tonight and send out those emails together. We could study for the calc midterm, too.”
He frowns. “I would, but I promised Hannah I’d take her to see the Christmas light show at the mall tonight.”
“Oh...” I feel weirdly disappointed. “Well, of course. Never mind, then.”
“Maybe we can study together later this week?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say softly as he gets out of the car. “Maybe.”
* * *
Izzy is waiting for me in the kitchen when I walk in. I imagine she slept all day. She’s recently taken a shower—her hair is still damp, and I can smell her strawberry shampoo strongly when I walk in. That and...cookies? She pulls a tray of tree-shaped cookies out of the oven.
“Wanna help me decorate them?” she says, putting the tray on the counter. I’d bought the ingredients for our yearly sugar cookies last weekend, anticipating we’d make them together, after my midterms, and now I swallow back disappointment that she made them without me and didn’t even think to wait for me.
She doesn’t wait for me to answer her now, either. She passes over a tube of icing and some green sprinkles. “We have to let them cool first,” I remind her. “Or the icing will run.”
She shrugs and flips her hair over her shoulder. Details are not her strong suit. And now she looks a little hurt, like I’ve rejected her. I reach for her hand. “We can decorate them after dinner, okay?” I say.
She sighs. “I guess it’ll have to be tomorrow, then. John and I are going to dinner and then to see the Christmas lights at the mall. That reminds me, can I take the car?”
I think about George, also going with Hannah to see the lights, and I frown.
“You could totally come with us,” Izzy adds, misreading my expression. She tilts her head, making her pleading eyes at me. I used to feel guilty saying no when she made that face, but now that I haven’t seen it in months, it’s not affecting me as much. I hate the mall, and I don’t much love Christmas lights, either.
I shake my head. “No, you go ahead without me. I have to study for midterms, anyway.”
Izzy frowns but she doesn’t press me like she used to. Instead, she just says, “Are you sure, Em?” I nod and then she shrugs and lets it go.
* * *
I probably should study for midterms, but we’ve been reviewing during all my classes for the last week. So truthfully, I’m already pretty prepared. Instead, I take out my notebook with the emails from lunch today, and I FaceTime Jane. We’ve been on FaceTime together all week, tracking whom we are sending the app to and how many downloads we get.
“I heard you got twenty-five people today,” I say when she answers. Her face fills the screen. Home Jane—Jane without a lab coat, with her long black hair up in a messy bun—always looks entirely different to me than school Jane, who is quiet, precise, protected. I like home Jane, because she seems more honest, more unfiltered, more like me.
“Yeah, twenty-four actually,” she says now, scanning her notebook with her eyes. “How’d you do?”
I scan down the list quickly counting. “Nineteen.”
She turns her eyes away from me, to her laptop. “From the twenty we added yesterday, thirteen have downloaded the app and twelve have gone in and made matches. I just sent that info off to Sam. He and Robert are going to follow up with those people tomorrow. And George and Hannah and I will continue to add names at lunch, too.”
When she mentions George and Hannah, I think about their date to see the lights at the mall tonight, and tell Jane about it.
“They are definitely a good match,” she says.
“Yeah,” I agree half-heartedly. “I guess so.”
“Actually, Sam told me he and Laura are going to see the lights tonight, too,” she says. “I guess that’s like the thing to do when you’re dating someone around Christmastime in Highbury.” She raises her eyebrows, and maybe she thinks it’s as ridiculous as I do. I fail to see the romance in electricity—instead, I think about the science, all the wasted kilowatts and energy. “You know,” she says. “Maybe we can use this?” I guess I’ve read her eyebrow raise completely wrong.
“Use this how?”
“We could go over there tonight, too, see how our matches are working out firsthand. Observational data. It’ll be more accurate than what Sam and Robert get interviewing people at lunch tomorrow.”
As