Allie looked over at her monitor right as the picture changed to one of her and Courtney. The slideshow continued, slowly rolling through all the pictures people had taken over the last few days and all the ClickPics from the leaderboard party. But Allie’s favorites were the shots of her real-life best friends, taken on the staircase on the first day of school.
“My friend Zoe may have had the most fun.” Allie pointed to the picture of Zoe, racing across the lawn with her arm in the air and a huge smile on her face. And then she leaned down like she was telling the girl a secret. “She got a little bit carried away,” she said as she crinkled her nose and let out a laugh. The little girl copied her expression and laughed along.
The next picture was the ClickPic Maddie and Chris took that day in the quad. “And my friend Maddie actually started talking to this boy she’s liked for a whole year.”
The next photo filled the screen. It was Allie and Emma on the stairs with their arms around each other. “And my friend Emma…” She didn’t know how to finish her sentence. “Well, let’s just say that Emma wasn’t such a big fan of my game,” she finally said. “But I click with her in real life, and that’s all that really matters.” Allie wished she had realized that earlier. Clicking with Emma in real life was always the most important thing.
The little girl smiled up at her. “I built a game at school. It’s called Tiger Run. Because I love tigers. I’d show it to you, but I don’t have it on my phone.”
“Darn. I wish I could see that.” Allie smiled at her. “What grade are you in?”
“Fourth.”
“Hey, that’s how old I was when I started coding.” Allie gave her a high five. And then she curled her finger toward her chest. “Want to see the code?” she asked, and the girl’s eyes lit up as she stepped in closer and came up on her tiptoes.
“Attention, everyone! The Fourth Annual Games for Good Competition is starting in fifteen minutes in Theater A.”
Allie squeezed her eyelids tight and gripped the sides of her kiosk with both hands.
“Ready?” She heard her dad’s voice behind her, but she didn’t turn around. She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t loosen her grip.
“I think I’ll wait here,” she said.
“Allie…” It was her mom’s voice that time.
But she shook her head slowly. “I can’t do it, Mom.”
“What if we told you we had a surprise for you?” her dad said.
Allie opened her eyes and stared at one of the signs hanging from the ceiling. She blew out a breath. “What is it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if we told you, would it? Come on,” he said as he led her out of the pavilion and toward the exhibit-hall exit.
When they reached Theater A, a man at the front door handed her a program and said, “Welcome. Do you need help finding your seats?”
“No, thank you,” her dad said. “We know where we’re going.”
They stepped inside, and she followed her parents to the first row. The music was loud and upbeat. Allie tipped her chin back and counted ten gigantic screens hanging from the ceiling, all placed at key points so everyone could see them. And the room was enormous—filled with seats in neat rows, all facing a circular stage in the center—and already packed with people.
When they arrived at their seats, Allie’s jaw dropped. Emma, Zoe, and Maddie were sitting in the front row, and as soon as they saw her, they jumped up and wrapped their arms around her.
“What are you doing here? You shouldn’t have come,” Allie said.
“We told you we’d be here!” Zoe said.
“To watch me compete, but now…” Allie trailed off. She couldn’t finish her sentence.
“We wanted to be here,” Maddie said.
“Yeah, I wasn’t about to miss this nerd party,” Zoe said as she craned her neck and looked around the room. “This place is ah-maze-ing!”
Emma didn’t say anything at first. She stared at Allie. “It’s my fault, isn’t it?”
Allie rested her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “No, it’s not.”
“You were right. You should have left the code alone. If I hadn’t insisted you fix it—” Emma began, but Maddie cut her off.
“No, it’s my fault,” she said. “It was my idea for you to share it in the first place. You wanted to wait until the competition was over. I should have listened to you.”
“It’s not your fault,” Allie said to Maddie. And then she looked at Emma. “And it’s not your fault, either. It was one hundred percent mine. I shared it because I got worried about Nathan’s game. I got competitive. If I’d shut it down as soon as I realized it was sharing personal pics, I would have been up on that stage, introducing Click’d and its more than three hundred users. Instead, I’m here in the audience, watching.”
Allie’s gaze traveled up to the stage and hung there, taking in the lights and the huge projection screen, and it was all she could do not to cry.
She was relieved when the houselights dimmed, the music went silent, and everyone took their seats. A spotlight shined on the stage, and when Allie looked up, she saw the Spyglass CEO, Naomi Ryan, standing right in the center.
“Welcome! Thank you all for coming to the Fourth Annual Games for Good Youth Developers Competition.” When the applause died down and people returned to their seats, she began pacing the stage slowly.
“I created Spyglass to entertain people. I built this company to bring fun, unique, expertly designed, slick-looking games to mobile devices. I’m excited to say we’ve achieved that, thanks to our hardworking developers and to all the partners we have in this room. But if you know me, you know this: I never intended to stop there. We’re all here for a bigger reason: to use our collective talents to make this world better than we found it.”
The room exploded into applause.
She smiled as she clapped along and paced the stage, waiting for the room to quiet down.
“Today you’re going to meet nine passionate developers. The youngest one is twelve years old. The oldest just turned nineteen. These games are planting trees, protecting endangered animals, teaching people how to survive a massive pandemic, providing bicycles for people in impoverished villages, and grooming people to be teachers in countries where girls are not allowed to learn.”
Allie felt goose bumps travel up her arms.
Naomi Ryan walked to the front of the stage and stood there quietly, waiting for the applause to die down before she continued.
“I promise, you will leave this room today feeling inspired and enlightened. I promise that you will leave this room feeling devastated, because only one person can win this year’s Games for Good competition. And I promise you will leave this room today with renewed hope for the future of this planet, because you’re about to meet representatives of a generation that thinks, cares, and acts.”
When the room erupted into applause again, she walked to one side of the stage with outstretched arms.
“The winner today will receive not only a five-thousand-dollar scholarship, but also serious bragging rights.” There was scattered laughter around the room. “No, the big prize today isn’t the money or the bragging rights, it’s the power of these firms backing one single project.” She turned to the panel of judges. “This is a group of our industry’s most impressive leaders, seven people who have proven to be uniquely gifted at finding the next big thing. Each firm will bring its vast resources to help this one developer take his or her game to the next level. They will spare no expense, right?” she asked. The judges smiled and nodded while the room clapped and cheered.
“Each young developer has six minutes to tell you about his or her game, give you a short demo, and explain why he or she deserves to be this year’s Games for Good winner. Are you ready to meet them?”
The music came back on and the nine developers walked across the stage and stopped in the center. Allie’s heart sunk. It was almost impossible to watch. She so desperately wanted to be
up there. Her dad must have sensed it, because he reached over and took her hand in his.
Nathan had ditched the shorts and T-shirt, and he was standing with his feet rooted in place, looking confident in dark jeans, a white collared shirt, and a black blazer.
Allie was still so angry with him, but she couldn’t help feeling nervous for him, too. After everything they’d been through together that week, she was surprised to realize that she wanted him to win.
“Before we begin, I just have to tell this group how impressed I am with every single developer. I don’t get to be a judge, and thank goodness, because I can’t imagine picking one of these games. Each has the potential to reach millions, and change the lives of many people. So, on your feet! Be loud and give our developers a big round of applause!”
Everyone stood, clapping and yelling. And then the lights went dark.
Allie could see the shadows of everyone exiting. Then the music and lights came back up, and there was a girl standing in the middle of the stage. The screen behind her was filled with a bright blue water drop and the words WIL’S WAY.
“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Lauren Secatero and I’m here today to tell you about Wil’s Way, a game designed to bring clean water to developing countries. This is Wil,” she said, pointing proudly to the animated water droplet with big eyes and a wide smile. “Wil stands for Water Is Life, and the name comes from that saying, Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
She launched her game and Wil bounced along the bottom of the screen. As she tipped her phone up, down, and side to side, the water droplet bounced, climbing a series of platforms and avoiding obstacles like piles of dirt and drains. When Wil reached the empty water glass at the top of the screen, the droplet advanced to the next level. Her game was much simpler than Nathan’s, but Allie liked that. At the end of Lauren’s presentation, she got a huge round of applause.
After three more presentations, Nathan finally stepped onto the stage. The screen behind him came to life as his little animated characters waddled around his detailed neighborhood with hammers in their hands. Each one took a spot on a ladder next to a tiny house and got to work.
“Last year, I was eleven years old. I was sitting in that seat right there.” He pointed to a chair in the front row. “All I could think about was that next year, I wanted to be up here on this stage, demonstrating a game of my own. And here I am. Thank you for letting me introduce you to Built.”
Allie couldn’t help but think about how much he’d done to get to that point. A year of lunches in the lab. An entire summer in front of his screen. And she found herself clapping along with everyone else.
For the next five minutes, Nathan took the audience on a tour through his town and told them all about his goal to build real houses for people who needed them.
Everyone laughed when he demonstrated his little workers, climbing ladders with hammers in hand. He explained how the store worked on a karma system; each player was encouraged to do kind deeds for a neighbor in exchange for points they could use to buy nails, screws, wood, and paint. In the final minute, he zoomed out so everyone could see the street signs and subtly placed billboards as he told them how sponsorship worked.
“It’s simple. For every home that’s built, one of our sponsors donates a dollar to Habitat for Humanity. That’s it. Just one dollar. Over the last year, I’ve built more than a thousand of these little houses. I’ve been the only builder. Obviously.” That got a laugh. “If I’d had a sponsor, that would have meant a thousand dollars for Habitat for Humanity. Can you imagine how many real houses we could build if we had twenty or thirty sponsors—each taking turns to donate a dollar—and thousands or even millions of players? The more sponsors, the more players, and the smaller the investment but the larger the reward.”
He stepped back to the center of the stage. “Thank you for your time and attention. I’m Nathan Fredrickson, creator of Built, and I believe games can change the world.”
He ended his presentation with a close-up of the Built icon.
And then Nathan looked down into the first row and locked his eyes on Allie. He gave her the biggest smile and mouthed the words Thank you, and she knew he wasn’t talking to the judges or the audience. He was talking to her.
There was something about the look on his face—a genuine sincerity mixed with sadness, but not a trace of guilt. She stared at him, and she knew in that moment he hadn’t sabotaged her game. He couldn’t have. Whatever happened, he hadn’t done it on purpose.
Nathan left the stage, and one by one, the final presenters took his place. When the last presentation ended, the music started back up, loud and upbeat, and Naomi Ryan returned to the stage.
“What did I tell you?” She looked over at the judge’s desk. “Are you blown away right now?” They all nodded.
“I know we’d all love to see every one of these games succeed out there in the great big world, but raise your hand if there was one game that you found yourself really excited about. One game that spoke to you.” Almost every single hand in the room shot into the air.
“In a moment, the judges will choose a winner, and it might not be your favorite. If it’s not, here’s what you can do about it. Each one has been uploaded on the Spyglass website. Go download it and start playing. Tell your friends. Spread the word. Encourage everyone you know to play these games.”
The ten giant screens around the room came to life, each one showing one of the Games for Good entries. One of the screens stayed fixed on the stage, and Allie wondered if that was where Click’d was supposed to be.
She pushed the thought out of her mind and returned her attention to the other screens. They were all interesting, but she still couldn’t take her eyes off Built.
“It looks like we’re ready to hear our winner,” Naomi Ryan said. She left the stage, and a woman wearing a dark red pantsuit with gray hair and thick black glasses took her place. All the developers returned and stood behind her.
“This was an incredibly difficult decision. The seven of us didn’t completely agree. We each had our favorites. But there was one game that had a home on all our top three lists because the design is clean and simple, and the concept is unique and easy to grasp for players of all ages. We chose this game because we felt the cause was timely and its call to action was simple and important.”
Allie was perched at the edge of her chair. She looked at Zoe, Maddie, and Emma. All three were sitting on the edges of their seats, too.
“This game is fun,” the judge continued. “But it’s more than that. It’s addictively fun.”
Allie couldn’t stand it. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would beat right out of her chest.
“This year’s winner of the Games for Good competition is…”
Built, Allie thought. Please say Built.
“The winner is Wil’s Way!”
Lauren Secatero threw her hand over her mouth and bent forward like she wasn’t sure her knees were going to hold her up. Two of the other girls jumped up and down and hugged her.
“Thank you!” She looked at the judge’s table, her eyes glossy with grateful tears. She shook their hands and they congratulated her. “Thank you,” she said again.
Allie looked up at Nathan. She could tell he was sad, but he was clapping just as hard and yelling just as loudly as everyone else.
When Allie got back to the Games for Good Pavilion, it was full of people, walking from kiosk to kiosk, meeting each of the developers and watching their demos. Ms. Slade came over several times to check in, and each time she introduced Allie to a bunch of the software executives who had been in the audience.
Eventually, Allie stopped feeling awkward about the fact that she was the only one in the pavilion without a real demo. She got comfortable with her photo slideshow. She told everyone about her friends and their week with Click’d. At first, she only talked about the things that went right, but after a while, she started telling stories about the things tha
t went wrong, too. She even found herself laughing and shaking her head as she explained how “one small, tiny, minuscule change in the code can mess everything up and…” Then she would let out a long sigh and say, “Anyway, that’s what happened to me. But I’ll fix it. And I’ll relaunch it. And soon, Click’d will be clicking again.”
The more she said it, the more she started to believe it.
Occasionally, she’d glance over at Nathan’s booth and see him gesturing wildly with his hands like he always did when talking about Built. She felt that pang of guilt again, just like she had when she’d seen him onstage. She could tell he loved his game. He believed in it. He never thought he needed to take her down to win Games for Good.
Like she’d been telling people all day: She made a mistake at some point. She missed something. She broke Click’d.
When all the booth traffic finally slowed down, Allie took a big sip of water and then crouched down, reaching into her backpack and feeling around for her lip gloss. She peeked inside and saw her spiral-bound notebook, and pressed in between its pages, she saw the printout Nathan had given her in the lab on Thursday right before they’d left for the day. She gave it a tug and pulled it out.
She looked over her code, paying special attention to the commands Nathan had highlighted in blue, and especially to that last line, highlighted in green. That line “was what tied it all back to the leaderboard,” he had said. She stared at that line, like she’d stared at it the whole night and most of the day before.
Her booth was still quiet, so she went back to her monitor, moved her presentation into the background, and opened a browser window. She navigated over to the CodeGirls server, opened her code, and found the area she’d changed on Thursday night.
She held Nathan’s printout up to the monitor and compared them. She’d deleted the lines of code he’d told her to. And the line he’d highlighted in green matched up perfectly, too.
But then she noticed something strange. Not in Nathan’s printout, but in her code on the screen.