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Invalid Pointer
Third week of code camp. Everyone around him was joking, arguing with their code, having fun with the mess of it.
“Yo, Danny!” Jamal waved a candy wrapper from across the table. “You’re debugging the interface, right? Or are you just trying to figure out why it’s still crashing every five minutes?”
“Debugging. Obviously. Mongol harass is just my backup plan.”
“Cool,” Jamal said. “Because if this keeps breaking, we’re submitting The World’s Most Useless App.”
“It’s already useless,” Clara said. “Who even needs an app to rank pizza toppings based on zodiac signs?”
“Everyone. We’re solving a problem society didn’t know it had.”
They cracked up. Danny tried to laugh too. His eyes dropped to the phone beside his laptop. One new message from Lucy:
Matt’s okay.
Hang in there and focus on camp.
Matt wasn’t supposed to be “okay.” He was supposed to be invincible.
“Danny.” Clara’s voice cut in. “Danny. You good?”
“Yeah. Just—uh, yeah. Totally good.”
“You sure? You’ve been on power saving mode for the last ten minutes.”
“Zoning out. I’m fine,” he said quickly.
“If you need a break, we’ve got this. Clara’s already rewriting your spaghetti code anyway.”
“Excuse me? My code is artisanal. Handcrafted. A masterpiece.”
“Sure,” she said. “And I’m Ada Lovelace reincarnated.”
Laughter hit again. This time, he didn’t resist it. But his gaze slid back to the screen.
Matt’s okay.
He shoved the phone into his pocket.
“Let’s make this app so good, people will think it’s psychic.”
Jamal grinned. “Cool. As long as it doesn’t go full Skynet.”
At least fixing the app was something he could do.
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