A notification pops up on my screen that Jane just updated the back end code on GitHub. So I guess she’s working, too.
I pick up my phone and text her. I’m home by myself, working on code, too. I actually think we’re the only two in coding club not on dates right now.
She texts me the eye roll emoji.
I’m not sure whether she’s eye-rolling at the fact that she still doesn’t really love the matching app, and here we are, spending our Friday night working on it. Or that everyone else in coding club jumped all in with it. Or that she thinks dating, in general, is lame.
I’m still considering that as FaceTime chimes. I’m expecting it to be Izzy, but then I see it’s Jane. I pick up, and the first thing I notice is that she’s not wearing her lab coat—she has a gray Princeton T-shirt on, and her long black hair is piled up on her head in a messy bun. But it was silly to think she would always wear her lab coat, even at home. It’s kind of like her armor at school, I guess. And I feel sort of honored that she FaceTimed me without it. That she trusts me enough to show me who she really is, even if it’s filtered through my phone screen.
“Hey,” she says. “I figured it was easier to talk than to text.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “What are you working on?”
“Oh...just trying to speed up the match creation without breaking it altogether.” She sighs.
I nod. “I’m working on the intro screen to add George’s new heart button to enter the survey.”
“Cool,” Jane says. Then she grimaces. “Okay, are we both ridiculous? FaceTiming to discuss how we’re coding love on a Friday night, while everyone else is out there dating right now?”
I think about what Izzy would say: lame! But Izzy isn’t here, and Izzy and I have never agreed on what’s lame and what’s not. “No,” I say. “We’re not ridiculous. We’re smart. Who wants to be out dating, anyway?”
“Exactly,” she says, making a face. “What a waste of time and energy. And who has time with all honors and AP classes?”
I nod, agreeing. “Let Sam and Hannah and Robert and George go test out our matches,” I add. “You and I can stay home and do the real work.” I don’t say this part to her out loud, but it feels a little weird to put George in the other camp. Because up until now, he has always been the math brain, with me. But now he’s on a date, with Hannah. At least I have Jane.
“Yeah,” Jane agrees with me, and then I prop up my phone on my pillow, and continue working on code, and she does the same, so we work and chat a little bit about our classes and what teachers we like and don’t like.
After a few minutes, I hear some commotion in the background on her end, someone yelling something, but I can’t make out what. She stops talking midsentence and turns her head.
“Do you have to go?” I ask.
“No.” She sighs. “Hang on, I have to shut my door.” She disappears from the screen for a minute, and then the yelling in the background is suddenly muffled, far away. “Sorry, my parents are fighting again.” She’s back on my screen. And I think it’s weird the way her expression is still blank, neutral. If Dad were downstairs yelling, at anyone, I’d probably burst into tears. But Jane seems oddly resigned to it.
“Do they fight...a lot?” I ask, and even as I ask it, I realize maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s not my business. But Jane nods in response, like she’s okay with me asking. “But they’re not divorced?” I ask, puzzled. Hannah’s parents are divorced and so are Sam’s, and a bunch of Izzy’s friends’ parents were.
Jane shrugs. “They say they’ll never get divorced. They love each other.” She rolls her eyes. “So basically, love makes people stupid.”
“Well, that probably shouldn’t be the tagline for our project,” I say, completely straight-faced.
Jane bursts out laughing. “Right? We should go with ‘Love is the worst’ instead.”
And then I’m laughing, too, and I feel something warm bubbling up in my chest, something different. And maybe it is this unfamiliar feeling that there is someone else in Highbury who thinks like me, who actually understands me.
Chapter 18
On Monday after school, George and I are walking out to the parking lot to head home, and I’m still wondering how his date with Hannah went on Friday night. This morning I was running late, and we were both rushing to get into school on time so we didn’t really have a chance to talk. I’ve spent most of the day thinking about how to bring it up on the ride home. I also want to tell him how Jane and I were joking about taglines for our app over FaceTime on Friday night, because it’s the kind of irony he would appreciate. Except maybe now that he’s dating Hannah, he wouldn’t even find it funny.
But I don’t have a chance to bring it up. Just as we get outside school, my phone rings, and I look down and see it’s Dad at work. Dad never calls me from his work number, and in general, if he wants to tell me something, he texts me.
I pick up quickly. “Hello?”
“Is this Emma?” It’s not Dad’s voice at all, but a woman’s, and suddenly I can’t breathe and I stop walking. George doesn’t notice and keeps going toward the car without me. “Emma?” she says again.
“Yes.”
“Honey, this is Kristy.” Kristy has been Dad’s legal assistant since before I was born, but I haven’t talked to her in probably a year or two at this point, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear her voice, which is why I didn’t recognize it at first.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, because I can’t imagine a scenario in which Kristy calls me and nothing is wrong. I’m shaking, and now George notices I’ve stopped walking and has turned and come back for me.
You okay? he mouths. I shake my head.
“Honey, I don’t want to alarm you, but your dad passed out at the office and had to be taken to the hospital this afternoon.”
“Passed out?” I repeat the words but don’t understand them. The parking lot is a sudden swirl of colors and lights, and I sit down on the curb so I don’t pass out myself.
“He’s at Princeton-Highbury General.”
“Princeton-Highbury General?” I repeat again, like suddenly I’ve lost all ability to speak words of my own and can only repeat back what she’s saying without really understanding or processing what it means.
George hears what I’ve said, sits down next to me, and now he’s frowning, too.
“Where are you, honey? Do you need me to come pick you up and take you to the hospital?” Kristy asks.