A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (16 page)

I could almost forget my nagging worry that something was going on at Bard – something big. I called the main line to the dorm several times, but got a busy signal each time. Cell phones and email were banned at Bard, so it’s not like I had a lot of other options to get in touch with people. In fact, the dorm phones had only just been installed. We used to have to wait to the end of the week and use payphones to call out. Nobody called in. But the faculty had put in the phones as a perk, and we could use them during specified times. It also gave the staff another privilege to take away if the students misbehaved.

 I considered calling Headmaster B’s office, but ultimately decided against it. None of the faculty liked to talk on the phone and it would probably just annoy her. Plus, even if she did know something about what was happening at the school, I seriously doubted she’d tell me. I considered calling Coach H. He was the closest thing to a friend I had on the faculty—next to Miss A. But it would be impossible to get a hold of either one without running the call through the Headmaster’s office. Plus, I seriously doubted Headmaster B would simply pass my message along to Coach H or Miss A without interrogating me first. And what would I tell them? I’d had a nightmare and I was worried?

So, I’d have to simply wait and see what was happening when I returned to school.

The hardest part, by far, was not talking to Heathcliff. I was worried about what Sydney was doing to Heathcliff’s reputation. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something important about the fact that Sydney looked like Heathcliff and that this resemblance was the reason he had been brought to Bard in the first place. But no matter how long I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with any good answers.

The day before we were scheduled to head back, Dad offered Lindsay and me the option of staying at home and not going back to Bard. Three years ago, I would’ve jumped at the chance. But that was before I’d met Heathcliff and before I’d found out just what a special place Bard was.

I touched the locket Heathcliff had given me. It was still in my pocket. I did consider, just for a second, what it would be like
not
to go back. I tried to imagine walking away from whatever insanity was unfolding there now. Could I just say “not my problem” and never return?

 But I already knew I couldn’t. There was Heathcliff to think about. And Hana, Samir, Blade and Ryan Kent. I thought about my nightmare and Madame Defarge and her scarf of death (by far the most creepy piece of knitting I’d ever seen in my life).

No, I definitely couldn’t leave them there alone. Something was going on, and I had to find out what. But that was me. Lindsay didn’t have to come and I told her so, but she wouldn’t hear of staying behind.

“Want to keep something as cool as Bard to yourself, huh?” she asked me, even as we packed up our clothes.

“I’m serious, Linds,” I said. “You could stay here. I think something is going on – something that isn’t good.” I told her about Sydney Carton and about my dream. I also reminded her that Catherine was running loose around campus.

None of this fazed Lindsay in the least.

“I’m still going with you,” she said, folding up her jeans and stuffing them into her backpack. “No way am I letting you go off and save the world by yourself. I want a little credit, too.” She grinned at me and I grinned back.

“You’re sure? It could be dangerous.” I didn’t like the idea of Lindsay being in danger at all. She’d seen enough close calls since we’d been at Bard. She really didn’t need another.

“Knowing that crazy island, I am sure whatever is going on
esxs
dangerous. That’s part of the Bard charm. Besides, maybe if I ride in and save the day, Ryan will notice.”

This was the first time Lindsay had mentioned Ryan since we’d gotten home.

I looked at her a second. “You know that he likes Hana,” I said.

“I know, I’m not blind,” Lindsay said. “But a boy could change his mind.”

“Or not.”

“Look, if he’s in trouble, I still want to help him, okay? Wouldn’t you do the same for Heathcliff?”

I thought about this. It was true enough. Even if he loved Catherine, I would still want to help him. I nodded.

“Well, then, you see what I’m talking about.” Lindsay set her mouth in a stubborn line.

I tried a little longer to convince Lindsay to stay, but it was a lost cause. She was going with me, no matter what I said. Eventually, I had to stop arguing with her.

Mom and Mr. Perkins dropped us off at the airport. There were lots of hugs and some tears (on Mom and Lindsay’s part) and then we were through security and waiting in the terminal. On a whim before we boarded, I called the house phone at my dorm at Bard one last time. Lindsay was busy eating another candy bar.

“Want some?” Lindsay asked me, offering up a square of chocolate. 

I shook my head no and signaled to the phone. Not that me being on the phone would stop Lindsay from interrupting. Besides, I half-expected a busy signal, per usual. But then a funny thing happened. It rang. It rang three times and then someone picked up.

 “Hello?” her voice was a thin whisper that was vaguely familiar.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“Parker Rodham,” came the oddly cowed-sounding voice on the other end of the line. Now I realized it did sound like Parker, but she seemed strangely subdued. It was like she was sleepy or she was talking to me in a roomful of sleeping bears that she was afraid could wake up at any moment.

“Parker! It’s me, Miranda.”

Now was the time that Parker usually insulted me. Or she hung up. But neither one of those things happened. Only silence came through the line. Okay, so she wasn’t insulting me, which was very un-Parker like. Granted, I had done her a favor recently. Maybe she was feeling good about me after I had exposed Catherine’s lie. Parker hated to be duped. Then again, no matter what I ever did for Parker, she always hated me in the end. No matter what happened, in Parker’s world I was always to blame.

“Are you still there?” I asked. I had a bad feeling about this. Bad, like the scared guy in the space marines about to invade a place overrun by killer aliens bad.

I heard Parker exhale, but that was it.

“Parker, you’re freaking me out a little.” Suddenly, I had Lindsay’s attention. She stopped stuffing her face with chocolate and looked at me. She gave me a questioning raise of her eyebrows. I shrugged. I didn’t know what was happening, either. Lindsay drew closer, putting her head close to mine, so she could hear Parker’s voice on the other end of the line.

“Can I talk to Hana? Or Blade? You see them?”

“No,” her voice was barely a whisper. “They’re gone. They’re all gone.”  

“Parker, are you okay? What do you mean ‘they’re all gone’?”

Again, silence.  Maybe this was her plan. Maybe it was all some elaborate joke. Somehow, though, I doubted it.

“Parker, say ‘yes’ if you’re in trouble.”

“Yes,” Parker whispered.

“Say ‘yes’ if you can’t talk about it on the phone.”

“Yes,” Parker said again. Her voice was hardly a croak. She sounded scared, and that made me scared. Very little scared Parker Rodham. I had the sudden vision of her hiding under the end table in the common room of the dorm, her mascara streaked down her face and trying desperately to avoid a masked killer/homicidal ghost/possessed demon/insert-your-own-horror-movie-freak.

“Is someone there? Someone trying to hurt you?”

Silence.

 “Where are the faculty? Are they there?”

“No,” Parker said.

“Can you go get one of them? Can they help?”

“No,” Parker said, her voice so soft I could barely hear her. “They’re gone, too.”

Now, I felt a shiver of cold down my back. Something was going on at Bard. Something bad. Had Catherine taken over the girls’ dorm? Or did Headmaster B have everyone on lockdown? I couldn’t think of a good reason why Parker felt she couldn’t talk on the phone. 

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know.” I heard some shuffling in the background. “He’s coming,” Parker said, urgently. I could almost feel her clutching the phone. “Miranda, he’s
coming
. You’re the only one who can stop this. You are the only one.”

“Who’s coming? Parker – what’s going on?”

Parker cursed and then she let out a scream.

 “Parker!”

But the line had gone dead and there was nothing but a dial tone in my ear.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

I put down the receiver and Lindsay and I stared at each other.

“You sure you want to go back there?” I asked her. “You can still change your mind. Stay here and overdose on chocolate.”

Lindsay glanced around at the airport terminal. Then she met my eyes again.

“No way am I letting you have all the fun,” Lindsay said. Her words were joking, but something in her voice wasn’t. She was a little scared. And, frankly, so was I.

I had no idea what we were walking into when we returned to Bard, but I also knew we didn’t have a choice but to go there.

On the flight back, I tried to think of anything except how scared I was. Parker had said I was the only one who could stop whatever was happening there. But, a strong part of me wanted to ask the pilot to turn the plane around. Yes, I’d faced down all kinds of horrors at Bard. I should be used to it by now. You’d think that nearly getting killed a half a dozen times would make you braver, but the strange fact was, I was
more
afraid because I knew just how close I could really be to biting it. After awhile, you start to wonder just when your luck is going to run out.

Lindsay didn’t seem her usual plucky self, either. She tried not to let it show, but she was worried, too.

“What if we’re just going back there to save Parker?” Lindsay asked, breaking through my thoughts.

“What?”

“Parker said Hana and Samir and Blade and the faculty were gone, right? But what if they’re all dead? What if the only person alive is Parker and we’re going back there to risk our lives to save…
Parker
?”

I thought about this a moment. “We don’t know that anybody’s dead. Maybe they’re just missing.”

“Yeah, but it’s Bard. If they’re missing then they could be who knows where.”

I saw Lindsay’s nerves. I felt my own, too. “You know, Linds, it’s not too late,” I said. “You could go home. When the plane lands, you could just hang out at the airport and fly standby on the next flight back to Chicago.”

Lindsay looked at me for a long while. “But you wouldn’t come with me.”

Even though part of me did think I was crazy for going back to Shipwreck Island, not even knowing what I’d find there, I needed to know that my friends were okay.

“No,” I said. “I’m going.”

Lindsay nodded at me. “Then I am, too.”

When we landed in Maine, a taxi took us to the wharf where the ferry would leave for Bard.

We stood underneath the old wooden sign that read “Shipwreck Island” in scrawled red letters. The wharf was empty. The ferry was sitting in inky black water and it was waiting for us. As usual, a heavy fog had rolled in and it clouded the view of the island. All you could see from shore was the peak of some rocky mountaintop in the distance, ringed by gray murky fog.

“Yeah, like
this
isn’t a postcard for Serial Killer Camp,” Lindsay said, eyeing the picture in front of us. “Got to love Bard. There is no end to the creepy.  I missed you over-the-top foreshadowing!” Lindsay shouted to the island in the distance.

“Foreshadowing? Seriously?”

“What? Sometimes my lit nerd comes out. Sheesh.” Lindsay rolled her eyes.

“Sometimes?”

“Ha. Ha.” Lindsay gave me a playful nudge. Then she grabbed my arm and tugged me to the plank leading up to the ship. “Come on, sis. Let’s go save the day since those loser friends of yours got into trouble.”

“They’re not losers,” I protested, as we boarded the ferry.

“If they’re not losers, how come we’re always saving them?”

“Sometimes they save us.”

“Technicalities,” Lindsay said and shrugged. We glanced around and saw the ferry was empty. There wasn’t a single person around. That had never happened before. Sure, I’d ridden on ferries with only a few people on board. But there had always been somebody else. But now, none. “Hello? Anybody here?” shouted Lindsay. Her voice bounced off the steel walls of the ferry. We waited, but nobody answered.

Usually, there were new recruits coming in or kids who’d gotten leave to go home. But, then again, it wasn’t a major holiday or anything. We’d taken a special absence. Still, it was weird that no one else was on board.

“Let’s go to the bridge,” Lindsay said and pulled me along. “Maybe there’s someone there.”

Lindsay took me upstairs to the guidance controls for the ferry. Nobody was in there, either. And suddenly a green light came on, a lever moved by itself and then we were slinking away from the pier.

“Now that is creepy.” Lindsay glanced at the boat controls, which were moving themselves. 

“I know,” I said. “I never get used to that.”

The ferry to Bard never had a captain. The boat was completely automated and remote controlled. Today, given the fact we were the only people on the boat, it was particularly goose-bump inducing.

We glided through the fog, the black water slapping against the sides of the ship as we went. The ocean was a little choppy so we dipped and rolled a bit. I held on to the railing and looked out at the clouds hugged the island. Shipwreck Island seemed just as gloomy as usual. I could imagine how sailors of years past would’ve been afraid of it. Many boats had crashed there.

When we approached the sun-bleached dock, the ferry landed with a bump and a loud creak of metal bolts against steel sheets. There was a loud clank of a metal chain unraveling, and the anchor came down into the water with a splash.

“We’re
heeeere
,” Lindsay called in her spookiest voice.

“Quit it,” I said.

We grabbed our backpacks and walked down the stairs and off the ship. The bus to Bard was waiting for us, but it was empty. No Mr. Thompson, either.