“Yep,” Nathan echoed as he stuffed a huge handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“Good. There’s this terribly boring meeting I’m required to attend, but I’ll be back in an hour,” Ms. Slade said. She turned on her heel, gave them a wave, and left the lab again.
Allie reached into the bag again and went back to work, staring at the source code. The problem had to be there somewhere. Her app couldn’t just pull photos from the wrong source without being told to. It would be easier if Allie knew what she was looking for.
“You know, I was thinking…” Nathan said as he draped his headphones around his neck.
“Nothing good can come of that,” Allie said without taking her eyes off the screen. She reached for her mouse and scrolled down, wishing she had headphones of her own.
Nathan ignored her and kept talking. “I think I’m going to install this thing you made after all.”
“It’s not a ‘thing.’” Allie still didn’t look at him.
Nathan reached for his phone. “Fine, your game,” he said, putting sarcastic emphasis on the last word. “Click’d.”
Allie ignored him.
“I’m kind of curious about that leaderboard thing, you know?” When she didn’t respond, he tapped his fingers on the desk, filling the silence. Then he pointed to Allie’s phone. “What’s yours like? Any big surprises?”
She sighed. “Install it and find out. You can see everyone’s clicks.” She turned to look at him and pointed at her monitor. “Look, I’ve got a ton of work to do here.”
“Sure. Got it.” Nathan poked around on his phone and mumbled to himself. Or maybe he was talking to Allie, she couldn’t tell. “That invitation you sent is somewhere in here…Oh, wait. Yep. There it is.”
Allie sighed again. Louder this time. She could hear him tapping on his screen.
“It’s installing,” he said.
“Awesome,” she replied. Allie tried to ignore him, but she couldn’t help stealing a glance out of the corner of her eye when Nathan leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on his desk.
“Man, you’re asking for a lot of profile data here,” he said as he typed. “What are you going to do with all this information?”
“Nothing.”
“You could sell it. I bet a big company would pay a lot of money for this kind of stuff. We’re a hot target market, you know?”
“I’m not going to sell the data.”
The room got quiet again and she went back to her code. But the silence didn’t last long.
“Ooh…photo.” Nathan reached out with his arm and smiled at the camera, but when he noticed Allie had turned to look at him, he changed course. “Actually,” he said as he handed her his phone, “will you do the honors?”
Allie took his phone without thinking about it, and Nathan leaned back in his chair with his hands folded behind his head, staring off into the distance.
“Seriously?” she asked. “I’m really busy here. Can’t you just take a selfie?”
“Selfies never turn out.”
“Sure they do. You just don’t know how to take them.”
“Please?” He smiled at her as he pointed to his phone in her hand. “It’ll just take a second. Then I’ll leave you alone.”
He returned to his pose and Allie blew out a breath. She held up his phone, clicked the button, and handed it back to him without looking at the picture.
“Nice,” he said, nodding approvingly. “Okay, profile done. Time for the big quiz!”
Allie rolled her eyes and then looked at the clock that hung over the door. She only had another ten minutes before her mom arrived. She told herself to focus, but she couldn’t help it—her eyes kept wandering over to Nathan.
At first, his eyebrows were pinched, like he was in deep concentration, but then his face started to relax. Every so often, a smile would tug at his mouth, and when that happened, Allie involuntarily leaned toward him, dying to know what question he was answering.
Suddenly, he started laughing hard.
“What?” Allie reluctantly asked.
“Boy bands? Seriously?” He was still trying to catch his breath as he twisted the phone toward her.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Wow. Okay. Hmm. Well, this one is definitely a tough question.” He drummed his hands on the table. “Pick a favorite. Come on, that’s just crazy talk. How am I supposed to pick a single favorite boy band singer?”
Allie rolled her eyes. She wondered if Ms. Slade had any headphones she could borrow.
“You know, I’m going with Zayn.”
“You do that.”
“I don’t really know why, I guess he seems like the most interesting one. And you know, I like that he left One Direction to go out on his own.” Nathan kept talking, but Allie ignored him. “Or maybe it’s just because his name is so much cooler than mine. Zayyyyn…” he said, drawing it out. “That’s fun to say. Zayyyyn…How come I got a boring name like Nathan and he got a name like Zayyyyn? Maybe I should go by Naaaate?”
Allie grabbed the sides of her monitor with both hands and pretended to smack her forehead against the screen.
“Nah. You’re right. I can tell by the look on your face. That doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?”
Allie sat up and pointed at her screen again. “I am trying to concentrate, Nate.” She didn’t draw it out the way he had.
“Sure. Right. Sorry.”
Allie looked back at her monitor and tried not to look over at him again, but he was making that pretty impossible.
“Last question!” Nathan said in a singsong voice. “No! You’re making me pick a favorite doughnut? Sprinkles, maple bar, glazed, or chocolate iced. Allie!” He slapped the back of his hand to his forehead as he looked up at her. “This test is impossible. You know that, right?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Not at all. Look at me. I’m stumped. Totally and completely stumped.” His finger hovered dramatically over his screen, as if he had a serious choice to make and feared picking the wrong one.
“You’re mocking me.”
He smiled at her. “I’m messing with you, not mocking you. There’s a difference. Here we go.” He made a big show of pressing the LET’S GO! button.
And as soon as he did, Allie’s phone said bloop-bloop-bloop and the screen lit up, flashing fast with a red-tinted photo of Nathan and someone she assumed must be his mom. Nathan’s phone echoed with the same sound.
“Well, isn’t this interesting!” Nathan said as his face broke into a huge grin. Allie craned her neck, trying to see his screen, but Nathan twisted away and curled his body over it, hiding it from her view.
She hoped it was something from Instagram.
She couldn’t handle the idea of it being anything else.
Because then she’d have to tell him why she was sitting next to him in the lab.
Nathan rotated the phone in her direction.
“Nice pic,” he said.
“Thanks.” Allie smiled, remembering the night she posed for it. “Courtney, my best friend at CodeGirls camp, took it when we were working late one night in the Fishbowl.”
She sighed. She missed the Fishbowl. She missed the people in it even more.