“Mrs. Clark?” I said, dumbfounded. “Was it you?”
She smiled at us.
“Yes, Lucy, I left the notes,” she confessed. She turned to everyone in the club. “I actually gave notes to three of you, one from each table group, at the beginning of the week. I’ve been curious to see what happened.”
“Wait, so we weren’t the only ones solving coding mysteries all week?” Maya asked incredulously.
“Precisely,” Mrs. Clark said.
We found out that Leila’s group guessed from the first note who they were from, so Mrs. Clark swore them to secrecy. I had to give them credit for figuring it all out so fast and not telling anyone.
Bradley got the first note, but lost it, and when more came, he couldn’t figure out what they meant. He hadn’t even shared them with his group.
“Girls,” Mrs. Clark said, turning to us. “I’m so impressed with what you’ve done here. Why don’t you explain the concepts you learned to everyone?”
We took turns telling the club what input/output, loops, conditionals, and variables were. It felt good to share what we’d learned in just one week.
“Thank you, girls. That was perfect. You can take your seats.” We walked back to our group table, feeling proud of ourselves.
“Now we can start thinking about programs we want to create,” Mrs. Clark said. “Nothing too complicated, and let’s make it something that would be helpful around school,” she quickly added.
I sighed. It looked like I wasn’t going to be able to make the app for my uncle, after all. But that was okay—I knew it would probably be too complicated for me to do, at least now. I’d get there.
For the last five minutes of club time, Erin, Maya, Sophia, and I talked about ideas.
Maya proposed a clothes-swapping program, and Sophia wanted to make something to track sports scores. But we all agreed that Erin’s idea was the best.
We were going to make a program to help kids who were sick and missed school get their homework!
I grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from my backpack to take notes. Our program would match kids who were home sick with kids in their classes. It would have a way to keep track of homework and assignments. It would look for students who lived in similar neighborhoods to make delivery easy.
I wrote down our ideas, and added at the bottom:
This program will help everyone make new friends.
As I looked over the list, I noticed something odd happening to the words.
“What?!” I couldn’t believe it. The list I had just written faded away, leaving a blank sheet of paper!
I thought for a moment. “Oh, Alex,” I sighed. Disappearing ink, of course. He must have replaced my pens, and I hadn’t noticed. He’d been so helpful, but now he was back to being himself. I shouldn’t have expected any less from him.
I sighed even harder when I remembered that I’d used the same pen to write notes in English class on index cards. I must not have noticed because I was turning the cards so fast. Ugh!
I reached into my bag to grab a pencil. As I leaned down, the hackathon flyer in my jacket pocket from a few days ago caught my eye. It was only a month away. We’d already learned so much in just one week, at this rate, I was sure we’d know enough coding by then to sign up. I just had to convince the others. I was about to talk to them about it when Mrs. Clark came over to our group.
“I’m so impressed with what you did here today, girls. Coding is about teamwork and problem-solving, which is exactly what you did this past week. I’d like to make the four of you a permanent group for coding club, if that’s okay.”
Sophia, Erin, Maya, and I all looked at one another and nodded. We already were a permanent group. And I had a feeling that our catch-the-coder game was just the beginning.
Acknowledgments
There were a lot of amazing coders involved in this book. I want to thank the staff at Girls Who Code. Special thanks go to the awesome coding girls in my neighborhood: Annie Chang and Sophie Courtney.
My gratitude extends to Aria Lin, Matt Cohen, Laura Sebastian, and Mai Robinson—I couldn’t have done this without you as my very own “permanent” group.
With heartfelt appreciation to my agent, Deborah Warren.
If you want to learn more about how to code, don’t miss Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World, available August 2017!
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The Friendship Code #1 Page 9