Everyone nodded.
Pippa cranked up the volume on the music. “So now let’s dance it!”
Lucy tried doing the dance, following Pippa’s example, but the movements changed too quickly. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four; one, two, three, four went by so fast when you were trying to do a clap high while it happened. Dancing clearly wasn’t going to turn out to be her best thing. It was more fun just to watch everyone else.
Nolan was good at remembering the motions for each dance move. But the serious expression on his face was such a contrast to the silliness of the motions, it made Lucy want to laugh.
Vera worked so hard to get every step perfect that she was still trying to do the dab when the rest of the campers were on to the floss.
Nixie looked pleased with herself even when she got the motions wrong. She gave huge smiles to an imaginary audience as if she were dancing in a show on Broadway.
As Boogie tried to keep up with the music’s pulsing beat, he flung out his arm for the double-down so energetically he narrowly missed smacking Vera in the face.
“Sorry!” he panted.
Then when he tried to do the Gangnam move, he stumbled against the side of a desk.
“Ow!” He stopped to rub his hip.
The song finally came to a stop, and Pippa clicked off the music.
“Well?” she said. “What did you think of our dance?”
“Dancing is hard!” one kid from another group moaned. Lucy certainly agreed.
“What made it hard?” Pippa asked him.
“Um—everything?”
“The desk crashed into me!” Boogie said, and got a big laugh, but not from Vera.
“So,” Pippa said, “one thing that made it hard was not having enough space to do your motions, so you bumped into each other and the furniture. What else made it hard?”
“It all went too fast,” someone in the front of the room said.
“So…maybe the dance moves should change after six or eight measures, not two or four,” Pippa suggested. “Anything else?”
“It’s too hot in here!” came another complaint.
Pippa smiled. “Well, that’s something we won’t have to worry about in our computer-coded choreography. Our animated dancers don’t sweat! But once we start coding for several animated dancers, we’ll have to watch for how we position them on the screen so they aren’t so close they’ll bump into each other. And we’ll have to make a sequence of the steps so the dance isn’t too frenetic and jerky—unless that’s the look you want, of course. It’s up to you.”
“And don’t let Boogie be one of the dancers!” Nixie joked, but not loud enough for Pippa and Preston to hear.
Boogie made a low bow, as if she had complimented him, and then caught himself just before he toppled over. Vera didn’t smile this time, either.
Boogie and Vera were just so different, Lucy thought. Boogie’s thing was goofing off and being silly; Vera’s thing was working hard and being serious. And right now it didn’t seem like coding was Vera’s thing or Boogie’s thing. But Boogie didn’t seem to mind if something wasn’t his thing, and Vera did—even if she already had two other things, comics and piano.
Right now Lucy still didn’t have anything to be her thing at all.
* * *
—
Coding a dance was even more fun than coding a boat in a maze. There were so many choices to make: picking the dancer, the music, the moves, even special background effects. And that was just for a dance with one dancer. When you added more dancers, they could be side by side, or in a square or in a circle. They could be the same size or different sizes, so that one was the main dancer in front, and the others danced behind her. They could be doing the same motions in unison, or each dancer could be doing a different motion. It depended on what instructions you put in the code.
Lucy chose a duck, to have something different from Elena’s kangaroo, and the disco song her dad liked to play when he washed the car, and a disco-ball background with bursts of bright light.
Yay for a disco-dancing duck!
Nolan already had his giraffe flanked by two smaller monkey backup dancers. Nixie had chosen a dog as her dancer—surprise, surprise—but was still trying to decide which music a dog would like best.
Vera would code one movement for one measure for her dancing mouse, and then run the program to see how it looked. Then she’d add another motion for another measure, and run the program to see how it looked. At the rate she was going, it would take her a whole month to get through one single mouse dance.
Boogie’s hippo was as clumsy a dancer as Boogie had been. His hippo was dancing right on top of his dancing turtle.
“Ouch!” Boogie said, on behalf of his turtle. “Get off me, you great big hippo!”
Lucy laughed, and this time Vera laughed with her. It was hard not to laugh with Boogie.
But Lucy was glad her duck was such a good dancer.
“I know you’re saving each program you code,” Preston said. “But now is a good time for a reminder to keep on doing this. Our last day of camp is going to be our Coding Expo, when your family and friends can come see the amazing things you’ve coded during our time together. They’re going to want to see some of these dances, for sure!”
Lucy remembered she hadn’t gone to the Coding Expo for Elena’s coding camp because she had been home sick with a bad cold that day.
Would Elena come to hers?
If she did, what would she think of Lucy’s dancing duck?
Would she be mad that Lucy’s duck danced just as well as Elena’s kangaroo?
What if her duck danced…even better?
By the end of the week, Lucy thought her dancers were definitely good enough to earn a dancing badge. Well, a computer-dancing badge. She was still impressed at how exhausting real dancing had been.
It had been hard to get her hour of computer time at home each day. Elena kept claiming she needed the computer for “homework” and then quickly turning off the monitor if anyone walked by. When Lucy did get her turn, Elena stalked out of the room, except for one time when she had seen Lucy working on a dance sequence. Then she stood behind the computer and made comments like, Those two dancers are too close together and Those dance steps don’t fit with that music.
If only human beings could be more like dancing animals in a coding program! The computer’s dancing animals did exactly what you told them to do every single time, even if by mistake you told them to do something ridiculous, like dance on top of someone else’s head. But it was impossible to make other people—especially older sisters—do what you wanted them to do.
Lucy wished she could write a computer code like this:
1. If Lucy sits down at the computer, then Elena smiles.
2. If Lucy is coding a dance, then Elena says, Good job!
3. If Lucy finishes her hour, then Elena says, Should we start planning out what we need to do for our coding badge?
Lucy hadn’t mentioned the badge to Elena since the day she had asked their mom to sign her up for coding camp. She was afraid that if she did, Elena might just stomp away and slam the bedroom door again.
* * *
—
Saturday was the day Lucy and Nixie had arranged to meet at Boogie’s house at two o’clock to walk Boogie’s dog.
That morning, sitting cross-legged on her bed, Lucy started writing down the requirements for a dog-walking badge in the Let’s Have Fun Club handbook.
Elena looked over her shoulder.
“A dog-walking badge?” she asked. “We don’t have a dog.” It was the same thing Nolan had pointed out to Nixie.
“I’m borrowing a dog,” Lucy told her. “Well, me and someone else.”
She read Elena the list of possible items for the badge, including the things she had made up in her head the other day: walk a dog,
pick up dog poop, go running with a dog, play fetch with a dog, and take a dog to a dog park.
Elena shook her head. “We should have to walk at least two different dogs. Probably three. Of different sizes and breeds. Or walk two dogs at the same time. Or have someone pay us to walk a dog.”
How could Elena, who had never walked a dog in her life, be making up requirements for Lucy’s dog-walking badge? But the way Elena had said we and us gave Lucy a little tingle of happiness. Maybe Elena would want to get a dog-walking badge, too! Maybe Elena was going to start caring about the Let’s Have Fun Club again.
Would now be a good time to mention the coding badge?
But, relieved to see Elena’s interest in the dog-walking requirements, Lucy just said, “Ooh! Those are amazing ideas!” She added them to the list in the handbook.
But today she just needed to walk one dog. And pick up the poop of one dog. And find out if she might be a dog person like Nixie, if loving dogs might be her special thing.
* * *
—
Boogie lived just a few blocks away, so Lucy walked there. Just as her parents believed in old-fashioned activities for kids, they also believed in old-fashioned transportation.
When Lucy turned the corner onto Boogie’s street, she spotted Nixie and Boogie already outside in Boogie’s well-trampled front yard with the biggest dog Lucy had ever seen. From a distance he looked more like a bear than a dog.
“This is Bear!” Nixie shouted joyfully. “We’re going to walk him to the park!”
So the bear-size dog was even named Bear.
“He’s all yours,” Boogie said, as he handed Bear’s leash to Nixie. “Oh, and the poop bags are in the pouch hanging from the leash,” Boogie called after them before he disappeared into the house.
As Lucy approached, Bear dashed up to her, dragging Nixie along behind him. The next thing Lucy knew, Bear’s huge wet tongue was licking as many parts of Lucy as he could reach.
“Sit, Bear!” Nixie commanded, as if she had bossed around hundreds of dogs before.
Bear didn’t listen.
“Sit, Bear!” Nixie said, louder this time, and she yanked at his leash.
This time Bear dropped down onto the lawn, grinning up at Lucy with his huge wet tongue hanging out of his huge toothy mouth.
“Do you think he bites?” Lucy had to ask.
“No. He’s a Saint Bernard. You know, the ones who rescue people from avalanches in Switzerland? The ones who carry those little thermoses of hot chocolate around their necks so the rescued people won’t freeze to death? A dog like that wouldn’t bite people.”
Lucy hoped Nixie was right.
As Lucy stayed a safe distance behind, Nixie started down the sidewalk.
Bear stopped to pee four times in the first block.
“Ewww!” Lucy said before she could stop herself.
“Good boy!” Nixie praised Bear, as if peeing were a spectacular accomplishment.
Then, just before they reached the corner, Bear squatted to make a poop.
Lucy was too horrified to say anything this time. Boogie hadn’t been joking about the need for extra-big poop bags.
“Good dog!” Nixie praised him again, but even Nixie had turned a bit pale.
Feeling like a traitor, Lucy squinched her eyes shut as Nixie dealt with scooping up what needed to be scooped. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change the dog-walking-badge rules to leave out anything having to do with dog poop.
But she wouldn’t be able to give herself any credit toward the badge today if she didn’t at least hold Bear’s leash for a little while.
“Can I hold the leash now?” she asked Nixie, once the poop bag had been deposited in the trash can at the entrance to the park.
“Okay,” Nixie said reluctantly. “But you have to hold it tight. Bear is big.”
As if Lucy hadn’t already noticed.
At first Bear trotted along beside Lucy obediently. Then Bear saw another dog, a tiny fluff ball hardly bigger than Bear’s head, entering the park with his middle-aged owner.
At the sight of Bear, the man’s face lit up with recognition. “Bear!” he greeted Boogie’s dog. “What lovely young ladies are walking you today?”
At the sound of his name, Bear made an enormous leap toward the man and the little dog. The next thing Lucy knew, she was facedown on the gravel path as Bear and his leash dashed off for a sniffing frenzy with the fluff-ball dog.
“Are you all right?” the man asked Lucy as he helped her up. “Gosh, I’m sorry.”
“I guess so,” Lucy managed to say. Her knees were scraped, but not bleeding. She brushed gravel off her chin and from her hair.
Now Lucy knew: she was definitely not a dog person.
Dogs were definitely not her thing.
“You really truly liked walking Bear?” she asked Nixie, once Bear had been returned to Boogie.
Nixie stared at her. “Of course! Okay, I can see why you didn’t like it today. Bear is pretty big for a starter dog. You’d adore dogs if you had a smaller one first. My parents would adore dogs if they’d only let me get one. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
Lucy was puzzled by the question. “I have a sister. Older than me.”
“You’re lucky! I’m an only child, so it’s just me against my parents. If I had a sister, we’d beg together for a dog, and we’d make them give in.”
Lucy thought about this for a moment. She and Elena had never made their parents give in about anything. Well, Elena had made them let her do coding camp, and then they had let Lucy do it, too. But the two of them hadn’t done their begging together. Elena hadn’t even wanted Lucy to do the coding camp at all.
Lucy had to ask the next question. “What if your sister liked dogs first, and wanted to be the only one who liked them? Would you have to like cats then?”
Nixie stared at her even longer and harder this time.
“Of course not! If I had a sister, which I don’t, we’d both love dogs; and if I had a dog, which I don’t, he’d love both of us. That’s just how it is with dogs—and how it is with sisters.”
Nixie certainly sounded sure of herself for someone who didn’t have either a dog or a sister.
“All right, coders,” Preston said on Monday afternoon, the first day of the third week of camp.
“Last week you were dancers and choreographers. This week you’re going to be artists and animators. Actually, you’ve been animators all along. Animators just create an algorithm by putting images in order, one after the other, to make an object look as if it’s moving—a boat in a maze, a dancer, even letters of the alphabet.”
He showed a short video on how to take letters—like the letters of your name—and make them change color, twirl around, jump up and down, and even make sounds.
The videos always made everything look so easy. Lucy already knew real coding was hard. (Elena had been right about that.) Every single thing every single letter did had to be put into code. There was no code instruction for telling a letter, Jump! the way Preston had told Nixie, Walk! You had to tell the letter to move up so many spaces, and then move down so many spaces, and how fast to do it. You couldn’t just tell a letter, Now turn pink! You had to choose the exact shade of color on a spectrum and the brightness of the color—everything.
It was a good thing Lucy liked coding!
“This sounds impossible,” Vera said sadly, once the video had finished.
“You’ll be great at it!” Nixie reassured Vera. Lucy remembered Nixie had said Vera drew amazing comics. “Now you’ll be able to make animated comics! You can turn your comics into movies! You’ll win the Academy Award for best animated film, and Nolan, Lucy, Boogie, and I will come to the Oscars and you can thank us in your speech!”
Vera shook her head at Nixie’s enthusiasm, but she was smiling.
First Preston showed them how to use a little paintbrush i
con on the computer to draw images using the computer touchpad to move the brush along.
Sure enough, Vera was good at drawing with the strange new paintbrush. She drew a dog that looked just like a dog.
Lucy tried to copy Vera’s picture. But what she really wanted was to start coding her dog to move around the screen.
Nixie tried to draw a dog, too, of course, but Vera’s had turned out so much better than hers that she just admired Vera’s dog instead.
The cat Nolan drew wasn’t as good as Vera’s dog. So drawing wasn’t Nolan’s thing. It was a relief that there was something in the world Nolan wasn’t best at.
Boogie clearly drew a terrible dog on purpose. His dog was a blob with four lines coming down from the blob to be legs, and another smaller blob stuck on top of the bigger blob to be a head.
When it came time for their animals to move, Lucy learned they weren’t going to make them actually move their arms and legs. They were just going to make the little picture of the animal, as a unit, move around the screen. But that was hard enough.
Lucy felt giddy when she managed to make her dog move first to the left, then to the right, then up, and then down. It felt miraculous that little blocks of code clicked into place could make something happen on the screen exactly the way you wanted it to.
“Cool!” Nolan said, looking over at her screen. And when Lucy looked over at his, she saw her dog was moving every bit as well as his cat.
Now that the drawing part was done and the coding part had begun, Vera had turned back to being as fidgety and flustered as she always was when she had to code anything.
“My dog won’t jump!” Vera moaned. “He just sits there like a lump!”
“Blobby sits there like a lump, too,” Boogie said cheerfully. He had named his blob dog Blobby. “His full name is Blobby Q. Lumpy.”
“What does Q stand for?” Nixie asked.
Boogie thought for a moment. “It doesn’t stand for anything.”
Lucy Lopez Page 4
