“It’s less commitment,” Jane says. “Maybe some people didn’t want matches, or to date exclusively, or to fall in love. But people do want to find someone to go to the dance with.” She sounds a little wistful when she says it, and she’s been checking her phone all night, like she’s waiting for something important.
“Do you want a match for the dance, Jane?” I ask her. We both have the latest beta version of our app on our phones, and it would be easy enough for her to create her own log-in, put in her own name, answer the few survey questions, get a match and then for her to text him—or her—through the app to see if that person would want to go to the dance with her. As long as she’s willing to cough up five dollars for George’s charity for him to give her a code to get past the opening survey. And even if she’s not, I can still run her match through the simulator on my laptop. George wouldn’t care.
She shakes her head. “No, no. I think we should all go to the dance together actually,” she says. “Coding club, I mean. It’ll be the day after states, so we can celebrate our win and see all the couples we matched together.”
I think about the disaster of the last dance I went to with her and George. But now our app is different. As Izzy even noticed, I’m different. “You really think we’ll win?” I ask Jane.
“I hope so,” she says. “But either way, I’m really glad we got this far, that you and I got to work together and became friends this year, Emma.”
“Me, too,” I say. “And honestly, I’m glad you don’t want a match for the dance, either. It’s nice to have a friend who actually thinks like me.”
Jane nods, and then glances again at her phone. And I have this weird feeling I said something wrong, but I have no idea what.
* * *
At lunch the next week, Mara walks over and joins our table after we’ve all sat down and started eating. Sam and Laura are talking to each other, involved in some boring conversation about choir music that I’m only half listening to, catching words about song choices and solos here and there. Mara ignores them and starts talking to me.
“I want to update you on all our team’s matches,” she says. Their season is over, but it’s a tight-knit team and they are friends all year long, she tells me, so she knows what’s going on with everyone. “Liz and I are doing great,” she says with a huge smile. Then she starts talking about four other girls, still dating their original matches, and my attention drifts back to Sam and Laura.
“Emma,” Mara says, nudging me gently with her elbow. “Are you even listening?”
“Yeah, sorry. I’m listening.” The truth is, I was half listening, half staring at Sam and Laura, wondering what’s going on with them. They finished talking about choir, and now Sam is concentrating very hard on his sandwich, which appears to be peanut butter and jelly on wheat. He’s methodically eating each crust before he tackles the center. Laura is focusing very hard on her soup.
“I was saying Alyssa and Garrett broke up,” Mara is saying now. “And Alyssa wants to try the app again, find another match for the dance. How does she do that?”
I shake my head. “There isn’t another match,” I say. “Garret is her best match in the school.”
“But what if she doesn’t want to date her best match?” Mara asks.
I turn to her and frown. “Why wouldn’t someone want to date her best match? Plus, Garrett is a really nice guy.”
“Maybe Garrett just isn’t for her?” Mara shrugs, and it feels like she’s missing the point.
“Mathematically, she matches with Garrett. Or our whole algorithm is wrong. And I don’t think it’s wrong. It’s working for almost everyone else. It worked for you,” I remind her.
“What if we add a feature so you can block certain matches, E?” Sam speaks up, surprising me. He’s put his sandwich down, and has his full attention focused on me and Mara. “What if we could get the database to exclude people you’ve dated in the past or people you haven’t quite connected with who you have matched.” Laura frowns at him, like somehow this is an insult to her.
“Yeah,” Mara says. “Exactly. Can we do that, Emma?” She stares at me, waiting for an answer.
“I’ll see what Jane and George think,” I say. “And then I’ll text you later and let you know what we come up with.”
“Cool.” Mara stands up, slaps the table gently with her hands and smiles at me. “You guys are so smart. Seriously. I love that you figured this whole love algorithmic thingy out.”
“Algorithmic thingy,” Sam says quietly after she walks away. “That’s kind of catchy.”
And suddenly Laura looks up from her soup and laughs and then so do I and so does Sam. And maybe our table is, as John referred to us in the car, nerd club. But it’s kind of nice to feel like I’m not in it alone.
* * *
“Plan B,” George says during our coding club meeting, the last Friday in January. He opens the simulator on his laptop, with a brand-new app screen. I’d told him about what Mara asked earlier in the week, and apparently Liz had come to him at his lunch with the same request. I’ve seen on GitHub he’s been updating and changing code all week. “I designed one more screen we can add,” he’s saying now. “A page to go to only if your first match doesn’t work out. It’ll cancel the first name out of the database and rematch you with your second highest match.”
“Isn’t Plan B like a pill you take if you think you’re accidentally pregnant?” Hannah asks.
Redness creeps up George’s neck, quickly flushing his cheeks. I look from him to Hannah, who doesn’t seem to be embarrassed in the least. Are the two of them...? I close my eyes, hating that thought. For whatever reason, right up until this moment, I didn’t picture them actually doing anything more than holding hands. Hannah’s only a freshman, after all. But that was stupid of me, wasn’t it? They’ve been dating for a while now. Of course they’re doing more than holding hands. I don’t want to think about it. I shake the thought away. Why do I even care? But also, ugh. “Okay,” George is saying. “So it needs a better name. But consider the idea.”
I close my eyes for a second, push myself to focus, to stop thinking about George and Hannah like that. Together. But now I can’t get the awful image out of my head. Plan B. Focus. Focus. “Mathematically how does that make sense? And the competition is a little over two weeks away,” I add. “I don’t know if we should change anything at this point...”
“Second chance,” Robert offers. We all look at him, surprised because he still barely speaks up at these meetings. “That would be a way better name than Plan B. We can have a second chance screen for people whose first match didn’t work out for whatever reason.”