Page 4 of Emma on Fire

“Why don’t you tell him, Emma?” Mr. Montgomery says.

“Why don’t you?” she counters.

Emma sees a vein pulsating at Mr. Montgomery’s temple. He’s sort of cute when he’s pissed. She can almost see why Lizzie’s so in love with him—either that or she herself only finds angry people attractive, which is totally possiblegiven her concern for thelackof concern she sees everywhere else.

“Ms. Blake!” Mr. Hastings barks.

Emma blinks and returns her attention to the room. She crosses her long legs and tucks her hair behind her ears. She’s still mad that she didn’t get to finish reading her essay, but maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised. Sometimes someone puts a pin back into a grenade; sometimes a bomb gets caught right before it hits the ground.

She decides to be the picture of calm. “Mr. Montgomery assigned us a descriptive essay,” she says evenly. “He said that we should use lots of details and description. So I did.”

“What did you describe?”

“I described what happens to a person when they set themselves on fire.”

Mr. Hastings visibly flinches, the eyebrows that had been drawn together now going up in surprise. She’s not enjoying the men’s discomfort, but she’s notnotenjoying it either.

“That isn’t even accurate!” Mr. Montgomery cries. “She said she was going to set herself on fire. Here, atRidgemont Academy.”

The way he adds this particular detail—putting the emphasis onRidgemont Academyinstead of onher—makes Emma wonder if he’d be quite as upset if she’d declared her intention to do it off campus.

“Fine,” Emma concedes. “I did say that I was going toburn myself alive. The essay was well written, though, if I do say so myself.”

Unlike Mr. Montgomery, Mr. Hastings keeps his outward composure. “Emma, this is very distressing,” he says. “I’m shocked to hear this.”

“Are you, though?” Emma asks lightly. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors. ‘Emma Blake’s not herself lately.’ ‘Emma Blake’s been going downhill all semester.’ I’m not exactly bearing out our motto, am I? No big win at the end for this girl.” She points at herself with double thumbs, now definitely enjoying their discomfort.

Mr. Hastings and Mr. Montgomery make eye contact over Emma’s head. Emma imagines them communicating via some academic ESP.

Montgomery: She’s failing my class.

Hastings: She’s failing philosophy too. She quit the tennis team and the teen mentor program.

Montgomery: I never see her with any of her friends. It seems like she’s falling apart.

Hastings: Then we will tape her back together. We are Ridgemont Strong!

Mr. Hastings finally tears his gaze away from Mr. Montgomery and folds his hands together over his giant desk, and Emma braces herself for a barrage of meaningless words and empty promises.

“Let’s set aside, for a moment, the question ofself-immolation,” Mr. Hastings says. “Let’s take a step back to reason and rationality. When someone like you—a straight-A student and a community leader—suddenly begins to disengage with school, we find ourselves asking why.”

Emma has been expecting anger, shock, some sort of sermon about how setting yourself on fire isn’t the Ridgemont way. But instead, Mr. Hastings is asking the question that no one else has—why?

“I kind of feel like it should be obvious,” she says. “I mean, you do know what happened in December? My ‘challenging life changes’? She puts her last words in air quotes.

But Mr. Hastings keeps on going, still wearing an expression fresh out of a PowerPoint presentation titled “How to Connect with Emotionally Disturbed Minors.”

“When a student like you begins to fail classes,” he says, “and in her junior year no less, which is the most important year for college admissions, we really start to worry about her. We try to figure out how to help her. Emma, we are committed to supporting you. To seeing you through this difficult time. So I ask you, what can we do better?”

Once again, Hastings takes her by surprise. Sarcastically tossing his own words back didn’t ruffle him at all. Emma would almost buy it, if every word out of his mouth wasn’t corporatespeak.

“You can start by not pretending that your concern isme,” Emma says. “It’s Ridgemont’s reputation. What happens to the school’s statistics if one of its students—like me—starts bringing down the collective GPA?”

“That’s absolutely not true,” Mr. Hastings says. “We care about all of our students. We particularly care aboutyou.”

“Mmmm … maybe it’s more like you care about Byron Blake’s daughter,” Emma says doubtfully. She picks at a snag on the sleeve of her sweater.

“I understand that it might be difficult to concentrate on schoolwork right now. I understand that there are … extenuating circumstances,” Mr. Hastings goes on.

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