The Code for Love and Heartbreak - Jillian Cantor Page 0,85
first on our schedule for the tournament. We haven’t uttered a single word to one another since we’ve gotten off the bus and gathered in the cafeteria at the host school.
As we’re walking toward the judging room, Ms. Taylor gives us all a warning look, and tells us quietly to “Get it together.” She stares right at me as she says it, like she thinks this is all my fault. Which really isn’t completely fair, because it feels like Jane and Sam started this. Except her withering look reminds me of how I yelled at Hannah the other day and I feel bad all over again. I consider grabbing Hannah and apologizing quickly before we walk in the room, but she’s walking ten paces ahead of me, holding on to George’s arm, and even if I catch up to them, I’ll still be annoyed that she and George are walking in as a team rather than me and him, as co-presidents.
But we all walk into the judging room, and then paste eager looks on our faces. And we do manage to get it together. George smiles at the judges and talks up how great our app is. And Sam spots the problem with the codebase as soon as the judges hand it over to us. Jane and I fix it within ten minutes. The judges check our work and tell us we did a great job.
“Wow,” George says to Sam as we finish. “That was impressive.”
“Photographic memory.” Sam shrugs, like it’s no big deal how fast he spotted the problem. But it kind of is. Finding the issue is always the hardest part in this challenge.
As we all leave the room we should be on this high because we totally just kicked ass in that challenge, finishing in seventeen minutes instead of thirty, but instead, as soon as we walk back toward the cafeteria, we stop talking again. Jane and Sam walk together in front of the rest of us, and then Hannah and George walk ahead of me, ignoring me, and only Robert hangs back, walking beside me.
“So far so good, right?” he asks me.
“Yeah,” I say, my eyes focusing on Jane and Sam ahead, noticing that they are now holding hands. It feels like they’re doing it just to annoy me.
“Then why does everyone look so upset?” Robert asks.
“I’m not upset,” I say quickly. “Are you upset?” He shakes his head. “Great,” I say. “Then we’re all happy. We’re all really happy.”
* * *
Somehow we push through and keep it together all day, doing what we need to do in the moment, ignoring each other in the in-between times. Our last event of the tournament is the oral presentation George and I have to make for the judges. We sit on the floor in the hallway outside the presentation room, just the two of us, waiting for them to call us in. George hasn’t said a word to me, and instead is reviewing his notes. But I remember my speech word for word from the regional competition, and I put my notecards down.
“Are you going to stay mad at me forever?” I ask him.
George puts his notecards in his lap, turns to me. “Who says I’m mad at you?”
“You’re sure acting like you’re mad at me.”
He closes his eyes for a second, leans his head back against the wall, then opens them again. “Let’s just get through this, okay? And then maybe we can talk tonight.”
Before I can say anything else, the judges call us in. George jumps up, puts a huge smile on his face, and I stand and follow him inside the room.
George’s presentation is first, and I see why he was reviewing his notecards. He’s changed his speech from the regional tournament, putting a personal spin on why our matching app has been so successful at school, including how it has matched him to Hannah. How it’s the first time he’s ever had a girlfriend, and how wonderful it is to connect with a person at your school who you really, truly match with mathematically. For some reason, I think about what Mrs. Bates said about how she fell in love with her husband when she played piano with him at Julliard. How his music was life and passion. Is that how George feels about Hannah, too? It sure sounds like it now.
Last week when we were playing Ping-Pong, he said he didn’t really believe that math can predict love, but clearly, he’s changed his