The Popularity Code (Mix) - Softcover

Faris, Stephanie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1534445196 ISBN 13: 9781534445192

Verlag: Aladdin, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

Mean Girls meets The Clique in this relatable M!X novel that tackles the effects of online bullying.

Faith Taylor is popular by association, thanks to her BFFs, Adria and Janelle. When a new website called SlamBook targets her school’s popular kids, Faith gets sucked in. And when she discovers her own page on the site, she finds herself obsessing over the comments people are posting about her. Some are good, some are…not so good. Faith becomes determined to match the negative comments to the people, and begins to retaliate by posting negative comments of her own.

Soon, Faith finds that people are talking about the comments she’s leaving. Even though she does feel guilty, it’s just so easy to be mean behind the anonymity of her laptop. But when her comments go too far, she realizes she must figure out a way to make things right before it’s too late.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephanie Faris knew she wanted to be an author from a very young age. In fact, her mother often told her to stop reading so much and go outside and play with the other kids. After graduating from Middle Tennessee State University, she somehow found herself working in information technology. But she never stopped writing. When she isn’t crafting fiction, Stephanie is indulging her gadget geek side by writing for online technology sites. Her work is regularly featured on the small business blogs for Intuit and Go Payment, and she is a featured columnist for SmallBizTechnology.com. She lives in Nashville with her husband.

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Chapter 1 CHAPTER 1
Breakfast at the Taylor house was never boring. There was my father, standing in front of the open refrigerator in his robe, reading an email on his smartphone. There was my sister, sitting next to me at the table and posing while she tested her new selfie ring light on her phone. And then there was me, eating my cereal while trying to figure out why all the hard work I’d done the night before had been for absolutely nothing.

Yes, we had a “no screens at the table” rule in my family. And yes, when my mom came blowing in like a hurricane in a few minutes, we’d all be in trouble. But between homework and school, I hadn’t had enough time to figure out why the app I’d spent hours coding was completely broken.

Sure enough, my mom came breezing in when I was halfway through my bowl of Wheat-e-os. A great day starts with a healthy breakfast and all that. My goal was just to wolf it down so I could get back to my work, but if Mom saw me rushing, I wouldn’t be able to do that. Eating fast while trying to look like you weren’t was really, really hard.

“Phone down, Hope,” Mom said, tapping the button to warm up the coffee maker as she whipped past it on her way to the fridge. “And, Faith, a laptop? Really?”

My parents, in a complete fit of unoriginality, had named my older sister Hope, then named me Faith a couple of years later. Someone really should have stopped them.

“I worked for hours on this,” I said without taking my eyes off my screen. “I can’t figure out why it’s broken.”

My sister sighed. She didn’t get me. It was like we were from two completely different sets of parents. If I hadn’t looked so much like my dad and Hope hadn’t looked like a younger version of my mom, I’d have had to check to see if one of us was adopted.

“I don’t care if you have the winning lottery numbers. No screens at the table,” Mom said. She had already shooed Dad out of the way and was on her way back to the coffee maker with the soy milk. “It’s rude.”

I closed my laptop and slid it off to the side. If I speed-ate my Wheat-e-os, I could take my bowl to the sink and get back onto my laptop somewhere other than the table. Just a few more minutes of focus were all I needed.

“Is this the homework app?” Mom asked as the coffee maker noisily spat out her organic decaffeinated beverage. “The one your mentor wants to send to her friend?”

My coding club coach supposedly had a friend who worked for Google. And that friend was just going to love an app that let students help each other do homework. Google would buy it and pay me millions, and we’d get our Paris trip. Either that or my coding coach’s friend was, like, a guy who cleaned toilets at Google and wouldn’t care anything about my app. I wouldn’t know for sure until I finished the app and shared it.

“Yeah, that’s going to take a while,” I said. Staring longingly at the laptop I’d been forced to set aside, I shoved down as much cereal as I could fit into my mouth. Just a few more bites and I could get away from the table. It was all about getting back to my code at this point.

“What did I tell you about positive thinking?” Mom asked, walking to the table. She set her coffee cup down and pulled her chair out. “If you think it will take a while, it will. If you think you’ll be finished tomorrow, you’ll be finished tomorrow.”

I laughed at the same time that I swallowed, briefly feeling like I was going to choke. If I choked, Mom would make me slow down and eat like a civilized human being.

“I can assure you, it will not be finished tomorrow,” I finally said when I could once again take a breath. “But… if I could eat and work at the same time, maybe…”

“Nice try,” Mom said. “Craig, tell Faith about positive thoughts.”

Dad took his spot at the table. He was fully dressed in dark jeans and a golf shirt, his phone safely holstered in the case on his belt.

“Positive thoughts put positive energy into the universe,” Dad said. “Or something like that.”

I smiled. Dad and I were a lot alike. We were both practical and into science and math and all that brainy stuff. Hope was more like my mom, even though she didn’t eat as healthfully as Mom and I did. But she was a dedicated cheerleader who spent all her spare time taking gymnastics, so she had the physical fitness part of it down. She even took my mom’s yoga class on weekends sometimes.

Suddenly I looked down and found that my cereal bowl was all milk. I wanted to make sure I finished every bite so Mom would have no excuse to say that I couldn’t hop back onto my laptop.

I got up and walked to the sink, then dumped the remaining soy milk down the drain and put my dish and spoon into the dishwasher. No excuses.

“Who’s riding with me?” Dad asked, grabbing a cold coffee out of the refrigerator and unscrewing the cap.

Wait… what? It was time to go already? I weighed my options. I could stay home and try to get some time in on my laptop in the ten minutes it took for the bus to arrive. Or I could ride with Dad and smuggle my laptop into school and hide out in one of the empty classrooms, hoping my friends didn’t find me in there. Once they found me, I’d get no work done.

“Me!” I called out.

“I’ll take the bus,” Hope said. She was finishing up her banana while staring longingly at her phone.

“See you after school!” Mom called out to me. She always picked me up from school after her afternoon class, since I didn’t have after-school activities like Hope did. Sometimes we even stopped for frozen custard and fruit. Mom loved custard.

Dad always left his car parked in the driveway, letting Mom have the garage. He said it kept her from having to be out in the cold and heat and rain. I always made gagging noises when Mom and Dad were all romantic like that, but secretly I liked it that they were so sweet to each other.

“Your mom may be onto something,” Dad commented as he backed out of the driveway. “This app could be the big one.”

“I’m trying not to get my hopes up,” I said absently.

Dad always got his hopes up. As practical and analytical as he was, he was a dreamer. Which was an interesting contrast. He was sure he was going to come up with some invention that would make us all rich. That was why he spent most of his free time working in the tiny office that was also our guest bedroom. He was always gluing things together or building things out of parts.

“Can I ask you a question?” I asked Dad.

“You just did.”

That threw me for a second. Then I got it. My father had what you might call a dorky sense of humor. It was the kind of humor that made you groan because if anyone you knew overheard it, you’d be mortified. If nobody else heard it, it was admittedly kind of cute.

“When did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up?” I asked.

Full disclosure: I had no idea what my dad did for a living. I mean, I knew he was a mechanical engineer, but I had no idea what that meant. Did he work on engines or something? Whatever he did, it was something that had him...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Aladdin
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2020
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1534445196
• ISBN 13: 9781534445192
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar