The Boyfriend App (6 page)

Like a rap star/Like a business mogul/Like a jock/Like a prep/Like a douche bag (Oakley sunglasses, pink collared shirt with the collar up)

What does your ideal boyfriend look like?

Clean Cut/Stubble/Mustache/Goatee/Brad Pitt from Seven Days in Tibet

FatBoy/Soft-Around-the-Edges/Toned/Brad Pitt from Fight Club

NBA-star Tall/Regular Tall/Medium/Short/Seriously Short

Black Hair/Brown Hair/Red Hair/Blond Hair/Dyed-a-Funky-Color Hair

What kind of shoes does your ideal boyfriend wear?

Converse/Nikes/Penny Loafers/Doc Martens/Flip-Flops/Dirty Bare Feet/Brad Pitt’s dress shoes from Ocean’s Eleven

I found most things in life could be illustrated with a Brad Pitt reference from the pre-Angelina Jolie years. Maybe he was old now, but someone with proven, lasting sex appeal was more my speed than a flash in the pan like Pop Boy Danny Beaton, whose concert Lindsay, Claire, and I were going to in a few weeks in Indianapolis at the Lucas Oil Stadium. Claire had won front row seats from a Public Party Preteen contest. Obviously I preferred Vampire Weekend and Radiohead to Danny Beaton, but I was secretly excited.

And that was a good survey question.

What kind of music does your ideal boyfriend listen to?

Danny Beaton/Vampire Weekend/Radiohead/Phish/Miles Davis/Metallica/Mozart

I did a few more questions about favorite songs, movies, forms of exercise, hobbies, and then moved on to dating stuff.

What is your ideal first-date cuisine?

Italian/French/Japanese/Chinese/Pizza/Hot Dog/Vegan/Something that won’t blow my Weight Watchers Points tally.

What are your favorite topics of conversation?

Sports/PopCulture/Celebrities/Technology/Fashion/Politics/I don’t wanna to talk, let’s just make out.

How do you want your boyfriend to vote when he turns eighteen?

Democrat/Republican/Independent/Socialist/Don’t care as long as he’s hot

How does your ideal boyfriend keep his bedroom?

Cleaner than an operating room/pretty neat/some clutter/the floor’s covered in his boxers and cartons of half-eaten Chinese takeout.

Then I made a section called Boyfriend in Action with questions like:

How do you want your boyfriend to greet you?

Yo!/Oh. Hi./Wassup Girl/Howdy Partner/Hello, Lover/Hail Princess

What kind of presents do you want him to bring you?

Flowers/Candy/Stuffed Animals/Jewelry/Video Games/No Presents. I’m so not materialistic.

What’s your ideal date?

Riding his motorcycle/Strolling on the beach/Expensive dinner at the hottest restaurant/Dinner at a dive/Go out to a movie/French-kissing on the couch/Wii bowling/Picketing at an animal rights protest.

How often do you want to hang out?

Practically never: My girlfriends are cooler/A date every few days/Daily hangout/Like we’re handcuffed.

It turned out that not ever having had a boyfriend primed me for writing the survey. I’d spent endless hours fantasizing about what I wanted and what I didn’t.

On page six of the survey, I did moral dilemmas. Like:

Say your boyfriend was caught in Target stealing a pack of Jujyfruit, would you: Call the cops/Break up with him on the spot/Give him a lecture outside the store but keep dating him/Roll your eyes but secretly be glad he did it while you chow down on Jujyfruit/Join in the fun and steal two Butterfingers

I felt a twinge as I read over the questions. Blake and I had spent practically every afternoon in seventh grade reading quizzes like these in
Seventeen
magazine. Blake bought the magazines for us, even though my mom said:
Not till you’re seventeen
, to which Blake said,
That’s missing the point. We need to know all this stuff
before
we’re seventeen.
We had to hide the magazines in an art-supply box under my bed.

I was searching
What do girls look for in a boyfriend?
on Google to make sure I’d covered everything when the bell rang. My back was stiff from arching forward. My butt was asleep with sharp, stabbing pricks where blood used to flow. But as I scrolled over the pages in front of me, there it was: the survey that would form the bones of the app. Tonight, I’d start hacking away at a code.

“You’re all going to have to dig deep,” Ms. Bates said as the bell quieted. “Program as your most innovative creative self.” As we gathered our stuff, she went on about pushing ourselves to do something that had never been done before (which was mildly impossible). Then she reminded us to log on to Public’s website as soon as we finished building our apps.

Here’s how it was supposed to go: We submitted our apps to Public; they went live and were available for download. During the weeks the contest ran, download was free. The Battery had missed a few key details. Public was granting
two
grand prizes: one for the Most Innovative Mobile App (decided by Public) and one for the Most Popular Mobile App (the app with the most downloads worldwide). Both grand prizewinners would secure the college scholarship. And—bonus—every student in the Most Popular App winners’ high school would get the newest edition of the Public Beast twenty-four hours before its official debut. (Beast 5.0, valued at $995.00.) And every student in the Most Innovative Mobile App winners’ high school would get a buyPlayer and speakers.

I ran a hand across my eyes and tried to blink away the screen’s glare, but it felt like my brain was glazed with a neon white glow.

“Auds?”

I turned to see Aidan. He had a habit of tugging his inky black hair between his knuckles and now it shot out on one side like porcupine quills. “I’ll walk you to gym?” he asked.

I nodded so hard I hurt my neck. Then I tried to be more casual, and said, “Time to get my dodgeball on.”
Time to get my dodgeball on?
“Thanks for walking me,” I tried again, making my voice sound ladylike instead of like an androgynous skater boy. It was another Top Ten Reason I didn’t have a boyfriend—I said weird stuff.

“I figured, especially after what happened yesterday,” Aidan said.

I looked up as he moved closer. I took in the smooth skin stretched tight over his strong, angular jaw. “I wasn’t sure if you were okay,” he said.

I wanted to tell him I wasn’t really okay. But Nigit was staring at us. “Your diary?” Nigit asked, pointing at my journal.

“Not exactly,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. I fumbled to fit the journal into my backpack’s front pocket without crushing my rabbit’s foot.

“So what’re you guys working on?” I asked Aidan once we were in the hallway and out of Nigit’s earshot.

Aidan’s dark blue eyes glinted as he glanced around us. “It’s a philanthropy app,” he said. I liked how he didn’t need to tell me to keep it a secret. He already knew I would. “You enter how much time you have to spare—on a certain date, or right then in the moment, and then the app tells you how you can get help people based on your location and the time you’re willing to commit.”

I chewed on my bottom lip. It wasn’t just a good idea; it was meaningful. The Public contest people were sure to love it. “That’s really good,” was all I managed to sputter out.

Charlotte Davis cruised down the hall in her wheelchair. Two soccer players wearing dark red Umbros and Harrison jerseys nearly toppled us as they jumped out of her way. (Sometimes she purposely steered it at people, especially Blake.) Aidan put an arm protectively around my shoulders. “What about yours?” he asked, guiding me toward a bank of lockers. He was stronger than I would have thought, and I felt little sparks of heat where his hand touched.

My idea suddenly felt stupid. Here Aidan was saving the world one charitable app user at a time and I was trying to get myself a boyfriend.

“It’s sort of an app that finds a girl a boyfriend,” I said.

“Really?” Aidan asked, arching an eyebrow. His mouth hinted at a smile. “Are you looking for one?”

Heat streaked through me. I was trying to figure out what to say when Jolene Martin rounded the corner with Xander.

“Audrey!” Jolene shouted, loud enough that everyone in the hallway turned to stare. The mole on her chin was like a clue that telegraphed:
This Girl Is Actually a Witch
. She made her fingers into an
L
on the top of her forehead.

Aidan stopped.

Xander was big, but Aidan was bigger. His large frame stood completely still, forcing Jolene and Xander to move awkwardly out of our way. “Oh, I get it,” Aidan said sarcastically to Jolene. “
Loser
. Your sign language is groundbreaking and original.” His hand on my arm felt protective, like a shield. But then Jolene made a fist and shook it in my direction.

It gave me shivers.

The Martin girls had made fun of me for years—ever since their Glory Day arrived and they took over my position as Blake’s BFFs. But Joanna actually hurting me yesterday was a first.

Xander’s hazel eyes caught mine. I swore sometimes he still looked at me the way he did that one time in Joanna’s basement.

Jolene was still laughing.

Aidan told them to get lost, and then held me closer until I felt dizzy. “Auds,” he said, low enough so only I could hear him. “They’re mean because it makes them feel better about their sucky lives. What a crap way to exist, right?”

“I should go,” I said. I ducked away, worried he was going to see how I wanted nothing more than to stay with him, safe beneath his embrace.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

chapter six

T
wo dozen bottles of Mountain Dew and seven thousand lines of code later, the app was built.

Here’s basically how I did it, and it’s easier than you think.

Building an app means writing lines and lines of code. Think of code like instructions. As the programmer, the code you write tells the app what to do.

I wrote the code in an editing program called Textmate. (Think Microsoft Word for app builders: Like how Word has fonts and formatting, my editing program has ways to help me write code.)

So, if you took a picture of app building it would look like this: me wearing pajamas sitting in front of Hector the Computer typing code into an open window.

The code I typed might look like this:

Distance = user.location()—target.location();

If (distance < 100) then

Target.isMatch = yes;

Else

Target.isMatch = no;

That code will determine the distance between the user and a potential match and, if the match is less than one hundred yards away, mark the target as a potential match.

I don’t need an actual phone to test my code because a simulator runs a version of the phone on my screen. So once I’ve written some code, I run it on my computer, click around to see if it’s doing what I want it to, and then go back and edit.

Programmers usually talk about code in terms of quantity of lines written. So say I have a monster session: I could write a few hundred lines of code in one night. But if I spend hours debugging problems, I might end up with only a couple new lines after a full night of work.

But there are
always
bugs—lots of them—so you have to be prepared. As a programmer, your job is to figure out where they are and squash them.

Like any app, the BFA had its own unique components, like the survey. Once I perfected the survey, I created filters for the multiple-choice questions. The app had to have a brain of its own to decipher how certain answers matched up with others. The filter made it so that if you preferred a short, bald, kleptomaniac fatboy, the app matched you with one. I built an external database to code the data so the answers could be pinged to that. Then, I got the app to use GPS to sort through all survey answers within a five-mile radius. Geo location triangulated each user’s position in relation to other users. The results were sorted. Matches were created. Then the external server returned back the match results to every user’s buyPhone.

Once I’d built the core functionality of the app, I had to skin it. Skinning an app means dressing it up. You take your clunky bits that work together (but don’t yet look like anything) and make them look pretty. Programmers call how the app looks the user interface. The better your app looks, the more likely users will want it, and I needed to get the design exactly right. So I pored over dozens of fashion magazines I borrowed from Lindsay. I tore out a bunch of pages—everything from a cartoon of Cupid to a photo of a couple snuggling over chocolate pots de creme, to an ad for bright white designer sunglasses. I wanted the Boyfriend App to look super romantic and chic, but glam, too, like a valentine combined with the shiny engagement ring the girl contestant gets on
The Bachelor
when the guy proposes. After making a bunch of stuff that wasn’t quite right, I came up with a sleek, bright white icon with a pink diamond-studded heart set inside. I stared at it for hours until I
knew
it was right. I could feel it.

I mocked everything up in Photoshop before slicing the screens and skinning the app. Once the user was within a hundred yards of her match, I designed the UI so that the app sent an alert to her phone with his name and position written in a cursive script with a swirly border. Like this: