“Oh my God, it is him!”
Chris must not have heard the first alert, but he heard the second one. He stopped, looked at his screen, smiled, and then turned slowly in place, giving the quad a solid three-sixty spin. Then he started walking again, a little more slowly, searching and listening as he went. Maddie’s eyes were glued to him. The rest of the girls were watching the scene like a tennis match, swapping from Chris to Maddie and back to Chris.
When Maddie’s phone let out a triple bloop, they all jumped and their eyes darted down to the screen. It was a picture of Chris and someone who looked like his little sister. The picture flashed faster as Chris got closer.
They all looked up when Chris stopped behind Zoe. “Hey.” He turned his phone so they could see the picture on his screen.
Allie recognized it right away. The four of them were dressed in matching green shirts with matching green hats and matching green socks. “St. Patrick’s Day, I’m guessing.”
“Nah, just a random Thursday,” Zoe said sarcastically, and Maddie shot her a look.
Chris smiled. “Well, it’s a nice pic and all, but it’s not very helpful.” Then he looked down and saw that the phone in the center of the table had his picture prominently displayed, tinted red and flashing fast. “One of you is going to have to tell me who that phone belongs to.”
“We could. But it’s way more fun to keep you guessing,” Maddie said, wearing that confident, flirty smile of hers.
“Here, have a seat,” Zoe said as she scooted over to make room for him between her and Maddie. Chris sat. And then he reached forward and set his phone on the table, right next to Maddie’s, with less than an inch of space between them.
He glanced around the table. “We had English together last year, didn’t we?” he asked Emma, and she nodded. Then he looked at Zoe. “I know you. You’re Quinn’s little sister.”
“Zoe,” she said.
“Chris,” he said to the whole group. “Is that your phone?” he asked, and Zoe shook her head. Then he looked at Allie. She took her phone from her pocket and showed it to him. Emma held hers up before he had time to ask. “So, process of elimination says…you.” He glanced at Maddie.
“Maybe,” she said.
He reached out, gave his phone a little nudge, and it hit Maddie’s. The two phones glowed white and then flashed their leaderboards.
He stood and looked down at the phones. “Looks like you’re my eight,” he said.
“And you’re my nine,” Maddie said.
“Good. You bumped Sean from that spot,” Chris said as he gestured toward his table. “That’s not going to go over well.”
“Why not?”
“He started off as my one this morning, but he’s been slipping off the board all day. I think it’s crushing his ego.” He shrugged. “That’s okay; he could use a little ego check anyway.”
Allie stole a glance at Chris’s leaderboard. It was hard not to notice that it was filled almost entirely with girls.
Woo-hoo, Chris’s and Maddie’s phones called out simultaneously.
“Well, I guess we should make it official.” Chris reached for his phone, held it at arm’s length, and leaned in close to Maddie as he snapped a selfie. Seconds later, all their phones lit up with a picture of the two of them.
He stuffed his phone in his pocket as he stood. “See you around, Maddie,” he said as he walked off, heading for his table.
As soon as he was gone, Maddie’s smile slipped from her lips.
Zoe noticed right away. She reached across the table and flicked Maddie’s forehead with her finger. “Stop it. Right now.”
“Nine?” Maddie pouted.
“How many users are there?” Zoe asked.
Maddie looked at the screen. “Two hundred sixty-three,” she said.
“Right, so do the math. Out of two hundred sixty-three people, he’s your number nine. What are the odds of that, Maddie?”
“Three-point-three percent,” Maddie said plainly.
“Three-point-three percent,” Zoe repeated. She pointed at Chris’s table. “And you finally talked to him.”
“Yeah.”
“And he knows your name.”
“True.”
“And two hundred sixty-three people just saw a picture of the two of you with your faces all smashed together!”
“Now that’s an excellent point.” Maddie’s face lit up again. She grabbed her phone and took a screenshot of the leaderboard. Then she swiped right and the photo of Chris and his little sister lit up her screen. She took a screenshot of that, too.
“He’s even cuter up close,” she said.
“See?” Emma said. “It’s all good.”
“It’s all good,” Maddie echoed. And then she stood and slapped her hands on the table. “Glad that’s done. Let’s get out of here. We have new friends to make.”
The four of them walked around campus for the rest of lunch, and by the time the bell rang, Click’d had 312 users and Maddie’s, Zoe’s, Emma’s, and Allie’s leaderboards were changing every ten minutes or so.
“We’re still number one,” Zoe said as she turned to Allie and gave her a high five.
Emma stopped in her tracks. “What’s wrong?” Allie asked, but Emma didn’t answer right away. She was still staring at her phone.
“You’ve all bumped way down,” she said. “You two are seven and eight, and Maddie’s my ten. I barely even know the rest of these people.”
Maddie grabbed Emma’s shirtsleeve and gave it a little shake. “That’s part of the fun!”
Emma squirmed away. “They can’t be my top friends over you guys! How is that even possible?”
“It’s totally possible,” Maddie said. “With three hundred twelve people in the system, the odds of the three of us being each other’s top ten drops to three-point-one percent.”
Allie looked at her out of the corner of her eye. She was good at math, but even she couldn’t imagine calculating that fast in her head. “You’re a freak of nature, you know that, right?”
Maddie shrugged. “It’s a gift.”
“Hello?” Emma waved her hands in front of them. “Doesn’t anyone care about this?”
“Not really. It’s not like it means anything,” Zoe said.
“Of course it does.” Emma crossed her arms. “How can you even say it doesn’t mean anything?”
“It means we all answered a bunch of questions the same way, Em. That’s all. It doesn’t say anything about our friendship,” Allie explained.
“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t have named it Click’d,” Emma said sharply. “Because then, you know, people might start to think it had something to do with figuring out who you click best with.”
“Wait. Are you seriously upset about this?” Zoe asked.
Emma thought about it for a few seconds, and then she crinkled her nose and said, “A little bit. Yeah.” She waved her finger around in front of the three of them. “And when we’ve all fallen off each other’s leaderboards, you’re going to feel the same way.”