Emily Beam finds herself in a boarding school in Amherst, MA in the middle of the winter. Emily's boyfriend, Paul, recently killed himself in her old school library. Her parents did not want to subject the girl to her peers' whispers and stares.

Luckily, Emily gets paired with roommate, K. T., someone she likes to spend time with. K. T. shows Emily the ropes and looks out for her. They have one key similarity that binds them together: a sibling of K. T.'s committed suicide a couple of years ago. 

Emily Beam is obsessed with the poet, Emily Dickinson. Beam loves to write poetry, and the words for them dance through her head. The two Emilys even share their birthday and hair color. The poems Beam writes express her ideas about Paul, Paul's sister, Carey, other people in her life, and the pain and uncertainty that she feels about her own situation.

And We Stay by Jenny Hubbard, 2014

I liked writing poetry as a teen and a young adult. I enjoyed learning about the boarding school experience from this book.

• Jenny Hubbard's web site
• Books about suicide
• Books about school shootings