“Two thousand? That’s nothing! If I can get a thousand users in a week, you can get two thousand users in a month, no problem!”
Nathan laughed. “No, you can get two thousand downloads in a month. Built isn’t a naturally viral game like Click’d is.”
“Well, it should be!” As soon as the words slipped from her mouth, she had an idea. She stopped talking. She could see it forming in her mind. And she knew exactly what she needed to do.
She remembered that day Nathan downloaded her app and asked, What are you going to do with all this data?
She didn’t have a good answer at the time.
But now she did.
“Allie.” The voice sounded soft and far away. “Allie, wake up.”
She peeled one eye open. The sun was shining brightly through the crack in her bedroom curtains, and she let out a groan as she squeezed her eyes shut again. Her face was sore and her neck was stiff.
“Did you sleep here?” her dad asked.
“I guess so.” She peeled her cheek from the keyboard.
“We have to get going,” her dad said. “Your game starts in an hour.”
Allie let her head fall back onto her desk. She’d been up practically all night. There was no way she could play soccer. “Can I skip it today? Please?”
“Skip it? No way. We haven’t seen you play all summer. Besides, you can’t let your team and your coach down.”
Allie yawned loudly.
“I’m making pancakes. Be downstairs in ten minutes.” He left her room and closed the door behind him.
Allie tried to focus her eyes on her computer monitor. She blinked fast, taking in all the lines of code, forcing herself to remember where she’d left off the night before.
Slowly, it all came back to her. She reverted to the original code, and then she made Nathan’s changes again, correctly that time. It passed all her tests on the first attempt. She was feeling brave, so she decided to keep going. She wrote a bunch of code to tie the ClickPics back in, and then she tested it again. And it passed.
Somewhere around 3:00 a.m., she broke all her data up by schools and created new groups, separating everyone so there was no crossover between Mercer and Steinbeck. Right before she’d drifted off to sleep, she’d written a screen that required every user to choose an existing group or create a new one.
And she’d written new terms of use. They explained how Click’d randomly pulled photos from Instagram and stored the ClickPics in the photos app, and outlined in clear terms that the information gathered would never be sold, but might be used for research purposes and app recommendations.
She wished she hadn’t fallen asleep when she had been so close. Now she looked over everything, feeling good about her progress. She sent the update to her phone and went through every screen, one at a time.
She opened Maddie’s profile. Then Zoe’s. Then Nathan’s.
Click’d didn’t crash.
She switched from the Mercer group to the CodeGirls group, and her face lit up when she saw the CodeGirls data, back where it was supposed to be. She toggled over to the Mercer group again, back to the CodeGirls group, over to the Steinbeck group, and back to the Mercer group again.
Click’d still didn’t crash.
Even though the data had been restored, the leaderboards were still empty. Everyone would have to reclick, but Allie didn’t think anyone would mind; that was the fun part. Allie did a little dance in her seat, and Bo walked over and rested his chin on her leg. “I think we’re ready,” she said to him.
She didn’t have time to second-guess anything, and at that point she figured she had nothing to lose. She quickly typed out a message, addressed it to the entire user base, and pressed SEND.
SECURITY UPDATE: REQUIRED INSTALL
And then she changed into her soccer uniform and headed downstairs for breakfast, with Bo leading the way.
As soon as Allie arrived at the fence that lined the soccer field, she spotted Emma stretching along with the rest of the team, and Maddie and Zoe warming up a few feet away.
The second she stepped onto the turf, her phone blooped.
She smiled, walking faster, heading toward her friends.
Bloop-bloop.
Now they heard it, too. Maddie and Zoe stopped kicking the ball and ran back to their bags, digging around for their phones.
Zoe found hers first. She held it up in the air, wearing a big smile on her face, and as Allie got closer, the bloop sounded three times. A red-tinted photo of Zoe in her soccer uniform and all her goalie gear took over her screen.
“It’s back,” Zoe said as she jumped in place.
“It’s back,” Allie said.
They clicked their phones together and watched their phone glow white and their leaderboards come to life.
“Aw, we’re ones again,” Zoe said, but when Allie didn’t respond right away, she knew that wasn’t exactly the way it was on Allie’s side. “Right? Am I your number one friend?”
For now, Allie thought.
“What’s that look on your face?” Zoe asked.
Allie could feel her cheeks getting hot. “Well, I mean we’re ones right now, but…”
Zoe smirked. “But you’ll have a new one when you see Nathan again, huh?”
Allie shrugged and smiled. Then she turned to address the group. “I’m going to need you guys to be my street team again tomorrow.”
“Of course,” Maddie said.
“No problem,” Emma chimed in.
“Sure,” Zoe added, “but I’m not sure you need us. Everyone’s been missing Click’d.”
“Yeah, especially Zoe,” Emma said as she slapped her arm with the back of her hand. “Look at her. She’s getting all twitchy. She can’t wait for this soccer game to be over so she can go play.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “She’s right. You guys want to go to the mall later?”
Allie started to tell them all about her plan, but then the air horn sounded and the game began, and they all sprinted to the field and took their positions. And for the next hour, they ran, passed, kicked, and worked together as a team.
When Emma scored the first point, the five of them ran over to her and threw their arms around her shoulders.
At halftime, they all ran to the goal and congratulated Zoe on all the shots she’d blocked.
In the third quarter, Maddie made a killer pass to Allie, but Allie missed it entirely. One of the Ravens stole it and took it all the way to the other end and scored.
Allie ran over to Maddie and dropped her head on her shoulder. “Sorry. I think I’m too exhausted for this.” Maddie laughed and promised to keep the ball as far away from her as possible for the rest of the game.
When the Ravens scored again, Emma yelled, “It’s all good. We’ve got this!”
And for a little while, it was as if the last week hadn’t even happened. And the four of them just felt like the four of them again.
Allie’s friends went to the mall right after the game, but she went straight home and got back to work. For the rest of the afternoon, she closely monitored the data.
By noon, almost three hundred people had installed the update.