The Code for Love and Heartbreak - Jillian Cantor Page 0,75

“No. You shouldn’t have gone to the city if you didn’t want to go. You need to do you, Em. You’ve changed so much this year. I’m proud of you.”

I shake my head. “I haven’t changed at all.” I’ve never liked the city. Never liked going out on Friday nights. I’ve always been a math nerd, and I will always be a math nerd.

“Yes, you have changed,” she insists. “You have your own friends now. That girl...with the lab coat.”

“Jane,” I say, wanting Iz to know her name. I don’t like the thought of Jane being reduced to her lab coat now that I know who she is underneath it.

“Right, Jane,” she says brightly. “And Hannah, and George. And that cute guy who just moved here.”

“Sam,” I say.

She nods. “And even though I think your dating app is kind of ridiculous, Jessi says it’s making you...popular at school. All the theater kids are super into it.”

Now I remember which one Jessi is. Izzy’s friend in my grade, who does musical theater. Have we matched her yet? We’ve done so many now, I’m not even sure.

“The app’s not ridiculous,” I say, not sure why I feel the need to defend it again now. But I do. For whatever reason I want Izzy to understand that it’s actually a really amazing thing to be able to match people mathematically. “We’ve matched one hundred people. They’re all dating...and happy.” Well, most of them are still happy: 95.7 percent of them, anyway.

“Math is one thing,” Izzy says. “Love is another.”

The doorbell rings, and I hear Dad’s footsteps on the stairs. Izzy grabs her suitcase from the hallway and then she comes to me and wraps me in a giant hug. “Everything can’t be solved with an equation, Em. If you feel something...just let yourself feel it, okay?”

And then, just like that, Izzy is gone again, leaving me all alone in the kitchen, wondering what the heck she means.

Chapter 27

Interest picks up in our app again by the middle of January, and George totally believes it’s because people care about the environment. But Jane and I agree, when she comes to sleep over and look through the data with me one Saturday night—we’re getting more interest now because we’re offering our app as a way for people to find dates for the dance next month. Sure, people are now paying us five dollars to give to the Environmental Defense Fund in exchange for an invite to download the app. But I have to wonder how many of them even know or care what the five dollars are for. People want dates for the Valentine’s Day formal, plain and simple.

“It’s less commitment,” Jane says. “Maybe some people didn’t want matches, or to date exclusively, or to fall in love. But people do want to find someone to go to the dance with.” She sounds a little wistful when she says it, and she’s been checking her phone all night, like she’s waiting for something important.

“Do you want a match for the dance, Jane?” I ask her. We both have the latest beta version of our app on our phones, and it would be easy enough for her to create her own log-in, put in her own name, answer the few survey questions, get a match and then for her to text him—or her—through the app to see if that person would want to go to the dance with her. As long as she’s willing to cough up five dollars for George’s charity for him to give her a code to get past the opening survey. And even if she’s not, I can still run her match through the simulator on my laptop. George wouldn’t care.

She shakes her head. “No, no. I think we should all go to the dance together actually,” she says. “Coding club, I mean. It’ll be the day after states, so we can celebrate our win and see all the couples we matched together.”

I think about the disaster of the last dance I went to with her and George. But now our app is different. As Izzy even noticed, I’m different. “You really think we’ll win?” I ask Jane.

“I hope so,” she says. “But either way, I’m really glad we got this far, that you and I got to work together and became friends this year, Emma.”

“Me, too,” I say. “And honestly, I’m glad you don’t want a match for the dance, either. It’s nice to have a friend who actually thinks