Chapter Four

The next morning, I met Anjali on the stairs outside school. She had long, wavy dark hair that took her forever to style. Today it was in a braid down her back. Unlike me, she wore makeup, usually brightly colored eyeshadow and lip gloss.

“Hey girl,” she said, giving me a hug. “Nice earrings.” Maya’s latest article in the school newspaper had talked about heart studs, so I’d gotten a pair and was giving them a try. I thought they looked cute with my pink shirt and blue jeans.

“Thanks! Cool eyeshadow,” I said, admiring the shimmery green hue.

“Trying a new one today,” she said, batting her eyes playfully. “Hey, so I was thinking about the coding thing you mentioned last night.”

“Oh yeah? Did you come up with an idea for how I’m going to become a coding expert?” I said, jokingly.

“You know me, I’ve got some ideas up my sleeve.”

I laughed. “Of course you do!”

We usually had more time to chat before class, but Anjali was in a rush today. “We have a quiz in social studies, and I want to look over my notes. Let’s talk at lunch, okay?”

“’Kay,” I said as Anjali rushed off.

I was passing by Mrs. Clark’s classroom on my way to class when something caught my eye. Was that Alex in there? Why would he be at the middle school? The high school was in a different building, and there was no reason for him to be here. Unless . . . was he up to no good again?

Classes were going to start soon, but I needed to make sure Alex wasn’t making more trouble for me. I peeked in through the doorway of Mrs. Clark’s classroom. It was definitely Alex, and he and Mrs. Clark were talking and laughing. I saw him hand her a paper. What was he plotting? I started imagining how he was going to embarrass me again in coding club and clenched my fists.

Suddenly the door swung open. “You’re a terrible spy, Lu,” he said. “I knew you were out here the whole time.”

“I just got here, and I wasn’t spying,” I said defensively. “But what are you even doing here? You better not be plotting something new, Alex, ’cause if you prank me again in coding—”

“Cool it, Lu. This has nothing to do with you. Mrs. Clark’s going to write me a college recommendation.” He smoothed a hand over his curls. Mrs. Clark also taught coding at his high school, and he’d been learning coding since he was my age. “I forgot to give her the form when I saw her at school. So I brought it here.”

“Really?” I squinted at him. It was hard to believe him sometimes.

“Yes, really.” Alex put his hand on my shoulder. “Not everything’s about you, Lu.”

“Whatever,” I said, shaking off his hand. “I’ve got to get to class.”

“Make sure to keep an eye on that phone of yours!” he said, grinning, as I walked away.

Ugh, I knew he was up to something!

If the morning at school was weird, after lunch it got even weirder. Anjali never showed up at the cafeteria. I texted her, but she didn’t reply. After a while, I figured she got busy and wasn’t coming (she often worked on extracurricular stuff during lunch), so I sat with some other friends, including Bradley from coding.

“Boring,” he said, wiping cold pasta sauce off his chin with his sleeve. “Snoozefest.”

“I actually like this pasta,” I said. It was the only school lunch that was halfway decent.

“Not lunch—coding,” he clarified. “Making sandwiches is boring. And stupid.”

“Yeah,” Sammy from coding club added, messily wrapping spaghetti around his fork. “It was pointless.”

“Well, we actually did learn something about input and output,” I said, not sure why I was defending the activity that had frustrated me, too.

Bradley yawned. “Like I said, B-O-R-I-N-G.”

“And a waste of food!” Sammy added.

I went back to eating my pasta. What did I care if they didn’t get the point of the activity?

“Want to know what’s not boring?” Bradley said. “Making rockets.” He looked toward a window and pointed outside, where a group of kids were hanging out with the new science teacher. He was showing them how to launch empty bottles into the air using a bike pump.

“Then why don’t you join the science club instead of coding club?” I suggested. He was starting to annoy me.

“Science club would definitely be more fun,” Bradley answered. “But I want to go to Mars, and you gotta know how to code for that.”

“Why do you need to know how to code to go to Mars?” Sammy asked, pasta dotting his chin.

I’d seen a documentary about that on TV. “They use coding to program the computers and machines on the spaceships to do stuff,” I explained.

Bradley nodded “Yeah, my dad says code is the foundation for everything.”

“Well, not everything,” I said, but I understood what he meant. Coding was important for the things both Bradley and I wanted to do.

After lunch, I headed to my locker to get books for class.

Taped to my locker was an envelope with my name handwritten on it. Confused, I looked up and down the hall to see who might have left it, but I didn’t see anyone other than the usual kids at their own lockers.

Hmm. I checked the envelope again, double-checked that the name on the front was mine, and after another glance up and down the hall, opened it.

On a white sheet of paper, a typed note read:

if (you_want_to_learn_code) {

do_everything_I_tell_you ( );

}

I recognized the parentheses from the first coding video I watched online . . . just before I fell asleep. This definitely looked like programming language.

I read the note again, ignoring the parentheses and strange squiggly things. If I wanted to learn to code, I was going to have to do everything someone said? That sounded like someone wanted to boss me around, and I didn’t like that. Was this a joke? Who could the note be from?

“Hey!”

I was so deep in thought, I jumped at the voice.

I turned my head to find Anjali laughing. “Ha—scared ya!” She peeked over my shoulder. “What’s that?”

“A note,” I told her. “I found it taped to my locker.”

“Really? Can I see?”

For some reason, I was reluctant to hand it over. Plus, I was annoyed that she hadn’t showed up at the cafeteria earlier.

I turned around, holding the note to my chest. “Where were you at lunch?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, sorry,” she said. “I lost track of time. Film club had a meeting. We need an actress who can sing, so we were talking about ideas.”

She seemed like she felt bad, so I decided to forget the lunch thing. “Why don’t you ask someone who’s in theater or choir?”

“We’ve asked around, but everyone seems busy with their own club’s stuff.” While she talked, I noticed that Anjali was staring at my note. I had been holding it against my chest but didn’t realize the words were facing out.

“‘If you want to learn code, do everything I tell you’? That’s so strange. Who’s it from?” Anjali asked, changing the subject.

I turned the note around and looked at it again.

“No idea,” I admitted. “Oh, wait a minute,” I said, snapping my fingers. “I bet it’s from Alex! I saw him talking to Mrs. Clark today. It must be another one of his stupid pranks.”

“I bet you’re right.” Anjali took the note and looked at it carefully, running a finger over the strange punctuation marks. “This is coding language, right?” she said.

I nodded. “Looks like it.”

Anjali nodded. “It’s got to be from Alex,” she said assuredly. “So what are you going to do?”

I thought about it. Alex couldn’t win. No way was I going to do “everything” my brother said. That was a recipe for disaster.

I crumpled the note in a ball and shoved it in my locker, slamming the door. “Bye-bye, Alex,” I said. “You can’t trick me. Not this time!”

Arm in arm, Anjali and I walked off to class together. I’d show my brother who was the boss!