13
Light and Shadow
I arch my back and reach up toward my dorm room ceiling. The muscles between my shoulder blades snap like rubber bands.
How long was I hunched over my laptop? It was sometime around dusk when I first sat down to work. The eight o’clock curfew forced me to retreat from the library back to Fenmore Hall. The sky outside my window had been awash with pink and orange light, and I had to pull my window shade to block out the glare.
I stand up from my desk and peek beneath the shade. The sky looks dark—a few shades shy of pitch black—but that creeping light at the horizon isn’t the last remnant of sundown. More like the first rays of dawn.
Did I stay up all night coding?
It wouldn’t be the first time. Sometimes I get in the zone. The logic clicks into place, and I can visualize the whole grand plan. Every step that needs to happen. Every function. Every loop. Every if-then clause. The entire logical structure comes to me all at once, and then it’s a race to get it all typed out and saved before I lose my train of thought.
I can code for hours when I get like that. Forget to eat. Forget to sleep. Forget to breathe, practically. I don’t come up for air until it’s done.
Done.
A warm glow of satisfaction fills me. I roll my shoulders and gather my loose hair into a ponytail, then sit back down at my desk. I just typed the final semicolon and saved my work to the InstaLove remote corporate server. Next step: debugging.
That will have to wait. My hyperfocused trance has ended, and the effects of my all-nighter hit me all at once. My head throbs. The tendons in my wrists scream for a break. I swivel in my desk chair toward my empty bed, but it’s no use. Even if I lay down and closed my eyes, I wouldn’t fall asleep. I’m on too much of an adrenaline rush.
I’ll crash in a few hours. For now, I have only one thought. I need to show this program to my partner.
Maddox will flip when he sees it. I twirl the end of my ponytail around my finger, imagining his reaction. He’s at his most adorable when he’s excited, the way his eyes light up and he starts bouncing all over the room. He tends to get touchy-feely too. Lots of arm squeezes and elbow nudges.
What if he breaks out the salsa moves again? What if he takes me by the hand and pulls me close to dance with him?
The thought makes my breathing quicken. I close my eyes, savoring the warm feeling in the pit of my stomach.
The boy’s a flirt. No question about it. Even when we’re talking about work stuff, there’s an undertone to everything he says. Like when I asked him what coding language he wanted to use for our project—C++ or Java?—and he got that sly look on his face. “I’ll use any language you like…” And then he turned and whispered the next part in my ear. “But I think in Python.”
I swear, there was something downright predatory in the look he gave me afterward. What do pythons eat for dinner? Bunny rabbits, perhaps?
Too bad, Maddox. I went with Java—easier to integrate with the real InstaLove app. Maybe he would’ve had a say in that decision if he hadn’t left me to write the entire program myself. He was supposed to meet me at the library yesterday for a work session, but he no-showed. He was already half an hour late by the time I checked my visor and saw his message.
PRIVATE MESSAGES WITH MADDOX
Maddox: Can’t make it. Start without me.
Lowercase: What happened?
Maddox: Sorry. It’s Eleanor. She’s being extra Eleanor-ish at the moment. 
Whatever that meant.
Maybe it was a mistake, agreeing to work with Maddox. Sometimes I wonder why I went along with it. I mean, it made sense a week ago, sitting side-by-side with him in the library. He’d commandeered my laptop. Our whole Maker Fair proposal was his idea—using the networking capability between the visors to create a shared virtual map of potential obstacles.
“Don’t you get it?” he’d insisted as he typed. “It’s like crowdsourcing!”
“OK… So…”
“So if one user visits a location, it will create a virtual map of that place and share it with all the other visors in the network!”
He’d paused to correct a typo, and I finally had a chance to speed-read through his bullet points. “A shared map.… So the visor knows the terrain, even if the person wearing it has never been there?”
“Exactly!” He’d smiled at me so big and bright I almost melted. “So your visor will know to push a warning message, even if you aren’t looking at the hazard.”
Brilliant.
Maddox is full of good ideas, but not so helpful when it comes to the implementation. A week has come and gone since we submitted our proposal. I’ve been chipping away at our work plan day by day, but he has yet to contribute a single line of code. The format library he promised to build? Nowhere to be found on the server last night. You’d think he would do something, especially after all his endless whining about how Reese never gives him edit privileges!
I reach for my visor to check my private messages. I’ve grown accustomed to its ever-present weight around my neck—and to the absence of a cell phone in my pocket.
“Nothing,” I mutter aloud.
No new texts from Maddox since our last exchange. Probably asleep. His visor will ping and wake him up if I message him. Maybe I should. Or better yet, maybe I should head over to his dorm room and pound on his door until he drags his cute/lazy butt out of bed. It would serve him right for ditching me last night.
I abandon the visor and look toward the window again. The sky has lightened to reveal an early-morning fog, cloaking the green lawns and stone buildings in misty gray. I’m not going anywhere. No way. I have a hard enough time finding my way around this campus when I can see where I’m going.
Maybe I should shower? Or at least brush my teeth and splash some water on my face? I venture out into the corridor, heading for the bathrooms a few doors down.
And that’s when I see it.
I’m not the only one awake. A sliver of light escapes from the crack beneath the door at the far end of the hall. I can make out the sound of voices, whispering inside the room. Reese and Eleanor… Are they awake?
I hold my breath as I creep closer. Maddox isn’t the only one I’m dying to show my program. I can’t wait to see the look on Reese’s face. Our group leader expressed no small amount of skepticism when Maddox called a meeting last week. The four of us gathered in one of those library study rooms, and I did my best to avoid all eye contact while Maddox ran the others through our plan. “I like the concept,” Reese had agreed after reading the proposal. “But how can you possibly build that functionality in three weeks?”
“Easy,” Maddox had answered. “We’ve got Nor—I mean, Lowercase. She’s our secret weapon.” He’d nudged me with his elbow. “We can do it, right, partner?”
I can’t remember how I answered him. Probably blushed bright red and stared at the tabletop, desperate to ignore the death rays Eleanor was shooting at me the whole time.
Awkward!
I don’t know why Eleanor hates me so much. It’s weird, like some animalistic dominance ritual, marking her territory. You can practically see the smoke coming out of her ears every time Maddox speaks to me.
I can only hope she’ll come around once she sees the code I wrote last night. It turns out I am their secret weapon, just like Maddox said. I didn’t need three weeks. I got a basic version of the hazard alert system up and running in one. Reese is going to view me with a new level of respect when she sees it—and Eleanor won’t be able to deny I’m an asset to the team.
Maybe she’ll be willing to speak to me then. Heck, maybe I’ll get my real name back. Let me be “Eleanor” for a while, and she can go by “Uppercase.” See how she likes it!
A small smile curves my lips as I tiptoe down the hall. The door to Reese and Eleanor’s room stands open a few inches. They must be awake. I peek inside, but the sound of voices pulls me up short.
Is that…
It sounds like…
Some instinct warns me not to make my presence known. I dart sideways, out of view of the two figures I glimpsed on the other side.
Not Eleanor and Reese after all.
Eleanor and Maddox.
I press my back to the wall beside the door. I don’t think they can see my shadow from this angle. A hallway security camera looms before me, positioned directly across from the doorway at my side. If I squint, I can make out a tiny image reflected in the dark glass lens.
It’s hard to tell what I’m looking at. Light and shadow, dancing behind a partially closed door. That might be Eleanor’s shoulder there. Maddox has his hand on it. I can’t tell if he’s drawing her toward him or holding her at arm’s length. She steps into the light, but she has her face lowered.
He drops his hand. “Fine. I’ll see you later.”
“Where do you think you’re going?” I hear her whisper.
“I’m not in the mood, Eleanor.”
“Are you going to her room?”
“No,” he answers. “But so what if I did? She’s my partner.”
Wait a sec. Are they talking about me?
I shouldn’t eavesdrop. I should tiptoe straight back to my room before they catch me lurking in the hall. But I can’t. I’m rooted to the spot, paralyzed with curiosity. I still can’t figure out the status between the two of them. Samirah and Miranda refused to give me the lowdown at dinner last night. The moment I brought it up, their eyes darted away, fascinated by the chalkboard displaying the evening’s entrée selections. It was only Reese, behind them in the buffet line, who muttered a grudging response.
“Don’t ask too many questions. It’s complicated.”
What does that mean though? How complicated could it be?
Maybe I’m about to find out. Their hushed words mix together with the sound of my own pulse, buzzing in my ears.
“I’m warning you, Moxie. Don’t you dare embarrass me.”
“Chill! You don’t own me.”
“Don’t I? We had a deal.”
“To hell with the deal. You can’t expect me to—”
She cuts him off with a sudden, jerky movement. “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”
Told anyone what?
“No,” he whispers. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“And you think people won’t guess, when they catch you hooking up with some sophomore?”
“I’m not hooking up with her!”
Oh my God.
Me?
Hooking up with me?
I cover my mouth with my palm to stifle the high squeaking noise threatening to come out of my throat. What the heck? Does Eleanor act this way toward every girl he talks to? I wonder if she knows about the push notifications that InstaLove keeps sending me.
Lowercase! Don’t leave your crush hanging!
Resume your last interaction with Maddox now! [GO]
No wonder she hates me. She obviously doesn’t realize who she’s dealing with. Maybe I should clue her in with a more detailed user profile.
Name: Nora
Age: 16
Ever kissed a boy? No
Ever held hands with a boy? No
Ever slow danced with a boy? No
Well, except for that one supremely awkward time with my cousin Seth at my bat mitzvah…
“Spare me,” Eleanor hisses. “I have eyes, Maddox.”
“There’s nothing to see. There’s nothing going on!”
“Why did you have to partner with her of all people?”
He pauses before he answers. I wait, holding my breath. I won’t pretend I’m not dying to hear his answer.
“Because she’ll do all the work and let me coast.”
His words hit me like a slap across the face. My head flies up. I look again toward the camera-lens reflection. Eleanor is poking him in the chest, I think. But he ignores her finger and encircles her waist, drawing her toward him. His voice turns flirtatious but somehow sarcastic at the same time. “So I have more time to spend with you, my dearly beloved girlfriend, whom I most definitely did not break up with on day one of the program.”
What? What does that mean?
“Don’t embarrass me, Moxie,” she answers him. “I will end you. One phone call from me, and you cease to exist.”
Her hands are on his shoulders. Pushing him away…or wrapping around his neck? He touches her face. For a moment, I’m sure he’s going to kiss her. Then he shakes his head and extricates himself from her arms.
Oh, no. Is he leaving?
He turns toward the door.
I have to move.
Now!
Panicked, I dart away, running on my tiptoes in the direction of my room.