His eyebrows pinched together. “The Fishbowl?”
“Yeah. That’s the name of the computer lab at Fuller University. It’s surrounded by these super-tall windows on three sides, so while you’re working, you kind of feel like you’re outside. There’s a small field where we all played soccer during breaks. And we’d sit in the shade under this big willow tree and eat our lunch.”
Nathan smiled. “Sounds nice.”
“Yeah.” Allie let out a long sigh. “It was.” She turned and looked at him. “It was quiet, too. People respected each other’s work time.”
Nathan looked at her. And then he smiled. “I feel like you’re trying to tell me something, but…” He lifted his phone into the air. “Okay, so what do we do now?”
“We tap our phones together to see where we landed on each other’s leaderboards.”
Allie reached out toward him, but Nathan pulled back. “What if we don’t tap them together?” he asked. “What if we keep it a secret?”
She lowered her arm. “Fine with me. I don’t need to know.” She dropped her phone on the opposite side of her desk, as far away from Nathan as possible, and went back to work. Nathan set his phone down, too. And then he pulled his headphones over his ears and his fingers started flying across the keys.
Allie checked to be sure he wasn’t watching her, and then she looked back at her data. All she had to do was search for his name and she’d be able to see every single answer to every single question. In a matter of seconds, she could figure out exactly where he ranked. She scrolled up to the search field. She was just about to type in N when he said, “Okay, I take it back. I can’t stand it.” He reached for his phone.
Allie wrapped her arms across her chest. “No. You didn’t want to find out, so we shouldn’t find out.”
“Come on…look.” Nathan fake-pouted and turned his phone so she could see his leaderboard. “I don’t have a single friend.”
“There’s a good reason for that.”
“Please?”
Allie hated the idea of giving in to him, but she also wanted him to use Click’d. She wanted him to know what he was up against on Saturday. It was an intimidation tactic, plain and simple.
“Fine,” she said as she picked up her phone and tapped it against the side of his.
And then they both stopped talking or moving or breathing, and watched their screens. They flashed white. And then their leaderboards appeared.
“Did you answer the questions honestly?”
“Of course I did. Why would I lie?”
More than five hundred people in the system, and she had the most in common with Nathan Frederickson? That seemed impossible. Totally and completely impossible.
“Interesting score for two people who hate each other,” Nathan said.
Allie glared at him. “You don’t hate me. I hate you! I’ve hated you since…” She trailed off, remembering all the little things over the years, each adding up to her calling Nathan Fredrickson her archenemy. Her nemesis.
Nathan looked at Allie.
And Allie looked at Nathan.
Now she had a new reason to get more users. The more there were, the faster he’d be bumped off her leaderboard.
“I have to get back to work,” Allie said.
Allie’s mom picked her up in front of the school. As she climbed into the car and slipped her seat belt over her shoulder, Bo poked his head in between the seats and started licking her face.
“Bo!” She buried her face in his neck and inhaled his soft fur. “I missed you! How was your day? Did you miss me, too?”
Allie was glad Bo was there. It helped her ignore the sound of her phone buzzing in her back pocket with new member alerts.
“Why did you have to stay late?” her mom asked as she put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. “It’s only the second day of school.”
If Allie had found and solved the problem in her code, she might have told her mom everything, but under the circumstances, she couldn’t stand the idea of bringing it up. “Just working in the computer lab, getting ready for Saturday.” Which was kind of true, but not completely.
She was expecting her mom to press her for details, but instead she reached over and grabbed Allie’s hand. “You were so brilliant last weekend. I can’t wait to see you up on that stage, in front of all those people.” She shot her a smile. “We are so proud of you.” And then she returned both hands to the steering wheel and started talking about some drama at work. While Allie listened to her mom’s story—offering the occasional What? and No way! at the appropriate points—she stole a glance at her phone.
Click’d was spitting out picture after picture, slideshow-style, of all the people who had clicked at school that day. They all looked happy. They were all having fun. None of them seemed worried about the clues they’d received on their phones. She wanted the thing with Zoe to be a fluke or a random error, but she knew that was impossible. And after hours in the lab, she didn’t have a clue how to fix it.
What was she going to say to Zoe? What were they going to say to Emma?
Her mom pulled up next to the fence that lined the field. “Maddie’s mom is giving you a ride home,” she said.
Allie grabbed her soccer bag from the backseat, kissed Bo good-bye, and then stepped out of the car. “See you at home,” she told her mom as she closed the door.
Most of her teammates were already huddled up in the corner of the field. She spotted Maddie and Emma standing with a big group, chatting as they stretched, but Zoe was sitting alone, a few feet away from everyone else, still lacing up her cleats.
Allie dropped her bag on the ground and collapsed next to her, flat on her back. It was still warm and sunny, and she stared up at the sky, looking for animal-shaped clouds.
“You’re not exactly reassuring me here, Al.”
Allie closed her eyes and rocked her head from side to side. She could feel those tiny artificial pellets from the turf digging into her scalp, but she didn’t care. When she opened her eyes, Zoe was staring down at her. “Turns out, it’s harder than I expected.”
“Speed it up, ladies!” Coach yelled as she pointed at the rest of the team, already starting laps around the field.
Zoe blew out a breath, untied her cleat and started over, buying time so they could keep talking. She motioned with her hand and shot Allie this keep-going look.
Allie sat up, unzipped her bag, and pulled out her own cleats, filling Zoe in as she started lacing them up.
“I can’t find it,” Allie whispered.
“What do you mean you can’t find it?”
“I only had an hour. I’ll try again tonight. But…” Allie looked around to be sure no one else could hear her. “All the photo-related stuff is in this one area, smack in the middle. It might not be a simple tweak to a single line of code, like I thought. Everything’s interconnected.” Allie interlaced her fingers. “The photo access is part of a much longer string of commands—the way it feeds users the Instagram clues, stores the ClickPics, and sends them to the whole community—it’s all tied together.”