The Scarlet Letterman

by Cara Lockwood

  I move closer to the bookcase and try pulling down several books. None of them opens the door.

  “You sure that’s how he opened it?” Hana asks me.

  “I thought so, but it’s not working now.”

  “Maybe you have to be missing a head to be granted entrance to the secret passageway.”

  “Maybe,” I say, growing frustrated that I can’t make the bookcase move. Eventually I give up. “So what do we do now? About Ms. W and Coach H?” I ask her.

  “I hate to say this, but I think we need to call a meeting of the LITs.”

  We meet Blade and Samir on the grass commons in front of the boys’ dorm. Just this week the snow has melted, and patches of brown and yellow grass are now visible in the sun.

  “This better be good, because it’s freezing out here,” Samir says, shivering. Samir has low cold tolerance. Even though the sun is out, and the icicles from the trees are melting steadily, he still would rather be inside with hot cocoa.

  “First order of business, Miranda is back in the LIT fold,” Hana says.

  “How can you decide that? We have to put it to a vote,” Blade says.

  “Can we just get on with it?” Samir cries, sounding cranky. “Did I mention I am freezing here? What is it — negative twenty out here?”

  “Okay, fine, we’ll skip the voting,” Blade says. “It’s good to have you back,” she adds.

  “Are we going to all kiss Miranda’s butt, or are we going to get down to business?” Samir asks. When I give him a sharp look, he adds, “What? I just have a low cold tolerance. You know I love you — in a strictly sexual way.”

  “Go ahead,” Hana says, looking at me.

  I tell them what I know so far, everything about the Headless Sweatshirt Stalker, Ms. W’s disappearance, and the thing that might be a cougar with stripes roaming around campus.

  “Cougars don’t come with stripes,” Blade points out.

  “I’m not sure if that’s what I saw, but it looked like it,” I say.

  “We also found a secret passageway in Ms. W’s room,” Hana adds. “Headless Sweatshirt Guy made his escape through it.”

  “Secret passageway! I knew it,” Blade says.

  Hana stares at her.

  “What? I mean, this place screams out for secret passageways,” she adds.

  “We couldn’t figure out how to open it, though. And anyway, we have more clues,” I add, showing them the scraps of paper. “I’ve found these in both Coach H and Ms. W’s rooms. And basically wherever Headless Sweatshirt Guy turned up. They have to mean something.”

  “But what?” Blade asks.

  “I don’t know. Something. I think that’s an ear,” I say, pointing to the one with a triangle.

  “Wait a second,” Blade says. She rips a piece of notebook paper out of her spiral notebook and puts it on the grass in front of us. She places the pieces on top of the paper and then arranges them one way, and then another. With a black marker, she draws the missing lines.

  “It’s a tiger,” I exclaim, suddenly seeing the picture come into focus. “So that is what I saw then. It’s not a cougar at all. It’s a tiger. I thought it could be, but I just thought it was too far-fetched.”

  “Are there lions and bears, too?” Samir jokes.

  “You’re sure it’s a tiger?” Hana asks. “I mean, what’s a tiger doing at Bard?”

  “It’s Bard. Do we need a good reason?” Blade asks.

  “Good point.”

  “Maybe these are clues to who is messing with the faculty,” I say.

  “Why would someone deliberately leave clues? And besides, we already know who the culprit is, don’t we? It’s Heathcliff.” Hana glares at me, as if daring me to contradict her.

  “But he’s not the Hooded Sweatshirt Stalker,” I say.

  “Correction — Headless Stalker. But maybe he is, after all,” Hana says. “You know that he’s not very powerful now that Wuthering Heights has been destroyed. Maybe he’s fading away, like the invisible man.”

  “I just don’t think it’s him,” I say, not bothering to volunteer the fact that I have a part of a page from that book in the locket around my neck. “I can’t explain it more than that.”

  “I can in three words,” Hana says. “Bad-boy mojo.”

  “Can we get back to the tiger? Hel-lo!” Blade says, tapping her piece of paper.

  Hana sighs. “Fine. Well, assuming that is a tiger, there are a few of them in literature. There’s the tiger Shere Khan in Kipling’s The Jungle Book. There’s also a tiger in Winnie-the-Pooh.”

  “Christopher Robin at Bard? Even in this place that sounds wacky,” I say.

  “Technically, the author of Winnie-the-Pooh is A. A. Milne,” Hana says. “And this tiger doesn’t look like the friendly, hyperactive Tigger, does it?”

  “No, it definitely doesn’t,” I say. We only have a few pieces of it, but it looks like a tiger of the more fierce variety. “Who else? Is there a poem, maybe? Or some kind of adventure story…”

  “Wait,” Hana says, as if getting an idea. “There is a poem about a tiger. A famous one. Tyger with a Y. ‘Tyger, Tyger burning bright…’ But I can’t remember the rest. But it’s by Blake. Yeah, William Blake.”

  “The same crazy Blake we have for theology class?” I ask. “You don’t think that’s a little bit of a coincidence?”

  “Well, he is the only poet I can think of who was also an illustrator,” Hana says. “He could’ve drawn this. He illustrated his own books of poetry, as well as Dante’s Inferno.”

  “He has to be involved.”

  “Maybe,” Hana says. “Or maybe Heathcliff is trying to frame him.”

  “You know, I’m not even going to try to defend him. Will this prove to you that I’m overcoming the bad-boy mojo?”

  “It’s a start,” Hana says. “Come on, let’s find Blake.”

  Seventeen

  We find Blake erasing the board in his classroom, talking to himself. Correction: talking to his imaginary friend, the angel Gabriele. When we show him the pieces of the drawing, he frowns.

  “Why, yes, this is one of my drawings, but where did you find it? I threw it away some time ago, which is why it’s in pieces.”

  Hana shoots me a knowing glance. This is her way of telling me that Heathcliff is framing Blake.

  “Can you tell us what the tiger means?” Hana asks him.

  “Well, Gabriele knows the answer to that one,” Blake says, starring out into the middle of the classroom to the spot, I assume, where his hallucination is standing, or floating, or whatever angels do.

  Samir, a puzzled look on his face, glances to the middle of the room and then back to Blake.

  “You see, I wrote the poem to prove how powerful God is. You see, God created the lamb, but God also created the tiger. Imagine the power of someone who would create something as strong and fierce as a tiger. I think, by the very fact that tigers exist, there is proof of an all-powerful God.”

  “Do you know anything about Coach H and Ms. W?” Hana asks Blake.

  “I’m afraid, as a faculty member, I cannot talk about faculty business,” Blake says. “But Gabriele can help you.”

  Samir looks at the empty spot in the room. “Gabriele can help us?” He sounds skeptical.

  “Gabriele can show you the way.” Blake points to one of the student desks in the classroom. There’s a book laying on top of it. Hana picks it up and shows it to me. It says Bard Academy Faculty Handbook.

  “What’s this?” I ask Blake.

  “A little heavenly illumination,” Blake says.

  “Wow, this is weird,” Hana says as she flips through the book’s heavy parchment paper while we walk back to our respective dorms. “It’s like a rules and regulations book for ghosts. Listen to this,” Hana says as she begins to read from the book. “ ‘The living shall not know about the dead. Knowledge of life after death could cause irrevocable damage to the psyche of the living.’ ”

  “I guess we’re damaged
goods then,” Samir says.

  “As if that weren’t already obvious,” I say.

  “Are you going to hog that book the entire time, or actually let someone else see it?” Blade cries. She’s completely put out that Hana has in her possession a book of the undead and isn’t sharing.

  “Wait, listen to this, guys,” Hana says, ignoring Blade. “According to this, teachers aren’t allowed to use their ghost powers in front of the living. Not even to save their lives.”

  “I guess Coach H and Ms. W broke those rules pretty soundly,” Samir says.

  I nod. Last semester they pretty much let it all hang out when they were trying to corner Dracula. It’s the main reason we found out who they really are.

  “Maybe something else is going on here. Something that maybe doesn’t have to do with Heathcliff,” Hana muses out loud. “What if the faculty are punishing their own? This handbook lists a number of punishments for breaking the rules, including banishment.”

  “You think Coach H and Ms. W are being punished for helping us last semester? For showing us their powers in order to save us?”

  “But why did they wait so long? Why now?” Blade asks. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “I don’t know, but I do know that I don’t think we’re supposed to have this book,” Hana says. “It’s like a handbook for the dead.”

  “Which is exactly why I should be the one reading it,” Blade says.

  “Just wait a second — you’ll get your turn,” Hana barks. Hana reads a bit more as we walk along. “Wait, there’s a whole section here about dealing with fictional characters. Apparently, it’s not all that uncommon for them to get loose. You can also conjure them up, too.”

  “We could summon more of your family,” Samir teases.

  “Funny — as in not,” I say. “What about the ‘end of the world’ stuff?”

  Hana flips through a couple more pages. “I don’t know about end of the world, but it does say something here about a ‘delicate balance’ between the dimensions.”

  The bell above the chapel tolls, signaling the end of the academic day and the start of extracurricular time.

  “Crap!” I exclaim, remembering my schedule. “I’m late for newspaper.”

  “Go, we’ll meet up with you later,” Hana says, her nose deep in the book.

  Newspaper, one of my mandatory extracurricular activities, is housed in a tiny office at the back of the library, where we put together stories. While most of the campus is completely computerless, here, we actually have two old PCs that are used to lay out the newspaper. These computers, however, aren’t hooked up to the Internet, so there won’t be any undue distractions from our studies. MySpace is a forbidden thing here. Given that most of the faculty are more than 150 years old, it’s no surprise that they’re leery of computers. Imagine your grandma’s techphobia times a thousand.

  The editor of the newspaper is a guy named Chad Perkins. He’s kind of a hard-core dork in an overtly greedy kind of way. At his old school, he’d been the ringleader of a scam to sell papers and old exams. Chad’s very smart, but apparently not smart enough to get away with it. He claims the exams-for-cash scam was just about earning enough money to get him more SAT prep courses. He’s obsessed with going to Wharton, the business school at Penn, where Donald Trump went. That’s why I imagine one day he’ll have a cheesy reality TV show and his own helicopter.

  “You’re late,” Chad says to me when I walk through the door. Chad is a stickler for time. He’s also about four inches shorter than I am, so he can’t really intimidate me too much.

  “I know, sorry — biology class.”

  “That’s what that smell is,” he says, waving his arm in front of his face.

  “Funny,” I say. I pick up the latest copy of the Bard Weekly, and see that Parker has grabbed the front-page headline again with her “campaign against the campus stalker” story. Also on the front page is a small story about sightings of a big cougar around campus. I read the story carefully, but there’s nothing in it that I don’t already know. And besides, I’m pretty sure now it’s a tiger, not a cougar, that’s on the loose.

  “Do you fact-check these at all?” I ask him, holding up the paper.

  “As little as possible,” Chad says. “By the way, I’ve got some bad news for you, sweetheart.”

  “What is it?”

  “Derek Mann’s editorial column,” he says, nodding toward the computer screen in front of him. He hits PRINT and sends the copy to the printer near his desk.

  “Wait — Derek can write?” I joke. It’s a well-known fact that most of the jocks at this school aren’t known for their literary talents. All except Ryan, who happens to be a straight-A student.

  “It’s his guest column. He’s written about you.”

  “He’s WHAT?” I shout, snatching the paper from the printer.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says.

  Chad is right. Derek has written a column about me. An entire column. And it’s about…abstinence.

  That’s right. Derek Mann, Bard’s most famous mlut, has written a column about abstinence. He writes that most adolescents’ problems can be found in their “straying” from “God’s will.”

  Since when is Derek Mann religious?

  He actually names me by name and calls me an “unfortunate sinner” and a “descendant of Mary Magdalene.”

  “Is this some sort of joke?”

  “No joke. That’s his submission. He says he’s found God.”

  The article says he’s going to “turn away from his sinful past” and embrace a new, “sinless” future, and he implores all other Bard students to do the same. In fact, he asks for everyone to start wearing abstinence bracelets, to show their commitment to no sex before marriage. The end of the article asks me to be the first to commit by wearing the bracelet. It’s a yellow rubber bracelet with a red A on it for Abstinence.

  I can’t believe this. I mean, Ryan said he was going to talk to Derek, but I didn’t think that involved becoming born-again.

  “I’m sorry you’re in it, but people are going to want to read this issue,” Chad says. “Derek Mann embracing abstinence? This will be the most-read issue of the Bard Weekly, ever.”

  “Chad, you can’t seriously run this article.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one, it’s libelous. Against me.”

  “Sweetheart, I know this looks bad for you, but it’s an opinion column, and technically he doesn’t say anything bad about you. He just asks you to join his abstinence pledge.”

  “But he implies that I’m as big a slut as he is. He’s playing on the fact that everyone’s heard the rumors. You’ve got to nix this story.”

  “I can only do that on one condition,” Chad says. “You fess up to the rumors. Write a first-person column about what happened.”

  “But the rumors aren’t true,” I say, for the hundredth time. “I can’t write a column about what I don’t know. It would be the shortest column you’ve ever printed. It would only have two words: nothing happened.”

  “Do you have a bigger story for me?” he asks evenly.

  “I saw our Hooded Sweatshirt Stalker,” I say.

  “Did you see his face?”

  He’s got me there.

  “Er, not exactly.”

  “Well, then, I guess I’ve got no choice but to run with Derek’s then.”

  Chad gives me his best Donald Trump sleaze smile.

  Eighteen

  “Just what did you tell Derek?” I ask Ryan, who’s covered in sweat — as usual — and sitting on the gym floor stretching his leg. It’s after yet another practice. Mr. S is filling in for Coach H temporarily. The gym is mostly empty except for me and Ryan. Derek has long since gone and it’s nearly curfew time.

  “I told him that maybe he ought to rethink his life choices,” Ryan says. “And I told him to leave you alone.”

  “Did you know he’s gone all crazy Puritan? He’s written a column for the s
chool newspaper asking everyone to take an abstinence pledge.”

  Ryan laughs, but then he sees the serious look on my face and stops. “Seriously?” he asks, looking surprised.

  “Seriously. And the worst part is, he asks me to join him. To put my past aside and become a better person. He wants me to wear an abstinence bracelet.”

  “And do you want to wear it?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “But what do you think about sex before marriage?”

  “I think given that the median marrying age in this country is twenty-six, I’ll probably have sex before I get married, yes. But I’m not sure I want to have it at fifteen, either.”

  “So you haven’t…” Ryan starts, then stops. “So you…”

  I realize we haven’t had this conversation yet. The one where I admit to him that I’m a virgin. And this is so not how I imagined this conversation would go.

  “…so you’re a virgin,” Ryan finishes.

  “Is that a problem?” I ask, starting to think it might be. Ryan looks thoughtful.

  “No, it’s not a problem,” he says. I notice he doesn’t say, “I’m a virgin, too,” because he most definitely isn’t. Someone like Ryan probably lost his virginity at twelve. “It just explains some things,” he adds.

  “Explains what?” Is being a virgin somehow like being defective?

  “Nothing,” Ryan says, but I know he’s thinking something he isn’t saying.

  “So would you talk to Derek? Ask him to take me out of his column?”

  “I just don’t quite see the problem. First, you were upset that everyone thought you slept around, and now Derek is giving you an opportunity to be a big abstinence advocate so that everyone thinks you don’t sleep around. I mean just what is the problem here?”

  “What’s the problem?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Has Ryan lost his mind? Isn’t it obvious? “It’s just another way to cement the rumor that I’m a big raging whore.”

  “Look, Miranda. I think you’re overreacting here.”

  “I can’t believe you’re taking Derek’s side.”