She felt herself leaning in closer. She watched a guy in a little green hat step up to the counter, holding a bucket of paint, and then walk away with the tiny can swinging by his side and his point total unchanged.
When she looked at Nathan, she realized his eyes were locked on her monitor.
“I have a crazy idea,” she said.
“I bet it’s not as crazy as mine.”
They looked at each other.
“I made this dog-walking game last year.”
“I’ve solved a bunch of interdependent code issues in Built over the summer.”
“I mean…” Allie shrugged. “I’m sure you could solve it on your own, but—”
Nathan cut her off. “Exactly. You’d fix it eventually, but—”
“Sure. But I’m just so tired of looking at it,” Allie said.
“Same,” Nathan said. “Ms. Slade’s always telling us to check each other’s code, right? So we have a ‘fresh pair of eyes’ on the problem.”
“Exactly.”
They didn’t say anything after that. They just stood up and switched seats.
“How do I know you’re not going to sabotage my game?” Nathan asked.
Allie shot him a smug grin. “Because there’s only one thing I want out of Saturday’s competition: to beat you fair and square.”
She unplugged his headphones and handed them to him, and then she reached into her backpack and grabbed her own. She was glad she’d remembered to bring them.
Allie and Nathan worked until after seven o’clock, when Ms. Slade finally said, “Okay, that’s enough excitement for one day. Shut ’em down.”
The two of them logged out and followed Ms. Slade to the front of the school. Allie spotted her mom’s car right away. There was another car parked behind hers, and Allie assumed that must be Nathan’s ride.
“Talk later?” he asked.
“I’ll be back online as soon as I eat dinner. I have a bunch of homework to do, but once I finish it, I’ll get back to looking at your stuff.”
He held his fist out and she gave it a bump.
Allie sat down and buckled in as Bo poked his head up from the backseat and started licking her cheek. “Hi, boy!” She kissed the top of his head and stroked his ears. “I missed you so much! As soon as this competition is over, we’ll get back to real life, okay? I promise. Three-mile runs. Snuggles in front of the TV. And treats. Lots and lots of treats.”
Bo licked her face again like he agreed with her plan.
“How was your day?” her mom asked.
She pictured Emma at the lunch table—puffy-faced and red-eyed—and it felt like someone had punched her hard in the chest. “Fine,” Allie lied. And then she asked, “How was yours?” changing the subject as quickly as she could.
She continued the strategy all through dinner, keeping the focus on her parents so she wouldn’t have to talk about her fight with her friends, the fake accounts, or the glitch she still hadn’t fixed. And as soon as dinner was over, she rinsed off all the plates, loaded the dishwasher, and sprinted back to her bedroom.
She worked on her math homework, read a chapter on the American Revolution for her social studies class, and did an online science quiz. As she worked, she checked the photo queue, but everything was quiet. Every once in a while, she’d picture that look on Emma’s face again and she’d feel sick to her stomach.
Two hours later, she was ready to get back to the Built code. She pulled out her spiral-bound notebook and flipped to Nathan’s login instructions.
Once she could see his code, she scrolled down to the lines specific to the way the store worked, and started analyzing the commands.
Everything looked right. The lines specific to paint were identical to all the other supplies.
Bo was curled up under her feet, and he didn’t budge for the next two hours as she tweaked the code and ran it through her debugging program. She moved to the next layer and the next layer, peeling the code back like an onion, testing each one.
Her eyelids felt heavy, but she couldn’t stop. Not yet.
She needed a distraction, so she picked up her phone, opened the chat window, and typed a message to Courtney.
Allie
good day/bad day?
Courtney
you’re up late
Allie
it’s been an interesting one
Courtney
then you first
Allie thought about everything that had happened that day. She wasn’t quite sure how she was going to narrow it down to three good things and three bad ones.
Allie
829 users stories to add to my G4G presentation nemesis and I are actually helping each other Courtney
ate lunch with new girl new personal best at track practice played Call of Duty for 5+ hours Allie
Emma’s mad at me and I deserve it Maddie asked me to rig her leaderboard
Allie thought about her third item. She wanted to tell her everything that was happening with Click’d, but she wasn’t sure where to start. And it was late. So she kept it simple:
Allie
Click’d has a glitch (but I’m fixing it)
A few seconds later, her phone chirped.
Courtney
miss playing soccer on the lawn miss our dorm room still miss you most Allie
Courtney
Goodnight
Allie
Goodnight
Allie looked back at her monitor. Those never-ending lines of code and database tables were blurring before her eyes.
She looked down at Bo. “Do you want a treat?” she asked, and Bo stood up and wagged his tail. “Come on. I need hot chocolate.”
The house was silent as she tiptoed down the stairs and into the kitchen. While she waited for her water to boil, Allie gave Bo three dog snacks, and then reached into the jar and stuck another handful in her sweatshirt pocket. When her hot chocolate was done, she grabbed her mug off the counter, and climbed the stairs with Bo right on her heels.
She returned to her desk, and Bo curled up next to her feet again. While she sipped her hot chocolate, she studied Nathan’s code, starting from the top again.
She spent the next hour reviewing everything, line by line. She made a few more changes and ran more tests, and when they failed again, she decided to call it a night.
Allie was just about to log out, when she had another idea.
She had been focused on the store-specific commands, but now she scrolled way down to the bottom, into the interactions between characters. And that’s where she spotted something unusual. The store was charging for paint. That wasn’t the problem. The problem came much later in the code.
It was almost 1:00 a.m. when she texted Nathan.
Allie
you told the system to credit all characters for paint
Nathan
what?
the code is right. it’s charging them. but later, it’s giving them a refund
that’s impossible
check it out
Allie copied the specific line of code, pasted it into the text, and pressed SEND.
There was no response from him right away, but a few minutes later, her phone buzzed.
Nathan
Allie
working?
I think so
hold on
okay refresh