The stress of having to face the wrath of Laura makes Colleen physically ill and, in an attempt to help, Emma-Jean has an accident that explains the book's title. This idea comes to her later after she has set about finding Vikram a suitable mate in the form of her very understanding English teacher at school.Įmma-Jean's problem solving begins to turn when Laura deduces who was behind the prank and threatens to get both Emma-Jean and Colleen in trouble. At home, Emma-Jean and her mother have taken in a housemate named Vikram, another scientist, who may or may not have affection for Emma-Jean's mom. In no time she is on the case, solving the mystery behind this teacher's rage and setting about to help clear Will as well. In her own subtle way Emma-Jean finds herself fond of one of these basketball players, a boy named Will, who one day she hears being slandered by a spiteful teacher. By the time Laura figures out it was a prank the other girls are already well on their way and Laura is out for blood. The plan is to create an official-looking document from the school inviting Laura to perform at a special ceremony for the basketball team, appealing to Laura's pride and vanity. Emma-Jean sets about to lure Laura away from the trip so that Colleen can be re-invited. Emma-Jean takes in the information and the casual challenge that Colleen utters when she wishes something could be done about the situation.
In the bathroom a girl she is acquainted with named Colleen (she has no friends by her own admission, and none the worse for it either) is having a panic attack because her best friend Kaitlin uninvited her to a weekend ski trip to invite the queen bee Laura along instead.
From her rational viewpoint everything can be studied and puzzled out, all problems have a logical solution. She inherited her mannerisms either genetically or behaviorally from her father, a math professor, who has been dead a few years now. Here though, the longer this book sits with me the more I'm beginning to believe that it very nearly achieved that difficult balance between a perfect anti-climax and a missing last chapter.Įmma-Jean is the deliberate, deceptively simple seventh grader who views life with the cool detachment of a scientist. Generally that would be a correct assumption. You watch and wait for that fuse to reach its powder keg and at the last minute it just stops.įrom that you might assume that I was disappointed or that I didn't like this book. There's a crackling funkiness to this book that hooked me early on, the hissing anticipation of a very long fuse on an unseen firecracker.
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