“I’ll tell you a secret, too. I don’t think Ms. Taylor believes I can get into Stanford. She thinks I’m not social enough. And she’s probably right. And even if I do get in...I don’t know what’ll happen to my dad if both my sister and I are so far away in California.”
He nods like he understands, like we’re both somewhat the same, and maybe a little bit, we are.
The bell rings, and I stand up to throw away my trash. “Hey, Emma,” Sam calls after me. I turn back and look at him. “We should hang out sometime, after school.”
“We should,” I say, and then for some reason, I can’t stop myself from smiling, all the way through calculus.
Chapter 3
I’m still thinking about my lunch with Sam after school, and I’m not really listening to what George is talking about as we get in the car, until I hear him mention Ms. Taylor’s name. “What?” I ask him.
“I said, I think Mr. Weston likes Ms. Taylor.”
“Mr. Weston?” I make a right out of the parking lot, and keep my eyes on the line of traffic, all students flooding Highbury Pike, anxious to drive home.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see George nodding. “He was pacing outside her office when I went to my college appointment with her this morning.” Of course, George made one of the first appointments with her, too, just like I did. He really wants to get into one of the top animation programs, either at USC or UCLA. “He was wringing his hands all weird.” George is still talking about Mr. Weston. “Like he wanted to go in and talk to her. But then he saw me and changed his mind.”
I remember Ms. Taylor’s gaze, fixed out the window at coding club on Friday, Mr. Weston sitting on top of his Prius, talking on his cell phone. Ms. Taylor seems young for a counselor. I would guess in her late twenties. And this is Mr. Weston’s first year teaching at our school. He’s finishing up his PhD at Princeton and teaching us to earn extra money in the meantime. They might be about the same age. “Do you think they both like each other?” I ask him.
George shrugs. And then neither one of us say anything for a little while. The silence feels nice, and it’s easy, too.
Last year, when Izzy drove me home after school, she would always have a story to tell me, something that happened during the day. Laela got caught cheating on her physics test, or Max and Ellie broke up, got back together, had a shouting match in between third and fourth periods by her locker, broke up again. Though I knew all her friends, they weren’t my friends, and when she told me her stories, I sometimes felt like she was just recounting an episode of some show she binged on Netflix without me. She tried really hard; she wanted me to love it just as much as she did. But the truth was, I didn’t care about all that stuff, and sometimes it just made my head hurt. In a weird way, I feel much more relaxed this year, driving home after school with George.
George fiddles with the radio now, until NPR comes on. They’re doing a fluff story on dating apps today, and I’m about to reach over and turn it off when I remember again that silly thing that Izzy said to me, right before she left, about coding myself a boyfriend. I still don’t want, or need, a boyfriend. But now I’m thinking about what George just said, too, about Mr. Weston and Ms. Taylor. What if there’s a way to show them mathematically, in a way they’ll both understand, that they’re right for each other? What if there’s an algorithm for love and I could figure out a way to write it? And even better: What if this could be our coding club project and also fit Ms. Taylor’s suggestion for me to do something more social to get into Stanford? In a sea of math brains, could this make me stand out?
“I have an idea,” I say to George as I turn into his driveway.
He’s still focused on NPR, and he points at the radio. “These people that use these dating apps are so superficial.” He shakes his head. “Swiping yes or no, just because of someone’s photo. And I bet the photos aren’t even real at least half the