The Friendship Code #1

by Stacia Deutsch

  “I tried to get him to download a reminder app, but he didn’t like any of the ones I found. I know exactly what kind of app he’d like—one where we, and Mom and Dad, could put in reminders for him. We could use it to remember when he has doctors’ appointments, too, so we could help him if he needed it.”

  Alex seemed interested in my idea, which gave me hope. “Can you help me learn how to code a little faster so I can get started on an app? Give me some tips, maybe?”

  “That’s a really cool idea, Lu, but you gotta start with the basics. And don’t get too ahead of yourself—making an app can take years. Maybe you should focus on a computer program first. Once you have a good foundation, you can do anything.”

  Ugh, he sounded just like Mom and Dad.

  “And then I might even help you.” Alex’s eyes had a playful glimmer as he set plates down on the table. “Plus, think of all the fun you’ll have once you learn how to code!” He made a beep-beep sound, with a big smirk on his face.

  “You’re evil,” I said, glaring at him.

  “What, me?” he answered, his hands on his chest, trying to look innocent.

  I could see that he was not only not going to help me, but that I also had to be on guard. He’d played tricks on me my whole life—usually stupid ones like coloring my face when I was sleeping, putting pebbles in my shoes, or hiding all my socks. Sometimes, like today, the tricks were publicly embarrassing. I got the feeling that now that I was in coding club, the pranks were going to move to the next level.

  All the more reason why I needed to learn how to code, ASAP.

  After dinner, I went to my room and searched online again for how to make an app. There was a kid at school who taught himself to play piano from videos, and he was really good. I figured there was no reason coding couldn’t be like that for me.

  I found a video that looked promising: Beginner Coding.

  But . . . the video was so boring, I dozed off and woke up when it ended.

  Instead of trying to watch it again, I clicked on a different video—a variation of the same title. But this one was so fast, I didn’t understand anything the woman said after, “So you want to learn to code . . .”

  Just when I was about to give up, I got a text. It was Anjali.

  hey!!! what’s up?

  ugh don’t ask

  what happened??? Is it alex??

  sorta but ugh notttt

  what then??

  coding. its wayyyy too slow

  omg join film!!! we already started working on a movie and we’re going to enter it in a festival!

  That didn’t help! How come her club was actually doing stuff?!

  no thxx. I want to learn coding but faster

  I’d already told her about Uncle Mickey and my app idea.

  k . . . maybe I can help??

  how?

  idk yet

  I had no idea how Anjali could help me, but it made me feel better that she would try to. She was one of those people who liked to “fix” things—not like an engineer, more like a person who connected other people and made things happen. Maybe she could somehow come up with a solution!

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, I met Anjali on the stairs outside school. She had long, wavy dark hair that took her forever to style. Today it was in a braid down her back. Unlike me, she wore makeup, usually brightly colored eyeshadow and lip gloss.

  “Hey girl,” she said, giving me a hug. “Nice earrings.” Maya’s latest article in the school newspaper had talked about heart studs, so I’d gotten a pair and was giving them a try. I thought they looked cute with my pink shirt and blue jeans.

  “Thanks! Cool eyeshadow,” I said, admiring the shimmery green hue.

  “Trying a new one today,” she said, batting her eyes playfully. “Hey, so I was thinking about the coding thing you mentioned last night.”

  “Oh yeah? Did you come up with an idea for how I’m going to become a coding expert?” I said, jokingly.

  “You know me, I’ve got some ideas up my sleeve.”

  I laughed. “Of course you do!”

  We usually had more time to chat before class, but Anjali was in a rush today. “We have a quiz in social studies, and I want to look over my notes. Let’s talk at lunch, okay?”

  “’Kay,” I said as Anjali rushed off.

  I was passing by Mrs. Clark’s classroom on my way to class when something caught my eye. Was that Alex in there? Why would he be at the middle school? The high school was in a different building, and there was no reason for him to be here. Unless . . . was he up to no good again?

  Classes were going to start soon, but I needed to make sure Alex wasn’t making more trouble for me. I peeked in through the doorway of Mrs. Clark’s classroom. It was definitely Alex, and he and Mrs. Clark were talking and laughing. I saw him hand her a paper. What was he plotting? I started imagining how he was going to embarrass me again in coding club and clenched my fists.

  Suddenly the door swung open. “You’re a terrible spy, Lu,” he said. “I knew you were out here the whole time.”

  “I just got here, and I wasn’t spying,” I said defensively. “But what are you even doing here? You better not be plotting something new, Alex, ’cause if you prank me again in coding—”

  “Cool it, Lu. This has nothing to do with you. Mrs. Clark’s going to write me a college recommendation.” He smoothed a hand over his curls. Mrs. Clark also taught coding at his high school, and he’d been learning coding since he was my age. “I forgot to give her the form when I saw her at school. So I brought it here.”

  “Really?” I squinted at him. It was hard to believe him sometimes.

  “Yes, really.” Alex put his hand on my shoulder. “Not everything’s about you, Lu.”

  “Whatever,” I said, shaking off his hand. “I’ve got to get to class.”

  “Make sure to keep an eye on that phone of yours!” he said, grinning, as I walked away.

  Ugh, I knew he was up to something!

  If the morning at school was weird, after lunch it got even weirder. Anjali never showed up at the cafeteria. I texted her, but she didn’t reply. After a while, I figured she got busy and wasn’t coming (she often worked on extracurricular stuff during lunch), so I sat with some other friends, including Bradley from coding.

  “Boring,” he said, wiping cold pasta sauce off his chin with his sleeve. “Snoozefest.”

  “I actually like this pasta,” I said. It was the only school lunch that was halfway decent.

  “Not lunch—coding,” he clarified. “Making sandwiches is boring. And stupid.”

  “Yeah,” Sammy from coding club added, messily wrapping spaghetti around his fork. “It was pointless.”

  “Well, we actually did learn something about input and output,” I said, not sure why I was defending the activity that had frustrated me, too.

  Bradley yawned. “Like I said, B-O-R-I-N-G.”

  “And a waste of food!” Sammy added.

  I went back to eating my pasta. What did I care if they didn’t get the point of the activity?

  “Want to know what’s not boring?” Bradley said. “Making rockets.” He looked toward a window and pointed outside, where a group of kids were hanging out with the new science teacher. He was showing them how to launch empty bottles into the air using a bike pump.

  “Then why don’t you join the science club instead of coding club?” I suggested. He was starting to annoy me.

  “Science club would definitely be more fun,” Bradley answered. “But I want to go to Mars, and you gotta know how to code for that.”

  “Why do you need to know how to code to go to Mars?” Sammy asked, pasta dotting his chin.

  I’d seen a documentary about that on TV. “They use coding to program the computers and machines on the spaceships to do stuff,” I explained.

 
; Bradley nodded “Yeah, my dad says code is the foundation for everything.”

  “Well, not everything,” I said, but I understood what he meant. Coding was important for the things both Bradley and I wanted to do.

  After lunch, I headed to my locker to get books for class.

  Taped to my locker was an envelope with my name handwritten on it. Confused, I looked up and down the hall to see who might have left it, but I didn’t see anyone other than the usual kids at their own lockers.

  Hmm. I checked the envelope again, double-checked that the name on the front was mine, and after another glance up and down the hall, opened it.

  On a white sheet of paper, a typed note read:

  if (you_want_to_learn_code) {

  do_everything_I_tell_you ( );

  }

  I recognized the parentheses from the first coding video I watched online . . . just before I fell asleep. This definitely looked like programming language.

  I read the note again, ignoring the parentheses and strange squiggly things. If I wanted to learn to code, I was going to have to do everything someone said? That sounded like someone wanted to boss me around, and I didn’t like that. Was this a joke? Who could the note be from?

  “Hey!”

  I was so deep in thought, I jumped at the voice.

  I turned my head to find Anjali laughing. “Ha—scared ya!” She peeked over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

  “A note,” I told her. “I found it taped to my locker.”

  “Really? Can I see?”

  For some reason, I was reluctant to hand it over. Plus, I was annoyed that she hadn’t showed up at the cafeteria earlier.

  I turned around, holding the note to my chest. “Where were you at lunch?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah, sorry,” she said. “I lost track of time. Film club had a meeting. We need an actress who can sing, so we were talking about ideas.”

  She seemed like she felt bad, so I decided to forget the lunch thing. “Why don’t you ask someone who’s in theater or choir?”

  “We’ve asked around, but everyone seems busy with their own club’s stuff.” While she talked, I noticed that Anjali was staring at my note. I had been holding it against my chest but didn’t realize the words were facing out.

  “‘If you want to learn code, do everything I tell you’? That’s so strange. Who’s it from?” Anjali asked, changing the subject.

  I turned the note around and looked at it again.

  “No idea,” I admitted. “Oh, wait a minute,” I said, snapping my fingers. “I bet it’s from Alex! I saw him talking to Mrs. Clark today. It must be another one of his stupid pranks.”

  “I bet you’re right.” Anjali took the note and looked at it carefully, running a finger over the strange punctuation marks. “This is coding language, right?” she said.

  I nodded. “Looks like it.”

  Anjali nodded. “It’s got to be from Alex,” she said assuredly. “So what are you going to do?”

  I thought about it. Alex couldn’t win. No way was I going to do “everything” my brother said. That was a recipe for disaster.

  I crumpled the note in a ball and shoved it in my locker, slamming the door. “Bye-bye, Alex,” I said. “You can’t trick me. Not this time!”

  Arm in arm, Anjali and I walked off to class together. I’d show my brother who was the boss!

  Chapter Five

  I didn’t go to my locker again until the final bell rang. But I saw the white envelope from down the hall. It was taped to my locker door, just like the first one. I knew before I even got close enough to read the writing that my name was on the front.

  Ugh, Alex was at it again. I opened the envelope. The note said:

  if (you_agree_to_my_terms) {

  grab_a_friend ( );

  go_to_school_playground ( );

  }

  I wondered how long the note had been there.

  Underneath the first part was another message:

  if (you_go_to_school_playground) {

  look_under_benches ( );

  find_a_big_red_envelope ( );

  }

  And then, after another line break, a third part:

  if (you_find_the_envelope) {

  trust_me (“You will learn to code”);

  }

  “Alex?” I called out, looking down the hall. I only saw kids at their lockers. “Are you here somewhere?” I said, turning the other way.

  “Who?” The new girl, the one who cried before coding club, was standing a few feet away. I racked my brain for her name. It finally popped into my head: Erin!

  “Oh, hey. Alex is my brother,” I explained. “I thought maybe he was lurking around here somewhere.”

  “What’s he look like?” she asked. I described his curly hair.

  “I haven’t seen anyone like that. But I’ve only been here a few minutes,” she said. She spun the dial of her locker, and the door clanged open. “New locker,” she said. “They didn’t have one for me yesterday.”

  “Cool,” I replied, not sure what to say.

  I turned back to my locker when Anjali came up beside me. The school buses were leaving soon, and we rode together whenever we could.

  Erin started stacking her books on her locker shelf.

  Anjali positioned herself between us. “Another note?” she asked me.

  I felt a bit guilty, like I should have introduced Erin to Anjali. But I had to talk to Anjali. It was important. I could be extra-friendly to Erin later.

  I showed Anjali what I found.

  “Maybe you should go to the playground,” she said. “Just to check it out.”

  “No way. I’m sure it’s from Alex,” I told her, putting away my books. “And I don’t trust him.”

  “Maybe he changed his mind and wants to help you,” Anjali suggested. I had told her about asking him for help, and how he’d refused.

  I snorted. “Not possible.”

  “Maybe your mom forced him to help you.”

  “I shook my head. She wants me to learn from coding club.”

  I stuffed the note in my locker, along with the other one. “I don’t want to follow his instructions, anyway. You know how horrible he can be. I think I’ll just go home on the bus with you.”

  “Aren’t you even curious?” Anjali reached around me and held my locker door open. She took out the new note and read it aloud.

  if (you_agree_to_my_terms) {

  grab_a_friend ( );

  go_to_school_playground ( );

  }

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  I noticed over Anjali’s shoulder that Erin was still going through her books at her locker.

  I focused back on Anjali. “If he was your brother, you’d know there was no adventure.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.” She pushed the note into my hand. “You should go.”

  “No, I shouldn’t, Anjali,” I said. “The note says I need a friend, and you’re busy, right?” She’d mentioned having something to do after school today.

  “Yeah, I have an orthodontist appointment,” Anjali said.

  “I could go with you,” a soft voice said from behind Anjali.

  Erin had her backpack slung over one shoulder, ready to head out.

  “I . . .” She looked from Anjali to me and back. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but you two talk kind of loud.”

  “Truth,” Anjali said with a small chuckle. She held out her hand, introduced herself, and then introduced me.

  “I know Lucy,” Erin said, quickly adding, “sort of.”

  “Erin’s in coding club,” I explained.

  “Oh, neat!” Anjali said. “Are you liking it?” She gave me a look. “Lucy here thinks it’s going way too slow.”

  “We
ll, I kind of had no option but to join,” Erin said, shrugging her shoulders.

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Long story,” she replied. She clearly didn’t want to get into it.

  “Hey, I have an idea!” Anjali stepped away so that Erin and I were closer together. “Lucy’s brother, Alex, is going to help Lucy learn coding to speed things along, and you, Erin, can help her, too! He left these notes in code-speak on Lucy’s locker, and now she has to go to the playground to do some mysterious activity.”

  “You don’t have to go,” I said to Erin. “Whatever he left there is probably lame, anyway.”

  “It’s okay,” Erin said. “I was going to walk home and help my mom unpack.” She gave me a small smile. “You’d be saving me from sorting silverware and plates.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Anjali said, patting me on the back. “I gotta go.”

  Erin turned to me as Anjali jetted down the hallway to the buses.

  “So,” she said, adjusting her backpack strap over her shoulder, “which way’s the playground?”

  Chapter Six

  “‘If (you agree to my terms) . . .’ What do you think this first part means?” Erin asked me, holding my latest locker note as we went outside.

  It was a chilly fall day. Erin had put a knit cap over her blond hair and tucked loose strands under it. The school playground was just behind our building, next to the elementary school. There were usually a ton of kids there, especially on a nice day.

  “I have to do everything he says, if I want to learn.” I showed her the first note, which I’d taken from my locker. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have both.

  She read it over. “Oh, okay. Well, do you agree?” she asked me. “To do anything the notes say to do?”

  She handed me back both notes.

  “I guess so. I mean, going to the playground means I already sort of did, right?” I sighed, hoping I wasn’t making a huge mistake. I didn’t want Alex to think I’d do anything he said. I told myself that if he asked me to do anything ridiculous—like clean his gross room or wash his beat-up car—there was no way I’d do it.