Chapter Ten

As much fun as I was having hanging out with Sophia, Maya, and Erin, by Friday night, I was beginning to have doubts about whether or not my brother really was behind the coding notes. We hadn’t found any definitive evidence against him, but we hadn’t figured out who else it could be, either.

I went to the kitchen, figuring I’d sit there as long as it took to catch him on his way in. I needed to talk to him, and a sneak attack might be the only way to get the job done.

To my surprise, Alex was sitting at the counter, working on his laptop.

I went up next to him and put my elbow on the counter. “Alex, if you’re the one leaving me notes, you’ve got to tell me.”

He looked at me like I had an extra eye on my forehead.

“What are you talking about, Lu?” he said, his brow wrinkled.

I contemplated my options. I could push it, but was it even worth it? It wasn’t like he was going to admit the notes were from him—he clearly wasn’t willing to back down from this prank.

“Forget it,” I said, plopping onto a stool next to him. “I just wish I could help make my app for Uncle Mickey faster, that’s all.”

“Lu, you know you don’t need an app to show Uncle Mickey how much you care. Why don’t you call or visit him? I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

I knew he was right, but still, I felt helpless.

Alex’s phone rang. I could tell something was wrong when he answered, because he kept saying, “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” and quickly got up to get his jacket and wallet.

“The late-shift delivery driver’s sick,” he said to me as he hung up and headed toward the door. “See ya!”

Oh well, I was glad I’d at least had a chance to chat with him, even if briefly.

After Alex left, I couldn’t stop thinking about Maya not believing that Alex was the one leaving the notes. Maybe she was right. But who could it be instead? I knew Maya thought Erin could be the culprit, but Erin wasn’t at school Friday when the dress-making note disappeared from my locker. It had to be someone who was at school that day.

Unless a random person took the note off my locker? Anything was possible, at this point.

My mom came into the kitchen and told me that Dad would be home with pizza soon. I sat on the couch and texted Anjali a bit, and then watched TV. It was actually nice to have some quiet time to myself.

Saturday morning, I was glad that we’d made plans to meet at Erin’s house, even just to get my mind off the notes. I met Sophia and Maya outside Erin’s building. The apartment complex was an older one—some of the paint was peeling on the front, but there was a pool out back with a slide.

We walked up to Erin’s apartment and rang the bell.

“Good morning,” a woman greeted us. She was wearing dust-covered sweatpants, and her short blond hair spiked up a little on top. “I’m Suzie, Erin’s mom. You must be Erin’s new friends.”

“Hi. I’m Lucy, this is Sophia, and this is Maya,” I said as Soph and Maya smiled at Erin’s mom.

“It’s nice to meet you all. Come in.”

Inside Erin’s apartment, there were boxes stacked everywhere, and books and clothes strewn all over the floor.

“I’m so sorry for the mess,” Suzie said bashfully. “You can just walk over anything.” She pushed some boxes out of the way.

“We’d be happy to help you and Erin unpack,” Maya offered.

“That’s so sweet of you, but we’re almost done,” she said. She pointed toward the back. “Erin’s in the kitchen.”

When we walked into the kitchen, Erin was standing at the counter with a mixing bowl in front of her. She was wearing an apron and had white flecks of flour in her hair.

“Hi, guys!” she said. She dusted her hands off on her apron. “Thanks so much for coming over. Ignore the mess—we’re still unpacking, but I wanted to do a little baking.”

Sophia took a deep breath. “Smells amazing in here!”

“It’s just cookies in the oven,” Erin said. “They’ll be done soon. We can have some, if you want.”

“I’m always in the mood for cookies,” I said. “Looks like you’re feeling better, Erin!”

“I am,” she answered, taking off her apron.

Maya handed her a packet. “Special delivery.”

“Oh, thanks! I wish there was a better way to get homework.” She put the papers on a clean counter. “I checked online, but not everything is posted, and there aren’t any class notes.”

“Yeah, it’s not the best system,” Sophia said.

The oven timer rang, and Erin grabbed oven mitts to take out the cookies. She put a few on a plate.

“Here, have some,” she said, handing us each a couple of warm cookies on a paper towel. “Careful, they’re hot.”

I let mine cool a bit and took a bite. It was sweet, gooey, and soft, all at once.

“Mmmm, these are so good!” I said, my mouth full. “What’s in them?”

“White chocolate chips and dried raspberries,” Erin said, putting more cookies on the plate.

“Yum! How did you learn to make these?” Sophia asked her, finishing hers in two bites.

Erin pointed to a shelf full of old, frayed-looking books. “I used a recipe from an old cookbook,” she said. “I collect them.”

“Really?” I said, my mouth still full.

“Yeah, I love looking at the pictures and being able to turn the pages. It’s different than looking at a website or blog.”

“Delish!” Maya said, licking crumbs off her lips and fingers. “You’ve got talent, girl!”

Erin’s mom popped her head into the kitchen. “Isn’t my baby an amazing baker?” she said, looking adoringly at her daughter. She put an arm around Erin. “I’m so glad she met you girls. It’s always tough for her to make friends at a new school.”

“Mom!” Erin groaned.

“Is that TMI? Sorry, honey.”

“Definitely,” Erin said, her face reddening. “TMI.”

Erin’s mom’s cell phone rang, and she shuffled around the kitchen until she found it in the mess of boxes. “I’ll let you girls bond without an embarrassing mom around,” she said, giving Erin a peck before leaving with her phone.

“Ugh.” Erin’s face flushed. “Moms . . .”

“Don’t worry. Mine’s a total nerd,” I said. “She plays video games for hours. The way she yells at the screen like my brother, you’d think she was still in high school.”

“Yeah, you have nothing to worry about. My parents love ballroom dancing,” Maya told us. “They practice in the living room—while I have friends over!”

We all giggled, imagining the scene.

“My mom thinks she’s really good at voices, but she’s actually terrible at them,” Sophia added.

“So true!” I said, laughing. I’d heard lots of Sophia’s mom’s “voices,” and they were all pretty bad.

“Erin’s actually great at voices,” I said, remembering her funny imitation at the playground the other day. “Do your French one, Erin!” I said. But the second I said it and saw Erin’s expression, I wished I hadn’t.

“Oops. Sorry!” I hadn’t realized that maybe she didn’t want it to be public knowledge.

“It’s okay,” Erin said, her face relaxing. She suddenly became the actress I’d seen in the park. In a perfect Dracula imitation, she raised her hands as if to strangle me and growled, “I vill make you pay . . .”

We all chuckled.

“As long as we’re spilling secrets,” Maya interrupted. She turned to Erin. “Tell us: Are you the mystery coder leaving notes for Lucy?”

I couldn’t believe Maya was being so blunt. Erin looked horrified, and her face went pale. “Who told you I know coding?” she asked.

All eyes turned to me.

“I’m so sorry!” I said, my eyes wide. “I know you asked me not to tell people about the playground, but it seemed like you knew stuff about coding, and you said GIGO, and we’re still trying to figure out who’s leaving me those notes . . .”

“What’s guy-go?” Maya asked.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” Erin and I said together.

“It’s what happens when you give a computer bad input,” I explained. “I looked it up.”

Now I was starting to get suspicious, too. “Wait, Erin, do you know how to code?” I said, turning to her.

She looked down at her apron, and then up at us. “Okay, I admit I know a bit about coding,” she confessed. “It’s fun, but I don’t want to do it anymore. And no, I’m not leaving you the notes. Did you guys really think it was me?”

“Well, we wondered . . . ,” Sophia admitted.

“Hold on a second, so you do know how to code?” Maya asked, glancing at me with an “I told you so” face. “How’d you learn? And why are you in coding club?”

“Oh, it’s a long story,” Erin said, waving her hand dismissively. I could tell she didn’t think we’d be interested.

“We want to hear it, right, guys?” Maya said, looking at me and Sophia. We nodded.

“Okay . . . ,” Erin said, reluctantly. “My dad’s in the military. That’s why we’ve moved so much. When he’d get transferred, we’d all go. Now my parents are getting divorced, so Mom and I came to live near my aunt.” She pulled a coding textbook out of a box of cookbooks on the counter. “My dad’s really into coding, so he’s been teaching me for the past few years. When we moved here, I wanted to join the theater club, but there weren’t any spots open. My mom insisted that I do coding, since my dad’s not around to teach me as much anymore. She says it’s a practical skill, and she wants me to keep it up.” Erin looked down at the coding book, her face drawn. “I like coding, but it just reminds me of my dad too much. I’d rather sing and dance.”

She looked so sad, I felt bad for her. “But think of the bright side—you got to meet us!” I said, trying to cheer her up.

“I know,” she said. “I just wish I could try something different.” Under her breath, she added, “Last year, I got a spot in the talent show at my old school. I loved it. But other than that, I’ve never gotten to act or sing—well, except in my living room.”

I thought about the tears Erin had on her face when she came to coding club last week. She must have been upset about not getting a chance to do theater.

“But I have something to tell you guys,” Erin continued after a pause. “Last night, Principal Stephens called my mom and told her I could be in theater club starting next Monday if I wanted to—a spot opened up!”

“And your mom’s letting you?” Maya said.

Erin nodded. “I told her why I’d rather do theater, and she agreed to let me try. I think she feels guilty about the move.”

“Wait,” I said, realizing what was happening. “So you’re leaving coding club?”

“Well, it looks like it . . . ,” Erin answered slowly.

“But you’re the only one in our group who knows anything about coding,” I said. She was our best chance to figure out the notes. “We need you!”

“Oh, you guys’ll be fine without me,” Erin answered. “And I already agreed to switch anyway.” Seeing my face fall, she added, “If you want, I can explain the activities you’ve been doing. Have you gotten more notes, Lucy?”

I liked hanging out with Erin, and I didn’t want her to leave the club. But I also didn’t want to lose a chance to solve the coding notes mystery.

“I have,” I said, taking them out of my jean jacket. I took them everywhere I went now. “Here’s one about hitting balls that doesn’t make any sense.”

Sophia chimed in. “Lucy and I followed the instructions and hit baseballs for a while, but we couldn’t figure out what it meant.”

I pointed to the latest note. “This one is about clothes, so we went to Dress to Impress and filled it out based on a dress Maya’s making.” I showed her the copy I’d made, since the one on the locker had been taken.

“But we have no idea what it means for coding,” Maya added.

Erin looked at the two notes and grabbed a piece of paper. We all huddled around her at the kitchen counter. She wrote down four things:

Input/Output

Conditionals

Loops

Variables

Maya eyed her suspiciously. “Are you sure you didn’t write the notes?” she asked.

“I promise—it wasn’t me,” Erin said. “You guys get input/output, right?” She pointed to it on the list.

“Yeah,” I answered. “The computer needs clear directions. It only does what it’s told. Just like Mrs. Clark couldn’t make a sandwich without us telling her exactly how, and like you couldn’t get around the obstacle course in the playground unless I told you what to do.”

“Exactly.” Erin gave me a thumbs-up. “We also learned conditionals at the park, Lucy,” she said.

I still had the first two notes, so I laid them out on the counter with the others.

“What do the curly squiggles and parentheses mean?” Maya asked, looking it over.

“The squiggles are called curly brackets,” Erin explained. “They’re an important part of some programming languages. They help the computer interpret your code. Sometimes code doesn’t work just because it’s missing a single bracket. And every programming language has a different syntax.”

“Syntax?” I asked.

“Yeah, the way words and phrases are put together to make up a language,” Erin explained. “All languages, like English or Spanish, have their own syntax, just like coding does.”

So far, this all made sense to me.

Erin pointed to the first note:

if (you_want_to_learn_code) {

do_everything_I_tell_you ( );

}

“These lines of code are if statements, or conditionals,” Erin explained. “If the first conditions are met, then the directions will be followed by a computer.”

Maya gave her a confused look.

“See, in the first line the parentheses contain the condition for the if statement,” Erin continued. “If you want to learn to code, then do what it says. The second line is a function—like an instruction—and the parentheses tell the computer to run the code.”

“Oh, I get it. So the first note was my first conditional, or if statement,” I said. “And the second note had conditionals, too.” I pointed to the note about the playground:

if (you_agree_to_my_terms) {

grab_a_friend ( );

go_to_school_playground ( );

}

if (you_go_to_school_playground) {

look_under_benches ( );

find_a_big_red_envelope ( );

}

if (you_find_the_envelope) {

trust_me (“You will learn to code”);

}

“Exactly,” Erin said.

“Okay, I understand conditionals,” Sophia said. “But what about the sports note?” She pointed to it. “Does that have anything to do with coding?”

while (there_are_balls_left) {

hit_the_ball ( );

}

“Loops,” Erin said. “Loops are actions that you perform while a condition is still true.”

“The softballs,” Sophia said, connecting the dots. “When we didn’t have a ball left,” Sophia reasoned, “we would have had to stop.”

“Only then,” Erin said. “Otherwise it’s the softball practice that never ends. You’d be caught in a loop.”

“Ha! Well, we did get tired from throwing and hitting the balls,” I said, rubbing my pitching arm, which was still sore.

“Yeah,” Erin said, leaning back against the counter. “You’re human. But computers never get tired of doing the same things over and over again . . . even if it’s a million times. That’s why loops are so great.”

“And what about the note with the clothing stuff?” Maya said.

We looked at the filled-out note:

int number_of_buttons = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8;

string button_type = “purple seed pearl”;

boolean has_sleeves = true false;

string sleeve_type =Petal”;

string collar_type = Mandarin”;

string lace_type = Antique Chinese Jacquard”;

“You guys filled this out right! These are variables, and they’re used to remember information,” Erin said, pointing to our answers. “You needed different types of things for the different parts of Maya’s dress, right? So if this was a computer program, you’d be telling it what to add to the dress.”

“Like what kind of button or collar or lace to pick,” Maya said, her eyes wide.

“Exactly,” Erin answered.

That made sense, but there was still a lot on the note that looked like gibberish to me.

“What does ‘int’ mean?” I asked, pointing to the top of the note.

“It’s short for ‘integers’—it’s another word for whole numbers. Sometimes there are numbers with decimals in coding, but that wouldn’t work here because you can’t have half a button.”

We chuckled.

“What about ‘boolean’?” Sophia asked.

“A boolean’s really simple: It’s a type of data that only has two options: true or false,” Erin explained.

“So, basically, whether or not the dress has sleeves,” Sophia said.

“Uh-huh,” Erin answered.

Maya chimed in. “And what about ‘string’—what does that mean?”

“A string is simple, too: It’s a word for a series of characters that can have letters, numbers, symbols, and punctuation marks in it.”

“So ‘petal’ is a string, but something like ‘Halverston#99’ would be, too, if that made sense for the code?” I asked.

“Yup. And variables hold all kinds of data types, like integers, booleans, and strings, just like what you guys filled out here,” Erin replied, pointing to our answers again.

I couldn’t believe that what just looked like total nonsense made sense to me now.

“Erin, look how much we need you—please don’t quit coding,” I said, giving her my most pitiful, plaintive look.

Erin smiled sweetly. “You guys’ll be fine without me. I’ve pretty much told you everything I know, anyway!”

I sensed that I wasn’t going to be able to persuade her to stay in coding club—not as long as theater club was an option. But what if . . .

I had the flyer for the hackathon tucked in with the coding notes, so I took it out of my pocket.

“Is that another note?” Erin asked, leaning over.

“No, it’s a flyer I wanted to show you guys.” I unfolded the paper.

Sophia took a peek at it. “Isn’t that what we saw at the computer store?” I nodded.

“Calling all coders, don’t miss the six-hour hackathon,” Maya read out loud. “What’s a hackathon?”

I smiled, trying not to let on my inner motive. “I looked it up—it’s a coding contest. You have to know some coding, but, Erin, with your help, I bet we could learn enough by then to win.” I pointed at the prize money. “You could buy more cookbooks!”

“Um, I don’t think she needs more books,” Sophia said, with a sweeping motion of the boxes marked “books” in the kitchen and the living room.

“Or you could buy more shelves to put them on!” I suggested.

Everyone laughed, and Erin smiled sympathetically at me. “Sorry, Lucy,” she said. “I can’t. I really want to try theater, and I don’t want to miss my chance.”

We tried a few (million) more times to convince Erin to stay in coding club, but she was like a coding loop. She kept repeating, “While I can go to theater, I will go to theater,” over and over again, which was disappointing, but also cracked us up. Eventually, we headed home.

That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the notes, especially now that I understood what they meant. I wondered if I’d receive more. But who could possibly be leaving them? I couldn’t shake the idea that it was Alex. Still, that wasn’t what was most on my mind—I was sad that Erin wasn’t going to be in our coding group anymore. It wasn’t like I’d known her that long, but I really liked hanging out with her, and I could tell Maya and Sophia did, too. Plus, it was obvious that she liked talking about coding. If only there was a way for her to do theater and coding club . . .