After watching the photos, profiles, and leaderboards on her phone all day, it was so cool to see row after row, column after column, filled with the data that made everything run. Allie scrolled up and down, taking everything in. She could see each user’s phone number. Each person’s profile photo. She had all their birthdays, favorite colors, favorite sports, favorite books, favorite movies, and favorite things to do in their spare time. She knew how many siblings each one had. She could clearly see how each person had answered every single quiz question. She even knew the password they each used to get into the system.
It made her feel a little guilty to know that much about that many people. But it made her feel a bit powerful, too.
With a few more clicks, she opened the leaderboard stats. The screen was a sea of numbers, but it didn’t take her long to figure out how everyone was mapping up against one another in the system. She had access to information no one else knew. She could see each person’s top ten ranking, even if they hadn’t found one another yet.
That made her think about Emma’s words back at lunch, so she opened her profile and studied her leaderboard. Emma seemed to think Click’d was broken—that her top ten had to be wrong—but it wasn’t. It was spot-on. The numbers said so, loud and clear.
Allie started wondering about the others, so she looked at Zoe’s stats, and then at Maddie’s. She could tell how all three of their leaderboards would change once they got within range of some of the newest users. And she could tell that Maddie wasn’t going to be happy about it.
She started sorting the data, trying to learn as much about her users as she could. She sorted them by birthday, to see who was the youngest and who was the oldest. She sorted them by number of siblings, curious to see how many of them were only children like she was. And then she sorted them by favorite dessert, just for fun.
But when she sorted all the users by grade, she noticed something interesting: of her three hundred sixty-three users, two hundred twenty-five of them were seventh graders, eighty-four were eighth graders, and only fifty-four were sixth graders.
Click’d was spreading around the school, but it wasn’t reaching everyone equally. She wanted stories from all the grades. And now that she knew it was stable, she wanted all the users she could possibly get.
Maybe it needs a little nudge, she thought.
She selected all the names in the Click’d user list and typed out a message:
Allie
Like Click’d? Pass it on!
She added the download link and pressed SEND. There was a loud whoosh sound as her message disappeared from the outbox.
The bell rang and everyone started collecting his or her things and heading for the door, but Allie hung back. There was one more thing she was curious to learn about her user base.
She sorted the data again, highlighting anyone who received an invitation to join Click’d but hadn’t downloaded the app.
It was a short list.
Just three names.
And one was Nathan Frederickson.
“Whoa,” Allie whispered under her breath as she stepped into the hallway and took in the scene.
As soon as the final bell rang, a bunch of people bolted from her math class and raced out the door, and everywhere she looked, she saw kids running with their phones lifted high in the air. She could see their screens changing colors and hear the bloops echoing off the hallways as people ran toward each other, tapped their phones together, and took a quick selfie before they took off running again, following the next clue.
She pulled out her phone and checked her own stats. Click’d was up to 382 users, and the count was growing by the second. By the time she got to the roundabout, it was already up to 423.
All those people were playing with Click’d. With her app.
She was just about to step onto the bus when she heard someone shouting her name. She turned around and saw Zoe racing toward her. “Allie! Wait!”
“I have to go,” Allie said, laughing. “You have to go, or our bus is going to leave without us.” The driver watched them, looking annoyed.
“In a sec. I have to show you something first, in private.” Zoe grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the open windows and out of earshot.
“What’s going on?”
“Have you seen Emma?”
“No. Not since lunch. Why?”
Zoe had one hand over her mouth, like she was going to be sick.
“What’s wrong?” Allie repeated.
Zoe reached for her phone and handed it to Allie. “This.”
“So…Emma told you she likes Andrew Sanders. What’s the big deal?”
“This was a clue,” Zoe said.
“A clue? About what?”
“No, listen. You don’t get it.” Zoe looked around to be sure no one could hear, and even though they were all alone, she took two steps closer to Allie. “I just clicked with Wyatt Davies and this was the clue that showed up on his phone.”
Allie furrowed her brow like she was still trying to connect the dots.
“It’s a screenshot. You can tell by the top, look: time, battery life.” Zoe tapped her screen with her fingernail. “This conversation between Emma and me happened on Saturday night. This was from my phone. I took this screenshot.”
“Why would you do that?” Allie asked.
Zoe scrunched up her nose and shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just that…Emma never tells me anything—”
Allie cut her off. “She never tells anyone anything. She’s Emma!”
“I know. I guess it just seemed like a big moment. I wanted to capture it.” Zoe sighed, but then she threw her shoulders back and looked Allie right in the eyes. “Still, that’s not really the point. The point is that this picture was in my photos app and nowhere else.” Zoe glanced at the screen, grimaced, and shoved her phone in her back pocket, like she couldn’t stand to look at that text for another second. “There is no way I posted that on Instagram.”
“You must have done it accidentally.”
Zoe looked at her sideways. “Please…that’s almost impossible to do, Allie. Besides, if I had posted it by mistake, don’t you think I would have known by now? I checked anyway, just to be sure, and it’s not in my feed. I didn’t send this to anyone. Not one single person.”
Now it was Allie’s turn to feel the color drain from her face. “Are you one hundred percent sure?”
“I am one thousand percent sure.” Zoe grabbed Allie’s arm. “Click’d pulled this from my photos, not my Instagram feed.”
Allie pictured that specific part of the code. It had taken her almost a full week to figure out how to pull the clues from Instagram and store ClickPics in the phone’s photos app, but she’d finally done it. She’d tested it hundreds of times. And nothing like this had ever happened with her CodeGirls friends. But then again, they’d spent more time testing it than they did playing it.
“It has to be a fluke. There are hundreds of users and this hasn’t happened once until now.” Allie’s backpack fell to the ground by her feet. “But still…” She trailed off, unsure how to finish her sentence.
There was no way she could let this go unchecked. The text itself was bad. The fact that it had exposed Emma’s secret was worse. But the real problem—if there was a real problem—was potentially much, much bigger. Sharing people’s personal photos without their permission? That was in a whole new ballpark.
“What do we do?” Zoe asked.
The bus driver was motioning to them, and Allie held her finger up, asking him to wait a minute. “Only one person saw it, right? Just Wyatt?”