“Good night,” she said.
“’Night,” he said.
She set her phone on her desk, changed into her pajamas, and went into the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. When she returned, there was a message waiting on her phone.
Nathan
Does anyone ever call you Allie-gator?
She rolled her eyes at the screen.
Allie
No
Nathan
Hmm. OK
Allie
Why?
No reason
She didn’t know what to say, so she typed:
You’re weird
I know
She was smiling as she climbed into bed. Bo jumped up on top of her comforter and settled in next to her, and she rested her hand on his back as she let her head sink deep into her pillow. Her eyelids felt heavy, and her whole body was ready for sleep, but her mind was still wide-awake. She’d been so busy all day, she hadn’t given Emma much thought, but now, lying there in the dark, quiet room, she couldn’t get her voice out of her head.
She reached for her phone.
Allie
I miss you, Em
I should have told you
I’m so sorry I didn’t
She wasn’t expecting a reply, but the message bubble popped up on her screen and she could tell Emma was writing back. She must have been having trouble sleeping, too.
Emma
meet me in the library at lunch?
Allie let out a sigh of relief as she replied.
I’ll be there
It’s going to be a good day, Allie thought as she stood waiting for the bus.
Nathan had an idea to help her fix the glitch. She had three success stories to build into her presentation: Blake and Jackson, Kira and Sean, and Ben and Brody. And by the end of lunch, Emma would have forgiven her and they would be back to normal.
But between first period and the lunch bell, things went from bad to worse.
In science, Bianca Singh told her that there was a mistake with the leaderboard, because Alyssa Moran seemed to be stuck in her #2 spot and the two of them despised each other.
She ran into Lea Cho between second and third, and she pulled Allie aside and told her she needed to do something about this sixth grader who thought they were real-life best friends and kept sending her annoying texts.
In math, she overheard Jesse Grant bragging about all the fake accounts he’d opened.
In the passing period after third, she stepped into the bathroom and overheard two girls fighting about a picture on Click’d. One of them was screaming and the other was crying, so Allie hid in a stall until they left.
And in PE, Jane Templeton said she was working in the office and a bunch of teachers had come in to complain to Mr. Mohr about a new game that was going around campus. “They said it was disrupting their classes. None of them mentioned your name or Click’d,” Jane said, “but someone’s going to rat you out eventually.”
Allie knew she had to face facts: She couldn’t keep up. People were getting to school early, sneaking out their phones during class, and meeting up after school to click. It was becoming impossible to manage the photo queue. She’d had it under control on Tuesday, but now, with this many users, the odds had shifted.
She changed into her gym clothes and then stuck her head in her locker to type out a message to Nathan.
Allie
I’m running out of time.
Need that idea. FAST!
When the lunch bell rang, Allie walked straight to the library. Emma hadn’t told her where to go, but she didn’t have to. She knew her favorite spot.
She walked past the checkout desk and the banks of computer terminals, up the stairs, and over to the sunny corner window in the back by the travel section. She spotted Emma right away, curled up in one of the colorful beanbag chairs with her head resting against the glass and her face buried in the pages of a thick book.
“Hey,” Allie whispered.
“Hey,” Emma said without looking up.
“What are you reading?”
Emma angled the book so Allie could see the cover.
“Haven’t you read that already?”
“Twice.” Emma pulled her knees to her chest, and then played with the pages, gently curling them toward her, and then letting them drop. She still hadn’t made eye contact with Allie.
“What are you doing in here? Why couldn’t we just meet at our table?” Allie asked.
Emma slowly shook her head. “People keep making kiss noises at me. In the halls. In class. It’ll die down, I’m sure, but until it does…” She trailed off.
“Jerks,” Allie said under her breath.
“And nobody’s at our table anyway. Zoe has spent every lunch playing your game—I swear, she’s completely obsessed with it. And Maddie is having lunch with Chris today.”
“Chris Kemmerman?” Allie asked.
Emma found a loose thread on her sweater and twisted it around her finger. “Yeah, we were group texting last night and Zoe dared her to ask him if he wanted to meet up at lunch. She did, and he said yes.”
“You guys texted last night? Without me?”
“We knew you were working on the fix. We didn’t want to bug you.”
Allie’s heart sank deep in her chest. Click’d was supposed to bring her friends together, not tear them apart.
“It’s still not fixed, is it?” Emma asked, changing the subject.
Allie pulled up a giant red beanbag chair and settled in next to Emma, resting her cheek against the opposite window. The sun was shining brightly outside, and the glass felt warm on her skin. “I’m working on it, but…no. Not yet.”
Emma shifted in her seat. “I deleted all the photos from my phone last night,” she said. “And so did Maddie. I’m just curious….When did you and Zoe delete yours?”
Allie thought back to their conversation on the bus the day before. “On Tuesday night after soccer practice,” she admitted.
“Because you know you can’t fix it.” Emma said it more like a statement than a question, and Allie shrunk into the beanbag chair, feeling small. “What if something really personal gets out there? I mean, my secret crush on Andrew is one thing, but what if a picture gets shared that’s seriously embarrassing, or hurts someone’s feelings, or like, ruins someone’s life?”
“It pulls from personal photos maybe one percent of the time. I’m watching and deleting them from the queue before they go out. I haven’t caught all of them, but I’ve caught most.”
Emma dropped her book on her lap and looked Allie in the eye. “Why don’t you just shut it down? You have more than eight hundred users. That’s plenty of data for Saturday. Shut it down, focus on collecting stories, and fix the code next week.”
Deep down, she knew Emma was right. But she couldn’t imagine doing that. She’d made something important. She wasn’t ready to let it go. People loved Click’d; they’d told her so. They told her on the bus. They’d stopped her in the halls all week. They’d leaned over the aisles in every class to fill her in on their leaderboard status, or to tell her about an unexpected connection. Sure, a few people had started complaining, but most of their issues would be gone along with the glitch. She knew she could fix it; she just needed a little more time.
“I can’t….” Allie said.
“Can’t or won’t?”
Allie sucked in a deep breath. “Won’t. Not yet.”
“Fine.” Emma pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and held it flat in front of her. She tapped on the Click’d icon, with its light blue background and stick-figure friends. Allie thought she was opening it, but instead, she held her finger down and didn’t let go.
All the icons wobbled and a little “X” showed up in the upper left-hand corner.
Emma clicked on it and a pop-up message appeared on the screen. “Deleting this app will also delete its data.” Emma said, reading the screen aloud. “Delete or cancel?”
&
nbsp; “Please don’t,” Allie whispered.
Emma brought her fingertip back to the screen and selected DELETE.
And just like that, Click’d was gone.
Emma looked right into Allie’s eyes. “You’re one of my best friends. You’ll always be one of my best friends. And I accept your apology—I really do—but if you can’t fix the glitch, I think you should shut your game down.” She stuffed her phone back in her pocket and returned her attention to her book. “I don’t want to talk to you until you do.”
Allie went straight to the lab and slid into her seat next to Nathan.
“There you are. I was just about to text you,” he said. “I have good news.”
Allie let out a relieved breath. “Please. I so need good news right now.”
He tapped on the keyboard a few times and pulled up her code. “I looked at the edge cases—the contingency plans that tell your app what to do if the code doesn’t execute the way it’s supposed to—and look.” He pointed at the screen. “When the program calls Instagram and can’t find it for some reason—which happens all the time, right, because the server is busy, or a user doesn’t have an account, or whatever—it’s pulling from their personal photo stream instead.”
Allie stared at the monitor. He was right.
“It seems like an easy fix, but I agree with what you said before about not having enough time to unravel everything since it’s all interconnected. Changing it now might cause something else to break. So, here’s my idea. Don’t fix it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t fix it until after G4G. For now, here’s the faster way to solve the problem.” He scrolled down to the bottom of the screen. “Get rid of the ClickPics.”
“What?” Allie shifted in her seat. “I can’t do that. Everyone loves the ClickPics!”
“I know, but look…” Nathan pointed at the monitor again. “If you just delete these lines and rewrite this one, you’re no longer touching the photos app at all. You’d be pulling exclusively from Instagram. It’s not storing or sending anything out from the photos app, so there’s no risk of confusion.”
He scrolled back up to the top and Allie looked over the lines again. She hated the idea of losing the Pics, but he had a good point. “I’d have to change all the app’s behavior after two people click.”
“No more woo-hoo,” Nathan said with a smile, but Allie didn’t smile back.
She kept going, pointing at the monitor and talking through the steps out loud. “If I remove this line, users will see the flash and the leaderboard, but the camera won’t launch. Then I can just revoke access to the photos app completely.”
“Exactly. Then you’re just dealing with Instagram and the pictures you know people have made public. You can always bring ClickPics back once you’ve fixed it the right way, you know? Roll it out in a week or two. Call it an upgrade.”
Allie sighed as she thought about all the work in front of her. She hated the idea of simplifying her app. She loved Click’d exactly the way it was. She didn’t want to lose the Pics or the woo-hoo—that was her favorite part! And all the stories she’d planned to share during the competition were based on those photos.
But she had to admit it: Nathan was right. Deleting the ClickPics would be a much simpler fix. She thought back to Emma’s words in the library. She didn’t want anyone else to get hurt. And she needed her friend back. She had to do something.
“I ran a bunch of tests last night. It worked every time. Here.” He slid her a printout with the specific lines of code highlighted in blue. “These are the lines you need to delete. That one in green needs a little tweaking to tie everything back together.” He’d written down the specific changes to the code in neat block printing.
Allie looked over at the clock. Lunch would be over in ten minutes, but at least she knew exactly what to do when school was out. She had an hour before she had to be at soccer practice, but that should be enough time. Nathan had made it easy. She could fix, test, and push out the upgrade before her mom got there. By the end of the day, she wouldn’t have to worry about Click’d sending out personal photos anymore.
She was thinking through the rest of the afternoon, strategizing how to make the change, when Nathan said, “Um…Allie. Something’s happening.” He scooted his chair closer to the monitor and curled his finger toward him. “You have to look at this.”
“Now what?”
“I’m not sure.” He pointed at the user count in the top right corner of the monitor. “Activity has been steady all through lunch. There were eight hundred and sixty-two users when I sat down, and that barely changed.”
“And?”
“It just started spiking. Look.” The user base was on the rise again, and it was growing fast.
876.
881.
883.
890.
“Why are you getting all these new users suddenly, especially when the lunch bell is about to ring?”
Nathan’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Here, let me sort it by ‘last updated’ so we can see the most recent new users. Maybe that will help.”
Allie used Nathan’s armrest to lean in to get a better look. She scanned the first twenty names, trying to figure out what they had in common, but she couldn’t see a thread. “I don’t know any of these people, do you?” she asked, and Nathan shook his head.
“This is so strange,” Allie said. “I haven’t seen spikes like that since Tuesday, when it first started going around. Why would a bunch of people join out of nowhere?”
They watched the numbers climb:
903.
912.
918.
925.
“That’s impossible. There are only nine hundred fourteen students at Mercer.”
Nathan’s jaw dropped open to say something, but he didn’t have a chance to. Allie beat him to it. “Wait. I know her,” she said as she pointed to the screen. “She used to be on my soccer team. She goes to Steinbeck.” Steinbeck Middle School was two towns away.
The bell rang.
927.
935.
943.
“It’s going around Steinbeck.” Allie knew she shouldn’t see this as good news, but she couldn’t help but be a little excited. She shot Nathan a nervous smile.
“Yep.” He shook his head and smiled back. “And ten bucks says their lunch just started.”
After school, Allie went straight to the lab, and she and Nathan worked together for the next hour. She carefully scrolled through her code, stopping at each line in question, highlighting it, and hitting the DELETE key, carefully separating all connections with the photos app from the other functionality. Every time she pressed DELETE, she thought her heart was going to explode, but she kept going until she reached the last line.
She looked down at the paper Nathan had handed her at lunch, double-checking to be sure she’d followed his handwritten changes perfectly.
Everything matched up.
The leaderboard was no longer connected to the photos in any way. No more ClickPics. No more woo-hoo. Allie wondered how long it would take before people noticed.
She took a deep breath and held it as she ran the final test.
“It passed,” she told him. She couldn’t keep the smile off her face. As much as she hated losing features, she couldn’t help but feel relieved.
Her phone chirped by her side and made her jump in her seat.
Mom
In the roundabout
“Are you going to send out the update?” Nathan asked.
“I can’t. My mom’s here. I have to get to soccer practice.” Allie stared at her monitor. “I’ll do it when I get home. That way I can run one more test first.”
Nathan shook his head. “Send the update, you chicken.”
Allie logged out and powered down her computer. “I will. Soon.”
He took a big handful of microwave popcorn and stuffed it into his mouth. “You’re stalling,” he mumbled as he chewed.
After soccer practice and dinner, Allie ran up the stairs to her bedroom. She rested her feet on Bo as she sat at her desk working on a math assignment, and then taking an online vocabulary quiz, and finally, reading a chapter on the American Revolution for her social studies class.
By nine o’clock, she still hadn’t sent out the update.
“Here goes,” she said to herself.
She logged into the CodeGirls server and navigated over to her code. She double-checked all the work she had done in the lab earlier, and pulled Nathan’s printout from her backpack to be sure she didn’t miss anything. It still matched up perfectly.
Her phone chirped. She picked it up and read the screen:
Nathan
Stop. Stalling.
She laughed quietly. He was right. She’d done everything she could. There was nothing left to do but to send the new version out to the user base.
Allie
I know!!!
OK
I’m doing it right now
She typed up a message to the installed base:
SECURITY UPDATE: REQUIRED INSTALL
Her finger was on the mouse, hovering over the SEND button, ready for her to press it.
Nathan
count of three
Allie took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.
Allie
1
2
3
Allie pressed SEND.
A few seconds later, the update message showed up on her phone. She installed it and went straight to her profile. Everything looked good. The ultimate test would come in the morning, when people got within range and the photo queue started filling up, but so far, everything seemed to be working.
Allie wanted to keep staring at the screen, but her eyes were burning and she was fighting to keep them open. She tossed the phone on her bed and changed into her pajamas. She was about to go brush her teeth when she heard another chirp.
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