“I don’t think I will,” Zoe said.
Emma let out a huff. “You’re just saying that because you and Allie are number one. But we’re not even a third of the way through the school yet, so if Maddie’s right, the odds of us being together will plummet every day.” She brought her hand down in front of her like an airplane falling from the sky.
The three of them laughed, and that seemed to make Emma even more upset. She looked at her screen, as if her own words had just given her an idea.
“Wait…what if I stop playing? Then my leaderboard won’t change.” She looked at them. “What if we all stopped playing? If we never tapped phones with anyone else, our leaderboards wouldn’t change, right, Allie?”
Allie shrugged. “You’d still get alerts when you got within range, but you could turn those off in settings, I guess.”
“Okay, but why on earth would you ever do that?” Zoe asked as she and Maddie exchanged a look.
Emma wasn’t giving up. “You guys, we don’t have to do the scavenger hunt part. Let’s stop playing so we can lock in our leaderboards exactly the way they are right now.” She raised her eyebrows at Maddie. “That way, you and Chris won’t move.”
“Hey, don’t bring Chris into this. The two of us are solid. We’re not moving, no matter how many users join.” Maddie smiled confidently.
“Besides, we can’t do that,” Zoe said. “The more users Allie has by Saturday, the better her chances of winning the Games for Good contest. We have to help her get players, so they can get new players, and they can get players.”
“Yeah, we’re Allie’s street team,” Maddie added, and then she turned to Allie and gave her a fist bump.
Emma thought about it for a minute and then blew out a heavy breath. “Fine. I’ll keep it moving, but I’m doing this entirely for you, Allie. Because I have three best friends.” She pointed to each in turn. “And I don’t need to click with anyone else but you guys.”
“Hey, Allie,” some guy said as they passed in the hall between fourth and fifth.
“Love your app!” another girl told her when she was gathering her books from her locker.
As she was rounding the corner by the library, a guy passed her and then doubled back. “Wait! You’re Allie?” he asked. And when she nodded, he waved a few people over and they all gave her high fives.
When she reached the computer lab, she opened the door and stepped inside, and everyone in the room started clapping. Allie curtsied dramatically and thanked them for sharing the app. “It wouldn’t have this many users if it weren’t for all of you,” she told them.
She was walking toward her desk when Ms. Slade called her over. “Sounds like Click’d is a huge hit. Everyone’s talking about it,” she said. “How many users do you have?”
Allie pulled out her phone, launched Click’d, and opened her profile page. “Three hundred thirty-two.” She felt so confident as she said it, but her expression changed when she saw the look on Ms. Slade’s face. “What?” Allie asked. “Isn’t that good?”
“Of course. I’m glad people are having fun with it, it’s just…” Ms. Slade forced a smile. “It’s going around a lot faster than I expected.”
“I know, right? I was worried about stability at first, but it’s working exactly the way it’s supposed to.” She took two steps closer. “My Games for Good demo is going to blow your mind. It’ll be so much better than the one you saw at CodeGirls.”
“I loved your demo at CodeGirls,” Ms. Slade said plainly. “I told you then not to change a thing. Because you didn’t need to.”
Allie thought back to Nathan’s Built demo. “Nah, it wasn’t good enough. I had twenty users and a few stories from camp, but now I have more than three hundred users. And you should see what’s going on out there.” She pointed at the door. “Kids are using it to make friends during the first week of school and it’s doing real, actual good!”
“It was doing good before, Allie,” Ms. Slade said. But she must have been able to tell how excited Allie was, because her expression morphed into a genuine Ms. Slade–smile. “Why don’t you use your class time today to start collecting some of those stories?” she said as she pointed to the two computers in the back corner. “Nathan’s using Agnes, but you can use Ira.”
“Really?” Allie’s eyes lit up.
It was perfect. She was dying to look at the back-end database again now that there were so many new users.
Ms. Slade reached for a pen and wrote something on a bright blue Post-it. “Here’s the password. Rip that up when you’re done.”
“Thanks!” Allie hurried to the back of the room, flopped down into the seat, and hit the space bar on Ira’s keyboard. She looked over at Nathan. He was leaning back in his chair with his head resting against the wall, his headphones over his ears, and his eyes closed.
“I can see you’re hard at work,” Allie said as she entered the password and pressed the RETURN key.
She wasn’t sure Nathan had heard her, but then his head fell to one side and he slowly peeled his eyes open. “I’m thinking.”
“Don’t hurt yourself.”
She wasn’t as worried about Nathan as she had been when he’d showed his demo to the class. After she gathered all her new data and a few inspiring success stories, those judges would have to see that Click’d was doing just as much good as Built.
“Besides, there’s not much to do at this point. My game is working flawlessly,” he said.
“Good for you,” Allie said. “So tell me, how many users do you have?”
Nathan rolled his eyes.
She cupped her hand to her ear and leaned in closer. “I didn’t hear you. Did you say ‘zero’? That’s interesting. My game’s a total hit. I have almost three hundred fifty users. And it’s Tuesday. I’ll probably have another three hundred by this time tomorrow. Last I heard, the judges like to see games with actual users.”
“Well, they also like apps that are making a difference.”
Allie let out a huff. “Click’d is making a difference!”
“Right. Of course. How did the students of Mercer Middle School go on before they knew how many other people liked pizza as much as they did?”
Nathan put his headphones back on and angled his monitor so she couldn’t see it.
Allie glared at him as she turned her monitor away from him, too.
Shake it off, she told herself.
She logged into the Fuller University server and navigated over to the CodeGirls development area.