A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (10 page)

“Agreed,” Samir said. “I am always in favor of someone else that isn’t me getting slashed by pirates.”

“Even me?” Blade asked, giving Samir a playful shove.

“Hell, no,” Samir said, laughing. “I need my human shield.”

“Aw. You are so romantic,” Blade and Samir joked some more and picked up the pace and walked away, leaving me behind with Hana in front of the chapel.

“Miranda…” I could tell Hana wanted to ask me something. I didn’t want her to feel bad about being asked by Ryan.

“It’s okay if you go with Ryan,” I told Hana. “If you want to. Don’t worry about Parker. Or Lindsay. Or me. If you like Ryan, you should go.”

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.

C
HAPTER
S
IX

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
.”