Page 24 of Emma on Fire

Emma says, “Where am I supposed to start?”

Claire was everything to me.

“How about your first memory of her.”

“Why?”

“You asked where you were supposed to start. The beginning seems like a good place.”

Emma sighs. Fine. She’ll play the game. She’ll dust off the memory. Offer it up like a present no one really wants. Jump through the hoops Lori wants her to jump through.

“Okay. I was three years old. Claire had just turnedeleven, and for her birthday, my parents had this giant play structure built in our backyard,” she says. “It had a tower, swings, slides, a climbing wall—everything. Claire was up in the tower with our neighbor, and I was supposed to be inside with the nanny. But I’d snuck out through the dog door, and I was standing underneath the tower, crying because I wanted to play with my sister. As soon as Claire heard me, she jumped out of the tower window and scooped me up in her arms. She put me in the baby swing and pushed me back and forth until I was screaming with laughter.”

Emma grabs a tissue from Lori’s coffee table. If she can’t stop herself from crying, at least she can dry the tears before they fall. “It wasn’t until later that night that anyone figured out she’d fractured her foot.” Her eyes sting. “That was the kind of person Claire was. She took care of people. She looked out for me especially. I could always follow her lead.” Emma wads up the tissue and flings it to the floor. “And now she’s gone forever, and there’s no one to tell me what to do or where to go or … I don’t even know.”

Lori hands Emma another tissue. “We don’t want you to go anywhere,” she says. “We want you to stay with us. We want to help you feel better. Do you think that might be possible?”

Emma runs her fingers through her short black hair. “I don’t know that either,” she says.

No fucking way,she thinks.Because you still haven’t asked me why.

CHAPTER 14

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

Emma lies motionless on her bed.

Knock knock.

“Emma?”

Emma turns her face toward the door but otherwise doesn’t move.

“Emma, I know you’re in there. Olivia told me. It’s Jade.”

“And Celia.”

Knock.

Knock.

Emma watches as the doorknob turns and the door swings inward to reveal two girls who are still trying to be her friends. They’re in their pajamas, with dewy, fresh-scrubbed faces. Celia is tall and stocky and blond.Jade is tiny and thin and raven-haired. Celia stands nervously on the lavender shag rug that Olivia brought back after winter break—claiming that all the influencers had one now—but Jade just glides right in, smelling like skin cream and toothpaste.

“Hey you,” she says in her charming accent. She’s London born and raised, but her mother is an American Ridgemont alum. “God, this rug is minging, don’t you think? It looks like unicorn vomit.”

“I like it,” Celia says, digging a toe into it. “It’s soft.”

She looks like she’d like to hide under it, Emma thinks. Like she’d rather look at unicorn vomit than at Emma’s face. Which, given the length of time since Emma’s bathed, might be understandable.

Jade flips her glossy black hair over her shoulder. “Celia’s rank taste aside,” she says, “we’re sorry to barge in. You weren’t asleep, were you?”

Sleep, what is sleep?“No,” Emma says. “I was just, uh, resting.”

Staring at the ceiling and checking the Doomsday Clock.

She tries to smile at them, but her face feels stiff and weird. She’s touched they came to check in on her, but she wishes they hadn’t bothered. They’re going to do the same thing Lori did—ask her if she wants to talk, then press her into talking, then redirect the conversation to all the wrong things. If it were her birthday and she had a cake withseventeen candles on it, she’d blow them out and wish for everyone to leave her the hell alone.

“Can we sit?” Jade says, but she’s already pulling out Emma’s desk chair. Celia sinks into Olivia’s.

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