Zoe nodded. “And he’s cool. I told him to delete it.”
“Good.” Allie checked the time. “You go home. I’m going to go to the lab and take a quick look at the code. If it’s somehow pulling photos from both sources, I’ll find it. It should be an easy fix.”
“Really?”
“It’s fine. No big deal.” Allie sounded more confident than she felt. “I have an hour before soccer practice. That’s plenty of time. I’ll just ask my mom to bring my soccer bag and pick me up here instead. I’ll meet you at the field.”
Zoe still looked like she was going to be sick. Allie hugged her and said, “Stop worrying. I’ve got this. Only one person saw it, and you didn’t break your promise to Emma—you didn’t tell anyone—okay?”
“Okay.”
“No one else will ever know.”
“You don’t think I should tell her?”
Allie blew out a breath. “She’s already upset about the leaderboard thing. And you know how sensitive she is. I’ll fix it, and then we’ll tell her. Okay?”
“Okay.” Zoe started toward the bus. Allie picked her backpack up off the ground and headed for the lab. But then she turned around and called Zoe’s name.
“You might want to delete that screenshot,” she said, and Zoe nodded.
As Allie walked to the lab, she opened her photos app and scrolled through her pictures, deleting anything she wouldn’t want to accidentally share.
Allie flung the lab door open and raced inside.
Ms. Slade was sitting behind her desk. “Hey, Allie. Everything okay?”
“I…” Allie opened her mouth, ready to tell her everything and ask her what to do, but then she stopped herself. She pictured the look on Ms. Slade’s face when she came backstage at the CodeGirls presentation. She could see the pride in her eyes that day. What would she say if she knew Allie had made such a huge mistake in the code? And then she had an even more frightening thought: What if she lost her spot in the Games for Good competition over this?
She took a deep breath and pasted a smile on her face instead. “No…everything’s fine. I just need to check something…on the CodeGirls server.” She tried to look casual as she tipped her head toward the back corner of the room. “Can I use Ira or Agnes for a few minutes?”
“Sure. Ira’s free.”
Nathan poked his head above Agnes’s monitor and gave Allie a little wave, and she scrunched up her nose. She couldn’t wait until Saturday, when she and Click’d could wipe that smirk off his face.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Ms. Slade asked.
Allie nodded. Everything was okay. It was a minor glitch. A small, easily correctable mistake. One line of code. No big deal. “It’s fine.”
Ms. Slade didn’t seem to be buying it, but she didn’t say anything else. She just smiled and lifted her hands to her ears, showing Allie her dangly earrings: two keyboard keys, a symbol, and the letter Z. “Do you know what these mean?” she asked.
Allie looked from one to the other, trying to piece it together. The COMMAND key. The letter Z. She pictured a keyboard. “Command-Z.” Allie felt her mouth turn up at the corners as she said it. “Command-Z is undo.”
Ms. Slade nodded slowly. “See, that’s one of the things I’ve always loved about coding. You can try anything. You can take risks. And you can fail spectacularly. Do you know why?” she asked, and Allie shook her head. “Because you can always hit command-Z. You can always undo it, and then redo it.” She leaned in a little closer, like she was sharing a secret. “It kind of makes you wish we had a command-Z in life, doesn’t it?”
Allie pictured Zoe’s face out by the roundabout and she felt her stomach knot up all over again. “Yeah,” she said. “Definitely.”
“If you need any help, let me know. But remember, as your mentor, I can only look over your shoulder. I can’t touch the code. I can give suggestions, but I’m not allowed to fix it for you, got it?”
Allie nodded. She was aware of the G4G rules.
Ms. Slade gave her a reassuring pat on the back. “Well, whatever it is, go command-Z it and make it right. And if you need my advice, you know where to find me.”
“Thanks. I will,” Allie said. But she didn’t think she’d need it. She walked to the back corner of the room, already feeling a little better about the whole thing.
Nathan was sitting in front of his computer, with his elbows on the table, his chin propped in his hands, and a pair of bulky black headphones over his ears.
“What are you doing here? I thought your game was ‘flawless.’” Allie put the last word in air quotes.
Nathan draped his headphones around the back of his neck. “It is. I’m just adding a few little touches. What are you doing here? I thought Click’d was a ‘total hit.’” He put his words in air quotes, too.
“None of your business. And it is a ‘total hit.’ You and your little builders are toast on Saturday.”
“Is that right?”
“It’s a fact.”
Allie took her seat and tapped on the space bar, and when the computer came to life she typed in the password and twisted the monitor away from Nathan’s curious eyes.
“Hey, don’t worry about me. I couldn’t care less what you’re panicking about.” He put his headphones back on. “But I bet I know.” He went back to typing as his head bobbed up and down in time with music Allie couldn’t hear.
Allie glared at him. Did he know? How could he know anything? He hadn’t even joined Click’d.
She ignored him as she navigated over to the Fuller University server. Within minutes, she was looking at the bright blue CodeGirls logo again. She touched it with her finger for good luck, like she could use it to channel all that knowledge from her instructor and all the words of support from her fellow CodeGirls.
She typed in passwords and opened new windows, and eventually she was in the Click’d code. She’d spent all summer staring at commands, but she hadn’t looked at it since the last day of camp. Still, it felt a little bit like home. And she knew exactly where to go.
She scrolled down until she found the specific set of instructions that told Click’d to pull photo clues from each user’s Instagram account. Then she found the code that told it to store CLICK-PICS in each user’s photo album. Everything looked right.
Allie kept going, looking beyond those lines for anything related to photos—anything that might be causing the system to confuse the two sources—but everything looked solid. After a half hour of squinting at the screen, the lines began to blur. She rubbed her eyes, shook out her hands, and scrolled back to the top, reading every single line all over again.
“I’ll be back in ten,” Ms. Slade called out, and Allie and Nathan both looked up. “Need anything?” she asked, and they both shook their heads. But when she returned ten minutes later, she was carrying two bags of microwave popcorn, and she dropped them in front of Allie and Nathan. They thanked her as they reached inside.
“Everyone good here?” she asked.
“Yep,” Allie said brightly, masking her concern.