I find myself staring at her arm, but not because I think her scars make her ugly or nightmarish, but because I wish I’d known about them before. I would’ve liked Jane more, understanding that, underneath, she was a little a raw, and that she felt like she didn’t fit in at our school. Just like me.
She pulls her sleeve back down, and I quickly look away, ashamed for staring. I wonder if without the lab coat Jane feels naked, exposed at school, the way I’ve felt this year without Izzy.
“I guess I made a choice, you know?” She’s still talking. “I could continue to be Freddy Kreuger in high school, or I could be the nerdy lab-coat girl. I want to be this girl in the lab coat instead.”
I nod. “I used to think it was some kind of a fashion statement I didn’t understand. But now I think I get it.” I pause for a moment. “I don’t understand people,” I admit. “Not just you, I mean...any people.” I think about all the people who were so mean to her in middle school. Why would anyone act that way? “Numbers make sense to me. People not at all.” I shrug, but even as I say it, I’m not sure it’s completely true. I think I do actually understand Jane now.
“Yeah.” She offers me a half smile. “I agree with you. People are the worst. Numbers are easy.”
I’ve respected Jane’s talent and intelligence in coding club for the past few years, but now, for the first time, I actually wonder if I might truly like her, if it’s possible we might even become friends.
* * *
I catch George up on what happened with Mr. Dodge on the way to school the next morning, and he frowns, looking anxious. He had texted me after school yesterday to ask if everything was okay, and I told him it was and I would explain what had happened in the morning, thinking it would be too hard to try and explain over text. And besides, I was engrossed in entering all the survey responses last night—I stayed up late inputting them all and then started to reconfigure my algorithm flowchart. I got hyperfocused on that, like weirdly if I got everything right there’d be no way Mr. Dodge could still shut us down.
“He should’ve called me in,” George says now, after I tell him everything. I’m not sure whether to be offended that George believes I can’t handle anything on my own, or if I should feel grateful that George wishes he could’ve helped.
“Jane and I handled it,” I say. “And Ms. Taylor was there when we left.”
“So how did you leave things?” George asks, sounding worried.
I shrug because I’m not exactly sure. I pull into the school parking lot, and George suggests we stop at Ms. Taylor’s office before class.
When we get there, we can see through the glass: she’s sitting behind her desk, and Mr. Weston is sitting on the edge of her desk, saying something to her. She throws her head back, and laughs, and George glances at me. “They really do like each other, don’t they?” He sounds weirdly surprised, like he hasn’t realized how we built our whole app off this theory until right this very minute.
I shoot him a look, and knock on Ms. Taylor’s door. “Come in,” she shouts, and Mr. Weston jumps off the edge of her desk, takes a step back and stands up straight.
“Emma, George,” he says to us. Then he turns back to Ms. Taylor. “I’ll see you at lunch, Anna?”
She nods and smiles at him as he walks out. Then she turns her attention to us. “I’m glad you both stopped in. I was going to call you down during first period.”
George takes one of the seats across from her desk, and I take the other. “Well,” I say, suddenly feeling really anxious, the way George has been sounding since I picked him up. “What happened after Jane and I left?”
She smiles at me. “Let’s just say I worked everything out, and you don’t need to worry. We’ll proceed with the project as planned.”
“Mr. Dodge just...got over it?” I ask, skeptical.
“Phillip rescinded his complaint this morning and assured Mr. Dodge there was no bullying going on.”
“He rescinded it? Just like that?” George raises his eyebrows.
“Oh... Phillip may have had a little nudge from his guidance counselor, who threatened a phone call to his parents. Mr. Dodge can be caught up with proof, but, George, your word is enough for me,” Ms. Taylor says. “Phillip and I had a nice chat about being respectful.” My eyes widen, as I’m super impressed by Ms. Taylor right now, but she shrugs like it’s no big deal, and she’s only doing her job as our counselor. “Anyway, I promised Mr. Dodge he wouldn’t get any more complaints about our app, so we have to make sure we’re really being inclusive and thoughtful about everyone’s feelings going forward.”
“Of course,” George says.
“Good.” Ms. Taylor smiles at both of us. “Why don’t you get to class, then, and I’ll see you at our meeting later this week.”
Chapter 16
Based on the results from our survey at the Villages, it’s clear that common interests are the most important factor for staying in love, and I finish redoing our algorithm so that it weights extracurricular activities and likes and dislikes the highest. Jane has the database up and running on the server; it includes her survey results, socials skim and yearbook data. And on Friday, we’re all sitting at our meeting, discussing how we’ll get everything into app form and ready to present at the regional competition right after Thanksgiving in Princeton, three weeks from now.
Our plan, moving forward, is to let the app be user-driven—people who want to will be able to download it and make their own matches. But for now, while we design and code the app and get it functioning, I’ll be adding people into the algorithm on my laptop and texting out their results.
“Okay,” Ms. Taylor says, clapping her hands together to get our attention. “In addition to working on designing the app screens and coding the app, we need some of you to tabulate the data and the accuracy of the matches we’re making. I’ll start,” she says. She looks right at me and smiles. “This is not normally something I’d tell my students, but in this case...I guess I should tell you all that Mr. Weston and I have been dating for two months now. So even in its prior form, I don’t know that your algorithm was completely off.”
I think about the way he made her laugh in her office the other morning, and then I clap, which is clearly the wrong response, because everyone turns to stare at me, and there’s an awkward silence. Jane is wearing her lab coat with the purple embroidery on the sleeves today, and it’s cold in here—she has it buttoned up, making her look weirdly like that Muppet. Is it Beeker or Bunsen? I can never remember which is which. But then I think about what Jane told me the other day about why she wears the lab coat, and I shoot her an apologetic smile. She smiles back before turning and saying to Ms. Taylor, “I think George and Emma and I should work on getting the app up to speed, and the new members should work on tracking the data.”