Page 8 of Emma on Fire

“I apologize, sir,” he said, “but regardless of the parameters of the assignment or how riveting the presentation may have been, what I’m concerned about here is the intent behind Emma’s essay. Especially in light of the present circumstances and her situation—”

“Which circumstances exactly?”

Hastings can’t bring himself to speak of the deaths in the Blake family. He doesn’t want to say “cancer.” He already said “suicide” once. Why must everyone in the Blake family be so intent on making others uncomfortable?

“Emma’s grades have been slipping,” he finally says, trying to steer the conversation toward something Byron might actually care about—winning.

“She’s the smartest one you’ve got at that school,” Blake says, and Hastings can hear the pride in his voice.

“Emma is extremely intelligent, yes. But if she doesn’t do the work, she doesn’t get the grade.”

“It sounds to me like she’s doing the work, but you WASPy graspers don’t approve of it.”

“Now Mr. Blake, let’s be civil—”

“Thisisme being civil.”

Hastings sighs. Without thinking, he glances down at Emma’s essay again.

During the burning, my muscles will contract, and this will cause my joints to flex. My hands may pull up into a boxer’s pose…

“English is not the only area of concern, frankly,” Hastings says. “But much more important than Emma’s GPA is her mental health.”

My bones will survive the fire when all other soft tissues have burned away. But they will likely exhibit U-shaped fractures…

“Emma’s fine. She’s strong. Steady,” Blake insists.

“She’s strong, yes, of course, but even strong people get tired. Right now she may need some extra support.” Hastings stares out the window at the green lawn, now dotted with students eating lunch. Emma isn’t among them. “We think it would be best if you could come to the school tomorrow. Maybe check in with her. Take her out to dinner. Have some family time.”

Have what’s-left-of-your-family time,he adds silently.

“I’m in the middle of a trial,” Blake says. “It’s a huge case. Lives are at stake.”

Hastings isn’t bold enough to suggest that a life might be at stake here too, but what Byron said about his own daughter is exactly the problem. She is steady. And she’s clearly set her course.

“Sir,” he says, “Ridgemont cares deeply about its student body. Exceptional students like Emma—”

“Spare me,” Blake says. “I lip-service my clients all day, I know what bullshit smells like—and sounds like.”

Bullshit.This man’s daughter has announced her intention to set herself on fire, and he wants to argue with Hastings about whether or notHastingsactually cares about Emma.

“Sir,” Hastings tries again, not ready to give up quite yet, even if he is irritating their largest donor. “The pressure to do well can be overwhelming, especially when one is struggling with—”

“It was schoolwork. Nothing more than that. Emma was just pushing the envelope. That’s what she does. That’s what I taught her to do.”

And with that, Blake hangs up.

CHAPTER 6

EMMA PACES BACK and forth across a square of moonlight on the dorm room floor. It’s past midnight. She barely paid attention in her last class of the day, Philosophy and Ethics, but a line from the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is stuck in her head anyway. “Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world,” he wrote.

Emma’s interpretation of this is simple: If a person can’t picture something happening in their mind, they think that it can’t actually happen in real life.

That person would be wrong, of course, and Emma is living proof of it. She’d never imagined a world where she lost her family like dominoes, one after the other. But here she is.

Twelve steps to the east wall, twelve steps back to the west. Emma’s probably walked a mile just inside her dorm room tonight, while her roommate, Olivia, snores under a flowered comforter. Olivia hasn’t heard anything about Emma’s essay yet, and Emma hasn’t told her about getting marched into Hastings’s office.

If Emma couldn’t imagine things happening in real life, Olivia is an example of someone who can’t distinguish between her real life and her online one. The whole campus is buzzing about Emma’s morning exploits, but Olivia’s most important contacts aren’t on campus—they are her followers and subscribers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, all feeders for her OnlyFans, which she says she’s only doing in order to be able to afford Yale.

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