Chapter 22: Debugging

E L L I E

I'm back in my old hiding place—the bench behind the hedge. Not that it will do much to conceal me if anyone wants to find me. Reese already found me lurking here once before, using the GPS tracking on my visor. It sits beside me on the bench at this very moment. The blue LED light flashes orange every few seconds, alerting me to the presence of unread messages.

I let out a sigh, ignoring the visor and tilting my face upward to bask in the mid-afternoon sunshine. I know who those messages are from. My exceedingly industrious "partner" has been texting me since early this morning. You'd think he'd take the hint after his first twenty messages went unanswered...

But no. The boy is nothing short of tenacious when it comes to text messages. Maddox has finally located his missing work ethic. All it took was a girl refusing to play his games.

"Because she'll do all the work and let me coast."

Oh really, Maddox? Will I?

I feel like throwing up. I can't get those words out of my head. No wonder I get the sense that Maddox is flirting with me. Not because he actually likes me. Of course not. Because he's using me. Am I really so easy to manipulate?

This is what I get for working with a team. I should quit. Go back to solo status. I need these people like I need a mattress full of bedbugs, creeping all over me in the dark.

That mental image makes me shudder. Gross, Ellie. But that doesn't change the fact that I need to eradicate this so-called partnership. Time to "debug" my life.

I don't know though... Part of me doesn't want to believe Maddox really meant it. Maybe Eleanor's the one he's player—and maybe he has his reasons. She's obviously not the easiest person to get along with. I suppose I should give Maddox a chance to explain himself before I do anything rash.

At least I didn't delete the program I wrote last night. That was my first instinct at the time. I scurried back into my room before he and Eleanor could catch me lurking in the hall, and I pulled up the program file that I'd spent all night crafting.

RIGHT CLICK
DELETE

I sat there for a long time with my finger hovering over the Enter key, but I couldn't do it. In the end, I wimped out and hit NO. That program was a thing of beauty. I couldn't bring myself to destroy it out of spite.

I settled for the next best thing instead. Why get rid of the whole program? Simply deleting a few strategic lines of code rendered it inoperable, unable to compile, and nearly impossible for anyone but me to debug.

Let Maddox try to coast on that.

Maybe that's why he keeps texting. The LED on my visor stops flashing and turns a solid orange. I side-eye it with a scowl, wondering what that means. Did all those unanswered messages drain down the battery? 

Reluctantly, I pick it up to check. I press the lenses to my eyes, and I see a different notification. No more texts. This came from InstaLove.

A True Love InstaQuest?

OK Maddox. Please excuse me while I gag on my laughter-vomit.

I can't let him get away with that. Anyone with the slightest trace of self-respect would hit Decline after the conversation I overheard.

Decline.
Decline.
Decline.
A thousand times, Decline...

If I ever encounter any such self-respecting young ladies, I'll definitely ask them how they got that way. As for me, I stare at the Continue button.

Who am I kidding? I might not trust a word out of that boy's mouth, but that doesn't mean I'm not dying to know what a True Love InstaQuest entails...

Ughhhh. Why am I so weak?

The truth is, I'm more than curious. I need Maddox. I can't blow him off forever. I don't have time to start from scratch on a different project. And why should I? Why should I turn my back on an opportunity, just because my partner turned out to be an untrustworthy creep? If he wants to use me for my brain, let him. I'll use him right back. Maddox is my ticket into Reese and Eleanor's group—the group guaranteed to win at the end of this program.

That "first prize" trophy is going to look awfully nice and shiny on my college applications in a couple years. And no admissions committee will stop to wonder who I might have used to get it—or who used me.

I straighten my shoulders. Maybe I do have some self-respect after all. I'd be stupid to drop out of the winning group. I'd only be hurting myself.

Your crush Maddox has invited you on a True Love InstaQuest...

I've been staring at the "Continue" option for so long that the letters are starting to blur. I can't hold my eyelids open any longer. With a grunt, I give in and blink.

The text flashes yellow and then disappears. My visor once again shows me a view of the green lawns and leafy foliage that surround me. I squint for a moment, confused. "OK...What happened to the quest?"

That's when I see it, twenty feet from where I sit, glinting red at a break between the hedges. Is that thing really there?

It looks like a helium balloon, heart-shaped and metallic red, floating in the air at exactly eye level. It bobs and dips in the breeze as I approach, but it doesn't float away like a real helium balloon would. Instead, I see the familiar pixilation sparkling at the edges. Augmented reality. Not quite as realistic as the palm trees painted on top of Dr. Carlyle's swimming pool, but still pretty convincing.

I shuffle forward and come to a halt before the floating object. The sun shimmers against the foil surface, and words appear that I couldn't see a moment earlier.

I hesitate. Am I really going through with this? A quest... Could there be a more perfect metaphor for being led on by a boy?

But I can't turn back now. The weight of my curiosity would crush me. I reach for the balloon, poking with my index finger. The instant before my fingertip makes contact, it explodes in a burst of red confetti, so suddenly it makes me jump.

Maddox's avatar appears where the balloon hovered moments before, and words scroll through the text window beside his face. This isn't some pre-determined game script, either. Way too specific. He must have written this message just for me.

Hey Ellie,
This is your extremely apologetic Maker Fair partner. Sorry I ditched on our work session last night. I suck...

His avi's expression shifts as my eyes move, from a neutral smile to the most adorable look of contrition that has ever graced the virtual features of a boy. Gosh, he's a player—and it's so pathetic that I'm falling for it. Why are my insides getting all butterfly-addled again? That's not even his real face. And yet, I can feel the corners of my mouth twitching into an involuntary smile as his words continue to scroll.

...I suck. You can yell at me when you see me. But I saw the code you wrote!!!! WOW! Just a couple runtime errors, but I got it to compile. I think it's ready to test. So...

The words stop and scroll back upward as I re-read the last few lines. Wait a sec. He got it to compile? That stops me in my tracks. That was no easy feat of debugging with the lines I deleted this morning. It's one thing to catch a syntax error or two, but a whole different level of skill to find a logical error lurking within a syntactically correct piece of code.

OK, so Maddox isn't quite as useless as he makes himself out to be. Maybe that thing about coasting was just a line for Eleanor's benefit... He's obviously capable of contributing when he thinks it's worth the effort.

I let out my breath with a sigh as I skim through the rest of his message.

...ready to test. So that's where I could use a little help. Follow the trail I set up and we'll see if your code works.

Don't leave me hanging, Ellie! Please?

<End of Message>

"Ooooh," I breathe. I get it now. This isn't what I thought. Not some pointless game designed to string me along. We're beta testing!

Maddox may have been coasting up until now, but something finally lit a fire under him. He had to bust his butt to get my code up and running so quickly.

I might not trust him, but I can work with him... for now. And this InstaQuest might actually be fun. I bounce on the balls of my feet, awaiting my next instructions.

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