I don’t say this out loud to her, but I also know that in order for me to win this little argument with George and Jane over our project, I’m going to have to do something bigger, a grand gesture. If I can get other people at school interested, outside of coding club, I could expand my social horizons as Ms. Taylor mentioned. And if I get the school excited, then coding club will be forced to do my project for the state competition. I think about Jane and George probably eating pepperoni pizza at his house right now and brainstorming other ideas, and for some reason, it makes me really annoyed.
“Hey,” I say as I stop at the light across the street from her apartments. “How about you come over to my house now instead of me taking you home, and we can get to work on this together?”
“Now?” she asks, sounding surprised. I nod. “But I don’t really know much about coding yet. I did a summer camp once in middle school, but that’s it.”
“Well, I’ll teach you,” I say quickly. That’s my job as a senior and president of club, isn’t it? To mentor.
She nods and her red hair bobs in front of her face, but even with her mess of hair, I can tell she’s smiling. For once it feels like I’ve said exactly the right thing.
Chapter 5
Izzy FaceTimes me later that night, just after I’ve gotten into bed. My eyes are closed but I hear the chimes, the ringtone I set just for her, and I jump out of bed to grab my phone. It’s midnight here, but only nine p.m. in California.
I pick up, and Izzy’s pretty face fills my screen. Her cheeks look pinker than they used to—she’s gotten too much sun already. I put my finger up to touch them on the screen. She’s so far away but she’s right here.
“Oh my gosh,” she says, her voice bursting. Izzy has one speed, fast and excited. Seeing her again on my screen, I remember how exhausting it used to be sometimes to keep up with her last year. But then I feel an ache in my chest, missing it all the same. “You’re in your pajamas,” she’s saying now. “It’s late there. I keep forgetting about the time. Em, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” She’s texted me a bunch of times the past few weeks when I’ve been sleeping, then I’ve texted back when I wake up and she’s sleeping. Three hours doesn’t sound very far apart, and yet, it’s been oddly unmanageable.
“It’s okay,” I yawn. “I just got into bed.”
Hannah was here awhile, working on entering data from the yearbook with me so we could begin to form a database, and I finally drove her home and picked up Chipotle for me and Dad at nine, right around when he got home from work. We ate our black bean burritos at the kitchen table, while Dad scrolled through notes on his phone and I studied the algorithm I’d used to match Ms. Taylor and Mr. Weston, considering my next move in figuring out how to rank each data point.
Just before ten, Dad had put his phone down, then lowered the lid on my laptop. “You look so far away, Emma. And it’s Friday night. Why are you studying so hard?” It was like he confused me and Izzy for a second, because I never went out on Friday nights the way she always had.
“I’m not studying,” I said. “Just thinking about an algorithm for our coding club project.”
He shook his head and laughed, like he didn’t really understand the difference. Then he stood up, ruffled my hair and told me not to think too hard. “Even geniuses need a night off sometimes.” Not that he should talk, because he was doing work on his phone, too. He kissed the top of my head. “I’m off to bed. Don’t stay up too late.”
I opened my laptop again, stared at all the data points and weights I had up on my screen. “Hey, Dad,” I called after him. “What made you fall in love with Mom?”
He stopped walking, turned to look at me. For a second he looked sad, but then he smiled, as if caught up in a memory he hadn’t thought to recall in so long. “Her eyes,” he said. “Your mother had the most intense blue eyes. She didn’t even have to say a word and you could know exactly what she was feeling. She sat next to me in Torts—it took me a few weeks to work up the courage to talk to her, and before I did, I used to hope she’d turn and look at me just so I could see those eyes.”
After he went up to bed, I sat there and stared at my screen awhile longer, wondering what I was supposed to do with that in my data points. Finally, I’d written Eyes? before going upstairs to get ready for bed.
“Em, are you listening to me?” Izzy is practically yelling at me through FaceTime now.
“Uh-huh,” I lie, having no idea what she was just saying. I take my phone and get back into bed, pulling the covers up and holding the phone above my pillow so she can only see my face. I remember that it’s Friday night, and still early there. Izzy likes to do things. She should be out with John. Why is she in her room, FaceTiming me? “What’s going on, Iz? Everything okay with you?”
“Me?” she laughs. “I’m good. John’s right over here.” She flips the camera to show him lying on the futon across her dorm room, looking on his iPad, and when I see him again, I remember how much he looks like George, except he has contacts, gels his dark blond curls and wears trendier clothes. So he’s like a prettier, shinier George. He waves now, and she flips the camera back to herself. “Are you okay?” she asks me, and I shake my head, confused. “George texted John that you’ve lost your mind. That’s why I FaceTimed you.”
George. I roll my eyes. Of course he did. What right does he have? George should mind his own business.
“You’re trying to set up your teachers?” Izzy is still talking. Our connection freezes for a second, her pretty face locks in on a scrunched-up frown. “...doesn’t even sound like you,” she pops back. “Since when do you care who’s dating? And why would you mess with the teachers’ social lives?”
“It’s a project for coding club. I’m trying to think outside the box and actually win this year, that’s all. And the teachers were just for the prototype. We’re going to match students.” Izzy frowns again and twirls a blond curl around her finger. “Maybe George is the one who lost his mind?” I retort.
“My brother is way too nerdy to lose his mind.” I hear John from across the room.
“Yeah, well, so is she.” Izzy turns, so I know she’s talking more to John than to me.
“Uh, thanks, Iz. I’m still here.”
She turns back. “Yeah, I know,” she says. “Sorry.” But she doesn’t sound sorry. “George is worried about you. And now we are, too.”
I don’t think John gives me a second thought, and George is jealous that I came up with this idea without him. Or annoyed with me, that I don’t want to do something to try and save the world with our senior year co-presidency. Which is not the same as worried. But Izzy, she might genuinely be worried. I want to tell her that if there’s any reason to worry, it’s all her fault, for abandoning me in the first place. But instead I reassure her that I’m fine, that George is just jealous and that I have everything in coding club completely under control.