A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) Read online

  Hana gave me a long look. “Thanks, Miranda. I just wish I knew what I should do.”

  “Just follow your heart,” I offered, wondering as I said it if this was sound advice. It’s not like my heart had been all that great a compass for me recently.

  “But what if my heart wants two different things?” She glanced after Samir and Blade, and I suddenly got her meaning. She might be interested in Ryan, but a part of her was still hung up on Samir. This was probably the closest Hana would ever get to admitting she had a crush on Samir.

  I understood being torn in two directions. Just like I wanted to be with Heathcliff, but I wanted more out of life, too. More like a college education and the opportunity to live somewhere else other than this island.

  I gave her a sympathetic nod. I understood better than she knew. “You’ll figure it out,” I said.

  “See you later.” Hana trotted down the chapel steps toward her homeroom class, which was across campus from mine. I took a deep breath and moved in the opposite direction. Before I could take a full step, I heard my name.

  Miranda.

  It was just a whisper. I whipped around, but no one was anywhere near me. I was alone on the steps.

  Miranda Earnshaw Tate.

  “Hello?” I turned one way and then the other, but I just saw groups of Bard students with their backs to me, huddled in groups or on their way to class. The front of the chapel was nearly empty. It was amazing how quickly a bright morning at Bard could turn into a chilling creepfest. I glanced at the retreating backs of my friends who were now fifty feet or more away. I considered calling to them, but dismissed that idea. If I did that, I might scare off the ghost. Or worse, expose my friends to danger. And I’d done enough of that already.

  Miranda.

  Miranda Earnshaw Tate. The voice was a woman’s and she was singing my name.

  “Who’s there?” I asked again. Hana was now too far ahead of me to hear. I was alone on the chapel steps. Just me and the voice.

  Miranda Earnshaw Tate, the girl who likes to tempt fate.

  “Show yourself,” I said, my voice a low growl. I was glad I managed to keep my voice steady. It didn’t sound as scared as I felt. Was it Emily Bronte’s ghost? Hana turned the corner now and was out of sight. Samir and Blade disappeared in the opposite direction. They were gone now, so if the ghost were going to say something important, now was the time.

  I turned left and then right. Now would be an excellent time to start running, I thought. Except that if I ran, I wouldn’t find out if it was Emily. And I needed to know. If she was here and plotting something, I had to expose it. The last time her bodiless ghost had appeared on the Bard campus, I’d had a close call with the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I wanted to know what I was in for this time.

  The voice seemed almost by my ear.

  “Emily – Emily Bronte – is that you? Is that you, Emily?”

  “Miranda. Miranda Earnshaw Tate.” The voice got louder, and suddenly I realized it wasn’t Emily’s. I knew Emily’s voice and this wasn’t it. This one was younger and somehow… meaner.

  Then, I heard a crunching sound, like hard stone being ground together. A scrape, scrape, scrape.

  “Who are you?” I whispered. No one answered me of course. I looked around but I couldn’t find the source of the sound. It sounded like someone moving the stone lid of a crypt, but that was probably just my active imagination at work. Then again, this was Bard. So maybe not.

  Miranda.

  The voice was almost taunting me. I walked down the last step and put one foot on the grass, trying to figure out where the voice was coming from.

  Miranda.

  Miranda Earnshaw Tate, sang the voice again in nursery rhyme time. She’s the girl who loves to tempt fate.

  Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

  Miranda.

  Miranda Earnshaw Tate.

  “Miranda!” This was a shout, and I looked up to see Heathcliff running towards me, a full on sprint. “Miranda, look out.”

  I froze, which was a very bad call. When someone tells you to look out, they are really telling you to get the heck out of there. But instead of running, I stalled. And it nearly cost me my life. And it would have, if Heathcliff weren’t so fast.

  “What?” is all I got out before Heathcliff had thrown himself at me, and then I was falling, rolling, collapsing on the green grass in front of the chapel. We were tumbling together, cartwheeling, until I came to a stop with Heathcliff on top of me.

  And somewhere close by, I heard a hard thunk on the ground. It was the sound of something heavy and large hitting the lawn in front of the chapel just a few feet away from us. I blinked, trying to process what I was seeing. There, half-buried in the lawn, was a giant stone gargoyle nearly as big as me, his sharp-teeth in a distorted grin, one talon extended outward. The stone gargoyle’s eye was a mean slit glaring at the small imprint in the grass that my ballet flat had made. I had been standing right where this statue had fallen. If Heathcliff hadn’t pushed me out of the way, I would’ve been buried under two tons of stone.

  “What happened?” I mumbled, even though I already knew what had happened. Someone had just tried to kill me. Heathcliff’s eyes focused on something on the roof of the chapel, the place where the gargoyle had come from. I followed his gaze, but all I saw was the flash of a Bard plaid skirt near the edge of the roof. Heathcliff frowned.

  “Did you see who it was? Who was up there?” Translation: who the hell was the crazy chick who just tried to kill me?

  Heathcliff ignored my questions. “Are you okay?” he asked instead, searching my face as he sat up. He pulled me to my feet his eyes never leaving mine. They were dark with worry. This wasn’t the first time Heathcliff had saved me. He’d rescued me from danger probably half a dozen times since I’d been at Bard. I was suddenly very grateful for his impeccable timing. In that moment, I forgave him everything from the night before. Heathcliff—my Heathcliff, the boy who’d saved me more times than I could count—was back.

  “I’m fine, really,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed. Once again someone was trying to kill me. This was a very bad habit I’d developed since coming to Bard. “If you hadn’t come when you did…”

  Heathcliff didn’t let me finish my sentence. He clutched me fiercely. “Shhh,” he said. “Don’t think about that now.”

  I inhaled against Heathcliff’s shoulder. No alcohol smell. Nothing but the safe smell of Heathcliff.

  “Who was up there?” I asked again.

  “Do you trust me?” Heathcliff asked me. I noticed he didn’t answer my question. Was it because he didn’t know who was up there? Or because he did?

  I swallowed. “Yes,” I said. I believed it at that moment. Whatever I’d seen in Heathcliff’s eyes last night, the edge of menace, wasn’t there now. The old Heathcliff was back.

  “Then trust me when I tell you I’m going to make sure this doesn’t happen to you again,” Heathcliff said. His fierce eyes echoed his promise, and I didn’t envy my enemies, whoever they were. Heathcliff didn’t make idle threats. “I’m going to take care of this.”

  “Is it Catherine? Does she want me dead?” I realized after I’d said her name out loud that it had been a mistake to mention her at all. I spoke my thoughts before I had time to think about whether it was wise or not.

  Heathcliff’s mouth drew into a thin line. “Why do you say that?” He relaxed his grip around me and his arm fell to his sides. He moved away from me and his voice was flat and cold. I realized I had just assumed he thought Catherine was involved. The sharp look on his face said that hadn’t been in his mind at all. He also seemed more than a little defensive.

  “I don’t know… I…” I needed to back track, but I couldn’t back pedal fast enough to get me out of the hole of accusing Heathcliff’s ex-girlfriend of being a murderous you-know-what.

  Heathcliff studied me a second and then glanced up again to the roof of the chapel. “Just let me take care of it,” he said.
/>
  I noticed he didn’t say that Catherine wasn’t involved. That was telling.

  I wanted to trust him. And I wanted to believe this would all go away. But would Heathcliff take care of it? Or was he dangerously close to falling for Catherine again? If I were honest, I didn’t trust that he could be objective at all about Catherine. What would he do if he found her? Give her a slap on the wrist? Or would she just bat her eyelashes at him, and he’d forgive her everything?

  All around us, a few Bard students who hadn’t yet made it to class, stood pointing and staring. It’s not every afternoon that a stone gargoyle falls from the sky and nearly squashes somebody. Even the relatively tough and jaded Bard Academy student body would take notice of that. I could feel Heathcliff uncomfortable with the attention.

  “We should get out of here,” Heathcliff said, moving away from the chapel as he caught Guardians on the approach, coming to investigate the accident.

  “Well, this will give them something else to talk about other than prom. By the way, Miss A said she’d help us go. What do you think of that?”

  “Go where?” Heathcliff echoed, seeming a little distracted.

  “Prom.” I had to fight off a distant, queasy feeling of panic. It was almost as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. “We are still going to prom, aren’t we? I mean if the faculty let us. When I asked you…”

  “You asked me?” Heathcliff said, again sounding dazed.

  I stopped and stared at him. Had he forgotten the conversation we’d had just last night?

  “Do you not remember because you were drinking?” It must have been more alcohol than I thought if he blacked out and forgot everything I’d said.

  “What?” Heathcliff looked thoroughly confused now. “I don’t drink.”

  He sure smelled like alcohol. First Catherine shows up then Heathcliff gets drunk and blacks out? And then he doesn’t remember any of it? Weird.

  Well, if he was going to deny it, fine. But the fact that he smelled like beer and now can’t remember anything I asked him yesterday was pretty damning proof all on its own.

  “What I want to know is—are we going? To prom? You and me. On a date? If the faculty let us?”

  Heathcliff stared at me for a long time and didn’t say anything. For a heart-stopping second I thought he was going to tell me he wouldn’t be going to prom with me. I stopped walking and stared at him. He asked me to marry him. Surely, prom wasn’t a deal breaker.

  “Heathcliff?” I prompted. My heart was beating fast and I was trying to keep my voice level. “Did someone else ask you?”

  Heathcliff avoided my eyes, and I thought for a horrible moment, that he was going to tell me he planned to take someone else. But then, he looked at me.

  “No,” he said. “Do you think the faculty will let us go?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Miss A said she would put in a good word for us.” I mentioned this again since Heathcliff seemed so distracted. I didn’t know if he’d absorbed it the first time.

  Heathcliff said nothing. He walked at the proper distance from me, our hands too far apart to even accidentally touch as we walked. I suddenly wanted to grab his hand and hold it, but I glanced up and saw Headmaster B standing near the library watching us. She was frowning.

  “I need to go,” Heathcliff said, eyeing Headmaster B. He turned from me abruptly, doubling back to the chapel.

  “Wait—what about prom?”

  “We have to wait for the faculty to decide, anyway,” Heathcliff said, moving away from me.

  I nodded. This much was true.

  “I’ll find you later,” he said, and then he moved quickly and was swallowed up in a crowd of students heading off to class. I realized as I stood there that technically Heathcliff hadn’t given me a straight answer on prom. I felt like I’d lost some important ground without even knowing how it had happened. I felt Headmaster B’s eyes on me and when I looked up, she was glaring, her face grave and serious.

  For a second, I thought about running after Heathcliff, but the look on Headmaster B’s face stopped me cold. Instead, I turned and headed to class, thinking as I went that I didn’t understand Heathcliff.

  Not like I once thought I did.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I didn’t know what was more infuriating—the drunk Heathcliff who said he’d go to prom with me and then tried to maul me or the cold, aloof Heathcliff who saved my life but then couldn’t quite commit to a prom date. I’d never had Heathcliff run so cold and hot before. It was as if he were two completely different people.

  Maybe it was Catherine at work. Maybe he became schizophrenic when she was around. After all, she was driving me crazy and I hadn’t even talked to her.

  “Can we go back to the part where you were almost killed,” Hana exclaimed as we stood in line for lunch. “Why didn’t you tell me that part first?” I’d been explaining why I’d disappeared after morning announcements. I was in the mood to talk about Heathcliff, not about my near-death-by-gargoyle, but I guess Hana had different priorities.

  “I’m fine, though, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “You were almost flattened. Yeah, that does matter to me. You nearly died.”

  “Yeah, but what else is new? How many near death experiences have I had at this place? Or you for that matter? I’m kind of over it.” Actually, I wasn’t. My knees still felt a little wobbly every time I thought about that plummeting concrete gargoyle, but I figured there wasn’t much to be gained by dwelling on it. I would much rather just pretend it didn’t happen.

  “You think it was Catherine?” Hana distractedly grabbed an apple from the line and put it on her tray.

  “All I saw was a plaid skirt. For all I know, it could’ve been Parker.”

  “I doubt it was Parker,” Hana said. “I think she was ahead of us when she exited the chapel.”

  “Yeah, maybe she cut out early so she could take the back stairs up to the roof,” I said, but even I didn’t believe it. Parker hated me, true, but she had no real reason to want me dead, at least not right now. I wasn’t making the moves on Ryan or stealing her popularity or any of the other things that tended to make Parker homicidal.

  “Or, one of her clones could’ve done it,” Hana said. “You know? Maybe trying to impress Parker.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Could be, I guess. But it seems like Catherine’s the likelier suspect. No matter what Heathcliff says.”

  “Why would she want you dead, though?”

  “Because I’m in love with her soul mate.”

  “Yeah, but she wouldn’t care – unless…”

  “Unless?”

  “Well, unless Heathcliff loved you back.”

  “You’re saying that if Catherine tried to kill me then that’s proof Heathcliff loves me more?”

  “It’s possible,” Hana said. “If you’re worried about whether Heathcliff loves you, then you might not be the only one. Maybe Catherine is worried, too.”

  “Hmmm,” I said, thoughtful.

  “So, the upside of nearly getting crushed by a two-ton stone gargoyle is that your boyfriend cares.”

  I had to laugh at that. I hadn’t thought there’d be an upside. “I’d rather he just come with me to prom to show he cares so much.”

  “What I think you should do,” Hana said, “is try to get Heathcliff to tell you what he knows.”

  “He said to trust him. That he’d take care of it.”

  “Yeah, like the time he handled the campus stalker?” Hana was referring to a debacle a year and a half ago, back when Heathcliff himself had been kidnapped and the ghost of Emily Bronte had terrorized the campus. She may not have had a body, but she had enough presence in this world to fill up a hooded sweatshirt and scare the grilled cheese out of half the student body.

  “He was kidnapped—he couldn’t help anybody, even himself!”

  “That’s what I’m saying. He needs to tell us what’s going on. He’s not invincible even though he thinks he is. We nee
d to know what he knows, so we can help if something happens to him.”

  I nodded. Hana was right. Heathcliff owed me an explanation.

  Outside, I saw a flash of a dark Bard blazer walk by the window. I sat up a little straighter in my chair. I recognized the broad shoulders as they cruised by.

  Heathcliff.

  Except he didn’t look exactly like he had this morning. His hair was messier, his shirt was stained with something dark, and his black eyes were bleary, like he’d just woken up from an extended sleep. He wobbled a little in his steps, too. This morning, he’d been crisp and put together—as neat as you could be after you just saved someone from falling architecture. What had happened? It looked like he’d saved me from the gargoyle and then gone to sleep for three hours and had just gotten up.

  “Speak of the devil,” Hana said, nodding out the window. “He looks terrible,” Hana noted, as Heathcliff ran a stiff hand through his hair.

  I dropped my sandwich. I needed to talk to Heathcliff. I needed to know what he was thinking.

  “I’m going to go talk to him.”

  “Now?” Hana asked, surprised as she watched me stand. “But lunch…”

  “Was pretty gruesome, anyway. I’ll catch you later, okay?” I grabbed my backpack and was already on my feet. Hana shrugged as I headed for the door. I found Heathcliff walking—stumbling, rather—down the east walkway to the library.

  “Heathcliff!” I called when I was close enough. “Heathcliff!” But, he didn’t turn around. He just kept going, like he couldn’t hear me or didn’t want to. He turned the corner, and in a few more seconds, I’d followed him, down the shadowy place between the library and the adjoining science building. As I turned the corner, I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Heathcliff was there. And so was… Parker Rodham?

  I stopped at the corner, using the corner of the library as a shield, trying to figure out what Heathcliff was doing talking to Parker Rodham. Heathcliff hated Parker. He was the only one I knew who liked Parker even less than I did.

  Heathcliff had his back to me, and all I could see was Parker’s face occasionally, when Heathcliff shifted enough for me to see past his broad shoulders. She was actually laughing at something he said. She was flipping her ponytail around like she might even be flirting.