The Code for Love and Heartbreak - Jillian Cantor Page 0,50

about our classes and what teachers we like and don’t like.

After a few minutes, I hear some commotion in the background on her end, someone yelling something, but I can’t make out what. She stops talking midsentence and turns her head.

“Do you have to go?” I ask.

“No.” She sighs. “Hang on, I have to shut my door.” She disappears from the screen for a minute, and then the yelling in the background is suddenly muffled, far away. “Sorry, my parents are fighting again.” She’s back on my screen. And I think it’s weird the way her expression is still blank, neutral. If Dad were downstairs yelling, at anyone, I’d probably burst into tears. But Jane seems oddly resigned to it.

“Do they fight...a lot?” I ask, and even as I ask it, I realize maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s not my business. But Jane nods in response, like she’s okay with me asking. “But they’re not divorced?” I ask, puzzled. Hannah’s parents are divorced and so are Sam’s, and a bunch of Izzy’s friends’ parents were.

Jane shrugs. “They say they’ll never get divorced. They love each other.” She rolls her eyes. “So basically, love makes people stupid.”

“Well, that probably shouldn’t be the tagline for our project,” I say, completely straight-faced.

Jane bursts out laughing. “Right? We should go with ‘Love is the worst’ instead.”

And then I’m laughing, too, and I feel something warm bubbling up in my chest, something different. And maybe it is this unfamiliar feeling that there is someone else in Highbury who thinks like me, who actually understands me.

Chapter 18

On Monday after school, George and I are walking out to the parking lot to head home, and I’m still wondering how his date with Hannah went on Friday night. This morning I was running late, and we were both rushing to get into school on time so we didn’t really have a chance to talk. I’ve spent most of the day thinking about how to bring it up on the ride home. I also want to tell him how Jane and I were joking about taglines for our app over FaceTime on Friday night, because it’s the kind of irony he would appreciate. Except maybe now that he’s dating Hannah, he wouldn’t even find it funny.

But I don’t have a chance to bring it up. Just as we get outside school, my phone rings, and I look down and see it’s Dad at work. Dad never calls me from his work number, and in general, if he wants to tell me something, he texts me.

I pick up quickly. “Hello?”

“Is this Emma?” It’s not Dad’s voice at all, but a woman’s, and suddenly I can’t breathe and I stop walking. George doesn’t notice and keeps going toward the car without me. “Emma?” she says again.

“Yes.”

“Honey, this is Kristy.” Kristy has been Dad’s legal assistant since before I was born, but I haven’t talked to her in probably a year or two at this point, and I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear her voice, which is why I didn’t recognize it at first.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, because I can’t imagine a scenario in which Kristy calls me and nothing is wrong. I’m shaking, and now George notices I’ve stopped walking and has turned and come back for me.

You okay? he mouths. I shake my head.

“Honey, I don’t want to alarm you, but your dad passed out at the office and had to be taken to the hospital this afternoon.”

“Passed out?” I repeat the words but don’t understand them. The parking lot is a sudden swirl of colors and lights, and I sit down on the curb so I don’t pass out myself.

“He’s at Princeton-Highbury General.”

“Princeton-Highbury General?” I repeat again, like suddenly I’ve lost all ability to speak words of my own and can only repeat back what she’s saying without really understanding or processing what it means.

George hears what I’ve said, sits down next to me, and now he’s frowning, too.

“Where are you, honey? Do you need me to come pick you up and take you to the hospital?” Kristy asks.

“No,” I say. “I’m at school. I have my car.”

Kristy might have wanted to say more, but before she can, I say, “Bye,” and hang up the phone.

“What happened?” George asks.

“My dad...he’s...Princeton-Highbury General...” I’m trying to find the words to repeat to George what Kristy told me, but I don’t know them anymore or I can’t remember them, and I really can’t remember how to speak much at all. All