The Boyfriend App (3 page)

My dad’s beliefs became my beliefs. And when he taught me how to find vulnerabilities in software he imparted the most important wisdom of all: Don’t use what you know how to do to hurt people.

Because once you know this stuff, you have responsibility.

Blake’s dad never got how capable my dad was with computers. He never even gave him a chance. He kept him working as a mechanic on the machinery, and hired his Notre Dame undergrad friends or his MIT grad friends for the programming stuff. And I think my dad was too nervous to ask for a chance. That part made me hurt all over. The idea of my dad feeling nervous. At home, with us, he was different. At home, he knew everything. He could put my favorite music into my video games. He could add characters so that my games were different from everyone else’s who played the same game. And if we couldn’t afford a certain game, he could build one that was even better.

And that was just video games. When it came to computers, my dad could do anything.

I still remembered the first time I chose a party over one of his programming sessions. I still wished I hadn’t.

The door marked G103 swung open and a tiny blond girl appeared.

“Audrey McCarthy?” the girl asked. Her eyes were the color of pool water. I tried to piece together which grade she was in—she was the kind of pretty that doesn’t usually go unnoticed at Harrison.

“We’re here for Mrs. Condor,” my mother said, shifting her weight and smoothing a hand over her wrinkle-free khakis.

The girl’s face widened into a smile that exposed tiny white teeth. “I’m Mrs. Condor,” she said in a warm southern accent. She turned to face me. A delicate gold necklace caught the light at her collarbone, and twinkled. “And you must be Audrey.”

This girl—no,
woman
—was the school shrink?

“You just look so
young
,” my mother said in the high-pitched voice she saves for when she’s embarrassed.

Mrs. Condor’s already-wide smile went bigger, like Anne Hathaway’s does. “Why don’t you come on in, Audrey, and we can talk,” she said. Her voice made
comeonin
one word. And
Audrey
sounded slow, like
Ahhh-drey
, not like the fast way most people say it.

I ducked under her arm with my ice pack pressed to my head. A cuckoo clock on the wall let out a chirping noise, and a tiny yellow bird shot forward and dipped its head. Weird.

I figured Mrs. Condor would want to talk to my mom privately about my rumored aggression problem, but instead she gave my mother a wave and shut the door. “Welcome,” she said. It was one of the few times I’ve heard someone say that word and sound like she really meant it. She gestured at the space around her and said, “Impressive, isn’t it?”

I wasn’t sure if Mrs. Condor was making a joke, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings and laugh if she wasn’t. Room G103 was windowless like the computer lab—which was exactly where I would have been right now if it weren’t for Blake—and so tiny it must have been a closet at some point, or a janitor’s equipment room or something.

But Mrs. Condor was tiny, too, so at least she fit.

“Care to sit?” she asked, moving behind a wooden desk with a circa 2003 Compaq and a framed photograph of two kids propped on the lap of a buff guy with blond hair, who sat in a canoe. If these people were her family, they looked like an advertisement for L.L.Bean.

I sat in a metal folding chair that squeaked beneath my butt. Mrs. Condor had put a pillow on top, maybe to make it seem less like the waiting area in the DMV. The box of tissues next to the chair leg reminded me that I should probably still be crying.

Mrs. Condor sat behind her desk and tapped her fingertips near a mouse pad with picture of a mouse on it. I love tech irony. “So do you want to tell me about what happened today, Audrey?” she asked.

Silence hung heavy in the stale air between us.

“Um,” I stalled. I didn’t really know how to talk to this lady. This was therapy, which I’d only seen in the movies. My mom tried to get me to see a grief counselor after my dad died, but I’d refused. I wasn’t sure how another person could fix the hole I’d felt ever since our buzzer rang at midnight and we’d opened the door to see a cop.

“I just stopped by Ms. Bates’s classroom,” Mrs. Condor said.

“If you can call that geek closet a classroom.” I forced a laugh. I wasn’t sure why I was so nervous.

Mrs. Condor tapped a peach fingernail on her desk. But she didn’t say anything like
How interesting
or
Do you consider yourself a geek, Audrey?
Which is what I thought a shrink in the movies would say.

“Ms. Bates says you’re her top female student,” she said instead.

“I’m her only female student.” Not technically true, but true in the sense that I’m the only female student in her advanced Java programming class. The one where we work on games and building apps and everything’s open source. The one where Aidan and Nigit and the other guys don’t realize there’s a girl in the room.

“Why don’t you tell me what it is you like so much about computers,” Mrs. Condor said.

My lips pursed and shot to the side. “Everything?” I said. I waited for her to ask me another question, but she didn’t. So I kept going. “I love how quiet it is working on my computer,” I said. “And how certain I am of what I’m doing, and the outcome. How there’s a formula for things that makes sense.” I wasn’t sure the last time I’d said three sentences in a row about my feelings. I was about to feel more, but then the loudspeaker crackled, followed by the familiar sound of our principal clearing his throat like he’d swallowed a bug.

“Hello, Harrison students,” Dr. Dawkins barked. Aloysius A. A. Dawkins is our principal. In the computer lab, he’s known as Triple-A or the Battery. He’s always wearing brown suits that make him look like a graham cracker, and he also happens to be Blake’s uncle, a fact she likes to keep on the DL unless she needs something. (Like, say, getting out of detention for stealing Charlotte Davis’s wheelchair—from the restroom, while Charlotte was peeing—and riding around the hall in it, waving like English royalty.) Plus, Blake’s bona fide rich-guy father does stuff like sponsor the yearbook and myriad school trips, like the upcoming Stanford lacrosse invitational that Blake’s boyfriend happens to be starring in. And a bunch of Harrison parents work at his company, R. Dawkins Tech. So everyone pretty much loves him. Except Blake and me. We used to spend all our time at my apartment, because we never knew what kind of nasty mood Blake’s parents would be in. In junior high, Blake told me she wished my parents were hers, and that way we could be sisters, and she could live with us.

Blake’s Uncle Battery went on, “This is a special announcement to inform you of a nationwide competition open to all persons aged thirteen to eighteen.” He let out a chuckle. He was generally very satisfied with himself. “And with our excellent record in technological studies, I’m feeling highly optimistic that the winner could be someone right here in Harrison, listening to this very announcement right now, given by your devoted principal.”

My stomach churned as the Battery mouth-breathed through the intercom. A possible tech competition made my nerves light up like Christmas decorations.

“Public Corporation has launched a nationwide competition for the most innovative mobile application . . .” the Battery droned on.

“Mobile application?” Mrs. Condor repeated.

“App,” I explained. My fingertips itched the way they do whenever I get those first pricks of excitement about something.

“Public is a generous company,” the Battery said, sounding like a bona fide fanboy. And why wouldn’t he? His brother, Robert Dawkins, made his millions by investing in Public when they were a little tech company operating out of their now-CEO Alec Pierce’s attic. Fast-forward a few decades: Public ruled every teenager’s world with the creation of Public Party (a social networking site), buyJams (music-for-purchase website), the buyPlayer (handheld device to play said music), and then, of course, the buyPhone, the Beast (a handheld computer), and the Fiend (a laptop, available in Skinny and Skinnier. Marketing slogan:
Get Skinny with the Fiend!
).

Public’s gear was the best, too. Kids went nuts for it. They stumbled around the Public store wide-eyed and amped up, spending all of their money there. I was currently grounded from entering the store because I kind of went bat-crap crazy, too, when my mom said I couldn’t get noise-canceling headphones that Public advertised as Drown Your Parents Out.

Anyway. Besides the XXXPhone (for adults only) that tanked in the marketplace, the Public product creators were geniuses (or at least, marketing geniuses) and the Dawkins family was Public royalty.

The Battery bug-cleared his throat again and went on, “The winner will secure a trip to Public’s worldwide headquarters in Ecru Point, California; spend a day with the Public tech team; and receive two hundred thousand dollars in college scholarship money.”

Little black dots swirled in my vision.

Two hundred thousand dollars? Any college I could get into paid for?

“Details of the competition will be posted on HarrisonHS.edu, along with all rules and regulations. I’d like to take this moment to introduce all of you to our technology teacher, Ms. Bates. If you choose to participate, you can visit Ms. Bates in room M107 with any computer-related questions.”

Ms. Bates came over the loudspeaker and invited everyone to participate. She said a few other things, too, but I couldn’t focus. My heart was pounding as my mind scrolled through existing mobile applications. The really successful apps: Foursquare. Angry Birds. Words with Friends. That one everybody used to get where your phone turns into a beer glass.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

Problems. Solved.

Mrs. Condor was doing the Anne Hathaway smile as the Battery came back on and wished us luck. Then the announcement was over.

I sat there with my back ramrod straight, like if I moved, this might all go away. I tried to slow my heartbeat, but I couldn’t. How was I going to think up—and build—an app that Public Corporation would give me two hundred thousand dollars for?

A wave of nausea hit—the kind you get when you want something the instant it’s dangled in front of you: You want it so badly you almost wish you never knew it existed in the first place, because that way it wouldn’t hurt so hard when you couldn’t have it.

It wasn’t just that two hundred thousand dollars could pay for MIT, or Harvard, or Stanford. It wasn’t just that if college were paid for, my mom and I could make our rent each month
and
have enough left over for my music and video games and her romance novels and fancy-French-food cooking habit.

It was the fact that I suddenly understood—with completely clarity—that building the world’s most innovative mobile application and winning this competition could change—and
save
—my life.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

.....................................................................

chapter three

I
stared at the raised bronze numbers marking 313 and stuck my key in the lock. Our heavy black door caught against the frame. I had to bang my shoulder against the wood to set it free, eventually catapulting myself into the apartment. “Roger needs to fix this,” I said to my mom’s back. Roger is our apartment complex’s good-for-nothing super who wears cutoff jean shorts and Tevas year-round. “Or it’s gonna stick more until we can’t open it, like last time,” I went on, dropping my black backpack next to our Leaning-Tower-of-Pisa coatrack.

I was trying to be casual.

My mom stood at the counter, chopping onions faster than people with their own cooking shows. (She’d learned all kinds of fancy ooh-la-la cooking because she trained with Chef Antoine in the basement of Villa Madri. She’d traded lessons with him for late-night weekend dishwashing.)

I smelled garlic, and I was pretty sure she was making my dad’s favorite dinner: pissaladière, saucisson en croute, and salad Nicoise with seared tuna. She’d made his favorite dish on the anniversary of his death sophomore and junior year, too.

“We’re eating at six,” she said. She bobby-pinned a dark strand of hair behind her ear. “And I meant what I said about the computer.”

“No!”
I accidentally screamed. “Mom,
please
,” I tried again, softer. “There’s this contest. And I just need to research some things about building apps.”

“I taught you better than to react to nastiness like you did today,” she said. She picked up a mason jar and started shaking it way harder than she needed to, like it was the vinaigrette that pushed Blake.

Fear clenched in my chest. I
needed
my computer tonight. “If I won the contest, I could . . .” I stopped myself. I didn’t want to mention money stuff today of all days, when we were both already on edge. Even with a hefty financial-aid package, college was going to be a reach, and I’d still have to work like, twenty hours a week. My babysitting jobs weren’t going to cut it—I needed to learn how to waitress in the next one hundred thirty-nine days.

The TV was on, and fifteen-year-old pop star and Public spokesperson Danny Beaton was staring at me and the rest of America, saying,
“Don’t you want it, girl? The Public BuyPhone 17.5 can be yours for only seven hundred ninety-five dollars. Complete with YouandDanny, the new app where I show you how it will be, girl, when the lights are off and it’s just you and me.”

I took a breath and tried a different tactic. “But the app contest is sort of like homework, when you consider—”

“
N
-
O
spells
no
, Audrey.” My mom has a tiny nose like mine, and smooth, fair skin that blushes from her cheeks to her ears when she’s upset. I backed away as a splotch of vinaigrette flew through the air. It landed next to the framed
Home Is Where the Heart
Is
cross-stitch my aunt Linda bought us at the St. Therese Little Flower Catholic Church’s Kris Kringle Craft Show.