A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy)

  A TALE OF TWO PROMS

  A Bard Academy Novel

  BY CARA LOCKWOOD

  Copyright Information

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2011 by Cara Lockwood

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  eISBN: 978-1-937776-23-7

  Bard Academy Novels by Cara Lockwood

  Wuthering High

  The Scarlet Letterman

  Moby Clique

  A Tale of Two Proms

  Visit Cara online at www.CaraLockwood.com and www.BardAcademy.com!

  Table of Contents

  A TALE OF TWO PROMS

  Copyright Information

  Bard Academy Novels by Cara Lockwood

  Prologue: Prom Night

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Author Bio

  Special Excerpt from Greg Logsted's THE STUTTERING TATTOO

  PROLOGUE

  Prom Night

  It was the best of prom. It was the worst of prom.

  But, mostly, it was just the worst.

  Because all I could see was the boy I loved and he was dancing with someone else.

  She was wearing a killer dress—a fitted satin red—and her dark hair was swept up and knotted in an elaborate twist. She met my glance with a smug smile that told me she knew she’d won already as she curled one arm protectively around his neck and pulled him closer.

  My chest felt like it had been split open, that all the best parts of me were running out onto the floor, seeping into the cracks in the tile, slipping ever father away from me. I put my hands over my heart to try to hold myself in, but I was melting, disintegrating, my whole life dribbling through my fingers and pooling in puddles on the floor.

  And yet, through the shock and the pain, I thought I should’ve seen this coming. I had known when I met him that he was made for someone else.

  This was his destiny—and mine.

  I couldn’t fight fate.

  Catherine and Heathcliff.

  Together again. Together forever.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Three months before

  I could hardly see anything. It was dark in the forest, darker even than usual, since the clouds were covering the moon. My feet took me down the worn path to the pond, the route I’d taken dozens, probably even hundreds, of times before. I had been down the trail so many times this year I could do it blindfolded. My hand trailed along the vines and fern branches that grew out along the path. The sky above me stretched into deep violet, the shadows lying dark and inky black on the ground. Somewhere in the distance, a bird cawed. My heart sped up as I passed the big white boulder, the one marking the entrance to the clearing. I scooted around it and came to the big pond. In the sky, the bright full moon broke free of the clouds, casting a silver glow on everything.

  “Heathcliff?” It was a question, my voice barely a whisper. He said he’d be here, and he was never late. We’d been meeting here every night since the ice had thawed. Yet, the hard thump of my heart in my chest told me I was still nervous. I knew the risks he took to see me alone, and what it would mean if we were caught.

  Just when my prick of worry was beginning to blossom into a gnawing jab, I felt his warm fingers wrap around my wrist. He spun me close and pulled me into the broadness of his chest. Before I could even utter his name, he’d covered my lips with his. The kiss was all Heathcliff, raw and powerful. When he kissed, he left none of himself behind.

  It was Heathcliff who pulled away first. He was always the one with more self-control. I attributed it to his old-fashioned manners. That is, when he chose to use them. Often, he didn’t bother. His gaze, always so fierce, grew softer as he drank in my eyes under the full moon.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he whispered, and his voice ran like a tremor under my feet.

  “Me, too,” I sighed. It was hard to pretend I didn’t love him, which I had to do all day every day at Bard. We were forbidden to date by the faculty. I would pass him in the halls or the cafeteria, my eyes cast down, pretending I didn’t notice him. That I didn’t long to touch him. That I wasn’t counting every minute until the sun went down.

  At this moment, I glanced up, glad to be able to look at him as freely as I wanted for the first time that day. His nearly black hair was slightly ruffled, his dark eyes sharp. He was broad and muscular and tall. He looked like he might be twenty, but that was nowhere close to his real age, which was somewhere around a hundred and forty years old. Then again, fictional characters don’t exactly age like we do. He’d been plucked from the pages of Wuthering Heights nearly three years ago, emerging whole into my world, so that he could turn it upside down.

  Now, he was leaning over me, his strong hands linked together, resting possessively around my lower back.

  “I want to do that again,” Heathcliff said, pulling me closer.

  “But what if the world ends?” I smiled. It was what the Bard faculty feared more than anything—me, a girl from the real world, and him, a boy from the fictional one, together. Never the two worlds should meet or there would be a zombie army apocalypse or we might all disappear into a black hole or all known laws of space and time would collapse. Or something equally dire and end-of-the-world like.

  “I’ll risk it,” Heathcliff said and dipped his head to kiss me again. The blood rushed through my ears and my skin felt like it was tingling. Everywhere. I don’t know how long that kiss lasted. A minute? An hour? But it was me who pulled away first this time. I felt light-headed suddenly and my knees turned to Jell-O.

  Heathcliff held me fast, as if worried I might fall to the ground without a steadying hand. I was worried about the same thing. Heathcliff took me by the hand and pulled me to the shores of the pond. We sat on a big flat rock there, his legs touching mine. This was good because my knees didn’t seem to want to work anymore. He pulled me close to him, and I leaned in, taking in the warmth and solidness of his body, like the contours of a chair made for me.

  “I could live here,” I sighed. It was true. When I was with Heathcliff, I felt like I’d come home. It was hard to explain to my friends. It was hard to explain to anyone. I didn’t even fully understand it myself. The depth of feeling sometimes scared me, even. But that’s how things were with Heathcliff. You were all in or all out.

  “Why don’t you?” Heathcliff challenged.

  I laughed, because I thought he was teasing. But when Heathcliff didn’t join in, I realized he was dead serious. I turned to look at him and I saw a somber look darken his face.

  “You could stay—after,” he added.

  He was talking about the thing we never spoke of—graduation. It was coming in a couple of months, and there wasn’t anything either of
us could do to stop it. After that, I was supposed to go back home to Chicago and Heathcliff would be sent back into the pages of Wuthering Heights.

  “How?” We’d been down this road a hundred times before. Heathcliff was bound by magic to the island. We both knew he couldn’t leave. And then there was the other problem—the one he didn’t know about. I’d been accepted to Penn. I had the letter in my pocket even now. Congratulations, Miranda! We’re happy to welcome you to the University of Pennsylvania one of the oldest schools in the Ivy League…

  It had been my first pick school. They had a Writer’s House and I knew I could pursue creative writing there. I hadn’t believed it at first when I’d gotten the thick acceptance packet in the mail. The irony was that I had picked schools I thought were too competitive, the ones that would never accept me. I never actually thought I’d get in. It would’ve been an easy out. Hey, Mom and Dad, I tried to get into college, but looks like no one will take me! Guess I should stay another year at Bard!

  But my plan had backfired. Now I had an acceptance letter and no idea what to do with it. The letter was in my pocket, burning a hole there. I’d just gotten it this morning and I had to tell Heathcliff, but I wasn’t quite sure how. Plus, I didn’t know what to tell him. It’s not like I’d decided anything.

  “You could stay,” Heathcliff said as if he’d been reading my mind. “We could be together.”

  “Stay how?” My voice sounded too harsh. I tried to soften it. “Where?”

  “Together. Here.”

  “The faculty would never allow it.” If Heathcliff refused to go back into Wuthering Heights, the Bard faculty would never stop hunting him. So far, they’d allowed him to stay only because in Wuthering Heights he disappears for three years from the story. No one knows where he went, as it’s never fully explained in the novel. He simply returns a wealthy man three years after running away. The fact he’d now spent two and three quarters of that time with me at Bard didn’t affect his storyline.

  But it would if he decided not to go back.

  Eventually, he’d have to return to Wuthering Heights, to fulfill his destiny as a heartbroken and bitter man who would stop at nothing to get revenge against the people he blamed for his true love’s death.

  If he refused to return, he wouldn’t be safe. Not anywhere. The faculty would find him. They had ways.

  “They would never have to know,” he pressed.

  “They know everything,” I said.

  “I could persuade them.” There was a hard edge to his voice and I felt his arm tense, even as he held me. Heathcliff was never one to back down from a fight. But the faculty didn’t respond well to threats. For one thing, they were already dead. Ghosts wouldn’t care if you threatened to do them bodily harm. All of them had once been alive, back when they’d been famous writers. But they’d died before their time, and now they were stuck here, on this strange island, where the characters from their own books could come to life. Did you ever wonder what really happened to Hemingway after he died? Yeah, well, he’s my English Lit teacher. Welcome to Purgatory, Bard Academy style.

  “We could make it work.” If Heathcliff had one fault it was being a little bit too cocky. He honestly felt like he would win—no matter what. Most of the time I was glad he was so confident. It was one of the reasons we’d all survived this long together. We’d faced down some powerful enemies on Shipwreck Island. And every times the odds were against us.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said. “I just don’t see how it’s possible.” Wow. When did I become such a pessimist? I realized how gloomy I was sounding. Had I always been that negative? Or was this a new senior-year development? Apparently, instead of senioritis, I was coming down with a heavy dose of cynicism.

  “Miranda…” Heathcliff’s voice held a note of frustration. “Don’t you trust me?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. And I did—even if my friends didn’t. Even if they told me that falling in love with a fictional character known for being ruthless was about the dumbest thing I could do next to falling for a vampire. Lucky for me, I guess, that vampires were actually one thing Bard Academy didn’t have very many of. I’d only met one and that was enough. Seeing Dracula face-to-face in the library sophomore year was enough to turn me off bloodsuckers for the rest of my life. They really weren’t that hot when they were trying to kill you. Trust me on that one.

  Heathcliff stood, and pulled me to my feet. He led me wordlessly away from the pond, where the reflection of the moon was a shimmer of white silver.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  But Heathcliff just squeezed my hand tighter, moving me deeper into the forest. He ducked between two large oak trees, leading me further into the shadowy brush. I could feel Heathcliff’s determination, his will, in every step. We walked in silence for several minutes, the trees forming a dark canopy above us, blocking out most of the moon’s light. It grew so dark that I could hardly see Heathcliff right in front of me. But I wasn’t afraid. Heathcliff made me feel safe, even here.

  This island held many secrets. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know them all, especially since most of them could kill you.

  I wasn’t sure where we were, but Heathcliff knew this island better than anyone. He led me to a moss-covered wall. For a second, I wondered if he wanted me to climb it, but then, he put his hands through the vines in front of me and pushed them aside. They hid a small cave, a passage to a secret glen on the other side. I could just make out a beam of moonlight shining on the grass in the distance. Heathcliff ducked his head to fit through and I trailed behind him, clutching tighter to his hand as the cave walls closed in. When we emerged, the moonlight seemed nearly as bright as day. And there, sitting in the small clearing, was an old cottage with a thatched roof and a door made of bound straw.

  There was a small light beaming from one window and my first thought was someone’s in there. I froze. Getting caught with Heathcliff off campus and holding his hand would be grounds for suspension. Maybe even dismissal.

  “It’s okay,” Heathcliff reassured me. He bounded ahead of me three steps and pushed open the door. There was a single electric lamp sitting on the table, bathing the room in artificial light. Next to the table, sat a small shelf lined with books Heathcliff must’ve taken from the school library. Those were for me, I thought instinctively, because he knew how much I loved to read. He also had stolen quite a bit of food from the cafeteria. There were cans stacked in the corner and boxes of crackers. On the single table there stood an old typewriter. I don’t know where he’d found it, but there it was, one so old that it didn’t even need electricity. It had a case with a handle. A stack of blank paper lay in a neat pile next to it.

  At Bard, computers were forbidden. As were iPhones and most every other form of modern technology. They were said to distract us from our purpose—to learn. But the reality was that you probably wouldn’t be able to use them very well anyway, since the electricity was always a bit iffy here. Power outages were common. You’d need the mother of all surge protectors to protect your hard drive. Here in the cottage, I saw, there was no electricity at all.

  Inside the small room, Heathcliff’s shoulders were so broad they seemed to take up all available space.

  “I thought you might want to write,” he said, nodding at the typewriter. “I know how much you like to write in your journal.”

  I thought about the old leather book I kept with me. Ms. W, my old teacher, had suggested I should keep a diary my first year at Bard. I had thought that would be a waste of time, but that was before I knew what Bard really was. As it turned out, I had plenty of interesting material for a diary. These days, I took my journal with me wherever I went. The old, camel-colored leather bound book was always either in my hands or my backpack. I scribbled in it all day long. I thought maybe one day I’d write a memoir. Or, probably more likely, a novel. Nobody would believe the things that had happened to me here were real.

  Glancing around me, I realized Heathc
liff had done all this for me. It must’ve taken him months to gather it all, to sneak it out, piece by piece. He’d tried to think of everything I wanted, everything I would need. He’d probably been working on restoring this cottage all semester. It smelled faintly of new paint and I saw new gleaming wooden planks on the floor. Where had he gotten the lumber? I wondered. It’s not like there was a Home Depot just around the corner. It was obvious he’d put a lot of thought and work into this.

  The acceptance letter in my pocket suddenly felt heavy and hot. How could I tell him about this now? I glanced around the room looking for an answer—or a distraction—and I saw the gleam of the lantern light catch one of the book’s spines on the shelf. I recognized several books there. The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

  Immediately I knew those were no ordinary books. They had come from the vault, the secret room beneath the library. They were the key to everything, these books, and the faculty would do anything to protect them. These books had powers I couldn’t even begin to explain.

  “How did you… ” I managed, my voice a croak. How did he get into the vault? How did he take these most prized of possessions from the faculty?

  These books could bring fictional characters to life and they could also banish them from this world. They were also the only thing anchoring the ghost faculty to this place.

  Heathcliff shrugged, but said nothing. He would give away no secrets.

  I crossed the room and I picked up Wuthering Heights.

  Holding the book in my hands, I could almost feel the magic in it. It was heavier than it looked, and when I touched it, the binding hummed beneath my fingers. An old and ancient spell powered this book, one that I didn’t think I’d ever really understand.