Emmy in the Key of Code Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  California Dreaming

  Pretending

  Locker Number 538

  Attempted Duet No. 1

  Sorry About That

  Homeroom

  Attempted Duet No. 2

  Solo

  Attempted Duet No. 3

  Hazy

  By the Way . . .

  None of the Above

  Option A

  Empty

  What I Hear from Across the Room

  The Girl in Braids

  The Cafeteria

  Spotlight

  Standing Out

  Looking Up

  Attempted Duet No. 4

  If You Close Your Eyes

  Elective Assignments

  Cacophony

  Try Tone

  Attempted Duet No. 5

  Maybe

  Fitting In

  Four-four time

  So I Don’t Worry Her

  Evening Music

  Griiiiiiiiind

  Whole Rest

  Option D

  The Computer Lab

  Back and Forth

  Standing Out: Remix

  Blending In

  Duet No. 1

  Something True

  Polyrhythm

  Orchestra One vs. Orchestra Two

  Fun Fact

  Not-So-Fun Fact

  My Turn

  Empty: Remix

  Ms. Delaney

  Repeat

  Muscle Memory

  Ms. Delaney Says

  { }

  Hello, World!

  First Words

  Lunchtime Music

  So I Don’t Get My Hopes Up

  4:00 p.m.

  4'33"

  Scenic Route

  Just Almost

  Stage Fright

  Turning Away

  Don’t Belong

  Usually

  A Good Weekend

  Anticipation

  Songs in the Key of Life

  Give Me Time

  Building Blocks

  Purple

  Booleans

  Hopes

  Boolean Logic

  What If?

  If/Then

  My Hand-Me-Down Laptop

  Why I Didn’t Destroy My Laptop

  Java

  Languages

  For What It’s Worth . . .

  The Things I Almost Say

  Making a Mark

  Not Just Me

  Eye Roll

  4:00 p.m.

  Two-Part Harmony

  Soup or Salad

  Don’t Tell

  Back

  Emails: Opus 1

  Subject: Soup or Salad

  Both

  If/Then: Remix

  Come On In

  The Computer Lab: Remix

  Innate

  Dad’s Song: 4:00 p.m.

  The New Schedule

  Been Fooled by September

  String

  String =

  Unison

  What I Hear from Across the Room

  Variables

  Storing Away

  Etude

  Emmy and Abigail: An Actual Duet

  Yes

  Dynamic

  Global Variables

  Semicolon

  Abigail Is Sick

  Solo: Remix

  Freeze

  Stuck in My Head

  Goodbye, Emmy

  The Girl Under the Stairs

  The You-Belong-Here Girl

  Variables: Remix

  Do Belong

  Yes: Remix

  One of the Above

  Blink

  The Plan

  The Girls That Belonged

  A Small Violin

  While Loop

  Termination

  12:01 p.m.

  What I Hear from Down the Hall

  What I Don’t Hear . . .

  Small Steps

  Disappear

  Downbeat

  Whole Rest: Remix

  Duo + 1

  Ms. Delaney’s Fairy Tale

  Trio

  Bracket Bracket

  [] =

  Errors

  The Dynamic Debugging Duet

  Girls

  A Chord, Resolving

  Methods

  Void

  void =

  Raspberry

  Abigail

  Abigail’s Fairy Tale

  What You Hate

  What If?: Remix

  Moving Out

  Main

  main =

  The Cafeteria: Remix

  Separate Methods

  Emmy() {

  The Symphony

  My Music

  Shared Music

  Dolce

  Randomness

  Bright Side

  Emmy and Francis: A Duet, If You Can Call It That

  SLAM!

  4'33": Remix

  Francis’s Fairy Tale

  Not Quite Boolean

  Avoiding

  Punch Cards

  String[] whatAbigailReads =

  String[] itemsOnMsDelaneysDesk =

  Emmy and Abigail: The Dyn——

  While Loop: Remix

  Diminished Fifth

  Off-Key

  Ms. Delaney’s Fairy Tale: Remix

  Augmented Fifth

  Cafeteria Logic

  Presto

  Attempted Duet No. 6

  The Latest Schedule

  Atonal Music

  Digital Art

  Hidden Lessons: Remix

  4:00 p.m.

  Digital Music

  String[] whyMsDelaneyLeftHerJob =

  Lento

  Artificial Intelligence

  Machine Learning

  White Space

  Not an Accident

  Expiain

  String[] whatAbigailSays =

  The Silent Treatment

  Arguments

  args =

  boolean willYouForgiveMeIf(String args);

  Anxious

  Fine

  String[] whatlHearFromMyBedroom =

  Da Capo

  Silver Lining

  Argument One

  False

  Not a Coincidence

  Random Numbers

  Ms. Delaney Is Sick

  Pianissimo

  Wrong

  Argument Two

  False

  Things That Are False

  Requiem

  Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

  A Bad Weekend

  Griiiiiiiiiiiiind: Remix

  Halloween

  What Friends Are For

  Knocks Me Off My Feet

  Emmy and Abigail: The Apology Duet

  Emmy and Abigail: The Apology Coda

  When You’re Sick

  The New Schedule

  Separate Methods: Remix

  Not So Separate

  Above

  Subject: Doctor Appointment Today

  Full

  New Friend

  True

  Rebecca

  public =

  String[] whatIHearWhenIPassThePrincipalsOffice =

  Building

  Fluent

  Final Bell

  So Close I Can Taste It

  Right

  Wrong

  Fine

  Frozen

  Not Fine

  Substitute

  Oh, By the Way . . .

  Emmy’s Fairy Tale

  String whatEmmySaysToAbigail =

  Absent

  The Worst Schedule

  90 Percent br />
  10 Percent

  Emails: Opus 2

  Subject: The Next Week

  Subject: Pi

  Subject: One More Thing

  Infinite Loop

  The Main Method

  A Method Apart

  Games

  Rest

  Two-Part Dissonance

  The Note

  ecret-Say ode-Cay

  Decoded

  Lipsticks

  Exclusive Or

  Forgiveness: Remix

  String whatISayToFrancis =

  Come In

  Tonal Music

  Forgetting

  A Wrong Note

  Allegro

  A Closer Look

  Fun Facts: Remix

  No Telling

  Subito Piano

  The Grind

  Attempted Duet No. 7

  Arguments: Remix

  What I Hear from My Bedroom

  Fortissimo

  Attempted Trio

  Lento: Remix

  Solo: Remix

  Two-Part Harmony: Remix

  The Symphony: Remix

  4:33 a.m.

  Emails: Opus 3

  Subject: The Showcase

  (1): Remix

  More Boolean Than Not

  Perfect Pitch

  Booleans

  Binary

  Fitting In: Remix

  Infinite Loop: Remix

  Separate

  Lift Me Up

  Programs

  Static

  We

  The Final Number

  Good News

  Author’s Note

  Glossary of Coding Terms

  Glossary of Music Terms

  Acknowledgments

  More Books from Versify

  About the Author

  Connect with HMH on Social Media

  Copyright © 2019 by Aimee Lucido

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  hmhbooks.com

  Cover illustration © 2019 by Abigail Dela Cruz

  Cover design by Celeste Knudsen

  Ebook design by Katy Mastrocola

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Names: Lucido, Aimee, author.

  Title: Emmy in the key of code / by Aimee Lucido.

  Description: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, [2019] | Summary: Sixth-grader Emmy tries to find her place in a new school and to figure out how she can create her own kind of music using a computer.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018053060 | ISBN 9780358040828 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Novels in verse. | Computer programming—Fiction. | Sexism—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Composition (Music)—Fiction. | Moving, Household—Fiction. | Family life—California—San Francisco—Fiction. | San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.5.L82 Emm 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053060

  eISBN 978-0-358-16687-0

  v1.0919

  To Baker Franke and Laura Ruby:

  the original Ms. Delaneys

  California Dreaming

  I’d never visited California before we moved here

  but I’d heard about it

  in songs.

  Mom even made a playlist

  and she and Dad sang along

  the whole drive over from Wisconsin

  but even after three days straight of

  Katy Perry

  the Beach Boys

  the Mamas & the Papas

  I still didn’t believe it.

  Why would people here be different

  than anywhere else?

  But now that I’m here

  on the first day of sixth grade at my new school

  the hallway is full of kids

  tapping on cell phones that probably cost more

  than an entire month’s rent

  in our new house.

  Plus

  everyone looks like they just jumped off the cover

  of a magazine.

  Hipster glasses

  jeans where the only holes

  were put there on purpose

  and everyone pulling out a reusable container

  full of weird grains

  that must be their lunch.

  I tug down my Packers hoodie

  because it’s colder here

  than the Beach Boys promised

  and this way no one can see

  that I look nothing like

  the cover of

  a magazine.

  I wish San Francisco

  would go back

  to just being

  a song.

  Pretending

  As I walk down the hallway

  I head-hum my favorite walking song.

  Beethoven’s Minuet in G.

  dum dee dum dee dum dee dum dee dum

  I move andante

  matching my steps to the beat

  left, and right, and left, and right, and left

  so I can pretend

  I’m not at all sore

  from climbing up the hill in front of the school.

  left, and right, and left, and right, and left

  I can pretend I’ve been hiking it my whole life.

  left, and right, and left, and right, and left

  I can pretend I don’t smell like Wisconsin

  and that I wore the right clothes to school today

  and that I’m going to make tons of friends

  and have an amazing year

  left, and right, and left, and right, and left

  just like everyone else.

  Locker Number 538

  Finally I reach my locker

  12 clockwise

  32 counterclockwise

  8 clockwise

  Stuck.

  Attempted Duet No. 1

  “Hi, I’m new here. My name is–”

  “That’s my locker.”

  Sorry About That

  I look up at the locker number

  engraved in metal at the top.

  583.

  Whoops.

  left, and right, and left, and right, and left

  Homeroom

  The desks are full of kids talking

  laughing and shouting

  in harmony.

  Quartets

  trios

  a few duets here and there.

  Even the teacher runs around

  in a stunning rendition of

  “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

  Everyone must have practiced their parts

  all summer long

  because they perform them perfectly

  no matter if they’re the background vocals

  or the lead singer.

  But there’s no part for me.

  There’s no group for girls wearing Packers hoodies

  because they forgot to ask their mom

  if they could go back-to-school shopping.

  There is no group for girls carrying brown paper bags

  stuffed with white bread sandwiches

  and full-fat potato chips

  because they made their grocery run at Safeway

  instead of Whole Foods.

  There is no group for girls who should have asked

  to live with their grandma and grandpa

  back in Wisconsin

  so they could stay at the school

  where they knew their part

  backwards and forward.

  Here in homeroom I feel like

  a wrong

  note.

  Attempted Duet No. 2

  “Hi, I’m new here. My name is—”

  “You’re sitting at my desk.”

  Solo

  Isn’t the teacher supposed
to invite me

  to the front of the classroom?

  Isn’t she supposed to ask me where I came from

  and when I moved here

  and what’s my

  favorite flavor

  of ice cream?

  Isn’t she supposed to give me a desk buddy?

  Or a member of student council to show me around?

  Or at the very least shouldn’t there be somebody

  anybody

  other than me

  who doesn’t already

  belong?

  Shouldn’t someone at least ask my name?

  Attempted Duet No. 3

  “Hi, I’m new here. My name is—”

  “Sorry, dear, give me a minute.

  I need to find

  the elective sign-up sheets.”

  Hazy

  In Wisconsin

  the first day of school was always hot

  and muggy

  far too long and far too bright.

  It always used to make me think of Ella Fitzgerald

  singing “Summertime.”

  But here

  in San Francisco

  in homeroom

  I stare out the window

  waiting for class to start

  and Ella Fitzgerald isn’t singing “Summertime.”

  She’s singing “Lost in a Fog.”

  When our homeroom teacher claps

  her hands

  starting class

  I’m relieved.

  I was getting dizzy

  staring out into all that fog.

  By the Way . . .

  . . . my name is Emmy.

  None of the Above

  In fifteen minutes

  I am supposed to decide

  where I go

  Monday Wednesday Friday

  before lunch.

  A. ____ Symphony Orchestra and Choir

  B. ____ Winter Play: A Tale of Two Cities

  C. ____ Cooking Around the World

  D. ____ Introduction to Computer Science

  In fifteen minutes

  I am supposed to decide

  who I am.

  A. ____ Musician

  B. ____ Actor

  C. ____ Chef

  D. ____ Geek

  But never before

  have I felt more like

  option E.

  Option A

  I picture myself three times a week