She thought about Nathan, sitting next to her with his headphones on. Had he only installed the app because he was trying to get a look inside? Maybe he was trying to sabotage her from the beginning. He knew she had a chance at beating him this time, so he’d decided there was no way he was going to let that happen.
But then she thought about all their lunches in the lab, reaching into the popcorn bag as they worked on their code, and texting each other as they stayed up late, troubleshooting from home. Had he been playing her all along? She didn’t want to think it was possible.
Ms. Slade curled her finger toward her chest and led Allie to the back of the room. Allie fired up her computer while Ms. Slade sat in Nathan’s seat.
“Remember, it’s my job to help you find the problem and do whatever I need to do to help you solve it, but I’m a mentor. I can’t fix it for you.”
Allie nodded. That wasn’t news; she knew the G4G rules.
“Okay, let’s take a look and see if we can figure out what’s going on,” Ms. Slade said. The classroom started filling up with her second-period class, but she didn’t leave Allie’s side.
She logged into the CodeGirls server and went straight to the cloud-based database. Allie scrolled down slowly, one line at a time. The answers to everyone’s questions were still there, and she stared at them, trying not to cry. Everything looked right. The algorithm that gathered each person’s leaderboard data and ranked it against the others in the system seemed to be working exactly the way it was supposed to.
“I have a backup,” Allie said. “I could just revert back to the old code and everything will return to the way it was last night.”
Ms. Slade’s eyebrows shot up. “But then Click’d would go back to randomly pulling pictures from people’s private photos?”
“Yeah.” Allie felt guilty for not caring, but what was the worst that could happen? It was Friday. As soon as she got it running again, she could take it offline for the rest of the day.
“The judges would never figure something like that out, Allie. But you would know. And I would know.” She pointed at the monitor. “I’m afraid you’re going to need to fix it, for real this time.”
Allie looked at her teacher. A big part of her wished she’d never told Ms. Slade the truth. Why didn’t she just go straight to Ira, revert to the code before she made the changes, and send out another update to the user base? It was that easy to get the leaderboard running again. And then everyone would be happy.
But she knew deep down that would have been wrong.
She stood up and paced the room. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the screen. She had over 1,200 users, but none of it mattered without a working leaderboard. If she couldn’t fix it by the end of the day, she would have to use the CodeGirls group as the example in her demo.
And that’s when she had a horrible thought.
“No,” she whispered.
She reached for her phone, opened Click’d, and switched over to the CodeGirls group. She clicked on “leaderboard” and her heart sank deep in her chest.
It was empty, too.
Her CodeGirls were gone. Wiped out. All of them.
Courtney lived in Arizona. Kaiya was back in Boston. Alexa was in Georgia, Maya was in Denver, Zaina was in Chicago, Rachel was in Florida, Li was in Texas, Layla was in Oregon, Shonna was in Illinois, and Jayne lived in North Carolina. Seeing those ten names on her leaderboard, knowing they would always be there because her CodeGirls leaderboard would never change, made her feel connected to them, even though they were far away. She remembered the day they’d run around the lab, tapping phones and watching their leaderboards come together. She could never re-create that moment. And without the phone tap, she wasn’t sure she could even re-create the leaderboard itself.
The bell rang and Ms. Slade rested her hand on Allie’s back. “Hey, it’s okay. Remember, it’s code. It’s inherently fixable.”
Allie folded her hands on the desk and let her head fall.
Last night, for a brief time, she had a working app without a photo glitch, more than a thousand users, and tons of data. But two empty leaderboards meant she had nothing to show the judges the following day. It might be fixable, but she had no idea how she was going to figure it out in less than twenty-four hours.
“My app relies on the leaderboard. Even if I’m able to find the problem and fix the code, how am I going to re-create a leaderboard by tomorrow?”
Ms. Slade was quiet while she studied Allie’s screen. “May I?” she asked, and when Allie nodded, she reached for the mouse.
“Hmm…” she said as she looked over all the information in the various database tables. Allie watched her work, trying not to jump out of her seat and run back to the quiet corner in the library. She thought about those colorful beanbag chairs and the way the light streamed in through the tall windows.
“Well, as far as I can tell, you have two problems to solve. First, you need to figure out what’s wrong with the algorithm that ties everything to the leaderboard. And once you figure it out—which I know you can do—you need to create a new leaderboard filled with people you can physically locate. A bunch of your users don’t even go to school here.”
Allie groaned. She knew she was right.
“I have an idea, but I don’t think you’re going to like it. What if you delete all your users and start from scratch?”
Allie’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Well, not delete,” Ms. Slade explained. “Just unflag every record for now, so you can start clean and work with a smaller user base. You can always re-flag everyone when it’s fixed and the competition is done.”
“But I added over a thousand users this week! That’s huge. You said it yourself, the judges look for things like that.”
“And that’s true, but they also look for working apps,” Ms. Slade said plainly.
Allie put her elbows on the desk and dropped her head in her hands, and Ms. Slade scooted in closer and rested her hand on Allie’s shoulder.
“It’s not the end of the world! You’ll get all those users back in no time. Just remember, you were selected for the Games for Good competition based entirely on your CodeGirls summer project, back when you had twenty users and an incredible story to tell. Focus on that. And keep in mind, you had an extraordinary week. There was pure enthusiasm in every corner of this campus. For your game, Allie. For this thing that didn’t even exist three months ago—not until you used your imagination to create it, and your skill and passion to bring it to life. You did that.” She squeezed her hand hard. “You.”
Allie wanted to cry, but she nodded instead.
“I think Mr. Mohr is the only one who wasn’t excited about it.” Ms. Slade joked, and Allie couldn’t help but smile. “And based on that note he just wrote, you even made him come around. You took your app through the most brutal beta test imaginable, and it passed with flying colors.”