“George, you coming with us?” John asks.
George looks at me, then back at John and shakes his head. John shrugs and grabs Izzy’s hand, and the two of them walk toward the train station building in front of us.
George and I get back in the car, in the front seat this time, and my hands are shaking. I feel a little bad that Izzy is probably mad at me now. But mostly, I feel relief, knowing I don’t have to do what Izzy wants. I’m going to do what I want.
“Nerds rule,” George finally says after a few minutes, and it breaks the tension a little, and we both chuckle. Then he says, “Hey, why don’t we go to my house and order a pizza? I swear I won’t even make fun of your gross mushrooms and olives.”
“So not gross,” I say.
“Agree to disagree, Emma,” he says, and we both smile. “Come on,” George says. “We can work on some code together. Then I can drive back with you later to pick them up so you don’t have to go by yourself if it’s late.”
I consider it for a moment. Pizza and coding with George sounds like the perfect Friday night. But then I suddenly remember: Hannah. She and George were talking about dinner tonight in coding club earlier. “Didn’t you make plans with Hannah?”
He makes a face, like he forgot. “Oh, yeah. I did...but I’ll...invite her to come over, too. We can all work on code together.”
Being the third wheel with the two of them, even if we are coding, sounds almost more painful than spending the evening in Manhattan. “Nah,” I say, pulling into his driveway but not turning off the car. “You and Hannah go out and have fun. I can send my dad to pick them up later if it’s too late.”
George frowns, and doesn’t get out of the car for a moment. “Emma,” he says. He turns and stares at me, and his eyes are so intense. And I kind of want to tell him I do want to spend the evening with him, and maybe he could cancel his plans with Hannah.
But the thought of saying any of that makes my cheeks burn hot. I look away, stare really hard at the steering wheel instead. “You don’t want to be late for Hannah,” I say, more to the steering wheel than to him.
I hear him breathing next to me for a minute, and I wonder if he’s going to finish what he was saying to me earlier, on the curb. What do you really want, George? But then all he says is, “Have a good night.”
He gets out of the car and closes the door hard enough that the whole car shakes a little as he walks away.
Chapter 26
Izzy’s flight is early the next morning, and I’ve been restless all night, worrying I’ll oversleep and miss saying goodbye to her. Dad offered to go pick them up at the train station last night when I told him where Izzy and John went, but I left out the part about how I threw a fit and refused to go with them. And I’d fallen asleep before Dad got back with them. I then woke up every hour starting at two a.m., checking the clock.
I finally get out of bed at five, go into the kitchen and brew one of my mochas for Izzy, putting it in a travel mug for the road. Since Dad picked her and John up from Newark a few weeks ago, Mr. Knightley is coming by around five thirty to pick her up to drive them both back to the airport.
“Hey,” Izzy says. I look up and she stands at the entryway to the kitchen now, dressed in black leggings and a big gray UCLA sweatshirt, her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. “You’re up early.”
“I made you this.” I hold out the mocha, a peace offering.
She walks into the kitchen, smiles and takes it from me. “Thanks, Em. You didn’t have to get up.”
“I wanted to,” I say. “I feel really bad about yesterday. I didn’t want you to go 2,764 miles away and still be mad at me.”
“I’m not mad,” she says gently, taking the lid off the travel mug and blowing on my mocha, before taking a sip.
“I should’ve just gone to the city with you last night. I’m sorry.” It’s what I was thinking all night long, every restless hour I woke up. Why did I have to make a thing of it? It was Izzy’s last night home until May. I could’ve just done what she wanted. Next Friday I’ll be here all alone, and that thought makes me sad all over again, the way it did when Izzy first left me, last August.
Izzy shakes her head. “No. You shouldn’t have gone to the city if you didn’t want to go. You need to do you, Em. You’ve changed so much this year. I’m proud of you.”
I shake my head. “I haven’t changed at all.” I’ve never liked the city. Never liked going out on Friday nights. I’ve always been a math nerd, and I will always be a math nerd.
“Yes, you have changed,” she insists. “You have your own friends now. That girl...with the lab coat.”
“Jane,” I say, wanting Iz to know her name. I don’t like the thought of Jane being reduced to her lab coat now that I know who she is underneath it.
“Right, Jane,” she says brightly. “And Hannah, and George. And that cute guy who just moved here.”
“Sam,” I say.
She nods. “And even though I think your dating app is kind of ridiculous, Jessi says it’s making you...popular at school. All the theater kids are super into it.”
Now I remember which one Jessi is. Izzy’s friend in my grade, who does musical theater. Have we matched her yet? We’ve done so many now, I’m not even sure.
“The app’s not ridiculous,” I say, not sure why I feel the need to defend it again now. But I do. For whatever reason I want Izzy to understand that it’s actually a really amazing thing to be able to match people mathematically. “We’ve matched one hundred people. They’re all dating...and happy.” Well, most of them are still happy: 95.7 percent of them, anyway.
“Math is one thing,” Izzy says. “Love is another.”
The doorbell rings, and I hear Dad’s footsteps on the stairs. Izzy grabs her suitcase from the hallway and then she comes to me and wraps me in a giant hug. “Everything can’t be solved with an equation, Em. If you feel something...just let yourself feel it, okay?”
And then, just like that, Izzy is gone again, leaving me all alone in the kitchen, wondering what the heck she means.
Chapter 27
Interest picks up in our app again by the middle of January, and George totally believes it’s because people care about the environment. But Jane and I agree, when she comes to sleep over and look through the data with me one Saturday night—we’re getting more interest now because we’re offering our app as a way for people to find dates for the dance next month. Sure, people are now paying us five dollars to give to the Environmental Defense Fund in exchange for an invite to download the app. But I have to wonder how many of them even know or care what the five dollars are for. People want dates for the Valentine’s Day formal, plain and simple.