A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) Read online

  Parker looked miserable in her nineteenth century dress. I wondered if she had to wear a corset.

  “What is this? I don’t think Jane Austen wrote a prom in Pride and Prejudice.”

  “No, she didn’t,” I agreed. “Maybe it’s all distorted, melded with the present. But something is definitely off. Do you see any danger? Any reason Parker should be screaming like she did on the phone?”

  All I could see were boys and girls in old-fashioned clothes waltzing to Katy Perry. It was an odd sight, for sure, but it was no Amityville Horror show.

  Then, as I looked on, a pudgy, older man stepped from the crowd and approached Parker.

  “Looks like Parker has an admirer,” Lindsay said. Parker saw the man, and her eyes went wide with terror. She bolted so fast, her crown bounced off her head and onto the floor with a plinking sound. She hit the side door and bounded out of the room.

  “Elizabeth!” cried the man, sweat gleaming on his large bald forehead. “Elizabeth Bennet!”

  “Go to hell, Mr. Collins!” shrieked Parker as she ran from the ballroom. “And my name is not Elizabeth!”

  “Parker!” I shouted after her. She stopped mid-run and spun to see me. In a few big steps, she was in front of me.

  “Miranda? Is that you?” She grabbed me by the arms and shook me. But then her face grew skeptical. “Or are you Catherine?”

  “Not Catherine,” Lindsay confirmed, stepping out of the shadows.

  “Oh, lord, am I glad to see you!” She said and threw her arms around me. She hugged me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. I should be used to Parker trying to hurt me, but she’d never used a hug as a weapon before. “Thank you for coming. You’ve got to save me from this place.”

  “You were freaking out because you’re Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice?” Lindsay asked. “You know that people would seriously kill to be you.”

  “And have that awful Mr. Collins after me? No thank you.”

  Inside, Mr. Collins had been stopped in his pursuit of Parker. He’d temporarily been waylaid by a group of girls who were talking to him.

  “You don’t marry him. You marry Mr. Darcy,” Lindsay explained. “He’s handsome and rich.”

  “And I’d rather not marry anybody, thank you very much.” Parker sounded certain on that score.

  “You sounded terrified on the phone. I thought someone was trying to kill you,” I said.

  “And you really freaked us both out. Thanks for giving us a stroke for no good reason,” Lindsay added.

  “You’ve got to help me,” Parker pleaded. “I’m wearing a bedspread, for crying out loud,” she added, picking up the hem of her ample skirt.

  “This is what you call life and death? God, you never change.” I shook my head at Parker. Queen of manufactured drama.

  “What happened to Bard?” Lindsay asked. “That’s what you should be worrying about.”

  “I don’t know.” Parker held out her hands, as if to show she wasn’t hiding anything. “I swear, I don’t know.”

  “You had a deal with Catherine,” I pressed. “Was this the deal? You help her destroy the entire school?”

  “I didn’t know it was going to disappear when I agreed to…. Look, this isn’t what I wanted.” Parker’s eyes darted back and forth. She was definitely guilty of something.

  “Start at the beginning, Parker. Tell us what happened.”

  “Okay, well, I did agree to help Catherine. She told me if I did her a favor, the prom would be mine. The school would be mine. And you would be gone.”

  “Wait—you were plotting to kill my sister?” Lindsay was all anger now.

  Parker wanting me dead wasn’t news to me. I’d been dealing with that since I came here. At least I knew she was telling the truth now.

  “No,” Parker said. “Well, I don’t know about dead, okay? Catherine said gone. I thought she meant she’d send you home.”

  “You mean you didn’t really care one way or another,” Lindsay grumbled. “Dead or gone, made no difference to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, waving a hand. “What did Catherine ask you to do?”

  “She needed Heathcliff. She wanted me to get him for her. She needed me to deliver a message to him and then bring him to her. Like you saw when you interrupted us by the library.”

  “I remember. But why couldn’t she do it herself?”

  “She couldn’t be seen on campus, she said. It was too risky. There were people after her.” Parker shrugged. “I assumed she meant you.”

  “Or the faculty,” I said, thinking about how I’d tipped off Headmaster B that she was on campus.

  “Well, not all of them,” Parker said. “She told me it was a faculty member who’d let her loose.”

  “Did she say who?”

  “She said it was a woman, but didn’t tell me her name.”

  “Emily Bronte, maybe?” I asked.

  Parker narrowed her eyes. “I don’t know I said!” Parker was getting defensive now. “She didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. Anyway, I delivered Heathcliff, just as promised. You tipped me off that Catherine was trying to double cross me. And a week later, I’m sitting in my dorm room and then—poof!—I’m here at prom wearing this crime against nature.” Parker glared down at her dress again.

  “That’s it? You don’t know anything!” Lindsay cried.

  “What do you want from me? I was just doing normal stuff and then—bam!—everything went crazy and psychedelic. And I was here…” Parker gestured to the stone building where the prom was taking place. “Then, Mr. Bad Breath was asking me to marry him.” Parker made a face. “It’s my idea of a nightmare.”

  “When I called…” I began.

  “I was hiding under a table hoping he wouldn’t find me. He’s very determined.”

  “You made it sound like you were dying, Parker,” I said.

  “We should just let you rot here,” Lindsay added.

  “Wait—no! You can’t. Every time I try to leave, Mr. Bad Dental Hygiene stops me. He’s surprisingly agile, despite his muffin top. And if he ever catches me and forces me to marry him I will die.”

  “You don’t care about Bard Academy at all?” I couldn’t believe that even Parker was this cold. “What about your friends?”

  Parker shrugged. “Sure, I care, but I can’t help them if I’m stuck here. Did you come in on the ferry?” She blinked at us. Lindsay nodded. She stared out across the green and saw the big yellow bus parked near the gate. “Is that the bus?” Her face grew bright. “You got the keys.”

  “Yeah, but we’re not going to just let you…” The words weren’t even out of my mouth before Parker had grabbed the keys from my hands.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  “Shove it, Miranda,” Parker said as she took off at a sprint. “I’m leaving this craptacular scene.”

  Lindsay and I ran after her.

  “You’d better give those keys back.” Lindsay called.

  “Or what? You’ll bore me to death? Please.” Parker was surprisingly fast in her promwear.

  “Parker.” Honestly, her self-involvement knew no bounds.

  “Oops—here comes ugly face!” she said, and picked up her pace.

  Behind us, I heard Mr. Collins call out, “Elizabeth! Miss Elizabeth!” I looked behind me and saw pudgy Mr. Collins struggling to keep up. The breeze caught his comb over and sent it up in the air like his hair was trying to hail a cab.

  “What about Bard?” Lindsay asked.

  “And all our friends?” I added.

  “You can go rescue your lame brain friends. I’m going to get a ferry and get the hell off this godforsaken island.” Parker was nearly to the bus now.

  “You don’t even care what happens to Ryan?” Lindsay asked her.

  “If he’s with the rest of Bard, there’s probably nothing we can do to help him anyway. But I can save myself and that’s what I’m going to do.” Parker reached the bus and hopped in. We were three steps behind. “If it�
��s his fate to die here, then there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “What do you know about fate?” I asked her.

  “I know it’s not my destiny to die on this freakin’ island. I should’ve never come back to this place.”

  “I thought you cared about Ryan,” This was Lindsay. She just couldn’t believe Parker would gladly leave Ryan behind.

  “Not enough to risk dying for him.” Parker shrugged. “He’s on his own. So are you two. Unless you want to come with me.” Parker stuck the key in the ignition and the engine chugged to life. I jumped through the door just as Parker tried to shut it.

  “Get in or get out of my way,” Parker said as she revved the motor. I was half in and half out of the bus. I could’ve tried to fight her for the keys, but suddenly, it hardly seemed worth it. Heathcliff’s cabin wasn’t too far from where we were and we couldn’t drive there anyway, because the path was too narrow. I had flashlights in my backpack. If Parker wanted to bail, I wasn’t going to waste the energy to stop her.

  “No,” I said. “Come on, Lindsay, let’s go.”

  “What?” Lindsay whirled to face me, she looked like I’d just told her to do a headstand and start singing Yankee Doodle Dandy. “We can’t let her take the bus.”

  “The place we need to go, we can’t take the bus to anyway,” I said. “Let her go if she wants to go.”

  “You’re both beyond stupid,” Parker told us. Lindsay and I turned and walked down the steps and out the bus door. Parker stared at us for a minute. I thought she might even change her mind and stay to help. But this was Parker we were talking about and she was never going to put herself at risk to help anyone else. Parker always came first with Parker. At least she was refreshingly consistent. You always knew what you were going to get.

  “Catherine did tell me one thing,” Parker shouted out through the open door. “She said she wanted to ‘improve the classics.’”

  “What did she mean by that?” Lindsay asked.

  “I don’t know, but she thought it was hilarious,” Parker said. “She laughed a long time at that joke.”

  Lindsay and I looked at each other.

  “Anyway, for what it’s worth, good luck. You’re going to need it.” Parker yanked the lever that sealed the bus doors shut. She hit the gas so hard that gravel spun out from her wheels and she turned the wheel of the bus hard. In seconds, she was speeding back down the road, nothing but a couple of retreating red taillights.

  “Can’t believe you just let her take our wheels,” Lindsay grumbled. “We could’ve slept in there.”

  “No need,” I said. “I know a better place.” I dug around in my backpack and I handed Lindsay one of my two flashlights. Both had been gifts from Blade. She’d etched LITs on the side of each one.

  “A LIT flashlight, just what I wanted.” Lindsay rolled her eyes, but she clicked it on anyway.

  “I can’t believe I was actually worried about Parker,” I said.

  “Total waste of stress,” my sister agreed. “I was worried, too, and then when we saw her I actually realized I totally can’t stand her. I’d pay to see her face when she gets to the dock and finds there’s no ferry.”

  “We’ll probably hear her yelling from here,” I said as I clicked on my flashlight. “Come on, we should go this way.” I picked a narrow footpath that went east. It was a small path, just wide enough for Lindsay and I to walk side-by-side.

  Our flashlights picked up gravel and dirt by our feet, and bits of branches and leaves growing into the path.

  “I really hate the woods,” Lindsay said. “Have I mentioned that, lately?”

  “You loved Girl Scouts,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, Girl Scouts, not walking through creepy haunted woods at night with every possibility we’re going to get eaten by Bigfoot.”

  “There’s no Bigfoot.”

  “That’s what they said about Moby Dick.”

  Lindsay had a point there. “Correction,” I said. “There’s no fictional story about Bigfoot, so we’re totally safe.”

  Nearby, a branch cracked.

  “You sure about that?” Lindsay whispered, her voice low and hushed. Another crack sounded and we both jumped. We swung our flashlights in the same direction and the beams settled on a clump of bushes. Nothing moved there. Not even a squirrel.

  We both listened for another branch cracking, but heard none.

  “You really shouldn’t have let Parker take the bus,” Lindsay told me again, as we continued walking. Lindsay, I noticed, had picked up her pace a little.

  “It’s not like we could drive it here, anyway,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I would prefer the bus over wandering around these haunted woods at night with only these…” She held up her LIT flashlight. “…as protection.”

  We heard another loud snap. This time it was closer. And it wasn’t any small twig either. It was too loud.

  “Ack,” Lindsay gurgled, swallowing a shout as she clutched at my arm. I flashed my light over at a nearby tree but picked up nothing but leaves.

  “Is something following us?” Lindsay whispered.

  “Shhh,” I told her. I needed to listen.

  I shone my flashlight into the darkened trees waiting for a sign of something. I don’t know what I hoped to see—something moving? A deer maybe? A wild boar? I heard those ran around the island. I shivered thinking about a giant boar charging us from the woods. But, then again, this was Bard. A lot of weird things ran around the island and a boar was probably one of the least scary options.

  Lindsay was clinging to me. She shone her flashlight this way and that, the light bounced off tree trunks and green waxy leaves. Nothing to tell us what was out there. And then, the third snap came, and this wasn’t the sound of a branch breaking under a normal-sized foot. This was the sound of a large branch cracking in two. I whipped my flashlight around to the sound, and I saw an entire tree shaking. The branches swayed dangerously from side to side, the branches bending at odd angles. It looked like it was being shaken by a strange wind that only seemed to affect this one tree. Under the glare of our flashlights, the dancing tree made an eerie shadow on the ground, the wild branches reaching out for our feet.

  “What the…” Lindsay croaked, as we watched the tree, her eyes wide in surprise and then fear.

  I’d been at Bard long enough to know you didn’t stick around to get formally introduced to the thing that might just kill you.

  “Run,” I hissed at Lindsay.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was running so hard my lungs were burning. I was too afraid to look back. Lindsay was almost by my side, a step or two behind. Her breathing was ragged. It occurred to me that I was just running in a blind panic. I didn’t even realize if I was going in the right direction, if I still was headed to Heathcliff’s cabin or not. For all I knew, I was running back to danger instead of away from it. Off in the distance, I heard the sound of a horn honking. Parker, I assumed. She couldn’t be close enough to see us. She was probably just honking at a raccoon or something.

  The thrashing behind us in the trees quieted down some. And then, it gradually shifted direction. After a few more steps, I realized whatever it was in the trees wasn’t following us anymore. After a few more yards, I slowed down. Whatever it had been, the horn had distracted it. I guess it went off to investigate the sound.

  “Let’s stop,” I wheezed, out of breath, and grabbed Lindsay’s arm. She shook her head, her eyes wild. I guess it didn’t take much for her to kick it into flight mode when we were in the pitch-black woods of Shipwreck Island. A surprise birthday party here could give you a heart attack.

  “I don’t think anything is following us right now,” I said, glancing back. Lindsay followed my gaze and she saw the same blank path behind us.

  “That was anticlimactic,” she said. “I could’ve sworn something was going to get us.”

  “I know.”

  “Something really big.”

  Lindsay met my eyes. I had
thought the same thing. You don’t shake a tree like that if you’re the size of a boar. Unless you’re a boar who’s twenty feet tall.

  “Maybe it was the wind,” I offered.

  “Riiight.” My sister did not sound convinced.

  I leaned over and put my hands on my knees to try to catch my breath. You would think I would have learned by now that if you’re going to stay at Bard, you’d better get in shape. I should’ve been running sprints during spring break to build up my stamina. I glanced uneasily at the trees, but none of them made any sudden moves, and I didn’t hear any giant branches cracking either. Whatever it was back there had gone another way. Or decided not to follow us for the moment. In either case, I was grateful.

  As we caught our breath, the moon cleared a few clouds above us, and the forest got suddenly lighter. A cold wind blew in from the north. Lindsay put her arms around herself and shivered.

  With the moon out and when I wasn’t running for my life, I realized this spot did look familiar. We weren’t far from Heathcliff’s cabin after all. And I had a strong desire to get inside. I turned north and ducked into the woods and then we were by the pond where Heathcliff and I used to meet so often.

  “Wow, this is pretty,” Lindsay said, looking at the reflection of the moon in the still water. “Kind of pretty but possibly dangerous. Like your boyfriend.”

  I didn’t rise to her bait.

  “Well, are we going to talk about the fact that he’s hooked up with Catherine and has destroyed the school or not?”

  “You don’t know that,” I snapped. I still didn’t want to believe Heathcliff was involved.

  “I’m just putting two and two together. Catherine shows up and then the entire school disappears. Heathcliff said he’d handle it, didn’t he? Maybe this was his way of handling it.”

  “No,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure myself. I didn’t want to think of Heathcliff plotting to do this. I really wanted to deal with the bad news that was staring me in the face (the campus was gone, the teachers were AWOL) and not the bad news I didn’t even know was true or not.