A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy)

by Lockwood, Cara

  I tried to imagine what it would be like to leave everything and everyone you’d ever known, understanding that you’d never be back. It was what he had asked of me—to stay at Bard. I realized he’d already done this himself. He was asking of me what he’d already given up.

  Heathcliff felt me looking at him. He didn’t turn but he reached out and grabbed my hand. He squeezed it once as if he already knew all the questions I was asking him. His touch grounded me.

  I felt Sydney’s eyes on me and I looked at him. He’d been studying me and Heathcliff and it seemed to confirm something for him. He gave me a nod and a wink.

  “I’ve got two for the price of one,” Sydney said. And I think I was the only one in the room who knew what he meant. He meant that both Lucie and I would think about Sydney long after he’d gone, about the sacrifice he’d made for us. I could feel Heathcliff’s questioning eyes on me, but I didn’t return his gaze. I squeezed his hand instead. He would have to be content with that.

  After all, things were far from settled between us. We had a long talk ahead of us, about just what he’d done with Catherine. About why he’d taken such a reckless risk, and how he could make me think he’d left me. I knew he’d done it because he thought it was best for me, but next time, he should just let me in on the plan. His secrecy was going to be a major issue if he thought he could solve problems without me. But for this moment, he knew that I picked him and I knew that he picked me, and for now, that was enough.

  Sydney turned from me then and walked into the portal. He didn’t look back again. He just stepped through. As soon as he was over the threshold, Miss A clamped the book shut. Heathcliff worked his arm around me and squeezed.

  The tremors, I noticed, had stopped. The library was quiet and calm.

  “Well, I’ll be damned, it worked,” Coach H said. “How did you even think of it?”

  Miss A spread her hands as if she’d been caught red-handed. “What can I say? I am a romantic.” And then she smiled at me. “And I do so love a happy ending.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I had my own doubts about how things were going to work out. For one thing, we had the not-so-little problem of getting Bard Academy out of 18th century England and to present-day Shipwreck Island. We sat together in the dark of the London night as the faculty members debated string theory. Coach H thought we could all just imagine ourselves back there, but Headmaster B pointed out that they’d have to get all of the Bard students to imagine the exact same scene and that would probably be impossible. Hana thought maybe we could read ourselves out by using a vault book, but that seemed only to offer a doorway into another book, not back home. Blade suggested that Heathcliff and I just make out and see if we could cause a dimension shift like Catherine had. I wasn’t on board with that theory. Besides, Miss A didn’t think it would work, anyway. And it might just send us off somewhere we didn’t want to go if it did.

  Eventually, Headmaster B clapped her hands. “I have a solution,” she declared. “Miranda, give me your journal.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, please get your journal, Miss Tate,” Headmaster B said, holding out her hand expectantly. You didn’t say “no” to Headmaster B even if that meant handing over something as personal as a journal. Besides, she could just snap her fingers and it would appear in her hand, anyway, probably. The asking part was just her being polite.

  I dug around in my backpack and came up with the journal. It was there, wedged behind For Whom the Bell Tolls.

  “This is our link to the real world,” Headmaster B explained. “If we write the scene we’d like to see in this journal, then stand in a circle and read from it, we’ll be given passage back to Shipwreck Island to the exact moment in time we write about.”

  “How is that even possible?” I asked.

  “Because we’ll be doing the reading,” Headmaster B said, as if the answer were obvious. Add “making journals magic dimension-crossing machines” to the list of the things a Bard ghost could do.

  “So you can just write a scene and make like none of this ever happened?” Samir asked.

  “We can’t erase your memory, if that’s what you mean,” Headmaster B said.

  “And we might not be able to bring back the chapel, either.” Coach H looked concerned.

  “So—wait,” Blade held up her hand as if to stop the rush of information. “The chapel is rubble and all the Bard students will remember this?

  The faculty exchanged a somber glance.

  “Can you say massive class action lawsuit?” Samir said. Now that he was done worrying about homicidal fictional characters, Samir was focused on the economic health of Bard.

  “We’ll figure something out,” Miss A said. She sounded pretty confident, but then, she was probably the most optimistic person among us.

  “Guys?” This was Blade. “Can we just get out of the 18th century first, please? My corset is making me itch.” Blade was trying to scratch her back and failing. She did look uncomfortable. I felt her pain—literally. The whalebone in this Spanx-on-steroids was squeezing my ribs. Now that I wasn’t in danger of being crushed by falling walls or sucked into classic literature, I had the luxury of realizing that my clothes were seriously uncomfortable.

  “Patience,” Headmaster B said, and then took a pen out of her skirt pockets and began writing in my journal. After a few minutes, she passed the book along to each of us. There were three sentences there, and we all committed them to memory. And then, we formed a circle, each one of us holding hands. Headmaster B began to recite the words she’d written on the page, and each of us joined in.

  And then the portal opened, and on the other side was our beloved home, Bard Academy on Shipwreck Island and we all walked through together…

  The portal opened up right before us, gleaming and golden, leading the way back to Bard. The difference this time was that the portal grew so large that it came over us, like a giant bubble. We didn’t need to walk to it. It came to us, washing over us, changing everything around us. It was as if the entire scene in London was simply a page of a book being painted over in large swatches of color. Night gave way to day. London became Shipwreck Island.

  Heathcliff squeezed my hand. I closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them we were standing together on the green under the statue of William Shakespeare, the sun still shining in the sky. I noticed all the buildings were back in place—all of them except the school chapel. Where it should’ve stood was just the rubble of the crushed building. It was smoldering, actually, as if it had just been on fire. Near it, the library was in bad shape, too. Half of it was sunken in.

  Students wandered around half-dazed, wondering what had happened. They stumbled into each other, as if not sure if what they’d experienced in the last week was just a group dream or some kind of mass hallucination.

  “How are you going to explain this?” I asked Headmaster B, wondering what on earth she would dream up to say to the parents of all the students who would go home telling them they’d seen Dr. Jekyll London circa 1780.

  “Gas leak,” Samir offered. “It’s your best option. You can evacuate everyone to a safe location and explain the delusions as being caused by too much gas exposure.”

  We all stared at Samir for a beat or two.

  “Why is everyone staring at me?” he asked after a second. “I mean have you seen how rundown everything is on this island? Gas leak would be seriously likely.”

  “No—I mean, we know,” Hana said. “It is a good idea.”

  “That’s why we’re staring,” Lindsay said.

  “So why do you look so surprised?” Samir glanced at each of us. “Like I don’t ever have good ideas?”

  “Maybe you don’t want to know the answer to that,” Ryan said and gave Samir a rough pat on the shoulder.

  Samir shrugged.

  “I think you’re still going to have a lot of explaining to do,” I told Coach H.

  “Well, the fact is we’ll have to close Bard
Academy for awhile,” Headmaster B said. “We’ll have to…regroup.”

  “Close?” Lindsay’s voice made a strangled sound. “You can’t close. I’ve got another two years before I graduate! And what about Miranda? And Blade? And Samir? And Hana? And...…” She couldn’t quite say Ryan’s name. But she meant us, the seniors (and in Ryan’s case, the fifth-year seniors). What happened to our diplomas if Bard Academy shut down a month shy of graduation?

  “You’ve completed your course work,” Headmaster B said. “Seniors will all graduate. We’ll send diplomas through the mail. As for underclassmen, we’ll transfer your credits to another school. But, you will all have to go home.”

  “No!” Lindsay protested.

  “Home?” Hana echoed, weakly. Her eyes darted to Ryan. He lived near Chicago. Hana’s parents lived in New York. They’d be miles apart if they had to go home now. Lindsay and I would have to go back to Chicago as well. Would Samir have to go home to India? How about Blade? Her family moved to Arizona last year.

  Miss A glanced at all our downcast faces. “We can’t keep the students here,” Miss A said gently. “We have to work on getting things back to normal.” Miss A put a hand on my shoulder. I noticed, for the first time, that her hand seemed to becoming transparent in the sunlight. I guess she was worn out after the last few days. And I knew it took energy for the ghosts to make themselves appear solid. “We’ll deal with all this later,” she promised me. “Right now, you need to change your clothes and shower. Your parents will be here in the morning to take you home so we can get things back in order here.”

  “Parents?” squeaked Samir. He didn’t get along with his traditional Indian parents, who were still set on the idea of trying to get him to agree to an arranged marriage.

  “Of course. They had to be notified,” Headmaster B said. “They’ll be taking you home in the coming days so that we can get the school in order.”

  “When did you do that? We just got back,” Hana said.

  “We have our ways,” Headmaster B said, mysteriously. I assumed she meant it was a ghost thing. Maybe they could make the telephones or email work with a blink of their eyes. Who knew? I was too tired to think about what it would mean to see my parents again or what I was going to tell them. But, I didn’t want to think about that right now. I needed to sleep. Next to me, Heathcliff seemed to sense how tired I was. He pulled me closer to him, and let me lean against him, taking the weight off my sore feet.

  “No long faces,” Coach H instructed us. “This is for the best.”

  Miss A hugged everybody, which made it seem like we were saying a final goodbye, despite the fact we were just headed back to our dorms to shower and sleep before our parents came in the morning.

  Headmaster B called after me. In her hand, I saw my book bag. She dug around in it and handed me my journal. She planned to keep the other books. Of course, they were vault books and belonged to the faculty. “Keep writing, my dear. You have true talent.” She said it in a way that implied she’d read more than a few pages. I was embarrassed, but also a little bit pleased. Even though I was bleary-eyed and exhausted, I nodded at Charlotte Bronte, and smiled. It’s not every day you get a compliment like that.

  She gave me a stout nod of approval. She wasn’t one for touchy-feely goodbyes.

  Miss A ran back and gave me one last hug.

  “Thank you,” she whispered fiercely in my ear. She seemed to be growing more transparent, or maybe she was just tired and it was showing.

  “Why are you thanking me?” I asked her, puzzled. “I should be thanking you. For Heathcliff.”

  Miss A gave me a bright smile. “You’re welcome, my dear. It was the least we could do for you, considering how much you’ve done for us.” Miss A glanced back at Coach H and Headmaster B. Coach H nodded fiercely at me, the closest he got to showing affection. Headmaster B and Coach H were standing close together by the entrance to the library. Miss A gave me a tight squeeze. They were all looking a little bit…thin. But nobody else seemed to notice.

  “Go on, now,” she said, and blinked fast, as if she were trying to hold back tears. Heathcliff pulled me gently away, and I walked with him. I glanced backward once, and saw them standing there, watching us, sad smiles on their faces. I didn’t know what to make of it, exactly, and I wanted to go back and ask them more questions, but I was too tired. My legs felt like lead. Now that all the adrenaline that had been buzzing through my system over the last day had drained away, I didn’t even know how I was going to walk back to my dorm to shower. All I wanted to do was collapse on my bed and sleep for days. I leaned heavily on Heathcliff as we walked, and he didn’t seem to mind. I knew I’d have to have a long talk with him about what had happened, and about how he really felt about Catherine and everything that had happened, but now wasn’t the time. I could barely keep my eyes open, despite the fact that it was three in the afternoon.

  I never made it to the shower. I stumbled into my room and fell on my bed. The last thing I remembered was Heathcliff taking off my shoes before I drifted off in a deep and dreamless sleep.

  I awoke with a start to find that I’d slept through all the way through the night. Bright morning light was already shining in through my dorm window. It was mid-morning, and I’d slept through the entire night and breakfast, too.

  I noticed Heathcliff wasn’t anywhere to be found. I had a heart-stopping moment when I wondered if all of it had been a dream. Did Bard really disappear? Had Heathcliff and Catherine really banished the entire school? Had Sydney really taken Heathcliff’s place? Had Parker really been eaten by Cyclops? I wasn’t sure if I was hoping or not hoping for that last part. Yeah, that’s cold of me. But it’s Parker we’re talking about and if anyone deserved to be eaten by a giant cannibal, it might be her. I’m kidding. Sort of.

  And was it true that we were all going home? I couldn’t imagine it.

  I sat up and yawned and stretched. I felt like there were four layers of grime on me, most of it 18th century grime, and I decided I was in desperate need of a shower. I grabbed a clean change of clothes and headed to the bathroom. Once the hot water washed over me, I considered the last few days. Now that I was rested, I felt I could see things a little more clearly. I realized I still had a lot of unanswered questions for Heathcliff. We had a serious discussion coming. There was also something bothering me about what Miss A had said, about how she’d thanked me. I needed to ask her about it.

  I pulled on a sweatshirt and some yoga pants, a decidedly non-uniform choice, but I figured it didn’t matter because we were all headed home anyway. I padded back to my room, my stomach growling. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually had a meal. I wondered if the cafeteria would be open yet and I figured probably not, but I decided to head there anyway. I pulled on a pair of tennis shoes and walked outside.

  The campus looked different. The big thing was that the campus chapel was still a smoldering pile of rubble. But even more strange was the swarms of parents everywhere. They’d descended overnight it seemed and they were all wandering around with their dazed-looking Bard students under their arms. Headmaster B had gotten the word out, because many of them were already taking their kids home. It seemed really bizarre, and then I realized why. Parents had never before been allowed on the island. There had never been a Parent’s Night at Bard. I was sure that was by design. The faculty didn’t want relatives asking too many questions.

  I also noticed that hardly anyone was wearing the Bard uniform. Rental cars were parked everywhere, no doubt brought over by the ferry sometime in the night or morning. Kids looked confused and out of sorts, and most parents looked grim or annoyed. You could tell by the looks on their faces they weren’t happy with having to find a new reform school for their offspring this late in the school year. Somehow, seeing them made it all feel too real. We would be leaving Bard soon, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  There were other strangers here, too—firefighters and police officers. Overnight, yellow caut
ion tape had been placed around the rubble of the chapel. The firefighters had search and rescue dogs.

  “Hey,” called Hana. She trotted up to me. She had on jeans and a long-sleeved crewneck tee and her hair pulled back in a simply ponytail. “Crazy, huh?”

  That was a good word for it.

  “Your parents get here, yet?” I asked her. She shook her head.

  “They’re late, as usual,” Hana said and shrugged like she was used to it.

  “Looks like Samir’s were right on time to meet Blade,” I said. Across the commons Samir was standing awkwardly with his parents. I waved at him and he waved back. Blade was standing with them, and I noticed Samir took a perverse kind of satisfaction in the double takes his mom made as she openly gaped at Blade’s orange hair and excessive piercings. That would make for some interesting breakfast conversation, no doubt. Next to Blade, I saw a very preppy looking woman wearing a pink cardigan and a string of pearls. I wouldn’t have known they were related at all except she had Blade’s eyes.

  “Whoa, is that…?” I asked Hana.

  “Yep, Blade’s mom. Can you believe it?”

  “No, I definitely can’t.” I couldn’t help but stare. Her mother looked like June Cleaver. That was a little bit of a shock. I realized now that there were other similarities between mother and daughter in the cheekbones and eyebrows. Blade might actually look a lot like her mom if she ever traded in the spiky dog collar she wore around her neck for a strand of pearls. Blade saw me and instantly changed direction. She hurried over and gave me a big hug. She even hugged Hana, which showed she was in a very affectionate mood. Her mother trailed behind.