Spotlight on Coding Club! #4

Chapter One

My heart raced as I hurried down the corridor, glancing at my watch. First day back from spring break, and I was almost two minutes late for coding club—but I had a really good reason.

I burst through the door, and over the tops of the computers, all heads turned toward me. Only one way to handle a mildly embarrassing moment like this.

Doubling over, I clutched my sides. “Water,” I wheezed. “Water.”

Everyone started giggling. From the third row, I saw my coding club besties—Lucy Morrison, Sophia Torres, Maya Chung, and Leila Devi—laughing with the rest of the class. At the front of the room, Mrs. Clark smiled at me.

“Everything okay, Erin?”

I straightened, fanning my face with my hand. “Yes! Sorry I’m late, but I have an announcement.”
Mrs. Clark crossed her arms and leaned against her desk. “Funny, I have a few announcements myself. But why don’t you go first?”

“Why thank you,” I said, with an exaggerated bow that got more snickers from the class. Then I pulled a folded-up flyer from my jeans pocket. “I just saw Ms. Davies printing these.” I held the flyer out for everyone to read the three words at the top, in a giant font:
 
ALL THE TALENTS!
 
“The talent show, yeah,” said Bradley Steinberg. “Everyone already knows that’s next Friday. I’m doing a stand-up act!”

I wiggled the flyer. “But this year, the film club is working with the theater club to do a different format. Everyone who wants to enter will make a video. And the talents can be anything, like animation or . . . or robot building!” I grinned at Leila, and her wide blue eyes lit up. Leila was super into robotics.

Then I pointed at Maya, our school’s resident fashion expert. Her short black hair was swooped over to the right and pinned down with, like, a dozen star-shaped barrettes that matched the pattern on her purple leggings. “Or clothes you designed! It could be anything. And then everyone can watch the videos and vote!”

“Which was actually going to be my first announcement,” Mrs. Clark said, smiling as she gestured for me to sit down. I hurried over to the empty seat between Maya and Lucy, as Mrs. Clark continued. “So it’s true: This year’s talent show is going to have a new format. Like Erin said, anyone who wants to enter can make a video, then upload it to our school’s video platform. Then they can share them through a web app that all students will have access to. After everyone votes, the top three finalists will perform at an assembly a week from this coming Friday.”

To my right, Lucy sat up straighter, one of her long, thick braids falling over her shoulder. “A web app?”

“That’s right,” Mrs. Clark said, eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “The film club will be compiling the videos, and our school already has the video platform, but the web app doesn’t exist . . . yet.”

She raised her eyebrows meaningfully, and murmurs broke out.

“Do we get to design it?” Sophia asked eagerly. She’d turned away from her computer to stretch out her super-long legs, and I noticed her track shoes were extra muddy. Sophia lived with her parents, three sisters, and her grandmother (who’d moved here from Puerto Rico to help out), so she didn’t usually have money for extras.

Mrs. Clark nodded. “It’s a pretty big project with some tight deadlines. But I think you’re all up for the challenge!”

“Awesome,” Lucy said fervently. Maya and I exchanged a grin because Lucy looked like she’d just won the lottery. We all loved coding, but Lucy couldn’t get enough of it. Her mother was a computer scientist—one of the first African American women at her company—and the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

And honestly, I was just as excited as Lucy about this project. I was definitely entering the talent show. Performing was 100 percent my thing. Or maybe 90 percent, because I had coding club and film club. One of the drawbacks of my interests, though, was that theater didn’t fit into my schedule. I still missed being onstage.

Besides, even more fun projects to work on were exactly what I needed. Anything to keep me from thinking about The Thing I Wasn’t Supposed to Think About.

As everyone logged into their computers, Maya leaned over and nudged me.

“So what’s your act gonna be?”

I adopted a look of mock innocence. “What act?”

“Come on,” Maya said teasingly. “There’s no way you’re not entering the talent show. Singing, dancing, doing impressions and silly voices—you actually have all the talents. Or, at least, a lot of them.”

“Moi?” I gasped, placing a hand on my chest. On my other side, Lucy started chuckling. “Vhat are zees talents you speak of? Vhat zilly voices? Vhat dancing? Vhat—”
“Erin?”

I jumped, startled, and realized Mrs. Clark was looking at me. “Vhat? I mean, yes?”

“Mind if we get started?”

“But of course,” I drawled, and Maya shook her head, grinning.

For the next ten minutes, Mrs. Clark explained more about how the web app would work. Students and teachers would register with their e-mail accounts to get access. Then contestants would upload a video, and anyone could view it if they were signed in. She started a task list on the board, and soon everyone was calling out suggestions.

“Web design,” Maya said. “All the Talents sounds like a reality show—maybe we can make the web app look like it really is one!”

“Each student can only vote once, right?” Lucy chimed in. “We’ll have to program it so that once you click on a vote button, you can’t click on any others.”

“There should be a notification system,” added Maddie Lewis. “An easy way to let everyone know who the finalists are.”

“Maybe we could program it to automatically send updates, too!” added her twin brother, Mark.
“Like who’s in the lead every day. That might get more kids to watch and vote.”

The suggestions kept coming, and soon the board was filled with Mrs. Clark’s writing. She hadn’t been kidding—this was a huge project.

And then we had to spend another ten minutes figuring out which ideas we needed. Like we learned at the hackathon (a day of coding where teams won prizes at the end), adding too many things could create “feature creep” (when a project became impossible to use because it had too much going on). So we had to cut down the list. A lot.

After all that, though, we still had to start on the real work!
“Next step: splitting into groups and dividing up these tasks,” Mrs. Clark said. Maya and I automatically scooted our chairs closer to Lucy. On her other side, Leila and Sophia did the same thing.

“Why split up a dream team?” I asked Mrs. Clark, and she laughed. It was true, though. We weren’t just best friends; we were an awesome team, too—like at the hackathon in the fall, when our robot had turned the event into an epic dance party.

“Any of these tasks sound particularly interesting?” Mrs. Clark asked.

Lucy was gazing at the board. “I was thinking about the voting feature we’re designing for the app,” she said. “Could we make it so that students rank their top three favorites?”

Maya tilted her head. “Or, like, rank each contestant on different qualities? Creativity, originality . . .” Maya hadn’t been so into coding club at the beginning of the school year, but she was totally into it now.

“That’d give us a lot of data,” I pointed out. “Way more than if everyone just voted once for their favorite. We’d know why certain contestants were more popular than others.”

Mrs. Clark was nodding. “It’s certainly not necessary for the talent show to be a success, but it might be interesting to analyze that kind of data afterward! So, is this what your group wants to do?”

We all looked at one another eagerly. “Yeah, I think so!” Lucy said.

As Mrs. Clark moved on to the next group, I pulled out a notebook and pen. “I like Maya’s idea about voting in different categories,” I said, jotting it down. “What do you all think?”

“I think it’s a great idea,” Leila said, adjusting her head scarf. “It’s easy to watch two contestants singing or dancing and just pick which one you think is best. But if contestants are going to be doing all kinds of stuff, like a stand-up act or—”

“Or a flying robot?” I interrupted, waggling my eyebrows.
Leila giggled. “Or that, yeah. It’d be harder to judge which one is better. Rating different qualities for each contestant seems more fair.”

“What should the qualities be?” Sophia asked.

Maya had opened the browser on her computer and pulled up the website for a talent reality show. “These contestants are judged based on overall performance, technical ability, style and execution, and originality.”

I scribbled in my notebook. “So if we use those qualities, our program will have to average them together for each contestant . . . but how? Ratings?”

“That might be confusing for people voting,” said Lucy, tapping her pencil on her notebook. “I mean, what does three stars really mean? Why don’t we make it even simpler: an upvote for each category? Like a thumbs-up you click on—and whoever gets the most thumbs-ups, wins.”

“Is anyone else picturing the winner onstage, surrounded by hundreds of thumbs?” I asked with a perfectly straight face, and everyone giggled.

We spent the next half hour taking notes and brainstorming ideas for our voting feature. Then
Mrs. Clark walked back to the front of the room and cleared her throat.

“It looks like you’re all off to a great start,” she said. “If you need any help this week, feel free to e-mail me. Now, before we leave, I actually have another announcement. Erin, you mentioned earlier that your group might be able to collect a lot of interesting data with your voting feature, right?”

I nodded, closing my notebook.

“That’s actually something some people make a career out of,” Mrs. Clark said. “They’re called data scientists. Think about every time you use your phone or a computer, every time you click on a link or type something into a search box—you’re creating data for these experts to analyze, and they learn all kinds of amazing things. That’s actually what I did before I came to teach here, and I loved it.”

Mrs. Clark was smiling, but in an almost sad sort of way, and a feeling of foreboding washed over me.

“Of course, I love teaching, too,” she went on. “And teaching this club in particular. In fact, seeing how far you’ve all come since the beginning of the year, and your enthusiasm for coding—it’s really inspired me to take on greater challenges.” She paused, and gave a sweeping look at everyone. “So I was excited over spring break when TechTown offered me a job as a data scientist.”

Next to me, Lucy gasped. “Wait, does this mean you’re leaving school?”

Maya nudged Lucy with her elbow, but her eyes were wide, too.

“Not for a few weeks,” Mrs. Clark said. “But yes, I accepted the job. Teaching this club has been so much fun, and I’m really going to miss you all. But I’ve talked to Principal Stephens, and I know he’ll find a great replacement . . .”

She kept talking, but I stopped listening. My hands were suddenly clammy, and my palms were starting to itch. It was a familiar feeling, although one I hadn’t felt in years.

No, I told myself firmly. No, that’s not what this is. This is not a panic attack.

My heart was pounding faster and faster, and soon a rushing sound filled my ears. I squeezed the edge of my chair and stared at my keyboard. The more I tried to convince myself I had no reason to have a panic attack, the more panicky I felt. Had my friends noticed? What about Mrs. Clark?

Was the whole class staring at me?

I closed my eyes and focused on breathing slowly until my pulse finally started to slow down. The rushing sound went away, and I heard voices and the scratching of chair legs on the tile floor as everyone started to leave. There was a hand on my arm, and someone was saying my name.

“Huh?” I opened my eyes. Lucy was staring at me with a concerned look.

“Erin, are you okay?”

“Yeah!” My voice came out in a squeak. “Totally fine.”

“I can’t believe Mrs. Clark is leaving,” Sophia groaned. “I mean, I’m happy for her. But ugh.”

“Who do you think will replace her?” Maya adjusted one of her star-shaped barrettes. “Should we go to the Bakeshop and eat all the cupcakes to make ourselves feel better?” Maya ate mostly Chinese food at home, which she loved, but she also loved cupcakes—who wouldn’t?

“Yes!” Lucy said, already buttoning up her coat. “And we can work on this voting feature, too!”

I zipped up my jacket, trying to hide the fact that my fingers were still shaking. “I’d love to, but I promised my mom I’d come home right after coding club,” I lied. “Sorry, guys.”

“Aw, we’ll miss you!” Sophia gave me a one-armed hug. I thought I saw Lucy give me another concerned look, although she didn’t say anything. My friends chatted as we left the classroom, but

I didn’t say a word until we walked outside.

“See you tomorrow!” I called, waving and hurrying off in the opposite direction. My stomach was in knots, and not just because of Mrs. Clark’s news. The Thing I Wasn’t Supposed to Think About was there, too, constantly hovering in the back of my mind. I needed more distractions if I was
going to stop the panic attacks from coming back.

Right now, that meant I had to bake.