Allie laughed. “How can you even say that?” she asked as she held up her phone, touched her icon, launched it, and watched it crash.
Ms. Slade raised an eyebrow. And then she looked at Allie and played with her earrings. One was a little wrench. The other was a tiny hammer. “You have all the tools you need to fix this. And after you knock those judges’ socks off tomorrow, you can get all those users back.”
Allie pictured unflagging all twelve-hundred-plus names. She wouldn’t have to worry about losing any of the data, and she could focus on a smaller, more manageable sample size. She was basically starting from scratch, like she did over the summer with the CodeGirls.
“Okay,” Allie whispered.
Ms. Slade snapped her fingers. “Hey, and if you can get the code fixed by the end of lunch, you can make our advanced CS class your user base. Their profiles and answers are already in the system. Just flag them when you’re ready, and as soon as they walk into class, you can start matching. Your leaderboard will be back up and running by the end of sixth period.”
It was a good solution. So why did it make her feel like such a failure?
Allie sighed. “I’ll be right back where I was on Monday.”
“Was Monday so bad?” Ms. Slade asked.
Allie remembered sitting with Maddie, Emma, and Zoe on the little path between the garden and the science building, watching over their shoulders as they each took the quiz. She pictured the four of them running around campus, listening for bloops, watching for clues, and trying to find one another. She remembered how the four of them clicked on the staircase by the gym, and the woo-hoo sound that told them to snap a selfie together. Allie thought about the look in their eyes when they told her how much they loved her game.
“No,” Allie said. “Actually, Monday was really good.”
Allie didn’t move when the lunch bell rang.
“Ms. Navarro,” Ms. Slade said. “You’ve been sitting in that same spot for almost four hours.”
“Yeah,” Allie said without taking her eyes off her screen.
“Get up, please. Go outside. Say hello to your friends. Get some food.”
“I’m not hungry.” As Allie said the words, she felt her stomach grumble.
“Go. Now.” Ms. Slade leaned over her shoulder and picked up the mouse. Allie didn’t even realize she’d done it until she reached out to use it and it wasn’t there.
Allie let out a heavy sigh. “Fine,” she mumbled as she scooted away from her desk. “I’ll be back in ten.”
She stepped into the hallway and took a deep breath, pulling the late summer air deep into her lungs. She walked quickly toward the quad, taking the long way and avoiding the busier routes. When people spotted her, she ducked into the closest bathroom, or turned toward a wall and pretended to look for something in her backpack. It took longer than it should have, but she finally reached the lunch line, and when she did, she stood with her head low, hoping no one would notice her. She couldn’t wait to get back to the lab, where she could put on her headphones and focus on her code again.
Allie took her sandwich to go. When she opened the computer lab door, Nathan was standing at Ms. Slade’s desk.
She stared at him.
“I’m just filling Nathan in,” Ms. Slade said.
Allie bit down hard on her lip. “Did you know?” she asked him.
“Know what?”
“That disconnecting ClickPics would wipe out the leaderboard.”
“No, of course not.”
“But you said you tested it.”
“I did. You tested it, too.”
“Just to be sure it was completely disconnected from the photos app. You said you tested it against the leaderboard a bunch of times, and I believed you.”
“I did.”
“Then why don’t I have a working app, Nathan?” she yelled.
Allie stared at him. She could feel her eyes narrowing.
“I didn’t do this on purpose,” he said.
“How am I supposed to know that?” Allie bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying. She couldn’t cry. If she did, Nathan would think she was sad, and she wasn’t sad. She was angry. She was angrier than she’d been in her whole life.
“Because I—”
Allie cut him off. “Because you couldn’t stand the idea of losing to me.” Allie looked at Ms. Slade. “I trusted him. And he trusted me. Only I didn’t let him down.” And then she turned back to Nathan. “By the way, how is the hardware store working out for you? Everybody still being charged for paint?”
Nathan didn’t say a word. He looked down at the ground and shook his head. “I was trying to help,” he said to Allie. And then he looked at Ms. Slade. “I worked on her code for hours. I tested it on Wednesday night and again in the lab, and it was working just fine.”
“Except it isn’t fine,” Allie said.
“Do you really think he sabotaged your game?” Ms. Slade asked.
Years of anger and frustration bubbled up inside Allie. She’d lost to him too many times. And she’d seen that smug look on his face after every one. She thought this time would be different, but she was beginning to realize she was wrong.
“I don’t know,” she said calmly. “But we’re less than twenty-four hours away from the biggest competition of our lives, and he has a working game, and I don’t. I think that’s kind of hard to ignore, don’t you?”
Nathan shook his head. He wasn’t about to take the blame. “Did you write the last line exactly the way I said to? Because that was what tied it all back to the leaderboard.”
“Of course I did,” Allie said. She couldn’t even look at him.
“You followed his instructions exactly?” Ms. Slade asked. “You didn’t change anything else?”
“No.”
“You must have missed something,” Nathan said.
Allie narrowed her eyes on him. “I didn’t.”
“Where’s the printout I gave you?”
“In my backpack.”
“Great. Let’s get it. I’ll help you fix it, right now.” Nathan pointed to Ira.
Allie laughed loudly. “Are you kidding? I’m not letting you anywhere near my code!” Nathan still looked confused and hurt, but that didn’t keep her from getting right in his face. “Excuse me. I have a ton of work to do and no time to do it.”
She turned on her heel and walked away. She sat down in front of her computer, pulled her headphones over her ears, and turned her music up as loud as it would go.
Right before fifth period, Ms. Slade walked to the back of the room and sat down next to Allie. “How’s it going?”
Allie looked up at the clock. There was no way she’d have everything done in time to make her sixth-period class into her new installed base.
“It failed the last test. I’m pretty sure I know what to do next, but I still have to test everything again.”