities are so normal, I thought but didn’t say, nor did I say I shouldn’t be surprised given how normal everything else was about him and his family. “Was there a matching sorority?” I asked instead. “Where people wore a lot of pink?”
    “Caro’s sorority was sort of like a sister sorority. And Caro likes to wear pink. So, yes, I guess there was a matching sorority where people wore a lot of pink.”
    A mental picture of a sorority house filled with pastel-clad triathletes flashed before my eyes. I gave silent thanks that I’d lacked the spirit of adventure applying to a college in California would have required before returning to the matter at hand. “So what did the male adolescents have to say?”
    “Ben and Luisa are right over there,” Peter said, pointing them out in line at a coffee cart. “Why don’t I wait and tell you all at the same time?”

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    The four of us purchased beverages and found a table on the plaza. It was a pleasant spot, especially during those fleeting moments when the sun managed to break through the clouds, and a breeze carried the faint notes of a saxophone accompanied by the occasional clang of a cable car’s bell or a barking dog. My seat faced directly onto the statue at the plaza’s center, a woman doing an arabesque atop a Corinthian column. She looked energetic and healthful, as if she hadn’t been deprived of vital carbonated and artificially sweetened cola refreshment. I, on the other hand, had the Rice-a-Roni theme song running through my head, courtesy of the cable cars, and was trying to make do with seltzer, which was doing nothing to relieve my withdrawal symptoms.
    “This is a useless drink,” I said, jabbing at the ice in my plastic cup with a straw.
    “Only forty-one hours left,” said Peter, his tone encouraging.
    “You forfeited your right to comment when you let your mother trick me out like a prom queen,” I said to him.
    “I thought it was Bridesmaid Barbie,” he said.
    “The two are hardly mutually exclusive,” I said.
    Luisa giggled.
    I looked up, startled. Giggling was as unprecedented as blushing. “Did you just giggle?” I asked her.
    “What can I say? It’s funny.” She pulled her cigarette case and lighter out of her handbag.
    “I’m glad you’re taking such pleasure in my suffering,” I said.
    “Who wants to debrief first?” asked Peter, wisely steering the conversation onto a more productive path. “Luisa, how about you? Did you find a way to reach Iggie?”
    She shook her head. “I had no idea he was such a man of mystery. First I left messages at Igobe, and I even tried to send a couple of e-mails to obvious addresses like [email protected] and [email protected], but they bounced right back. Then I must have made calls to two dozen of our classmates, including everyone who lived on our hallway sophomore year, but even his old roommates didn’t know how to find him. They haven’t heard from him since college, and one of them is still harboring quite the grudge—I got an earful about how Iggie borrowed his autographed picture of Bill Gates and never returned it.”
    “Bill Gates? As in the guy who founded Microsoft? That Bill Gates?” asked Ben, who had been silently sipping his latte up until now.
    I nodded. “Iggie always used to wonder if he should bother sticking around until graduation. He said he already knew more than most of the professors and Bill Gates dropped out of college and did just fine without a degree. If you haven’t gathered as much by now, Iggie was never the sort to be paralyzed by self-doubt.”
    “He was absolutely confident that he would eventually be as successful—if not more so—as Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or any of the other technology moguls,” added Luisa. “And this was even before the Google guys