The Scarlet Letterman

by Cara Lockwood

  “Ew!” I squeal, but he’s got his arms around me, and then he pushes me up against the side of the gym and lands a kiss on my lips.

  And for a second I forget about Heathcliff, Bard, and everything else, and I’m sucked into that kissing-a-cute-boy vortex where time stands still and everything around me freezes. Ryan Kent is a fantastic kisser.

  When he pulls away, I’m a little breathless.

  I glance up at Ryan, and then over his shoulder, to the woods, where there’s a flash of movement. I think it’s Hooded Sweatshirt Guy, but I can’t be sure. Did he see me kissing Ryan? There’s no way to tell. I can’t see anyone near the trees now.

  “Come on,” Ryan says, taking me by the hand and leading me off to the trees.

  “But the rules,” I say, thinking about how we’re not supposed to go into the forest at night. And Heathcliff might be there. And while I’m dying to see him, I have no idea how he’d react to Ryan, who’s at this moment, squeezing my hand.

  “This is our only time together. We’ve got twenty minutes till curfew,” he says, picking up the pace and taking me along. “We probably won’t even be missed for fifteen.”

  Having a boyfriend at a delinquent boarding school is difficult, it’s true. It’s not like we can go on dates, or be alone for extended periods. There are Guardians everywhere, and faculty, too, and so even kissing can be a challenge.

  “But…” I don’t tell him what I’m really thinking. The woods are really seriously creepy. I know now that Bard is purgatory, and that most of the ghosts here don’t really mean us harm, but that doesn’t mean that I’m willing to hang out in the dark woods at night with a full moon over our heads and not get a little wigged out.

  Still, Ryan is determined. He’s got that look on his face that all boys get when they want to get some. And, honestly, I’m not sure what makes me more nervous. The idea of being stuck in the woods, or whatever Ryan is hoping I’m going to do. Like I said before, my friend Liz is the one with the experience. I have no idea what I’m doing.

  It’s so cold, my hands feel numb, but Ryan squeezes my hand and glances back at me as he leads me deeper into the woods. I wonder what’s going to happen. Are we just going to make out? Will I have to do something else? I’m so totally clueless in this department, it’s seriously sad.

  Which is why Liz says I ought to live with the Amish. She acts like I’m the only girl in America who hasn’t given it up yet, but I know there are others out there. I can’t be the only one.

  I tell myself to calm down. Aren’t I crazy about Ryan? And wouldn’t almost any girl in class love to trade places with me?

  Ryan stops now, and turns. He’s got a snowball in his hand. He whirls it at me, and it hits me straight on the forehead.

  “Oh, you’re dead,” I say, grabbing a bunch of snow from the ground and putting together a hapless snowball. I head after him, managing to hit him dead in the face. He laughs, and spits out new snow, even as he grabs a handful of snow on the ground and lunges at me, grabbing me by the waist and pinning me against a tree. As I squirm to get free, he shoves snow down the back of my Bard jacket and shirt collar. The snow is freezing as it drips down my back.

  “Aaaaaaaaack, you jerk!” I squeal at him, but I’m laughing, too. I can’t help it. Ryan is just fun. The anxiety I felt before is completely gone, and now I’m just with Ryan and it feels good.

  Ryan gets a semiserious look on his face and leans in for a kiss. But instead of feeling swept up in the moment, I feel a hard piece of bark jabbing my back.

  “Wait, ow,” I say, pushing against him a little, and he eases his weight off me a little, backing up.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, suddenly worried.

  “It’s just the tree…and…it’s cold…” God, I’m blowing it. I sound as whiny as my kid sister Lindsay.

  “Not the best make-out spot is it?” Ryan asks me.

  I’m glad he agrees.

  “Bard is very short on those,” I say.

  “I guess I’ll have to write an official complaint.” Ryan leans in to kiss me again, but before his lips touch mine, I hear a sudden crack. Like a footstep on a twig.

  “What was that?” I ask him, turning my head toward the noise.

  “What was what?” he asks me, dipping and nuzzling my neck. I hear another cracking sound. It sounds like something very large and very heavy is walking in the forest. I think suddenly of Hooded Sweatshirt Guy. What if that wasn’t Heathcliff at all, but some psycho killer with an ax? There’s another crunching sound. Whatever is out there is getting closer.

  This time Ryan hears it, too. His head snaps up. I try to focus on the trees, but I can’t make out anything but dark blobs.

  The whole scene just smacks of a horror movie. Didn’t Jason kill people who were making out?

  “It’s probably just a bear,” Ryan says.

  “I hope you are kidding,” I say.

  “I am. Bears are hibernating now, aren’t they?” Ryan takes his attention away from the forest and turns back to me. “Come on, we only have a few minutes before Coach H comes looking for me.”

  Ryan starts to lean in, but I put my hand on his chest.

  “I think we’d better go,” I say. I’m not at all sure it’s safe to be here anymore.

  “Come on, one more minute,” Ryan says.

  “Ryan, I’m serious. I think something is out there. I think we need to go.”

  “Where?” he asks, looking out over my head to the forest behind us.

  And that’s when, over Ryan’s shoulder, I see two eyes peering out from the darkness. They’re glowing red.

  “Behind you!” I stutter.

  But when Ryan turns, the eyes disappear.

  “I-I-I saw something,” I say, already moving away from Ryan. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Miranda, come on.”

  “I’m serious,” I say. “I don’t care if you want to stay, but I’m going.”

  And then, almost as if someone else were reading my mind, I hear a high-pitched scream.

  Three

  Ryan and I both start, and then, without saying a word, we both run toward the sound of the scream.

  When we clamber out of the forest, we see Parker, down on the ground, surrounded by two of her clone posse. Parker is looking a little disheveled and clearly out of it.

  “What happened?” Ryan asks, a wrinkle of worry forming in his forehead. I don’t like that wrinkle. And I certainly don’t like that Parker is causing it.

  “She was nearly raped,” says one of the clones.

  “By who?” I ask.

  “Some guy, I didn’t see his face,” Parker sputters. “He cornered me, just here, and he slammed me against the wall…”

  Something about this situation doesn’t feel right to me, and not only the fact that Parker is a known pathological liar. I can’t help but think it’s quite the coincidence that Ryan disappears with me for a make out session, and Parker conveniently gets attacked. Okay, this is evil of me, I know, but it’s Parker we’re talking about. No tactic is beneath her. She’s been coveting Ryan since he came to Bard, and she’d be willing to do anything to get his attention.

  “We should call a Guardian,” I say. “Report him.”

  “No,” Parker says, giving me a sharp look. “I’m okay.”

  Bingo, I think. She doesn’t want to report it to the authorities because maybe it didn’t happen?

  “What did he look like?” Ryan asks, kneeling down so he’s nearly at eye level with Parker.

  “She said she didn’t see his face,” the other clone says.

  “I don’t know,” Parker adds. “He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and it was dark.”

  “Hooded sweatshirt?” I echo, my attention suddenly focused on Parker’s every word. “You’re sure he wore a hooded sweatshirt? Was it blue?”

  “Um, yeah, why? Was he one of your friends?” Parker snaps.

  Ryan and Parker’s clones are now looking at me.

  “
Not exactly,” I say. “I just saw a guy in the gym, wearing a sweatshirt. But lots of guys do.” Could Heathcliff have shoved Parker? He doesn’t like her, that’s for certain, but I didn’t think he would ever try to rape her or anyone else. Would he?

  “Ryan, would you mind walking us back to the dorm? I don’t feel safe out here,” Parker says, rubbing her own arms and shivering.

  Ryan doesn’t even glance at me. “Of course,” he says, helping Parker to her feet. When she stumbles a little, he puts an arm around her. So that only I can see, Parker sends me a smug smile.

  By the end of the week, word about Parker’s attacker circulates like wildfire through the campus. It doesn’t help that on Wednesday one of Parker’s clones also claims to have been attacked by the Hooded Sweatshirt Stalker. By Friday, there’s an all-out security alert on campus for the would-be rapist, and there are posters even, with a drawing of Parker’s attacker, who looks a lot like the Unibomber. So much for Parker insisting on keeping this quiet. I guess she decided to tell the teachers after all.

  “Do you believe the lengths Parker will go to for a little attention?” Hana asks me as we watch her clones hand out fliers on campus.

  “So you don’t think she was attacked, either?” I ask Hana, surprised.

  “Do you?” Hana asks me.

  “I don’t know.” Hana and I watch as Parker is trailed by Ryan, who is helping her carry a box of flyers to the library.

  “She gets attacked while you are sucking face with your boyfriend and then said boyfriend suddenly becomes her twenty-four/seven errand boy and you don’t find that suspicious?”

  “She’s scared to walk around campus without an escort,” I say.

  “So why does the escort have to be your boyfriend?” Hana says.

  “I know.” I sigh. “I don’t know what I can do about it, though. Anytime I bring it up with Ryan, he acts like I’m being insensitive.”

  “Maybe you should remind him that Parker poisoned her own mother. I think her stalker has more to fear from her than vice versa.”

  Before I can reply, the Bard school bus churns and lurches into view at the other end of the snowy campus commons.

  “Watch out,” Hana says. “It’s the driver’s ed class.”

  As we look on, the bus careens into some nearby bushes, nearly hitting two students, before coming to a skidding stop about ten feet from us.

  Behind the wheel is a white-faced Samir, who looks like he just went on a roller coaster without being buckled in. Thompson, our driver’s ed teacher, stumbles out of the bus and declares, “Now that’s what I call crazy mad parallel parking!”

  “You do know that you’re in the middle of the commons?” I ask Thompson.

  He frowns at me. “Details, details,” he murmurs.

  “How can he possibly be qualified to teach driver’s ed?” I whisper to Hana.

  “I don’t know, but I’m taking it in special session next week,” she says. “Aren’t you? Isn’t your birthday in March?”

  “My dad would never sign off on me taking it,” I say. “And they require both parents to give permission.”

  “But you won’t be able to take your driver’s test when you get back home this summer without some driver’s ed.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’ve written to my dad a hundred times. I think he doesn’t even read my letters. But even if he did, I seriously doubt he’d give me permission. First of all, I totaled his car. And second, the man doesn’t like me.”

  “That’s just because you’re the only one who calls him on his BS,” Hana says.

  “Exactly. And there’s so much of it. I mean, the way he goes through wives, he should just rent his next spouse from Blockbuster. It’ll save him all those settlement fees,” I say. Dad left my mom, sister, and me for his secretary five years ago. He’s divorced and remarried since then. As far as I’m concerned, he’s doing his best to pretend that I, his firstborn, don’t exist.

  “Yo! Heathcliff!” I hear someone behind us call. Without thinking, I whip around.

  I find myself searching frantically for the tall, broad, and brooding figure of Heathcliff, but instead I just see two skater types trying to do jumping tricks on the stairwell near the library sans skateboards, using only the soles of their tennis shoes.

  “Looking for someone?” Hana asks, eyeing me with some suspicion.

  I shake my head just as the bell tower tolls, signaling the end of lunch. “I’ve got to go see Ms. W,” I say, leaving Hana standing near the bus.

  On my way to my counseling session, I walk close to the library, near where the skater types are flinging themselves off the railings.

  “Hey,” I ask the one who sails into the air and lands on bended knee in front of the stairs. His hair is dyed red, with long bangs in front and a cropped, shaved cut in back. “Do you know Heathcliff?”

  “Do we know him? Dude — everyone knows him,” the skater says.

  Heathcliff’s reputation at Bard was made last semester when he single-handedly took down three Bard Guardians, the glorified mall security guards that keep us delinquents in line. Heathcliff knocked out three of them in the cafeteria and escaped in front of nearly the entire school. In his absence, his legend has only grown, and he’s about to join the league of Campus Legends, which include Kate Shaw’s Ghost and the Haunted Library.

  “But have you seen him? I mean, lately?”

  He looks at me as if I’ve taken one too many bong hits.

  “But you called his name?”

  “Dude, that’s a mad move, ‘the Heathcliff,’ ” he says. “I’ll show you.” He rears up, jumps on the staircase railing, and slides down it like he’s skating, and then does a flip at the end, landing on his feet at the bottom of the stairs.

  “That, dude, is a ‘Yo! Heathcliff.’ ”

  “So you haven’t seen him?” I can’t help but be disappointed.

  “No,” he says, shaking his head. “You heard the rumor, right? Headmaster sent him to juvie.”

  That’s one rumor that I know isn’t true. You can’t send a fictional character to juvenile detention. But where is he? And why is he staying away from me? Maybe if I knew what had happened to him, then I wouldn’t be so obsessed with him.

  Four

  “Thinking about Heathcliff?” Ms. W asks me, zeroing in on my thoughts with uncanny precision like she always does. I’m sitting in her office where I’ve appeared for my monthly counseling session, during which we normally talk about how I feel about my complicated relationship with my absentee dad. But lately we’ve been talking more and more about Heathcliff and about my fictional ancestor and about coping with that.

  “Is it that obvious?” I ask her.

  “It was the book that clued me in,” Ms. W says, nodding toward my backpack, where my dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights is sticking out. “You’re never without it. How many times have you read it now?”

  I shrug. “A couple,” I say, although it was probably closer to a dozen. The book is my only insight into Heathcliff. I can’t decide if he’s a good person or a bad person, but the book is all I have to explain him.

  “You know, it’s okay that you miss him,” Ms. W says.

  “It is?” I ask, surprised. “I thought you hated him.”

  “I don’t hate him. I don’t think he’s good for you, but I don’t hate him. I think he belongs in his world and not ours. I do see that the two of you had a strong connection.”

  “You think we have a strong connection?”

  “Had, Miranda. Not have,” Ms. W corrects. “It’s natural for you to feel strongly about someone who saved your life. He put himself in danger to rescue you more than once, and you’re likely to feel a sense of obligation. But don’t confuse that sense of obligation with something deeper than that.”

  “But why —” I start, and then stop myself. I was going to ask her why, if he was willing to risk his life to save me, now he didn’t seem to want to talk to me. I can’t believe I almost blurted out the sec
ret that Heathcliff was still alive in this world.

  “Why what?”

  Quickly, I try to cover up my near mistake. “Why does he have to stay in Wuthering Heights?”

  “You know he can’t live in this world permanently,” Ms. W says. “If he did, he’d disappear from Wuthering Heights, and think about all the people who would miss knowing him. In fact, the entire book might disappear forever without him in it.”

  “I know,” I say, having heard this before. “And having him here makes our dimensions unstable, I know, but if my great-great-great-grandmother managed to live in our world her whole life…”

  “Elizabeth Linton, the fictional daughter of Catherine and your ancestor, was a minor character in the book, and her absence is not missed in the story,” Ms. W tells me curtly. “By the time you read the book, she was completely gone from it, and that was fine. Her twin sister Catherine lived on in the book and moves the story forward. But without Heathcliff, there is no Wuthering Heights. We don’t know what would happen if a major character managed to make the leap from fiction to reality. It could be catastrophic.”

  “…and bring on the Apocalypse?” Everything around here seems to cause the end of the world.

  “Maybe,” Ms. W says, evasive. “We don’t know for sure.”

  I sigh, frustrated.

  “Miranda, there’s something else we need to talk about,” Ms. W says, her eyes darting back and forth as if she’s about to tell me something she shouldn’t. She nods at the door and it closes with a click. I’m still not sure about all her ghost powers, but it appears they include walking through walls and moving objects with her mind. It’s not something I think I’ll ever quite get used to.

  “The faculty are concerned about you,” she says, her voice at a low-pitched whisper. “You and your friends. They don’t like the idea of students knowing about…us and about…the vault.”

  The vault is the special room beneath the library where all of Bard’s Books with Powers are kept. If taken from the vault, characters from them can come to life. Like Heathcliff, my great-great-great-grandma, or not so nice ones, like Dracula or Frankenstein. They also hold the souls of the faculty ghosts, and if you destroy the books, you destroy the teachers.