Chapter 30
As we’re all boarding the bus to Newark a few days later, I can still hear Mrs. Bates’s wobbly voice in my head reassuring me that no one could possibly hate me. Maybe I can just get on the bus, and put my chin up like Mrs. Bates says. I’m the co-president of the club. I can make a speech, and then we can all calm down and figure out a way to work together at the competition.
But what to say exactly...? I’m still mad that Jane and Sam don’t believe in our project and went behind my back. Could I ignore that for the day and give the team some kind of pep talk? I try to work out some words as I walk on the bus, staring at my feet. Chin up, I hear Mrs. Bates say again. And I look up just in time to see Jane, who is carrying our trifold, bump it into a seat as she walks down the aisle of the bus.
“Careful,” I say to her. My reaction is instinct—I’m trying to warn her, not reprimand her.
But she turns and glares at me, and I press my lips tightly together and I wish I’d just kept looking down and hadn’t said anything at all. Sam stands in front of her, and he doesn’t even turn around and meet my eyes when I speak.
I sigh and take a seat by myself near the front. I was wrong. I have no words to fix any of this, and I’d really like to keep my chin down. I go to put on my headphones as the bus gets ready to pull out of the parking lot, and then I realize I have done something insanely stupid: I’m supposed to be in charge of bringing the mechanical, and I don’t have it with me. It’s not on the seat next to me, not in my backpack. I took it home to work on it last night, but I’m sure I brought it with me this morning. Didn’t I?
“Ms. Taylor!” I stand up quickly and shout her name, telling her I don’t have it.
She checks her watch, and looks back at me, her eyes wide with worry. “Emma, we don’t have time to wait for you to go and search for it.”
“It’s back in the classroom.” George suddenly stands up, two rows behind me. “I saw it there but thought you were grabbing it on the way out, Emma. I’ll run and go get it. Five minutes, Ms. Taylor.” He jogs off the bus before I can think to say I’ll do it. Hannah frowns at me from across the aisle and back two rows. Her eyes are blue-green daggers, and I sink lower in my seat, my heart pounding in my throat, worrying that it’s not back in the classroom at all but still in my bedroom.
George is back a few minutes later, breathless, sweating. He stops at my seat, hands me the binder with the mechanical. I exhale with relief. He pauses for another few seconds to catch his breath and I think he might sit down here with me, too. I wish he would, because really, we should talk and make sure everything is prepared for our oral presentation. But he doesn’t. He walks back a few rows to sit with Hannah.
“All right,” Ms. Taylor says, clearing her throat. “Now, do we have everything?”
She calls off our checklist, and we respond one by one. Then I put my headphones on and try to concentrate on nothing but Beethoven for the seventy-three-minute ride to Newark. But even with the headphones on, it’s impossible to relax. It feels like everything is about to implode, and it makes my stomach ache. I wish George were sitting here next to me, because I know he would say something to calm me down. I think about the way he reminded me to breathe when Dad was in the hospital, and I cast a glance back toward where he’s sitting now. But he and Hannah are deep in conversation, and neither one of them seem to notice that I’m even here, on the bus, just a few rows in front of them.
* * *
There is a component to the all-state competition that is not a part of the regional tournament called the teamwork challenge. The whole team has to go into a room, and three judges do something to mess with our codebase, then give us thirty minutes to figure out a way to fix it and get our code running again. It counts as one-fifth of the final score, and is supposed to emphasize the club part of coding club, more than the coding part. Last year, we excelled at this challenge, but this year we have it at 9:25 a.m., first on our schedule for the tournament. We haven’t uttered a single word to one another since we’ve gotten off the bus and gathered in the cafeteria at the host school.
As we’re walking toward the judging room, Ms. Taylor gives us all a warning look, and tells us quietly to “Get it together.” She stares right at me as she says it, like she thinks this is all my fault. Which really isn’t completely fair, because it feels like Jane and Sam started this. Except her withering look reminds me of how I yelled at Hannah the other day and I feel bad all over again. I consider grabbing Hannah and apologizing quickly before we walk in the room, but she’s walking ten paces ahead of me, holding on to George’s arm, and even if I catch up to them, I’ll still be annoyed that she and George are walking in as a team rather than me and him, as co-presidents.
But we all walk into the judging room, and then paste eager looks on our faces. And we do manage to get it together. George smiles at the judges and talks up how great our app is. And Sam spots the problem with the codebase as soon as the judges hand it over to us. Jane and I fix it within ten minutes. The judges check our work and tell us we did a great job.
“Wow,” George says to Sam as we finish. “That was impressive.”
“Photographic memory.” Sam shrugs, like it’s no big deal how fast he spotted the problem. But it kind of is. Finding the issue is always the hardest part in this challenge.
As we all leave the room we should be on this high because we totally just kicked ass in that challenge, finishing in seventeen minutes instead of thirty, but instead, as soon as we walk back toward the cafeteria, we stop talking again. Jane and Sam walk together in front of the rest of us, and then Hannah and George walk ahead of me, ignoring me, and only Robert hangs back, walking beside me.
“So far so good, right?” he asks me.
“Yeah,” I say, my eyes focusing on Jane and Sam ahead, noticing that they are now holding hands. It feels like they’re doing it just to annoy me.
“Then why does everyone look so upset?” Robert asks.
“I’m not upset,” I say quickly. “Are you upset?” He shakes his head. “Great,” I say. “Then we’re all happy. We’re all really happy.”
* * *
Somehow we push through and keep it together all day, doing what we need to do in the moment, ignoring each other in the in-between times. Our last event of the tournament is the oral presentation George and I have to make for the judges. We sit on the floor in the hallway outside the presentation room, just the two of us, waiting for them to call us in. George hasn’t said a word to me, and instead is reviewing his notes. But I remember my speech word for word from the regional competition, and I put my notecards down.
“Are you going to stay mad at me forever?” I ask him.