Chapter Two

“Hi!” Lucy said excitedly when I opened the door. She gave me a wave instead of ringing the bell again. Maya and Erin were standing next to her.

Lucy’s black hair was pulled back into two neat, tight braids, and she had on her bright heart-shaped stud earrings, which stood out against her dark skin. She’d been wearing those a lot lately—I was pretty sure it was because Maya had told her they looked cute.

“Hey,” Maya said, making her way into the house. If Lucy was a trend chaser, Maya was most definitely a trendsetter. She was wearing black drawstring pants matched with a loose floral top. I was amazed at how she could make anything fashionable, even something I thought looked like pajamas.

“I brought treats.” Erin tapped her paisley-print backpack. “Homemade s’mores cookies.”

“Yum!” I said, ushering my friends in. Everyone took off their shoes and hung their coats on the coatrack.

“Lucy, did you bring the binder?” I asked. Over the last week, Lucy and I had organized everything we’d learned in coding club into a white two-inch binder to help us get ready for the hackathon, and we’d included all the information about the hackathon, too. It was nice to have a best friend who loved organizing things as much as I did.

“The binder?” Lucy gasped, dramatically putting her hand on her chest. “I had one job. How could I have forgotten?”

I rolled my eyes. “Never mind. I see it in your bag, Lu.”

She dropped her hand and giggled. “You only texted me about a million times to remember it, Soph.”

My dad popped out of the kitchen to say hello to my friends, and we then headed toward my room.

“I’m so bummed I missed coding club yesterday,” Maya grumbled, making a face. “What did you do?”

“Wait, first tell us what happened at the dance meeting,” Erin said as we trooped upstairs. “I thought you were going to text us about it.” As president of the student council, Maya was in charge of organizing the upcoming winter dance at school. They’d had their first meeting yesterday during coding club, which was why she’d missed it.

“Ugh, my battery died last night, and I couldn’t find my charger.” Maya groaned.

“Not being able to find things . . . welcome to the story of my life,” Erin said, shaking her head. “I lost my glasses yesterday, and you’ll never guess where I found them.”

“Your backpack?” Lucy ventured.

Erin giggled as she tapped her lens. “Nope. On my face!”

We all laughed as we walked into my bedroom.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to text you about the meeting, anyway,” Maya said, plopping onto my bed and sighing.

“Why?” I asked. “I thought you were so excited about it.”

“I was,” Maya explained. “Until I got there and hardly anybody showed up! Some people were out sick, and I guess other people just forgot or something. And our advisor was super late, so basically nothing happened.”

Lucy spread out on the floor and pulled the binder from her bag. “Did you talk about the theme? Or decorations?”

“Nope,” Maya said, shaking her head. “It was super annoying. When I saw how many people were missing, I should have just canceled the meeting and gone to coding club instead.”

Erin offered Maya a cookie. “Here, have a s’more. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

Maya shrugged. “One will make me feel a little better.” She reached into the tin. “Two would make me feel a lot better!”

I went over to grab a cookie, too. They had a graham cracker crust with melted chocolate and roasted mini marshmallows on top. I licked my lips and took a bite, making sure not to get any crumbs on my floor. “Mmm . . . so good, Erin!”

I took a seat at my desk. “Okay, so we need to talk about our plan for the hackathon,” I said. I pulled out a small whiteboard from behind my desk and erased last week’s predictions. My dad and I always wrote down our forecasts before we watched football games together. I had totally beaten him last weekend—as usual.

Maya rummaged through her bag. “Gahhh, here it is.” She held up her charger and waved it around. Then she took out her sketchbook—we hardly ever saw her without it. “Did Mrs. Clark tell you more about the hackathon yesterday?” she asked.

Lucy clapped. “Oh, we have to tell Maya the theme!”

Maya raised an eyebrow. “We couldn’t even come up with a theme for the dance, but you’re telling me there’s one for the hackathon?”

Lucy nodded. “Yes.” She paused dramatically. “The theme is . . . robots!”

“Beep beep bop!” Erin playfully imitated robot sounds, moving her arms around stiffly. “Beep bop boop!” Erin loved acting, and she was really good at voices. And apparently, at robots, too.

Lucy started bumping into Maya, saying, “Error! Error!”

Erin lifted her arms and twisted her upper body to the left, keeping her back straight. She moved mechanically, a blank expression on her face.

Lucy and Maya couldn’t stop giggling. “She’s doing the robot!” Maya said, clapping.

Lucy clutched her neck with one hand and her leg with her other hand and began hopping up and down. “Watch out, Sophia, or you’re going to get wet. It’s spuh-rinkler time!”

Suddenly my bedroom had turned into a full-on dance party. Maya hopped off my bed and pretended she was pushing a shopping cart around. She guided the “cart” between Erin and Lucy, who squealed and moved out of the way. Reaching up toward my bedroom walls, she grabbed and tossed imaginary items into the pretend cart.

I tried hard not to laugh. “Stop goofing around, guys!” But my friends wouldn’t listen. Lucy stopped being a sprinkler for a second to grab my hand and pull me up. “Come on, Soph, show us your moves!”

I crossed my arms, feeling a flare of annoyance in my chest. We were supposed to be coding, not dancing! But to be honest, the empty expression on Erin’s “robot” face was pretty hilarious. I broke into my best running man shuffle as my BFFs egged me on.

“We look ridiculous,” Lucy gasped, doubled over laughing.

“Speak for yourself,” I panted, hopping in place and swinging my arms.

Before long, we were all rolling on the floor in hysterics.

Across the room, I heard my phone vibrate. I disentangled myself from my friends and picked it up. It was probably Abuela practicing texting again—she kept sending me texts that said “TEST” (yes, in caps. Don’t ask). I’d write her back, and then she’d say she couldn’t find the texting app. Typical. But when I saw who the text was from, my heart skipped a beat.

“Ooh, you’re turning red, Sophia!” Maya said, looking at me with a curious expression. “Did you get a text from a secret admirer?”

My cheeks felt hot, and I hoped my face hadn’t turned beet red. “What? No, it’s nothing.”

Lucy came up behind me and peered over my shoulder. “By ‘nothing’ she means she got a text from Sammy and it says, ‘See you tomorrow.’” She gave me an incredulous look. “Sammy, like Sammy Cooper from coding club? Why is he texting you?” Her brown eyes opened wide. “Ooh, is this what you were talking about the other day?”

“No, it’s not! It’s nothing,” I said a little too loudly, quickly turning my phone off. Sammy and I were in English class together, and he’d been out last Friday, so he asked me about what he’d missed. We’d exchanged numbers, and he’d texted me a few times. I hadn’t told my friends, though Lucy had pried out of me that maybe I had a crush on somebody.

“Talking about what the other day?” Erin asked, rolling onto her stomach and propping herself up on her elbows. “Sounds mysterious.”

I shoved my phone into my desk drawer, grabbed my whiteboard, and sat down at my desk. “I swear, it’s nothing. Hackathon, remember?” I crossed my legs and gave my friends my best no-nonsense face, hoping my cheeks weren’t still flushed. “So, we need robot ideas.”

“I bet Sammy would be happy to help you brainstorm ideas,” Lucy said slyly.

Erin made smooching sounds. “Oh, Sophia. I had a question about algorithms, and it just can’t wait until school tomorrow,” she said dreamily, batting her eyelashes.

Maya started giggling. “Somebody has a cru-ush,” she said in a singsongy voice.

I kept my expression blank. “When you’re done amusing yourselves, just let me know.”

The three of them gave a collective sigh. “Maybe you need another s’more,” Erin said, pushing the tin toward me.

I scowled in her direction. “Bribes will get you nowhere.” But I did reach for another cookie. “Are we ready?”

“Oooooookeydoke.” Lucy picked up the binder and started paging through it. “Mrs. Clark told us that each team will get what they need for a programmable robot: a robot rover, which is like the base of the robot, and a motherboard.”

“What’s a motherboard?” Maya asked.

Erin broke off a chunk of cookie. “It’s like the command center for the robot. The rover has four wheels and a flat thing on it, and the motherboard goes on top, right?”

Lucy nodded. “That’s what we connect to the computer to program it. Look, like this.” She turned the binder toward us and showed us an image we’d printed out of a metal rectangle on wheels with another metal piece on top of it.

We all leaned in to take a look.

“And we’ll have to add modules to it, I think?” Erin chimed in.

I remembered that part from yesterday. “Yeah. There’ll be things like lights and movable arms that we can add to our robot rover—it should have four slots where we can plug them in.”

“And there’ll be a table of supplies where we can get other stuff like balls, blocks, or string,” Lucy added. “Basically any four modules we want to add to our robot.”

Maya flipped through the pages we’d printed about modules. “Cool, but does the robot have to do something? Or do we just add modules for fun?”

“I think it does have to do something,” Lucy said, pressing her lips together and squinting thoughtfully. “Hang on.” She flipped through the binder to the hackathon information sheet that Mrs. Clark had given us, and read:

You will code your robot to go through the judges’ maze. The maze will be a six-foot square. It will have low walls and dead ends that the robots will have to get around to reach the exit. It’s not just about finishing first, though—prizes will be awarded for creativity, coding, and the most imaginative robot.

Maya nibbled on her fingernail. “So we have to get our robot to go through a maze, and it has to be super creative? What does that even mean?”

We were all stumped when there was a knock on my door.

“Come in!” I called out, glad for the distraction.

My mom poked her head in. “Hey, girls,” she said, smiling at my friends. She had changed out of her jeans and into her scrubs. “I hate to interrupt, Sophia, but I’m leaving soon, and I had a quick question.”

Behind her, I could hear voices echoing down the hallway.

“Clean teeth are important!” Abuela was saying, probably to Pearl.

Mom glanced back into the hall. “When’s the hackathon again?” she asked me.

“Saturday,” I told her, feeling a little exasperated. Was it that hard to remember?

“Right . . .” Mom nodded slowly. “Okay, I’ll talk to Dad about it.” Then she gave me a kiss. “See you tomorrow, honey,” she said, closing the door.

“Does your mom work every night?” Erin asked.

“No. Her schedule changes,” I explained. “Sometimes she works days, sometimes she works nights—it all depends on how busy the hospital is.”

“You two have the same smile,” Maya remarked, looking up from her sketchbook. She had started doodling a robot with swirly designs all over it.

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at my whiteboard. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. My mom was going to miss yet another one of my events. I could just feel it.

Maya waved her sketchbook around. “Earth to Sophia!”

I tried to shake off my bad feeling. “Sorry.” I straightened my whiteboard on my lap. “So, we need to figure out how to get our robot through the maze.”

“And be creative,” Lucy added, sounding hopeless.

The only sound was Maya’s pencil on her sketchpad.

Lucy raised a finger. “Didn’t Mrs. Clark talk about how we should plan out our robot idea?”

I nodded. “Yeah. She talked about coming up with the idea, planning the algorithm, and then coding the algorithm.” I wrote down the three steps on my whiteboard in separate columns.

Maya looked up from her pad and gave my whiteboard a dismissive look. “Can’t we just, like, code the robot when we get there?”

“No, we can’t,” I said, getting annoyed. I actually liked the steps Mrs. Clark had described. It gave us a clear plan—Coach Tilton would have approved. “We have to figure everything out ahead of time so that we know what to do when we get to the coding part,” I explained. Lucy and Erin nodded.

Maya was fiddling with her choker. “Okay, I get the ‘idea’ part, but what’s the algorithm part?”

“An algorithm is a set of instructions a computer follows in a certain order to complete a task,” Lucy said. “Mrs. Clark talked about it at the meeting you missed.”

Erin sat up and crossed her legs. “Exactly. I think what we need to do is plan our algorithm with pseudocode.”

“Pseudowhat?” Maya asked.

“Pseudocode is code that humans can read and computers can’t, remember?”

“Oh yeah. But that’s useful how?” I said. “Since we’re, um, working with a robot?”

Erin thought for a minute. “You know how Coach Tilton writes up directions for players?”

I frowned. “You mean, the plays?”

Erin beamed like I’d just given her a gold star. “Yeah! The plays. Well, pseudocode is kind of like that. You have to write down the logic of your code to help you plan before you write the code.”

“Just like the players need a game plan before they run onto the field and start tackling people,” Lucy said, catching on.

“Wait.” Maya leaned over to grab Lucy’s wrist. “Is that a Rudolf Randolf wrap bracelet?”

I hadn’t noticed the woven blue silk cord that was wrapped several times around Lucy’s wrist.

“Yeah.” Lucy grinned. “A client of my mom’s gave it to her as a thank-you gift for solving some big computer problem. Mom said it wasn’t her style, so she let me have it.” Lucy moved her arm so everyone could see how the royal blue shimmered against her dark skin. Her mom was a software programmer—one of the only black female coders at her company. “Isn’t it cool?” Lucy wasn’t as into fashion as Maya was, but she liked adding little touches to her outfits.

Maya ran her fingers over the cord. “I love it. Can I borrow it sometime?”

“Sure.” Lucy beamed.

“It’s superspecial that you’re sharing your jewelry and all, but can we focus?” I said, rapping my knuckles on the whiteboard. If I didn’t keep us on task, no one would. “We have a hackathon to plan for, remember?”

“Yes, Coach Sophia,” Maya said, saluting me.

We all giggled and got back to our robot plan.

Maya tapped her eraser against her mouth. “So if we figure all this out now, we can bring notes to the hackathon, right?” She started doodling again. “’Cause there’s no way I’m gonna remember all of this.”

“No notes.” I looked at Lucy and Erin. “Didn’t Mrs. Clark say that?”

Lucy nodded. “And we can’t really practice beforehand, since we don’t have the robot or modules. I think we just have to come up with an idea for what we want our robot to do and hope we can make it happen at the hackathon.”

It seemed impossible. Even though we’d learned a lot in coding club over the past few months, none of us had ever coded a robot before.

We finished all the s’mores and tried to come up with ideas for how to get our robot through the maze (and be original at the same time). But we were losing steam—Lucy couldn’t stop yawning, and Maya kept drawing.

Suddenly Erin stood up and started playing music from her phone. Loud music.

I looked at her. “Um, Erin, what are you doing?” We were all getting tired, but now wasn’t the time for music. It was kind of frustrating that she wasn’t taking this more seriously.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” she said, shaking her hips. “Dancing!”

“Again?” I groaned. “If you’re even thinking about doing the worm—”

Maya tilted her head. “Wait, what’s this song? Erin . . . is that you singing?”

Erin grinned. “Do you like it?”

“Oh my gosh, it is you!” I said, recognizing her voice. The song was fast and upbeat, but Erin’s voice was soft and melodic.

“It’s this song called ‘Dance to the Beat’ that we’re doing for film club. They’re going to film me dancing, so I need to practice.” She reached for Maya’s hand.

“Maybe our robot could play ‘Dance to the Beat’!” Erin said, spinning Maya around.

One of the modules they’d provide at the hackathon was a speaker, so it could work. I wrote “Play ‘Dance to the Beat’” in the Ideas column on the board.

“Any other modules we should try to use?” Lucy asked.

I considered the list. An arm and a ball—if the robot could be musical like Erin, couldn’t it be sporty, too?

“Maybe we could have the robot push one of the balls,” I suggested.

Lucy came over to look at the pages with me. “That could be cool. I doubt anyone else will do that.”

An image of Sammy kicking the soccer ball floated into my mind. He might think of this idea, too. Still, I wrote “Push the ball” under Ideas on the whiteboard.

Maya leaned down to look at the open page of the binder. “Maybe we could combine the ball with something else.”

That sounded good, but I had no idea what.

“How about dancing?” Erin suggested excitedly. “I could teach our robot a few moves!” She shook her hips. “Let the algo-rhythm move you!”

“Erin, we need serious ideas,” I said, sighing. “We want to win this thing, don’t we?” I asked.

Maya wagged her eyebrows. “Yeah . . . but I think you have a little extra motivation.”

I frowned. “Like what?”

“Oh nothing . . . ,” Erin trilled, sashaying across the room. Then she turned around dramatically. “Like beating Sammy!”

“Whatever,” I said dismissively. “Of course I want to beat him. I want to beat everybody!”

“Uh-huh,” Erin answered, shaking her hips.

Lucy was the only one who seemed to be focusing on our coding project. “Soph, any idea is a good idea, right?” That’s what Mrs. Clark always said. “I think you should write Erin’s idea down.”

I wrote “Dancing,” even though it was obviously impossible. The rover looked like a car, not a ballerina. “Anything else?”

No one could come up with more ideas. “We’ve done enough work. DJ Erin says it’s time to boogie!” Erin said, dropping her voice. She turned up the music and started spinning around.

“Friends don’t let friends dance alone,” Lucy shouted, joining in. And that was how our coding club meeting ended with the four of us dancing around my room like maniacs. Again.

Before my friends left, I remembered one more thing.

“Maya, wait, I have to give you your T-shirt.” I handed her one of the tees that Mrs. Clark had given us for the hackathon.

“Um, thanks . . .” Maya held it up. The T-shirt was white with bold yellow letters on the front that said HACKATHON. Maya wrinkled her nose like it was a slice of moldy pizza. “Do we have to wear this?”

I shrugged. “Mrs. Clark said we could make up a team name and decorate it if we wanted to. But we don’t have to.”

Maya looked relieved. She tapped her finger on her chin. “Wait, I have an idea,” she said. “How about we call ourselves the Rockin’ Robots?”

“Oh my gosh, that’s perfect!” Lucy gushed, clapping. After the dance party we’d just had, it did seem fitting.

Maya looked at the T-shirt again. “Can everybody meet tomorrow after school?” We all nodded. “Awesome. Bring your T-shirts. I have tons of supplies. We have got to make these more presentable.”

Everybody grabbed their stuff and headed downstairs. I loved hanging out with my BFFs, but we needed to come up with an original robot idea, and they seemed more interested in looking at bracelets, bugging me about Sammy, and dancing. And there were only four days until the hackathon. I just hoped we’d get it together in time—’cause there was no way I was letting Sammy’s team beat us to a prize.