The Code for Love and Heartbreak - Jillian Cantor Page 0,5

my tray down. “I don’t know too many people yet, and I got a little overexcited when I saw you. Hope it wasn’t too embarrassing.”

“I don’t get embarrassed easily,” I say, and I think about what Ms. Taylor said, that I need to work on being more social to get Stanford to accept me. Maybe I’m supposed to get embarrassed more. I’m definitely supposed to be making new friends. Or, I guess, any friends, now that Izzy is gone.

As I take a bite of my sandwich, I consider what to say to Sam. What are you supposed to say in these situations? I don’t want to go back to eating lunch alone tomorrow. So I don’t say anything at first.

Sam has brought a lunch from home, in an insulated lunch box. Which I find both weird and endearing. There’s something about him that feels comfortable and safe—he called out for me in the cafeteria and now he’s pulling out his oddly elementary-school-like lunch. He doesn’t care what he looks like, what other people think of him. I watch him pull out a bag of sliced carrots and a small tub of hummus from his lunch box.

“Vegetarian?” I blurt out as he dips a carrot into the hummus and takes a bite.

“What?”

Obviously, I’ve already said the wrong thing. “I saw your lunch...and...I’m a vegetarian. Are you?”

“No,” he says. “I’m not a vegetarian, but that’s cool. I just like carrots. And hummus. And my mom was working all weekend, I don’t have my license here yet and it was all we had in the fridge this morning when I packed my lunch.”

“Your mom works a lot?” I ask, realizing only now, too late, that asking about his parents would’ve been a more apt first question.

But Sam doesn’t seem bothered by my awkwardness. He nods and keeps eating his lunch. “My parents got divorced last spring,” he says. “My mom’s an ER nurse and she got a job out here, so she could live closer to my aunt in Philly. But now she’s the new one on staff, so she’s always working. And weird hours, too.”

“My dad works a lot, too,” I tell him. “And I used to do everything with my older sister, Izzy, but she decided to go to UCLA for college this year.”

He smiles at me. In the cafeteria light, his eyes are more blue than green, but the colors have mixed in a weird and pretty way that I’ve never quite noticed on anyone else before. “I was happy to join coding club,” Sam is saying now. “Thanks for making me feel welcome the other day.”

I made him feel welcome? Maybe I am better with people than I, or Ms. Taylor, believes. “Where’d you go to school last year?” I ask him. There’s a rhythm to our conversation now that feels easier. Like when I’m playing the piano, the way my fingers always feel like they’re sighing in the slow second movement of a sonata.

“Phoenix,” he says. “My dad’s still there.” His voice breaks a little.

“You miss him?”

“Yeah, well, he works a lot, too, and he’s getting remarried, so everyone thought it would be better for me to move out here to finish school.” He pauses and finishes off his carrots. Then reseals the tub of hummus and puts it in his lunch box. “Can I tell you something I haven’t told anyone else?”

I nod, but I wonder what it means to be the keeper of a person’s secrets, if that person is someone you barely know.

“I lied to both my parents. I told my dad that I’d definitely come back to Phoenix for college. It’s why he let my mom take me across the country to begin with. But I promised my mom I’d stay out here near her for college.”

“What do you want to do?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. All my friends are in Phoenix. But college is two years away. That’s a long time...”

“We can be friends,” I say quickly—maybe too quickly—and after I say it, I think that it’s probably not something Izzy would’ve said in this situation. “I mean, if you want to.” Then I add, for good measure: “But I’m not going to be here next year when you’re a senior. I’m planning to go to Stanford.”

“Yeah, you told us. At the coding club meeting.” He smiles again. “You’ve got lofty goals, don’t you, Emma Woodhouse?”

“Well,” I say, rolling my napkin up into a ball, my fingers trembling a little.