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MR. MONTGOMERY’S LONG fingers keep their hold on Emma’s biceps as he guides her down the hall, out the door, and across the quad to the administration building.

With its gray stone facade softened by climbing ivy and purple wisteria, Pemberly Hall looks like an English manor house. Like the setting of a romance novel or a cozy mystery—the kind of books Emma’s mother used to devour when she thought no one was looking.

But there’s nothing romantic or mysterious about being marched to the headmaster’s office by a furious AP English teacher.

They stop in front of the desk of the headmaster’s assistant, Fiona Dundy.

On the wall behind her hangs a poster that reads E DISCERE .

S CIRE . A GERE . V INCERE . It’s Ridgemont’s motto, and it means “Study. Know. Act. Win .”

Of course winning would be the ultimate goal of any Ridgemont graduate, and if Emma had been allowed to finish her essay, Mr. Montgomery would understand why her goal of self-immolation would ultimately be a win—maybe not for her, but for the world.

Ms. Dundy smiles brightly and says, “Oh, hello, sorry, Mr. Hastings is in a meeting.”

Her eyes slide to Emma, the sheen of her irises shifting into a slightly glazed look, the one that all the staff greet Emma with now. It is a careful look, one designed to measure the impact—or possibly repercussions—of speaking to Emma Blake.

But then her gaze shifts to Mr. Montgomery’s hand, still holding Emma’s upper arm tightly. Ms. Dundy’s mouth tightens, and Mr. Montgomery releases her.

“I don’t mean to be so brusque,” Mr. Montgomery says. “But I am very concerned about Emma.”

“Correction,” Emma speaks up. “He’s concerned about inappropriateness, not me. Not really.”

“You are inappropriate,” Montgomery snaps, spinning back to her.

“What you’re seeing now is not an example of how our staff typically speaks to students,” a deep voice says, and the English teacher goes pale.

Emma turns to see the headmaster.

Peregrine “Perry” Hastings is standing in the doorway of his office, flanked by a man and woman who—judging by their expensive clothes and hopeful expressions—have come to explore the possibility of their precious child attending Ridgemont Academy.

“I wouldn’t be overly concerned about how staff speak to students here,” Emma informs them. “Less than ten percent of applicants get into Ridgemont. But I’m sure you can find another overpriced school where free thought and expression are stifled.”

“Emma!” Mr. Hastings says sharply, then turns to the parents. “I’m so sorry. I apologize for the behavior of both Ms. Blake and Mr. Montgomery. Unfortunately, Emma has been going through some challenging life changes—”

Emma snorts. “Talk about a descriptive essay.”

As Mr. Hastings politely ushers Mom and Dad back into the reception area, Emma does have to give him some credit. He didn’t provide any sort of excuse for her English teacher’s behavior—only hers. A seed of hope blooms inside her chest. Maybe there’s a chance the headmaster will hear her out.

But Mr. Hastings’s politeness vanishes the instant the door shuts behind the visiting parents. “You two. Inside. Now.” He snaps his fingers in a way that must have been taught at an Ivy League school back in his day … but only to the male students, of course.

Inside his office, Emma drops into a vacated club chair. Mr. Montgomery remains standing, shifting from foot to foot in agitation and running his hand through his thick blondish hair. Mr. Hastings sits behind his mahogany desk, his stern gaze focused on Emma’s English teacher.

“What could possibly have you so agitated as to behave that way in front of prospective parents?”

“Basically, I did my homework really, really well,” Emma pipes up.

“Ms. Blake read an extremely inappropriate and upsetting essay to my class just now,” Mr. Montgomery says, shooting her a hard look. “I don’t know who to be worried about more—her or the rest of the students, who are in a state of shock.”

“Better than being in a state of slumber,” Emma mutters. “Which is where they were before I started reading.”

Mr. Hastings pushes his pale, bushy eyebrows together. There is far more hair on his forehead than above it. “What was the subject matter?”

“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 possible given her concern for the lack of 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 not not enjoying it either.

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

The way he adds this particular detail—putting the emphasis on Ridgemont Academy instead of on her —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 to burn 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 of self-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 is me,” 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 about you .”

“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.

“That’s one way to put it,” Emma says. The snag becomes a small hole.

“A death in the family is a terrible thing. And when it’s so recent—well, I understand that you are deep, deep in the grieving process.”

Anger floods Emma’s body, a chewed fingernail catching on the hole in her sweater. “You can’t even say the word,” she says. “I’m going through ‘challenging life changes,’ with ‘extenuating circumstances.’ If you can’t say the word, how can you possibly understand how I feel?”

Hastings closes his eyes. It looks to Emma like he’s trying to gather his strength. Then his eyes open with a snap, and he stares right at her. “Suicide,” he says, “is the tragedy of the greatest proportions.”

There. He said it. She didn’t think he would. Mr. Hastings keeps swinging at her pitches. And even though she made him do it, it still hits her like a gut punch.

“When people are grieving,” Mr. Hastings goes on, “they sometimes have very dark thoughts. But these must remain thoughts only. I cannot have you going around talking about setting yourself on fire, Emma Blake. There are other ways to express your sadness. And there are far better ways to process it. Do you understand me?”

What Emma now understands is that Mr. Hastings doesn’t think she’s serious about actually doing it. He thinks she’s having “thoughts only,” as a mean to “express her sadness.”

She’s about to tell him how wrong he is when it occurs to her that his ignorance could be to her advantage. The less Mr. Hastings knows about her plans, the harder it will be for him to stop them.