Yeah. Still upset but she accepted my apology
She’ll get over it.
But still, you should talk to her
Allie
I’m trying. She doesn’t want to talk to me
Zoe
Did you fix the glitch yet?
Allie knew she should have told her about the four blurry pictures, the two unflattering ones, and the two text exchanges she’d deleted during lunch, but she didn’t.
Almost. Working on it now.
Allie pulled the lab door open.
Well, I don’t think Emma will accept your apology until you do
“Great,” she mumbled to herself. Then she pocketed her phone and stepped inside.
Allie expected to see Ms. Slade behind her desk, but she wasn’t there. Nathan was hiding behind Agnes’s monitor as usual, with his headphones over his ears and his forehead practically pressed into the glass. He didn’t even look up as she slid into her chair and typed in Ira’s password.
She went straight to the photo queue, figuring she’d focus her energies there until the leaderboard party was over, and then she’d go back to fixing and testing the code again.
But as soon as Allie landed on the photo queue, she could practically see her plans sprout wings and fly out the window. There were two screenshots in the queue—both of fairly boring text exchanges—along with a picture of Eric Valente standing in his bedroom in a pair of green-and-blue plaid boxers.
“Oh my God,” she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t. She turned to Nathan. She could hear the music through his headphones, and she was glad he had the volume up.
She deleted both screenshots and then clicked on Eric’s picture, but with all those people in one place, the queue was moving a lot faster than it usually did—adding new photos and sharing new clues every ten seconds or so—and by the time she selected his photo and pressed DELETE, she wound up deleting the next one in the queue by accident. Her heart was racing as she toggled over to the catalog of photos that had already been sent out as clues, and saw Eric’s picture right on top.
“No…” Allie muttered.
There was only one thing she could do.
She quickly navigated back to the database, found Eric’s name, and clicked on it, drilling down into the underlying data. There, she could see his leaderboard stats and tell that he hadn’t located match #7, but that the two of them were actively looking for each other.
With a few more clicks, she could tell that “someone” was Abigail Brenton.
She did another scan of the queue. It was adding new ClickPics and sharing clues even faster now. She figured there must have been at least sixty people playing out on the blacktop.
Allie went back to the main screen, highlighted Eric’s and Abigail’s names along with all the information stored in the database, and hit DELETE.
She pictured the two of them running around, searching for each other when suddenly, their screens went black. They’d go back to their home screens to relaunch Click’d, and they’d be prompted to join all over again, to start fresh.
Allie knew she had to go out there and find them, to tell Eric what happened and make sure Abigail hadn’t taken a screenshot and sent the ClickPic to anyone.
But she couldn’t leave. Not with the images coming in and leaving as quickly as they were. She turned her head to the right. Nathan’s music was still blaring and his eyes were glued to his screen.
Allie looked at the photo queue again. And then back at Nathan. She had no other choice.
When she tapped Nathan’s shoulder, he lowered his headphones and draped them around his neck.
“Can I ask you a huge favor?”
He pointed at his screen. “I’m kind of in the middle of something,” he said, but he must have been able to tell from the look on Allie’s face that this was a big deal, because his expression softened and he lowered the volume on his music. “Are you still worried about those fake accounts?”
Allie hid her face in her hands. “I wish. That’s nothing compared to this.”
As quickly as she could, she explained what had been going on with the photos, and how she’d been monitoring the queue to be sure nothing else got through. She was expecting him to look surprised or maybe even smug, but instead he said, “So that’s why you’ve barely left this room in two days.”
Allie nodded.
“Would you just watch this screen for the next fifteen minutes? Delete any picture that looks like it might not have been posted on Instagram. If it’s blurry, if anyone’s making a weird face or looks otherwise bad, or if it looks personal, delete it. If you see a screenshot of a text or any saved snaps, delete those, too.”
“Got it,” he said, and as soon as Allie stood up, Nathan scooted over into her seat and put one hand on the mouse and the other on the DELETE key.
Allie opened the door and the warm breeze hit her smack in the face. She ran through the quad and over to the cement staircase that led to the large blacktop area next to the field, and when she saw what was happening below, she stopped cold.
She was wrong about the count. There were a lot more than sixty kids gathered on the blacktop. Some were racing back and forth, taking selfies, and tapping their phones together. Others were clustered together in smaller groups, looking at one another’s phones.
And they were still coming. As soon as a new person arrived, Allie could hear bloops bouncing around in the air. Her phone was in her back pocket and she could hear it calling to the others, trying to echolocate, but she ignored it—as hard as it was. She didn’t have time to play. She had more important things to do.
When she reached the bottom of the steps, Bryan Nieto spotted her. “Allie’s here!” he shouted. She and Bryan had known each other since kindergarten, and they used to be good friends in elementary school, but they hadn’t talked much since they got to Mercer. He looked like he was about to say something to her, but then a girl stepped in front of him and threw her arm around Allie. “Hi, I’m Jess. This leaderboard party was my idea! What do you think?”
Allie clenched her jaw and forced a smile. “Awesome.”
“We’ve all decided we should do this every day until the whole school has clicked! I’m so glad you came. Zoe didn’t think you’d make it.”
She tipped her head toward a group over by the grass, and Allie followed her gaze. Zoe was sitting on top of a table, talking with Ajay. Allie couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been in that same spot when they were texting each other only fifteen minutes earlier.
“Can we take a selfie?” Jess asked, snapping Allie back to reality. Before she could answer, Jess was holding her phone high in the air and resting her chin on Allie’s shoulder. “Thanks!” she said as she skipped off.