“It’s all about the questions.” Allie didn’t want to talk in jargon about fields and algorithms, so she answered as simply as she could. “I even made up a fake name and joined a few online dating sites so I could see how they worked. Click’d looks for things two people have in common. That’s it, really. The more you overlap, the higher your score. The higher the score, the higher your spot on the leaderboard.”
Allie went back to the main screen, tapped on the LEADERBOARD tab, and ran her fingertip slowly down the glass, scrolling through the list of photos. “This is how my fellow CodeGirls and I ranked,” she said proudly.
“What’s going on here?” Allie looked up in time to see Mr. Mohr standing right behind Emma, trying to see over her shoulder and into the circle. Allie pocketed her phone as quickly as she could.
“Nothing,” Zoe said. “Allie was telling us a joke.”
The girls scrambled into their seats and reached for their food.
“I didn’t see a phone, did I?”
Before Allie could answer, Maddie spun around and looked him right in the eye. “Did you have a nice summer, Mr. Mohr?” she asked sweetly.
Allie could tell he wasn’t buying the diversion tactic, but he must have been feeling generous. It was the first day of school, after all.
“It was very nice, thank you,” he replied. “My kids and I went to Washington, DC, and New York.”
“That sounds so fun!” Maddie said, smiling and nodding, but his face remained completely expressionless.
“It was. I highly recommend it.” He locked his hands behind his back. “Welcome back to Mercer,” he said, and then he walked away, scanning the quad, looking for his next stop.
Allie waited until he was over by the sixth-grade section, and then she pulled her phone out again. “Wanna try it?”
Zoe, Emma, and Maddie smiled at each other. “Um, yeah!” Zoe said, speaking on behalf of all three of them.
The night before, Allie created a new group called “Mercer Middle” so she could keep her school friends separate from the CodeGirls. She tapped on the pull-down menu and opened it. Allie was the only member, but she wouldn’t be for long.
She curled her body over her phone again and navigated to the LET’S CLICK button. It opened her contacts and she selected the boxes next to Zoe, Maddie, and Emma’s names. And then she looked at each of them in turn. “Ready?” she asked.
They all nodded.
Allie pressed INVITE.
“Let’s get out of here,” Maddie suggested, and that was all it took for the four of them to ditch what was left of their lunches in the closest trash can and hurry out of the quad, away from the crowds and Mr. Mohr’s watchful eyes.
They found a quiet spot on the walkway between the school garden and the science building and sat in a circle, cross-legged and bent over their phones. The three of them took the Click’d quiz while Allie squirmed, fidgeted, and leaned in closer, trying to see their screens.
Zoe let out and a laugh and said, “Okay, that’s funny.”
Maddie said, “Ha! No way!” as she selected an image.
When Emma kept chuckling under her breath, Allie couldn’t stand it anymore. “You guys are killing me!” she said, and scooted over behind Emma, resting her chin on her shoulder so she could see what question she was on.
“When you see the LET’S GO! button at the bottom of the screen, stop. Don’t press it until I tell you to,” Allie told the group.
“It wants permission to access my photos and my Instagram account,” Zoe said.
“Say yes. It pulls clues from your Instagram feed and stores the ClickPics in your photos file.”
“ClickPics?” Emma asked.
Allie grinned. “You’ll see.”
“Now it wants permission to access my contacts,” Maddie said.
“Choose yes again. That’s how you’ll invite new users,” Allie explained.
A minute later, Zoe yelled, “Done!”
“Me too,” Maddie said.
“Same!” Emma added.
Allie tapped her toes fast against the cement, feeling giddy as she checked the time.
“Perfect. We have fifteen minutes. Run. Get as far away from one another as possible and tap the button.” Allie circled her finger in the air. “And then start walking around campus, looking for each other. Oh, and watch your screen for clues. Blue means you’re close. Yellow means you’re getting warmer. Red means you’re hot. As soon as you find each other, tap your phones together.”
“And then what?” Emma asked.
“You’ll see,” Allie said again.
Emma, Zoe, and Maddie looked at one another, started cracking up, and then took off running in totally different directions, while Allie sat on the cement all alone, staring at the screen and trying to contain herself.
A minute or so later, Allie’s phone sounded with a single bloop and the screen lit up in bright blue.
She sprang to her feet and ran in the same direction Maddie had gone, stealing glances at her phone and watching for the color to change. The screen was still blue when she rounded the flagpole at the front of the school, but it turned yellow when she ran by the library.
Bloop-bloop.
She ran through the quad, down the steps, past the basketball courts, and turned the corner by the gym.
“Getting warmer,” Allie whispered as she glided past the boys’ locker room, heading for the staircase. “Who are you?” she asked the screen. “Where are you?”
Bloop-bloop-bloop.
Allie stopped cold and looked down at her phone to find a picture of Emma and Zoe with their arms around each other. It was tinted red and flashing, and as she walked toward the staircase, the red screen started flashing even faster.
She took the stairs two at a time, turned the corner, and found Emma sitting on the top step with her phone in the air, displaying an old photo of all four of them, taken at a soccer game.
Allie ran up the stairs as Emma jumped up and down, yelling, “This is so awesome!”
“Now tap,” Allie said, holding her phone out to Emma.
“What?” Emma asked.
“Tap your phone against mine.”
The second Emma touched the side of her phone to Allie’s, both phones vibrated, the red lights stopped flashing, and the photos disappeared. They sat down on the top step and stared at their screens. There was a single flash of white. And their leaderboards opened.
“Number three?” Emma crinkled her nose.
Before Allie could reply, Emma’s phone gave a celebratory woo-hoo sound and her camera automatically opened.
“Now we take a picture,” Allie said. They came in cheek-to-cheek, and Emma held her phone at arm’s length. “That’s a ClickPic. It goes out to everyone to show off the newest match!”
Bloop-bloop.
Allie’s and Emma’s phones sounded in tandem and started flashing yellow.
“Someone’s close!” Allie held her phone high in the air and Emma copied her.
Bloop-bloop-bloop.
The light on Allie’s phone changed to red. Emma’s did the same.
“It’s Zoe,” Emma said, twisting her phone so Allie could see.
“Mine’s Maddie!” Allie said.
They heard bloop-bloop-bloop from the bottom of the stairs, and a second later, the same sound came from the top. Allie’s phone showed a selfie of Maddie in her room, and Emma’s phone had a picture of Zoe and her brother at one of his swim meets over the summer.
“They’re coming from different directions!” Emma yelled. She barely had the words out before Maddie came racing down the stairs and Zoe came running up.