Page 48 of Emma on Fire

CHAPTER 36

THE GAS CAN slams against Emma’s back all the way to the intersection, her backpack gurgling. She hangs a left on Poplar Street, and then she finally slows down and tries to catch her breath. An old man watering his pansies looks disapprovingly at her. She’s sweaty and wild-eyed, and suddenly she feels like an idiot. Did she really think the cashier was going tochaseher? He probably hasn’t run since the day he discovered Nintendo, and anyway, he couldn’t leave the Slim Jims and the beer cases unattended. All he could do was shout after her,I know you!

And isn’t that the point? Two YouTube videos, seen millions of times, and now she’s a celebrity in Nowheresville, New Hampshire, and probably everywhere else people have TikTok and 5G. Her message has exploded. She’s officiallygone viral. She should feel triumphant. But instead she feels scared. There’s a flickering of emotion running under her skin. She wanted an audience, now she has one.

She can’t let them down.

Thankfully no one at the Creekside Motel has any idea about Emma on Fire, which is how she’s able to rent a room with Claire’s ID (“Jocelyn Peters”) and $400 in cash as a security deposit.

“Ice is between rooms fifteen and sixteen, hon,” says the old lady at the front desk, smiling sweetly with tobacco-stained teeth. “Right next to the vending machine.”

“Thanks.”

Emma already knows where the ice is. Byron, when he visited Claire at all, refused to spend the night, saying that the Wi-Fi at Creekside was too slow. But her mom was charmed by the small rooms painted a faded pink. She enjoyed making an adventure of staying overnight, bringing along a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild and sparkling cider for Emma. She’d pour the drinks into the motel’s little plastic cups and make a toast.

“Quiet time after ten,” the woman says. She narrows her eyes. “And no guests.”

“You got it,” Emma says, taking the key. She knows at least six Ridgemont students who lost their virginity at the Creekside. Her plans don’t include that, not by a long shot.

Her room’s decor is familiar. Tossing her backpack ontothe bed, she goes into the tiny bathroom, strips off her clothes, and climbs into the shower. She runs the water so hot, it feels like her skin’s going to blister. She has to hold her injured arm out of the way, because hot water on a burn feels like molten lava.

After her shower, Emma sits on the bed and takes out her phone. Her home screen is nothing but notifications. Ten messages from Jade. Eight from Thomas. Four missed calls from a Ridgemont number. Emma ignores them all. Instead she opens TikTok and searches #emmaonfire.

There are thousands of videos. Her words have become sound bites for lip-syncers. “We keep cramming more and more people onto the planet, and guess what,” mouths a baby Goth with a septum piercing, “news flash, you guys—itisn’t getting any bigger.” Other people post reaction videos or offer up depressing facts of their own. “Human sperm counts have fallen by fifty percent in the last fifty years,” shouts a middle-aged man in a baseball cap. “It’s because we’re polluted, man! Soon we won’t even be able to make more humans!” A teenage guy from Ottawa has autotuned her voice and put it to a beat.

Some people talk about how right she is, howbrave,while others claim her videos are just a desperate cry for attention. Which is ironic, Emma thinks, because the entire TikTok platform is a cry for attention. One video—six million views—puts her face on a marshmallow that’s beingroasted over a campfire. There’s even a dance in which people of all ages do a series of haunting, flickering hand movements set to a remix of the chorus of “I’m On Fire.”

Emma lets her phone drop to the floor and falls backward on the flowered comforter.You’re supposed to be talking about the world’s problems!she wants to scream.You’re not supposed to be dancing to a conveniently relevant Bruce Springsteen song or roasting my face on a fucking Jet-Puffed!

How did her message get so distorted?

After a while she grabs her phone again. Of course the stupid reactions are the ones she saw first—they’re the lowest common denominator. Surely somewhere out there, someone is taking her intentions seriously? She has to find out.

Another text comes in. It’s from a number she doesn’t know, but for some reason she opens it. There’s no message, just a cell phone video. A bunch of kids outside a high school wave signs and chant. The sound quality’s terrible, so she has to watch it a few times before she understands what they’re saying.

Save Emma. Save the world. Save Emma. Save the world.

CHAPTER 37

THEY DON’T GET it either. Emma doesn’t want to be “saved.”

But at least they’ve got the world part right.Yes, try to save the world,she thinks.I’ll be cheering for you from … wherever I am.

Protests, texts this unknown person.Marches. Happening because of *you.*

Emma puts her phone back on the bedside table.Thisis what she wanted. She feels charged now. Electric. She knows she’s making a difference. Her death, unlike Claire’s, will mean something.

So now she can do what? Relax?

How is a person supposed to relax on the last night of their life?

The suicide rate for people ages twenty to twenty-four increased 63 percent from 2001 through 2021.

The global rich have more than they could ever consume, while a billion people struggle to get enough to eat.

She reaches for the remote. She’ll find a stupid movie and stare at it until her brain goes numb. But instead her attention gets pulled to the fake watercolor on the wall, which shows a little yellow cottage beside a white picket fence. On the other side of the fence, six puffy sheep dot a bright green meadow.

She realizes that she’s in the same room she shared with her mother when they came for Claire’s graduation.

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