A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (21 page)

“We never saw her,” Blade said. “But that doesn’t mean she’s not behind this.”

“So what happened after the floor turned blue?” I asked.

“One second we were sitting in the library and the next, the chairs and tables and books were shrinking and twisting and flying around and then we were all in the air and next thing I know I’m sitting poolside with a martini glass with that dress on,” Blade said.

“I liked that dress,” Samir said and wiggled his eyebrows.

Blade rolled her eyes. “And I was
blond
. That was a crime against humanity. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from that.”

“That is actually good news,” Lindsay said, as she picked up another book from the shelf. Samir and Blade stared at her. “Don’t you see? The school wasn’t destroyed. It was just relocated.” She held up her vault-copy of
Jane Eyre.
“If you guys were pushed into the pages of the
Great Gatsby,
then….”

“The rest of Bard has to be hidden somewhere in literature, too,” I finished. For the first time, I felt a little bit of hope. Maybe the school hadn’t been decimated at all. Maybe it was just hiding out in another story—along with the rest of the Bard students and faculty.

“Let’s look,” Blade said, grabbing another book off the shelf. We each took one and poured over the pages, looking for familiar names.

 After a few minutes, Lindsay spoke first.  

“Found Ryan…and Hana,” Lindsay said, pointing her finger at a page in the book. “They’re in
Jane Eyre
. Oh, crap.” She kept reading.

“What?” I thought for a minute they were both in danger.

Lindsay glanced up at me, her face pained. “I think they’re getting married.”

“They’re what?” Samir and Blade both grabbed the book at the same time.

She held up the page for us to see. I saw Ryan’s name and then Hana’s. It seemed Ryan was now Mr. Rochester and Hana was now Jane Eyre. “We’ve got to go get them out.” Lindsay’s voice came out in a whine.

“No way. I’m not going in there,” Samir said, shaking his head. “Do you remember two years ago? When that crazy pyromaniac what’s her name…?”

“Mrs. Rochester,” I said.

“Right, that crazy woman who set fire to everything? I mean, do you remember her? She nearly burned down the school. And she’s
nuts
. I’m sorry. I’m not going in there. Crazy lives in there.”

 “You don’t have to come with us,” I said. “You can stay out here with Lindsay.”

“Excuse me?” Lindsay blurted. “I had to stay out last time. It’s my turn to go in.”

“No, I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “It’s too dangerous. Have you even read Jane Eyre?”

“Yes,” Lindsay said. “Before you, actually. Mrs. Rochester is going to burn down the house if you we don’t get in there.” She looked at me a long time and I realized she wasn’t bluffing. “And, Miranda, I’m not a little kid anymore. It’s time you let me do some stuff on my own.”

Blade didn’t offer her opinion, which was telling. Normally, she’d be the one screaming that Lindsay had no business going on a stealth mission. Instead, she just gave an indifferent shrug, like she really didn’t care one way or another. I looked at Lindsay for a second, really
looked
at her, and I saw she was right. She wasn’t the twelve-year-old kid sister with the braces and the annoying whine. She was growing up. And maybe she was right. Maybe it was time for me to let her.

“Fine,” I said at last. “You go. But be careful.”

I took
Jane Eyre
from her hands and began reading. A glimmering portal opened up in

the middle of the cabin and on the other side sat a lush green lawn and an old English estate.

“Okay, Lindsay, stay close to me, listen to what I say and don’t screw anything up,” Blade said. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Lindsay said and nodded.

“Maybe I should go with you,” Samir told Blade. I could see the concern on his face. If Hana could see them now, I was sure she’d approve of them as a couple. They just worked. I didn’t know if fate brought them together or it was just plain luck. Because on the outside, nothing about them seemed compatible, but together, they just clicked. There wasn’t a better way to describe it. I felt a sharp pang as I thought about Heathcliff. When I thought about perfect couples, my mind went back to him. I thought we’d been one. Had I been so wrong?

Thinking about that, I felt like crying, so I stopped thinking about it. I had a job to do. I had to keep reading to keep the portal open, so I kept reading.

“Samir, you stay here with Miranda,” Blade said. “I’ll be right back. Lindsay, come on.” Blade stepped through the portal. Lindsay’s eyes grew bright as she followed. On the other side, we could see them, dressed in long skirts, and walking quickly toward the estate.

“I should’ve gone, shouldn’t I?” Samir said, as we watched them go. I stopped reading, and the portal began to close.

“They’ll be fine,” I said. At least, I hoped so. 

Outside, the wind howled against the thin walls of the cabin. The trees rustled loudly in the wind, and I tried not to think of whatever creature Lindsay and I had run into in the woods.

“Yeah, but a brave boyfriend would’ve….”

Outside, I thought I heard a scream. So did Samir, because he instantly stopped talking and his face went white.

“Tell me I imagined that,” he said, his voice a little shaky.

“Nope,” I said, walking to the window. I peered out, but the light in the cabin made it hard to see. I turned and flicked the light off.

“Lights off? Is that
really
necessary?” Samir hovered near my shoulder. We both pressed our faces to the glass. All I saw were tree branches swaying in the wind.

“I can’t see anything otherwise,” I said.

“And tell me again
why
you want to see what’s out there causing people to scream?”

“I want to be prepared,” I said.

“Maybe it’s not what it sounded like,” Samir said, trying to sound hopeful. “It could’ve been a wounded raccoon or something.”

“Maybe.” I wasn’t convinced. I glanced over at Samir. “You beginning to regret not going with Blade?”

“Definitely,” he said.

We both fell quiet, and then, far away, another scream came. This time, it was hard to imagine it was anything else than a girl out there in trouble. I wondered if it was Parker.

“That was no raccoon,” I said.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Samir said.

I put my hand on the door lock, preparing to open the door, when Samir’s hand clamped down on mine.

“If you go out there and don’t come back then Blade won’t, either,” Samir said. His voice was low and somber. He wasn’t afraid of me opening the door as much as he was telling me he wasn’t going to allow me to do it. He wasn’t going to let me run out there and leave Blade trapped in
Jane Eyre
.

“You’re right,” I said, taking my hand off the doorknob. “What was I thinking?” I was Blade and Lindsay’s only way back.

“It’s okay,” Samir said. “Can we turn the lights on now?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea do you?”

“Probably not,” Samir said. “Just thought I’d ask.”

We sat in dark silence, looking out the window. No other screams came after that. The woods were silent, except for the wind blowing through the trees.

The minutes ticked on, and then, it was time to open the portal.

I began reading and the doorway to the book opened in the center of the room, just as it had before. The light glimmered as the portal grew larger. In seconds, we saw Blade and Lindsay sprinting across the field. Following them were a man and a woman in period dress, and as I got closer I recognized them.

“Hana! Ryan!” I shouted, but, of course, they couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t hear them, either. I could only see their lips moving, but no sound came out. Then, they all ran closer and in an instant, they’d crossed over, into the small cabin.

“Miranda!” Hana cried and threw her arms around me. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Not that you seemed all that broken up about it,” Lindsay grumbled. “You two seemed pretty happy to be getting married.”

“We were making the most of a bad situation,” Hana said, sounding a tad defensive. Hana and Ryan exchanged a shy glance. I gathered by the looks on their faces that they’d bonded quite a lot while they’d been stuck together. Jane Eyre had fallen in love with Mr. Rochester in the book. It looked like Ryan and Hana had played their parts a little too well.

“What’s going on, anyway? You guys have any ideas?” Ryan asked.

Blade and Samir told them about seeing Heathcliff and Catherine near the vault.

“Okay, well, the first thing we should do is go find the faculty,” Ryan said. “Let’s all head back to Bard and….”

“Uh, Ryan,” I said. I glanced at Blade and Samir and we all realized that Ryan and Hana
didn’t know
. Wherever they’d been when Catherine and Heathcliff had gone into the vault, they hadn’t seen the distortion of the Bard buildings like Samir and Blade had. They had no idea there wasn’t a Bard to go back to now. I looked at Ryan and Hana. “There’s something we have to tell you about Bard.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

“How does an
entire
school just disappear?” Ryan cried, jumping to his feet as if he were going to run to the campus to see it for himself. Hana put her hand on his arm to steady him. “How is this even possible? I just can’t believe it.”

“The vault, too?” Hana asked, her voice soft and solemn.

I nodded.

“Damn,” she whispered, under her breath. “Everything…gone?”

“Yep,” Lindsay said, perching on the table and eating some more saltines. With all of us in this small cabin it was feeling way too tiny. There weren’t enough chairs or places to sit.

 “Maybe it isn’t gone,” I said. “Everything could be hiding in a book.”

 “Can you send an entire campus through the portal?” Ryan asked. “I didn’t think that was possible.”

“They brought in a whale,” Lindsay said. “Why not a whole school?”

Hana looked thoughtful. “If you were going to try to move something as large as a school, you’d have to have a
very
large window. And if you made such a large window, I bet it would be a two-way portal. Some fictional characters from that world would get into ours.” Hana was pacing as she thought out loud.

“Yeah, and?” Blade said.

Hana’s head snapped up and she sent Blade an annoyed glance. “The
point
is, did we see any other fictional characters running around Bard in the days before the school disappeared?”

“You mean aside from Heathcliff?” Lindsay said.

“Right,” Hana said.

“There was Catherine,” Samir said. “Right? From
Wuthering Heights
. Emily Bronte could’ve hidden Bard there; you know, in her own book.”

“She would have control of it,” Hana said. “It’s a good possibility.”

“Nope. No way. I don’t think she’d do that,” Blade said.

“Why not?”

“Because Emily Bronte
hated
Bard. Do you think she’d ruin her own masterpiece by putting Bard in it? No, definitely not. She’d stash the school in someone else’s book. She wouldn’t want any of her scenes polluted by the boarding school she couldn’t stand.”

“Blade has a point there,” Ryan said.

“Anybody see any other fictional characters?” Hana asked the group.

“I did,” I said. I glanced at Lindsay. “Sydney Carton.”

“From
A Tale of Two Cities
?” Ryan asked. Neither he nor Hana had been there when I’d explained Heathcliff had a double.

“Yep, and he looked just like Heathcliff,” I said. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence, either.”

“So you’re saying
A Tale of Two Cities
is where we should look,” Ryan said.

“It’s our best lead at this point,” I said.

 “We should
not
do anything but call our parents and go home,” Samir said. “I’m done with enchanted islands. This is getting ridiculous.”

“If we don’t save the school who will?” I asked him. “And we have to find out what happened to the faculty. What about Coach H? And the other teachers?”

“Maybe they’re happy.” Samir shrugged. “Maybe they’ve been released finally and get to go to another plane or wherever else they should be. Besides, aren’t they always telling us to stay out of it? Maybe we should.”

“They could need our help.”

 “Or not,” Samir said. “Besides, the vault is gone. We have no way to travel there, anyway.”

“Yes, we do,” Lindsay said. She held up
A Tale of Two Cities,
she’d found it on the cabin bookshelf.

“You guys do remember that
A Tale of Two Cities
is not the safest of places,” Samir pointed out. “You know that the Bastille is where they beheaded everybody in the French Revolution, right? And they didn’t really care who they executed.  At first it was just Marie Antoinette. But then they started killing anybody who was anybody.”

“We can’t just sit here and do nothing,” Blade said. Suddenly, the ground shook beneath our feet. The whole cabin seemed to shake, the chairs and table vibrating against the wooden floor planks. The electric lantern jumping on the table. Just when I was sure it was an earthquake, I realized the tremors came in regular bursts. They came, as if in reaction to footsteps made by a pair of very, very large feet.

I looked over at Samir who’d gone white. “It’s coming, Miranda,” Samir told me. “It’s found us.”

“What found you?” Blade asked.

“Something that makes people scream,” Samir said.

“Is it that thing we saw?” Lindsay asked me. She had her face pressed to the glass, too.

“What thing?” Ryan asked.

“We didn’t actually see anything,” I clarified. “We heard something. And then when you guys were in
Jane Eyre
, Samir and I heard somebody out there screaming.”

“This island just gets better and better,” Hana said sarcastically. 

“What are you talking about? This is the coolest island
ever
,” Blade said and she was being sincere. It was very hard to creep out Blade.