“It’s still not fixed, is it?” Emma asked, changing the subject.
Allie pulled up a giant red beanbag chair and settled in next to Emma, resting her cheek against the opposite window. The sun was shining brightly outside, and the glass felt warm on her skin. “I’m working on it, but…no. Not yet.”
Emma shifted in her seat. “I deleted all the photos from my phone last night,” she said. “And so did Maddie. I’m just curious….When did you and Zoe delete yours?”
Allie thought back to their conversation on the bus the day before. “On Tuesday night after soccer practice,” she admitted.
“Because you know you can’t fix it.” Emma said it more like a statement than a question, and Allie shrunk into the beanbag chair, feeling small. “What if something really personal gets out there? I mean, my secret crush on Andrew is one thing, but what if a picture gets shared that’s seriously embarrassing, or hurts someone’s feelings, or like, ruins someone’s life?”
“It pulls from personal photos maybe one percent of the time. I’m watching and deleting them from the queue before they go out. I haven’t caught all of them, but I’ve caught most.”
Emma dropped her book on her lap and looked Allie in the eye. “Why don’t you just shut it down? You have more than eight hundred users. That’s plenty of data for Saturday. Shut it down, focus on collecting stories, and fix the code next week.”
Deep down, she knew Emma was right. But she couldn’t imagine doing that. She’d made something important. She wasn’t ready to let it go. People loved Click’d; they’d told her so. They told her on the bus. They’d stopped her in the halls all week. They’d leaned over the aisles in every class to fill her in on their leaderboard status, or to tell her about an unexpected connection. Sure, a few people had started complaining, but most of their issues would be gone along with the glitch. She knew she could fix it; she just needed a little more time.
“I can’t….” Allie said.
“Can’t or won’t?”
Allie sucked in a deep breath. “Won’t. Not yet.”
“Fine.” Emma pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and held it flat in front of her. She tapped on the Click’d icon, with its light blue background and stick-figure friends. Allie thought she was opening it, but instead, she held her finger down and didn’t let go.
All the icons wobbled and a little “X” showed up in the upper left-hand corner.
Emma clicked on it and a pop-up message appeared on the screen. “Deleting this app will also delete its data.” Emma said, reading the screen aloud. “Delete or cancel?”
“Please don’t,” Allie whispered.
Emma brought her fingertip back to the screen and selected DELETE.
And just like that, Click’d was gone.
Emma looked right into Allie’s eyes. “You’re one of my best friends. You’ll always be one of my best friends. And I accept your apology—I really do—but if you can’t fix the glitch, I think you should shut your game down.” She stuffed her phone back in her pocket and returned her attention to her book. “I don’t want to talk to you until you do.”
Allie went straight to the lab and slid into her seat next to Nathan.
“There you are. I was just about to text you,” he said. “I have good news.”
Allie let out a relieved breath. “Please. I so need good news right now.”
He tapped on the keyboard a few times and pulled up her code. “I looked at the edge cases—the contingency plans that tell your app what to do if the code doesn’t execute the way it’s supposed to—and look.” He pointed at the screen. “When the program calls Instagram and can’t find it for some reason—which happens all the time, right, because the server is busy, or a user doesn’t have an account, or whatever—it’s pulling from their personal photo stream instead.”
Allie stared at the monitor. He was right.
“It seems like an easy fix, but I agree with what you said before about not having enough time to unravel everything since it’s all interconnected. Changing it now might cause something else to break. So, here’s my idea. Don’t fix it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t fix it until after G4G. For now, here’s the faster way to solve the problem.” He scrolled down to the bottom of the screen. “Get rid of the ClickPics.”
“What?” Allie shifted in her seat. “I can’t do that. Everyone loves the ClickPics!”
“I know, but look…” Nathan pointed at the monitor again. “If you just delete these lines and rewrite this one, you’re no longer touching the photos app at all. You’d be pulling exclusively from Instagram. It’s not storing or sending anything out from the photos app, so there’s no risk of confusion.”
He scrolled back up to the top and Allie looked over the lines again. She hated the idea of losing the Pics, but he had a good point. “I’d have to change all the app’s behavior after two people click.”
“No more woo-hoo,” Nathan said with a smile, but Allie didn’t smile back.
She kept going, pointing at the monitor and talking through the steps out loud. “If I remove this line, users will see the flash and the leaderboard, but the camera won’t launch. Then I can just revoke access to the photos app completely.”
“Exactly. Then you’re just dealing with Instagram and the pictures you know people have made public. You can always bring ClickPics back once you’ve fixed it the right way, you know? Roll it out in a week or two. Call it an upgrade.”
Allie sighed as she thought about all the work in front of her. She hated the idea of simplifying her app. She loved Click’d exactly the way it was. She didn’t want to lose the Pics or the woo-hoo—that was her favorite part! And all the stories she’d planned to share during the competition were based on those photos.
But she had to admit it: Nathan was right. Deleting the ClickPics would be a much simpler fix. She thought back to Emma’s words in the library. She didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. And she needed her friend back. She had to do something.
“I ran a bunch of tests last night. It worked every time. Here.” He slid her a printout with the specific lines of code highlighted in blue. “These are the lines you need to delete. That one in green needs a little tweaking to tie everything back together.” He’d written down the specific changes to the code in neat block printing.
Allie looked over at the clock. Lunch would be over in ten minutes, but at least she knew exactly what to do when school was out. She had an hour before she had to be at soccer practice, but that should be enough time. Nathan had made it easy. She could fix, test, and push out the upgrade before her mom got there. By the end of the day, she wouldn’t have to worry about Click’d sending out personal photos anymore.
She was thinking through the rest of the afternoon, strategizing how to make the change, when Nathan said, “Um…Allie. Something’s happening.” He scooted his chair closer to the monitor and curled his finger toward him. “You have to look at this.”