“Why?”

“You’re eligible to buy one hundred shares at eighteen dollars a share. So you need to mail in a check for eighteen hundred dollars.”

Jess grinned in disbelief. “Eighteen hundred dollars?”

“No, no, no, you have to do this,” Emily said. “After the IPO, the price will go through the roof. Daddy’s buying. Aunt Joan is buying….”

“Maybe they can buy some for me too.”

“No, this is important. Stop thinking like a student.”

“I am a student.”

“Just leave that aside for the moment, okay? Follow the directions. You’ll do really, really well.”

“How do you know?”

“Have you heard of Priceline?”

“No.”

“Sycamore Networks?”

Jess shook her head as Emily rattled off the names of companies that had gone public in 1999. The start-ups had opened at sixteen dollars, thirty-eight dollars, and were now selling for hundreds of dollars a share. “Just read the material, and mail the check….”

“But I don’t have eighteen hundred dollars,” Jess reminded her sister.

“So borrow.”

“All right, will you lend me eighteen hundred dollars?”

Emily lost patience. “If you’d just temporarily give up your aversion to money …”

“I don’t have an aversion to money,” Jess said. “I don’t have any. There’s a big difference.”

“I don’t think you understand what I’m giving you,” said Emily. “I get only ten on my Friends and Family list.”

“So it’s sort of an honor,” said Jess.

“It’s sort of an opportunity. Please don’t lose this stuff. You have ten days to take care of this. Just follow through, okay?”

“If you insist.” Emily’s bossiness brought out the diva in Jess.

“Promise.”