A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (11 page)

“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 need 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.

I expected to see an argument or at least anger—on Parker’s part or Heathcliff’s—but from what I could see they seemed almost… friendly. Parker’s face broke out into a smile and she laughed again. She even puffed out her chest a little bit like she does when Ryan Kent, or another eligible boy, is around. It took me a few seconds to realize just what I was seeing. Could it be possible? Was Parker
flirting
with Heathcliff?

I ducked back and watched as Parker laid a casual hand on his forearm and laughed again, tossing her blond hair.

Yep, definitely flirting.

Officially, this was the strangest thing I’d ever seen at Bard Academy and my English Lit teacher was the ghost of Ernest Hemingway.

I blinked a couple of times and just barely resisted the urge to pinch myself. This could not be real. I was not witnessing Parker Rodham flirting with
my
Heathcliff. 

Parker glanced up. I ducked behind the building, trying to hide, but even I knew I was a split second too late. Parker had seen me. The game was up.

“Hello!” she called to me. “We’re over here!”

Parker had seen me watching her flirt with my boyfriend and now she was calling me over to have a closer look? Clearly, I had fallen into a wormhole into another dimension where Parker had lost her mind and I wasn’t far behind.

I peeked around the corner and found her staring at me, hand on her hip. Heathcliff was looking at me too, and nothing on his face told me he realized he’d been doing anything unusual. He seemed perfectly calm, like I’d just caught him at the cafeteria in line to get milk.

“We’re over here,” Parker said, as if she were expecting me. “I told you, I’d do it.”

Heathcliff smiled at me, glad to see me, and not at all uncomfortable by the fact he was two feet from the girl he knew I couldn’t stand. Something was rotten in Denmark.

And I don’t mean figuratively.

Literally, something smelled awful. As I took a step closer and soon figured out that the stink was coming from Heathcliff. This morning, he’d smelled perfect—just like himself. Now, he carried with him the odor of stale beer.

“Uh… What was that?” I asked Parker. I was too distracted by Heathcliff’s smell and by his rumpled clothes. He looked like he’d spent the last couple of hours since I saw him at a frat party.

“What else?” Parker echoed. “I found him for you.” Parker’s white smile grew bigger. I didn’t detect the usual sarcasm in her voice. I had no idea what was going on, but a voice inside my head told me to play along until I figured out what was happening. Parker was suddenly chummy with Heathcliff and me? Something was up, and I had to figure out what it was.

She was still talking. “I told you I’d find him and I did. Now, tell me how this is going to make Miranda’s life miserable.”

“Make Miranda’s life miserable?” I echoed. Okay, so clearly, Parker thought I wasn’t me. That made sense, as did the fact she still hated my guts. Parker and I had never been, and probably would never be, BFFs. We were more like BEFs, Best Enemies Forever.

But then,
who
did she think I was? I could think of only one person: Catherine.

“Ugh, Miranda. Can’t stand her. Her and that imaginary boyfriend of hers. Do you think since he’s a made-up character he’s even a
real human being
? Isn’t that like dating outside your species or something?”

I must have given Parker a long, hard look, because she started to backpedal.

“I mean, not that I have anything against you 'Fiction-Americans, ' or whatever you want to call yourself.  Sorry, Catherine—or Cathy—a or whatever you want to go by.”

Now this was starting to make more sense. Parker did think I was Catherine, and the two of them had made some kind of deal.

I wondered when Catherine had approached Parker. Even more troubling was that Catherine and Parker had any kind of deal at all. With those two together, you didn’t need any horsemen of the apocalypse. I think they had enough evil between them to get the job done all on their own.

“Yeah, uh, thanks,” I said. Why would Cathy need Parker’s help to find Heathcliff?

And why was Heathcliff just standing there, totally fine with the fact that I was supposed to be Catherine and Parker was trading him off like a stray dog she’d found in the street. Nothing about this was right. Heathcliff would never let Parker do something like this… unless he
wanted
to go with Catherine. Maybe that had been his plan all along?

I glanced up at Heathcliff’s face but couldn’t read a single expression on it. He also seemed a little unsteady on his feet. Was it just my imagination or was he swaying a bit? Kind of like a big oak tree about to fall down.

“So?” Parker asked me.

“So?”

“So, I delivered…” Parker looked at Heathcliff. “And now you owe me what you promised.”

What I promised? I think the last thing I promised Parker Rodham was to never speak to her again after I’d saved her life and in return she’d tried to get me expelled from Bard. I was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about that promise. What could Catherine have promised Parker? I doubted a girl from 1825 had much to offer Parker in terms of a bribe.

“Right—that, well…” I stalled. “I’m working on getting it.”

“You’re working on it. You said fair trade, and here I am.”

“Right, but uh…” I had no idea what Parker thought I owed her, but I decided to bluff. “I couldn’t bring it out here. In daylight. Not with the Guardians around.”

Parker stared at me a long minute. “You couldn’t bring
the key
to the vault outside? How big is this key?”

I stopped and stared. Parker wanted the key to the vault? The same vault that was hidden beneath the library and contained a whole mini library of enchanted books, any of which could bring fictional characters to life?
That
vault?

The idea of Parker rummaging around in such a powerful and dangerous place like the vault made me feel like throwing up. She knew how dangerous those books could be. She also knew that you could banish the faculty by destroying those books. The books were their only anchor to this world.

 Maybe she planned to liquidate the teachers. It wouldn’t be beyond her.

I tried to keep my face blank, but something must’ve shown, because a suspicious look darkened Parker’s face.

“You do know what I’m talking about, right?”  It was more than a question. It was an accusation.

I willed myself to look calm and hoped none of my true thoughts were popping up on my face for her to see. I must not have been the best actress because I could tell Parker was already doubting my performance. She was studying me now, doing her own calculations and she was quickly coming to the conclusion that something was wrong.

“Well, I have to be careful when the key comes out,” I said. “The faculty have ways of knowing when it’s on the move.”

Technically, there wasn’t a key to the vault at all so nothing that I was saying was in the least bit true. The vault was opened by pulling a special book from the shelf in the back of the library, near the rare books wing. I could easily show Parker how to get into the vault, but I wasn’t going to do that. That would be like handing Parker all the launch codes to the country’s nuclear arsenal. It was only wise if you were hoping for the end of the world.

The fact that Catherine promised Parker a key to the vault at all was an interesting development. Either Catherine was playing Parker by telling her there
was
a key, or Catherine didn’t know how to get into the vault any more than Parker did.

That was a fact to file away for later.

Parker’s eyes had narrowed. She was on the brink of figuring all of this out. Parker might be evil, but she was hardly stupid. “What happened to your hair?” Parker asked. The doubt in her voice growing. “It looked different this morning.”

This was a trap, the kind Parker loved to set. I remembered Lindsay saying Catherine had worn ponytails—old school Britney Spears style—the last time she’d seen her. Maybe she was still wearing them that way.

“Yeah, I had ponytails,” I said, pulling my hair up on each side of my head to mimic them. “But I decided it was time for a change.”

“I agree about that,” said a voice from behind me. It was a girl’s voice and it sounded remarkably like mine.

I knew who it was before I turned around. The surprise on Parker’s and Heathcliff’s faces was enough to clue me in. When I turned, I saw Catherine standing there, her hair in pigtails, gum in her mouth. She snapped it loudly. Now that we were closer than we’d ever been, I saw she wasn’t my exact twin. She had a flatter stomach than me. She also was a smidgen shorter. Her eyes weren’t quite like mine, either, or maybe that was just the excessive make-up she was wearing. It was hard to tell what her eyes were like under ten pounds of black liquid eyeliner. I had never met anyone before who wore more make-up than Blade, but I guess there was a first time for everything.

“How could you possibly think
this
pathetic girl was me?” Catherine’s voice was barely a snarl, her face twisted in disgust. If I had suspected she had been the one to launch the stone gargoyle at my head this morning, I was more than sure of it now. The hate in her eyes told me if she had something lethal in her hands at the moment she’d throw it at me.