Allie hit -R and then relaunched his game. She selected a player in a red sweatshirt, clicked on the store, and watched her cross the street and step inside. She double-clicked to see the activity.
The little red character walked to the register, paint can swinging by her side, and set it on the counter. A second later, it deducted five hundred points from the account. She grabbed the paint off the counter and walked out of the store.
Allie was smiling when her phone rang. She answered it as fast as she could, and hoped her parents hadn’t heard it; they’d be furious if they knew she was still awake.
“I remember what I did.” Nathan launched in without even saying hello. “When I was first working on the character interactions, I didn’t want to deal with transactions, so I wrote code to bypass the store fees. I thought I’d deleted them over the summer, but I guess I missed one. I bet it hasn’t been charging for months and I just hadn’t noticed it.”
“Makes sense,” Allie said.
“How did you find that?”
“I’m good,” Allie said smugly.
Nathan laughed into the phone. “Yes, you are.”
“Any luck with mine?” she asked.
Nathan took a deep breath. “Sort of. I’m still working on it. You’re right—it’s super complicated and everything’s interconnected—but I think I have an idea.”
Allie yawned loudly into the phone. “What?”
“Let me play with it a little longer. I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Allie said. “I need to go to bed before I fall out of this chair.”
Allie could hear him typing on the keyboard in the background. Then the sound stopped. “Allie?” Nathan said.
“Yeah.”
There was silence on the other end. “I’m…It’s just…well…Thanks.”
Allie smiled to herself. “Glad I could help. Return the favor, would you? You’re kinda my only hope, here.”
“Yikes. No pressure,” he said. Allie could tell he was smiling on the other end of the phone.
“Good night,” she said.
“’Night,” he said.
She set her phone on her desk, changed into her pajamas, and went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. When she returned, there was a message waiting on her phone.
Nathan
Does anyone ever call you Allie-gator?
She rolled her eyes at the screen.
Allie
No
Nathan
Hmm. OK
Allie
Why?
No reason
She didn’t know what to say, so she typed:
You’re weird
I know
She was smiling as she climbed into bed. Bo jumped up on top of her comforter and settled in next to her, and she rested her hand on his back as she let her head sink deep into her pillow. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her whole body was ready for sleep, but her mind was still wide-awake. She’d been so busy all day, she hadn’t given Emma much thought, but now, lying there in the dark, quiet room, she couldn’t get her voice out of her head.
She reached for her phone.
Allie
I miss you, Em
I should have told you
I’m so sorry I didn’t
She wasn’t expecting a reply, but the message bubble popped up on her screen and she could tell Emma was writing back. She must have been having trouble sleeping, too.
Emma
meet me in the library at lunch?
Allie let out a sigh of relief as she replied.
I’ll be there
It’s going to be a good day, Allie thought as she stood waiting for the bus.
Nathan had an idea to help her fix the glitch. She had three success stories to build into her presentation: Blake and Jackson, Kira and Sean, and Ben and Brody. And by the end of lunch, Emma would have forgiven her and they would be back to normal.
But between first period and the lunch bell, things went from bad to worse.
In science, Bianca Singh told her that there was a mistake with the leaderboard, because Alyssa Moran seemed to be stuck in her #2 spot and the two of them despised each other.
She ran into Lea Cho between second and third, and she pulled Allie aside and told her she needed to do something about this sixth grader who thought they were real-life best friends and kept sending her annoying texts.
In math, she overheard Jesse Grant bragging about all the fake accounts he’d opened.
In the passing period after third, she stepped into the bathroom and overheard two girls fighting about a picture on Click’d. One of them was screaming and the other was crying, so Allie hid in a stall until they left.
And in PE, Jane Templeton said she was working in the office and a bunch of teachers had come in to complain to Mr. Mohr about a new game that was going around campus. “They said it was disrupting their classes. None of them mentioned your name or Click’d,” Jane said, “but someone’s going to rat you out eventually.”
Allie knew she had to face facts: She couldn’t keep up. People were getting to school early, sneaking out their phones during class, and meeting up after school to click. It was becoming impossible to manage the photo queue. She’d had it under control on Tuesday, but now, with this many users, the odds had shifted.
She changed into her gym clothes and then stuck her head in her locker to type out a message to Nathan.
Allie
I’m running out of time.
Need that idea. FAST!
When the lunch bell rang, Allie walked straight to the library. Emma hadn’t told her where to go, but she didn’t have to. She knew her favorite spot.
She walked past the checkout desk and the banks of computer terminals, up the stairs, and over to the sunny corner window in the back by the travel section. She spotted Emma right away, curled up in one of the colorful beanbag chairs with her head resting against the glass and her face buried in the pages of a thick book.
“Hey,” Allie whispered.
“Hey,” Emma said without looking up.
“What are you reading?”
Emma angled the book so Allie could see the cover.
“Haven’t you read that already?”
“Twice.” Emma pulled her knees to her chest, and then played with the pages, gently curling them toward her, and then letting them drop. She still hadn’t made eye contact with Allie.
“What are you doing in here? Why couldn’t we just meet at our table?” Allie asked.
Emma slowly shook her head. “People keep making kiss noises at me. In the halls. In class. It’ll die down, I’m sure, but until it does…” She trailed off.
“Jerks,” Allie said under her breath.
“And nobody’s at our table anyway. Zoe has spent every lunch playing your game—I swear, she’s completely obsessed with it. And Maddie is having lunch with Chris today.”
“Chris Kemmerman?” Allie asked.
Emma found a loose thread on her sweater and twisted it around her finger. “Yeah, we were group texting last night and Zoe dared her to ask him if he wanted to meet up at lunch. She did, and he said yes.”
“You guys texted last night? Without me?”
“We knew you were working on the fix. We didn’t want to bug you.”
Allie’s heart sank deep in her chest. Click’d was supposed to bring her friends together, not tear them apart.