Chapter Eleven

“I t’s the left turn!” I exclaimed after we looked through the code a few times. “That’s the issue. Zahira only knows how to go left!”

“Five minutes left!” Ms. Kamat announced.

I could see the judges gathering near the maze. Students were already carrying their projects over.

In the end, we made a few changes to the code but didn’t have time to think through whether it was right or not. We figured anything was worth a try.

“Time’s up!” Mrs. Clark called the last straggling teams to the maze. “If you’re visiting, please take your seats. And hackathon participants, please put your team T-shirts on for the final maze runs.”

I hadn’t even noticed, but some visitors had gathered around the maze. Lucy’s parents and Leila’s little brother waved at us. I thought about my mom not being there and got a bit sad, but then I remembered that at least I’d been able to come to the hackathon—thanks to my friends.

We all got our T-shirts and put them on. Suddenly it felt real. We were about to compete!

And then, far out in the crowd, I spotted Abuela sneaking into the community center. She saw me and started waving frantically. I couldn’t believe it! She must have come back early from Marissa’s to see me. I felt a rush of happiness and waved back with a huge grin.

“We’ll go in order of your table station numbers,” Mrs. Clark told the groups. “Table one.”

The first group that went had a basic robot. They directed it by remote control and had no extra modules. It only went through the maze, and pretty slowly at that.

Another group had their robot drag the ball behind it with a string rope. And the group that had asked Leila for advice used sensors to detect distance and avoid the walls.

“They owe you,” Lucy whispered in Leila’s ear.

Leila shrugged. “They were really nice. I’m glad I could help them.”

Machine Madness was up next.

“Looking forward to your surprise,” I called over to Sammy as he walked past me to the starting line.

“We’re going to beat all speed records for doing a maze,” Bradley said, strutting forward with a cocky grin. “Any maze. Ever.”

Maya rolled her eyes. “Good luck with that.”

Machine Madness gave one another a round of high fives while Alicia put their robot on the start line. Their robot had a huge swinging arm, just like Zahira did.

“Okay, go!” Ms. Kamat said, and blew her whistle.

The robot gripped a block in its arm until it reached the first wall. But instead of turning left or right or even backing up, it put the block down. Then, using its arm, it lifted itself onto the block and over the wall. Once on the other side, it turned back and reached over the wall with its arm to collect the block. Then it moved on to the next wall and did the whole thing over again. After going over two walls, all the robot had left to do was move straight to the finish line. I had to admit, it was pretty creative—and efficient.

“That was fast!” Ms. Kamat said, checking the time and making a note on her clipboard. “First place so far.”

Bradley and Sammy started dancing.

“And the most innovative, as well,” Ms. Kamat added.

“Isn’t that cheating?” Erin asked Ms. Kamat, saying what we all were thinking. “I mean, they went over the maze instead of through it.”

Ms. Kamat flipped a few pages on her clipboard. “Well, it’s certainly not the way we expected the robot to finish the maze, but the rules don’t say anything against going over.”

“The time stands,” another judge announced. “Machine Madness has the score to beat!”

“There’s no way we can top that,” Maya said darkly. We’d worked so hard, and now we weren’t even sure our robot would travel past the first wall.

I looked at my friends. “We did our best,” I said, channeling Coach Tilton. “Time to leave it all on the field. No holding back.”

“Rockin’ Robots!” Ms. Kamat called our group. “You’re up!”

“Let’s see this robot rock,” Erin said, sounding determined. I set Zahira down at the beginning of the maze, and Erin initiated the code on her laptop.

At the starting line, Zahira’s lights began blinking constantly. Soon after, Erin’s song started playing from the speakers we’d attached to the rover. Then Zahira’s arm began to swing, and it almost seemed like she was trying to move to the rhythm of the song.

She started through the maze perfectly. She moved forward to the first wall, sensed it like she was supposed to . . . and then, just when she was supposed to turn, she began to spin. She kept going left, left, and left, but it was happening so fast that it seemed like she was spinning.

“She’s only going left!” Lucy said, sounding panicked. And on top of that, her arm was swinging wildly, with the music still playing.

“Yeah, but why?” Erin asked, her hands on her head.

I was horrified by what was happening. I looked over at Ms. Kamat, but to my surprise, she was chuckling. Maya looked over at me and started laughing.

“It really looks like Zahira’s dancing!” she said.

We all realized how ridiculous Zahira looked and cracked up together. Then other kids and some of the visitors started laughing, too. Even Mrs. Clark was giggling.

Zahira might not be able to pass the first part of the maze, but she sure could bust some moves!

Erin turned up the music, and we all began to dance, swinging our arms like Zahira. Pretty soon, the whole room was dancing along to Erin’s song and Zahira’s funky moves. It didn’t matter anymore that Zahira had failed miserably at getting through the maze—we’d started the most epic robot dance party!

After the dance party (and Zahira’s coming in last, since she didn’t even make it through the maze) we were cleaning up at our table when Ms. Kamat came over to us.

“Hi, girls,” she said. “I know your robot didn’t work how you expected. But I was impressed at your problem-solving style.”

“Thanks,” I said, unplugging Zahira’s arm. “I’m not sure we have much of a problem-solving style, though. Zahira didn’t exactly do what we planned.”

“Yeah, she was supposed to move her arms like she was dancing, not turn around nonstop!” Erin said, sighing.

“I know,” Ms. Kamat answered. “But some problems take more time than we had here.” She looked at our robot. “Have you girls learned about feature creep yet?” We shook our heads. “It’s when you put too many things in a computer program—or robot, in this case—and it can’t do any of them exactly as intended. Too many features creep in.”

I laughed. “Well, that’s definitely what happened to Zahira!”

“Indeed,” Ms. Kamat continued. “There’s always so much to learn with computer programming.” She reached into her tote bag and pulled out a card. “I know you didn’t win a prize, but I still have an offer.”

We all stopped cleaning up for a minute.

“I heard you trying to figure out why your robot would only go left.” She handed me the business card. “Most kids would have gone back and started rethinking their whole plan, potentially making things worse in the process.”

“Ha! We considered that,” Maya said.

“I know.” Ms. Kamat nodded. “But in the end you decided to review your original concept, to determine where things had gone wrong.” She looked at each of us in turn, her eyes finally resting on me. “That was impressive.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling flattered.

“Computer programing is all about creativity, grit, and teamwork, and you girls showed today that you have all of that, so I want you to see what else you can do with it.” She pointed at her business card. “I’d like to invite you all to come to TechTown for a personal tour. I’d love to show you around.” She leaned in toward us and whispered, “I might even have a prototype drone to show off.”

My friends and I all looked at one another in amazement and grinned.

All I’d wanted to do was beat everyone else in the hackathon. But now I didn’t even care that Zahira hadn’t made it through the maze—or that we had (technically) lost. Because with what Ms. Kamat had just told the Rockin’ Robots, we were winners all the way.