I run Sam’s match, too, and he comes up as a ninety-seven percent match to Laura Jensen. She’s in my AP Spanish class, she sits right in front of me and she talks a lot. I do just fine in Spanish. I always manage an A, but it’s certainly not enjoyable for me to learn the way math is, and I don’t go out of my way to talk too much in there.
I don’t text Sam about his match right away, but instead I watch Laura in class on Monday morning. She’s shorter than me, with long raven hair. Today she reaches back and twirls a strand around her finger all through class. And when she raises her hand, answers question after question after question, her voice is high-pitched, effusive. Izzy would refer to her as bubbly, and not in a bad way, either, like I would.
“Hey,” I say to her as the bell rings, and we both stand up to walk out of class. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
She freezes for a second, then frowns at me. I suddenly realize this might be awkward, as we’ve never spoken directly to one another before, and I probably should’ve led with something else, though what, I’m not exactly sure.
“No,” she says, hugging her books to her chest. “Why?”
And why did I ask her, really? I didn’t ask Phillip; I didn’t ask Jenny Hampton. I just told them their mathematical matches and let them figure out the rest. But maybe I wanted her to say yes, she already has a boyfriend. Maybe I want a reason to reconfigure my algorithm, for Sam. Because when I look at bubbly Laura, I can’t picture them together. “I just...” I finally stammer. “I’m working on a project for coding club, and—”
“I’m going to be late for class,” she says unapologetically, cutting me off. And she turns down the hallway, walking away briskly toward the science wing.
My hands are shaking a little as I head toward calculus. I said all the wrong things, and now she probably hates me. Why did I even talk to her in the first place? I need to stick to gathering data, making the matches. I promise myself I’ll tell Sam about his match at lunch, and let him do the rest on his own.
But then at lunch, he tells me a funny story about his chemistry teacher accidentally setting the end of her hair on fire in the lab, and he is so animated, re-creating Mrs. Hefferman’s panic, that we are both laughing so hard we’re crying, and the topic of Sam’s match doesn’t even come up.
* * *
I finally tell Sam about Laura at lunch on Friday, when he straight out asks me about his results. I’d been planning on telling him today, anyway, more evidence for our meeting later this afternoon that my app can work, that it has potential. I really need Sam to be excited, to back me up. But he asks me before I figure out a way to bring it up.
“Laura Jensen,” I say flatly, thinking about the way she’d flipped her hair and run away down the hallway from me the other day.
“Laura?” he says. His voice is brimming with excitement, and I wonder if Sam is thinking of the right Laura. There are fourteen in the school. “Laura’s in choir with me. She has a solo. She’s really, really good.” He smiles, like the fact that she’s a good singer makes all the difference in the world. But yeah, he’s thinking of the right Laura. I remember her singing in some concert Izzy was in last year, and Sam’s right, she is a good singer. I’ll give her that. Is Sam a good singer, too? Or does he just participate in choir to have something vaguely musical to put on his college applications? He’s still talking. “I’m going to ask her to the dance at our rehearsal tomorrow afternoon.”
“Great,” I say, forcing a cheerfulness I don’t actually feel. But Sam doesn’t seem to notice.
Lunch is over and we both stand up, and before I know what he’s doing, he leans in and gives me a quick hug. “Thanks, E,” he says into my hair.
I like the way it feels to hug him, and he smells nice, kind of woodsy, like Christmas trees. And I know it’s wrong, but a small part of me hopes that Laura will say no when he asks her to the dance tomorrow.
* * *
By the end of the day, I feel a little like I’m drowning as I walk to our coding club meeting, trying hard to keep my head above water. I’m still worrying about what’s going to happen with Sam and Laura. And then Phillip texts me, with two more requests from his teammates for matches. And Jenny Hampton, who I have never met until now (but I recognize her immediately from her yearbook photo) grabs my arm in the hallway, gushing about how her friend Ellie wants a match for the dance, too, and can I do that? Please, Emma, Jenny says, holding on to my arm. Pretty please? I find myself nodding, bobbing my head just above the surface, completely overwhelmed.
I tell Jenny I will text her later, but first the club needs to go along with my idea over George and Jane’s. If I’m going to match more people, we really need to perfect the algorithm to truly get it right. We need more research, more input from people who are more social than I am. And more data for the database from someone who knows how to skim socials, like Jane. And George. I need George to stop being mad at me and turn my idea into something animated and appealing, an app that people in the school could actually download and use to match themselves. So then the matching won’t all be on me.
I walk into the meeting with all this on my mind. I’m the last one here, since I’d stayed after class for a few minutes in physics to ask Mr. Halpbern a question about the weekend homework, and had also gotten stopped in the hall by Jenny. And when I walk in now, everyone’s eyes turn to me, so I get the uncomfortable feeling they’ve all already been talking about me.
“I updated everyone on your progress,” Sam says. He smiles, and I relax, but only a little. At least someone in the room has my back. “Hannah and I both did,” he adds. I look at Hannah and she nods and smiles, too. Okay, two people in the room have my back.
“I proposed that we take a vote,” Ms. Taylor says, shooting me a small smile. She’s wearing a red flowered dress and heels today, looking nothing like she had last weekend at the mall in the picture Sam sent. “But it’s clear Sam and Hannah are on Team 1-Factor with you, Emma, and Jane and George are on Team Karma Can.”
I glance at George and raise my eyebrows. Karma Can? He shrugs, but doesn’t look away or give me his angry glare, and maybe he’s not still mad at me? I haven’t driven him to or from school in almost two weeks and, looking at him now, I realize how much I’ve missed his company.
“So—” Ms. Taylor is still talking “—that leaves Robert in the middle.”
All of us turn to look at him. He was doodling in his notebook again, but his pencil stops moving, and he looks up, looks around, as if suddenly noticing what we’ve all been talking about around him. “Me?” he says, his voice cracking.
“I know it’s not quite fair to put this all on you,” Ms. Taylor responds. “You’re new to the club and don’t have much coding experience. So I would like to hear your opinion, yes, but then I’m going to make the final decision as the club’s adviser.”