“Yes,” Hannah agrees with him. “I like that. And what if one person is a 96 percent match and someone else is a 95.4 percent match? That would almost be statistically equal, right Emma? Jane?”
I hold up my hands, and give Jane a look, like she should try and convince everyone because I don’t think I can convince them to listen to me over George on this. “I agree with Emma,” Jane says. “I just don’t think we should reinvent the wheel this close to states.”
“Only one new screen,” George says quickly. “I already have the bugs mostly worked out. So we’re really not reinventing anything.”
“I’m with George,” Sam finally speaks up. He offers me and Jane an apologetic smile.
“I’m still worried this will hurt us more than help us,” I say, one final plea. “It almost feels like we’re betting against our own hypothesis, saying our math is wrong.”
But no one is still listening to me but Jane, who offers me a shrug, as if to say, What can we do? We’re outvoted. Everyone else is commenting on the design of the new screen, brainstorming ideas for how to integrate George’s animated hearts. I guess we’re moving ahead to states with a “second chance” screen in place.
Chapter 28
Dad always likes to say that hindsight is 20/20.
Izzy used to make fun of him because he would say it so much when we were little, any time one of us would talk about something that upset us, or that we wished we’d done differently. Hindsight is 20/20, Dad said with a shrug. He still says it from time to time.
Dad, Izzy would always say, if you pay attention, you know things way before hindsight.
But for people like Dad, and me, people who don’t always pay attention, or even understand how to pay attention, I guess Dad’s expression makes a lot of sense.
It’s snowing when George and I walk out to the parking lot after coding club the first Friday in February. We finished adding the second chance screen to the app earlier this week. George animated it with two upside-down hearts holding hands, which I do think looks cute despite my reservations about the change. And we now have the latest beta version running on 187 students’ phones. So far, according to Jane, Alyssa is the first and only one to make a match with the second chance screen. And now she’s going to the Valentine’s Day dance with Anderson Adams, whom she matches at only ninety-one percent but whom she describes, when Jane asks her, as so, so nice.
All in all, I’m feeling pretty good about things as we walk out of the meeting. States is next week, but we’re close to ready other than working out the last-minute presentation and technical details, and I don’t think the second chance screen data will mess us up too much if only one person has used it.
The snow is already dusting the parking lot, making the world around us white and blinding. Flakes swirl in the air, hit our faces as we walk toward my car. George sticks out his tongue to catch one, and I laugh and remind him about what we learned in chemistry last year about acid snow.
“Oh, shoot,” George suddenly says, and I think he’s responding to my comment about the snow until he continues, adding, “I forgot my PE clothes in my PE locker. I want to wash them over the weekend. Do you mind if I go over there really quick?”
I nod. I don’t mind. There’s actually something weirdly nice about walking through the parking lot with George, in the snow. We turn and walk toward the side entrance of the school, to the gym, heading around the north side of the parking lot. The flakes start to fall harder, swirling in front of our eyes.
“Here.” George takes his hat out of his pocket and puts it on my head. “It’s my fault you’re still out in this. The least I can do is keep you warm.”
He tugs the hat down a little too far, so it covers my ears but then it almost covers my eyes, too, and between that and the swirl of snow, everything around me is obscure, light and ethereal and unreal. So when I first see them there together, back up against the brick wall by the gym, I blink, sure I’m seeing things wrong.
And then the second thing I think is, Hindsight is 20/20.
“Hey...is that Sam and Jane?” George says, catching sight of them through the blur of snowflakes about ten seconds after I do.
I don’t answer him, because I’m already running toward them, my feet slipping through the slush, sliding. Neither Jane nor Sam notices me coming, because their faces are too close together, their eyes only on each other. Their lips are connected in a long drawn-out kiss.
“What are you doing?” I say to them when I’m close enough. I’m breathless, and a little numb with shock. They’d walked out of coding club together. Jane was going to drive Sam home, but why are they here—kissing? What are they doing? Sam is dating Laura and Jane hates love. I half expect them to both burst out laughing and explain their joke to me. Because it must be a joke. Nothing else makes sense.
Neither of them say anything for a minute—they’re weirdly frozen there, holding on to each other. But neither one of them is laughing, either. Jane pulls away first, looks at Sam, horrified. Then turns to me. “Emma...it’s not what it looks like.”
Sam looks at her, shakes his head, takes her hand and then looks at me. “I’m sorry, E. It is exactly what it looks like.”
“What does it look like?” I’m still confused.
George has caught up by now, and waves. “Hey, guys...” He sounds out of breath.
“I like her,” Sam says to me, ignoring George.
She takes his hand. “And I like him,” Jane says, biting her lip a little, refusing to meet my eyes, so it suddenly feels like she lied to me about everything.
“E...” Sam says gently.
“Don’t call me E,” I spit at him. “You’re cheating on Laura. And you...” I turn to Jane. “You’re ruining everything we worked so hard for with our app. And what about all those things you said about not wanting a match, not having time for a boyfriend. Love is the worst.”
“E,” Sam says again. I glare at him. “I mean...Emma. Look, I tried the second chance match, and I still don’t match Janie. We have nothing in common other than our hair color and we took that out of the algorithm months ago. We’re never going to match in our app. But that doesn’t change the way I feel about her.” He looks at her, smiles at her. She turns and smiles back at him.
States is next week and they’re ruining everything we’ve worked for. If they don’t believe in our app, in the code we wrote for love, then who will?
But worse is the feeling of betrayal. It washes over me, thick and blinding, and then settles as a wave of nausea pushes up my stomach to my throat. Sam, who didn’t want to kiss me last fall, because he said he matched with Laura in the app. But I guess the truth really was, he just never liked me. And Jane. Jane. She slept over at my house multiple times, and I thought she was actually my friend. She told me she didn’t want a match. She was lying to me, too. I feel bile rushing up my throat, and it’s hard to breathe.