“Okay, he’s a senior, one. And two, I’ve never been to a formal,” she says. “I don’t even have a dress.”
Izzy has dresses, half a rack in her closet that she’d left behind at home, saying she wouldn’t have much use for all her formal wear in LA. She’d made a point of telling me I could borrow them anytime I liked, and I’d rolled my eyes at the suggestion. I measure up Hannah silently with my eyes now. She’s about Izzy’s size, maybe an inch shorter. That should be close enough. “I can help you figure out a dress,” I tell her. “And anyway, why are you worried about that? You match him. It doesn’t matter what you wear. You’re going to be perfect together.”
* * *
I spot Sam at lunch, and make a quick beeline to his table. I sit down across from him and update him on what happened this morning with Phillip and Hannah. He’s peeling an orange with his thumbs, and I’m curious what else he has in that insulated lunch box of his, what else his mom managed to keep in the fridge over the weekend. He pulls out a canister of soup, and then I remember that his mom had picked him up Friday after coding club. Maybe she’d had the weekend off?
“Can you show me the app?” Sam asks in between spoonfuls of soup. “I want to try it.”
“It’s not an app...yet,” I say. “So far, it’s just an algorithm pulling from a database I created on my computer. To make it into an app, we’d need the whole club. I’d have to create it in Xcode and then we’d need Jane to put the database on a server and George to design the UI/UX and animation and...” My voice trails off on that thought, as I remember again that George is mad at me and that he has no interest in animating this app. “Anyway, we’re a long way from that. And,” I add, “you’re not even in my database. Since you’re new to the school, I didn’t have any yearbook data for you. And I couldn’t find you on social media.”
He caps his soup canister and puts it back inside his insulated lunch box, turns to me and shrugs. “I’m not on social media. But I could tell you my info. We could input it, right?” His eyes are really green, brightened by the fluorescent cafeteria lights. And they’re filled with kindness. He’s not laughing at me like Phillip was, not angry with me like George is. “I want to go to the fall formal, and I barely know anyone at school yet.”
“You know me,” I say quickly. And I put my hand to my mouth, realizing as soon as the words are out how it sounded, like I want to go to the fall formal with him. I quickly clarify: “I mean, thank goodness you know me, so I can find a match for you.”
“Yeah.” Sam flashes me that smile of his that makes me feel warm and happy. “Thank goodness I know you.”
Chapter 7
On Friday, George and Jane walk into coding club carrying a huge chart on a bright green poster board. George has made a cute drawing of a recycling can with googly eyes that I assume he would bring to life with animation in whatever this world-saving idea of his is.
“What’s this?” Ms. Taylor asks, smiling at George.
“We have our own prototype,” Jane says with a smirk in my direction, and I want to roll my eyes so bad, but normally the person I’d roll them at in this situation would be George, and he won’t even look at me.
I hold my thumb drive in my hand, clasping it hard against my palm. I’d come prepared with my new database to show off, and my update about Hannah and Phillip. Phillip also texted me last night saying he has a friend, Jason, on cross-country who wants a match, and Sam still wants a match, too. He plans to come over this weekend so we can input his data. But Jane is still going on about her prototype—hers and George’s—and I bite my lip and let them talk.
“Basically it’s an app to track your recycling,” George is saying now. “You can connect with your friends and compete to see who recycles the most in any given week.”
Sam catches my eye across the room, and gives me a half smile, a shrug, as if to say what I’m already thinking: our matching app is so much more original and interesting.
“I don’t get it,” Robert interrupts, surprising all of us. I think it’s the first time he’s spoken up at any of our meetings. His voice is deeper and more confident than I would’ve expected. Jane shoots him an icy stare, but he keeps talking. “What do you get if you win? What’s the point?”
“You get karma points,” George says.
“Karma points?” Hannah pipes up, sounding skeptical.
“You collect them in the app,” Jane says. “And then when you get a lot, you feel good about yourself.”
And George texted John to complain about me? Maybe I should text Izzy and tell her John needs to worry about George’s animated trash can and his karma points.
“I don’t think that would make me feel good about myself,” Sam is saying now. “I like Emma’s idea better.”
I shoot him a grateful smile, unclasp my thumb drive and put it into my laptop, bringing my Excel file and algorithm flowchart up on the screen. I update everyone about Hannah and Phillip, and also how I plan to work on new matches this weekend for Jason from cross-country and our very own Sam. At the mention of his name, Jane turns her icy gaze toward him, and Sam shrugs a little in response.
“Ms. Taylor,” Jane complains. “I thought we all agreed that this dating app was a terrible idea.”
“We did not agree on anything like that,” I say quickly.
“Well...” Ms. Taylor’s voice falters a little. She shoots me a half smile, then does the same thing to Jane. “I think these are both very interesting ideas and we should take the next week or so to think things over. We still have ten days to submit our application—we’ll decide at next week’s meeting. Let’s take our time and make our idea the best we can before we send it in.”
* * *
An hour later, Izzy FaceTimes me. I pick up, and her face is covered in a green gooey face mask. “You look like a swamp monster,” I say. “Are you calling just to scare me?”
“I miss you, too, Em,” she shoots back. “I’m going out tonight and I wanted to call you earlier so I didn’t wake you up this week. How’s it going?”
We haven’t FaceTimed since last Friday night, and the truth is, I’m still a little annoyed with her. We’d texted during this past week a few times, but not as much as we had the week before and not about anything serious. I haven’t updated her on my matches, and I’m not sure I should now, either. So all I say is, “It’s going fine, Iz.”
“Yeah?” She raises her eyebrows, and her green face looks even more ridiculous.