Jane and I stand up and Ms. Taylor sits down and takes my seat. She winks at me, as if to say, Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered. Or maybe she’s saying, Ignore what he just said. Go. Get to work.
Jane and I walk out together, toward the parking lot. My hands are still shaking. So are Jane’s. “Do you think he’s going to kill our project?” Jane asks, sounding worried.
I shake my head. “I think Ms. Taylor will work everything out.” But my voice falters a little because even as I say it, I’m not totally sure. “Hopefully,” I add.
“Mr. Dodge was probably totally the Phillip Elton of his high school.” She rolls her eyes. “Girls, we have a zero tolerance policy for bullying,” she mimics his voice. “What a jerk.”
I laugh a little. “Yeah. Well, you were pretty awesome in there.”
“So were you,” she says back, quickly.
“I don’t know, if he called us girls one more time, I was about to scream,” I say.
She nods in agreement. “Right? And why did he call me and you in instead of you and George, anyway? You two are the co-presidents.”
“Because it would’ve been way harder to mansplain bullying to George,” I say, and Jane snickers a little. “No, I think it’s actually all my fault. Phillip confronted me on Friday and I might have said something about how you were designing a survey to keep anyone from dating him.” I shrug.
She shakes her head. “This is not your fault, Emma. Or mine. Or George’s,” she adds. “And I actually think it’s pretty great that you confronted him.”
“Really? You do?” I’m still unsure. Maybe it would’ve been better if I’d said nothing at all. Then Phillip wouldn’t have complained to Mr. Dodge and we wouldn’t be in danger of having our whole project ruined, again.
She nods. “Why should Phillip and his friends just be allowed to do whatever they want with no consequences? Anyway, this is me...” We’ve reached her car, and she goes to open the door, but then she stops and turns back toward me. “Actually, Emma, are you doing anything now? I know Mr. Dodge told us not to work on the app, but that only makes me want to work on it more.” I smile because I feel the same way. “Maybe we could go to the diner and order some fries and get a little work done?” she suggests.
Izzy used to hang out at the diner after school all the time with her friends, but it was something I always schemed to get out of, not having the mental energy at the end of a school day to listen to all that idle chatter and gossip. I actually wouldn’t mind going with Jane now to get some work done, but it’s Tuesday, and I have to get to the Villages. “I can’t. I have to go volunteer at the retirement villages right now.”
“Oh,” Jane says, frowning again, her face going back to that expression that’s familiar to me. “Well, never mind, then.”
“Why don’t you come with me?” I say quickly, before I really think through whether it’s something I should say or not. I tell her about the surveys Sam, Hannah and I dropped off on Saturday, and how I plan to collect them now after I play. “Then maybe we can go to the diner and get to work on tabulating the surveys after?”
* * *
Mrs. Bates just loves that I brought Jane, and makes her sit beside her and Mr. Bates during my performance. When I’m finished playing, I walk over to them, and Mrs. Bates whips out the full stack of filled-out surveys from underneath her chair. She hands them over to me proudly.
“Thank you,” I tell her. “This will really help us, Mrs. Bates.”
“Oh, your friend Jane told me all about your little project. I hope you two will fix yourselves up, too. What about that handsome boy who was here the other day? What was his name?” She snaps her fingers and Jane shoots me a funny look.
“Sam,” I say as I take the stack of surveys from her, hoping we can get out of here without any more embarrassing questions. “But Sam already has a...” I’m about to say girlfriend, but then I correct myself because I’m still not sure how he and Laura feel about one another. “Match.”
Jane offers her a tight-lipped smile. “I don’t want a boyfriend, Mrs. Bates. I’m too busy with homework and coding club.”
Mrs. Bates smiles at her, and shakes her head like she doesn’t believe her. It’s suddenly like I can picture Izzy at eighty-six years old, and here she is, right in front of me, bangle bracelets and all. “It was nice to meet you, Jane.” Mrs. Bates pats her on the shoulder. “Come back and see us another time, okay? We can always use more young people around here.”
* * *
At the diner Jane and I both order cheese fries, and I put the stack of answered surveys on the table in between us. Jane pulls her laptop from her bag so we can begin to tabulate and note the responses.
“You’re really, really good at piano,” Jane says as she powers on her laptop. “I had no idea you even played.”
“Thanks.” I shrug. Why would she know? I don’t really ever talk about it at school, and I haven’t ever talked much to Jane, period. “Playing at the Villages is an easy way to get my service hours for NHS.” I pause for a second before admitting something I haven’t ever admitted out loud, not even to Izzy. “And also...I’ve grown pretty fond of Mrs. Bates. My mom died when I was really young, and my only living grandma lives in Miami so we don’t see or talk to her much.”
Jane nods. “I can see why. She seems really nice. Though...she told me three times I could be such a pretty girl if I took my lab coat off.”
That sounds like Mrs. Bates. She doesn’t always filter what comes out of her mouth, which is part of the reason I like her. I appreciate her honesty. But it does make me uncomfortable at times, too.
“Why do you wear the lab coat all the time?” I ask. Jane frowns, and this tenuous truce, or whatever it is we have come to now, this afternoon, might already be over. “Never mind,” I say quickly. “Forget I asked.”
She doesn’t say anything for a minute, and I half expect her to throw her laptop in her bag and run out of the diner, leaving me with the stack of surveys, two orders of cheese fries and the check. But then she slowly pushes up her right sleeve, rolls her arm over and shows me what I got only the smallest glimpse of a few weeks ago. Her entire forearm is marked with jagged pink and purple scars, going all the way up to the crease of her elbow.
“What happened?” I ask softly.
“The summer before sixth grade, I was in a car accident and it messed up my arm pretty bad. I started middle school with these really ugly fresh scars all over my arm and people never even bothered to learn my real name. Everyone called me Freddy Krueger instead. I cried almost every night for three years. I begged my mom to homeschool me.” She traces the scars on her forearm with her pointer finger now, and I can’t imagine the Jane I’ve known in coding club the past few years—serious, brilliant, confident Jane—crying every night, or wanting to be homeschooled, or worse, being teased so relentlessly at school.