“Nope, never met him before. But between sixth and seventh, I’d had my whole head stuffed in my locker, checking my stats, when my phone blooped and started flashing and stuff, and when I looked up, Ajay had his head in the locker right next to mine. He was watching his phone flip out, too! We started cracking up, and then we tapped phones, and boom! Number six.” Zoe brought her chin to her chest and glanced at Allie out of the corner of her eye. “And he’s kinda cute, don’t you think?”
Allie nodded. “Definitely. And he’s nice, too, so I think you two should be a thing, like ASAP, because I need a cute success story.”
“If you insist,” Zoe said with a shrug. “But only because I’m part of your street team and you need my help.”
The bus pulled out of the roundabout and into the street. Allie tried not to check her phone every thirty seconds, but she couldn’t help it.
“Whoa.” She hadn’t meant to say it. The word just slipped out.
“What?” Zoe asked.
“Sixteen people have joined in the three minutes since we got on the bus!” Allie did a little dance in her seat. “I was hoping for fifty users—maybe sixty—before Saturday’s presentation, but I might have that many by tomorrow. Don’t you think?”
“I think you’ll have double that by tomorrow. This thing is moving!” Zoe drummed her hands fast on the seat in front of her, and the girl sitting there turned around and shot her a glare. Zoe apologized.
Suddenly, Allie’s phone went bloop-bloop.
She and Zoe stared at the flashing yellow light. They listened. And they looked around, but no one on the bus seemed to be responding.
“Yellow is one hundred feet, right?” Zoe whispered.
Allie nodded.
“Then it’s coming from outside.”
They both heard the bus engine rumble to life. They stood, trying to get a better view out the windows. The bus inched forward, but it couldn’t go very far; there were two buses in front of them, waiting to turn into the street.
Bloop-bloop-bloop.
Suddenly, they heard a pounding sound coming from the front of the bus. “Wait!” a muffled voice yelled. The driver pulled on the lever and the doors swung open.
“Thanks!” a guy said as he climbed the stairs. He had his hand on his chest and he was trying to catch his breath. “I didn’t know where to go.”
“Find a seat,” the driver said. And then he added, “Quickly.”
The boy pulled his phone from his pocket and looked at the screen, and then he took a seat in the third row.
Bloop-bloop-bloop.
Allie watched him glance down at his phone. And then he slowly turned around.
She held her phone in the air with one hand and waved at him with the other.
He waved back. And then he twisted in his seat, and pointed at Allie as he said something to the girl behind him. She took the phone, passed it to the guy behind her, who passed it to the girl behind him. It traveled toward Allie, row over row.
Penny McCaskill was sitting across the aisle with the guy’s phone in her hand. She tossed it to Allie like they were playing hot potato.
Zoe leaned in closer, her shoulder brushing against Allie’s as she tapped the two phones together and watched the screens light up, side by side. Their leaderboards appeared.
Marcus Inouye. Allie looked at his profile pic. She didn’t know who he was. And she was certain he hadn’t taken their bus last year, because she would have remembered him.
“He’s in my Spanish class. His family just moved here from Denver.” Zoe tapped on his profile. “Cute pic,” she whispered.
Allie felt her stomach do a little flip-flop. Yeah, it is, she thought.
“Well?” someone yelled, and Allie and Zoe looked up. Marcus was turned around, kneeling with a big smile on his face. “Where did you land?”
“Three,” Allie yelled back, holding up three fingers.
He nodded approvingly. “Nice. Where am I on yours?”
“Six,” Allie yelled back, and Marcus gave her a thumbs-up.
Zoe elbowed her in the side. “Dude, that was kind of adorable,” she whispered.
“A little bit, right?” Allie whispered back. She was beaming as she handed his phone back to Penny, who started it up the aisle again, headed back to Marcus.
“Okay, what just happened?” Penny asked.
Zoe answered before Allie had a chance to. “Allie built it at coding camp over the summer. It matches you up with friends; everyone’s playing it.” She jiggled her phone. “What’s your cell number? I’ll send you an invite.”
People closed in around her, calling out their phone numbers, and Allie and Zoe typed them in as quickly as they could.
Allie had pictured her best friends playing with Click’d. She’d even pictured it moving around her other circles of friends, to girls in her classes, and people she’d known since elementary school. But this was different. She’d never pictured anything like this. Not in a million years.
Zoe looked down at her phone. “They’re coming in like crazy now. Look: it’s up to fifty-eight.”
When the bus stopped at the curb in front of Allie’s house, she stood and threw her backpack over her shoulder. “See you tomorrow,” she said to Zoe.
As she walked down the aisle, she couldn’t help but notice that the whole bus seemed to be taking the quiz. She felt like she was on top of the world. And that must have made her feel braver than usual, too, because when she passed Marcus, she slowed her steps. “See ya, Six,” she said.
He tipped his chin up and said, “See ya, Three.”
As Allie fished her key out of her backpack, she could hear her dog scratching excitedly on the other side of the front door.
“Hold on, Bo!” Allie turned the key and heard the dead bolt click open. She barely had one foot in the door when her dog was jumping up on her, begging for his usual greeting.
“Hi! Aw…I missed you, too, buddy!” Allie rubbed his head as she let her backpack slip from her shoulder and drop onto the floor next to the entryway table. She sat on the tile with her legs folded in front of her, laughing as Bo jumped into her lap and started licking her cheeks. She buried her fingers in his curly brown fur. “Did you have a good day?” She took his face in her hands, looked him in the eyes and said, “Dude, I had the craziest day! I’ll tell you all about it, but I swear, you’re not going to believe me.”
She kissed his wet nose and stood up. “I’m starving. How about you? Do you want a cookie?” She rubbed his head again. “Let’s get you a cookie!”
She walked to the kitchen with Bo on her heels and took a dog biscuit from the ceramic container on the counter. He gobbled his treat and then followed Allie around the kitchen as she made a toasted cheese sandwich and poured a glass of milk.
She brought her plate over to the couch and turned on the TV. Bo snuggled into her side with his chin resting on her leg as she ate and flipped through the channels, looking for a good soccer match. She was glad none of her teachers had been mean enough to assign homework on the first day of school.
Allie pulled her phone from her pocket and launched Click’d for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, but instead of opening her Mercer Middle School group, she went back to the main screen and selected the CodeGirls group instead.
She opened the chat window and typed a message to everyone.
Allie
I miss you guys!
Seconds later, the messages started flooding in.
Skylar
I miss you too!
Zaina
How was everyone’s first day?
Kaiya
Fine, but missing the fishbowl!
Morgan
the fishbowl…