A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (23 page)

“God that’s awful,” Lindsay cried, holding her nose.

“Remind me to invent Febreze,” Samir said. “I totally would make a killing.”

 The clomp of horse hooves and the movement of a large wagon caught my attention as the crowd nearest us parted, allowing the horse-drawn wagon through. The wagon was filled with even smellier people. They were all smudged with dirt and mud and blood. Their hair was matted and their clothes were torn. They looked far worse than the people in the crowd, and their hands were bound.

“Prisoners,” Hana hissed in my ear, “from the Bastille.”

The crowd erupted into boos and jeers as the cart made its way slowly past us. All around us the mob yelled angrily in French. I didn’t understand a single word of it. A few people began to throw trash and whatever else they could find at the men and women in the wagon. A rotten head of lettuce hit one woman and a piece of cobblestone caught a man in the cheek, drawing blood. The bleeding man bent over, holding his cheek, and that’s when I saw someone I knew in place behind him. For a heart-stopping minute I thought it was Heathcliff. But I took a closer look and realized it wasn’t him.

It was Sydney Carton.

“Sydney!” I shouted, without thinking about it. “Sydney!” With dull eyes Sydney searched for the sound of his name. For the briefest of moments, he did find me, and we exchanged a look. He gave me a small smile. Then he put his bound hands to his lips and made a shushing sound, as if we shared a secret.

“Where?” Hana asked.

“There,” I pointed.

“You’re sure that’s not Heathcliff?” Lindsay asked me.

“He looks exactly like….” Blade said.

“I know—I told you,” I said. “And, yes, I’m sure it’s not Heathcliff.”

“Now are you guys a hundred percent sure you saw Catherine with Heathcliff?” I asked Blade and Samir as the two of them watched Syndey drive past us in the cart.

“Well, now that you mention it… I guess it would’ve been hard to tell them apart,” Samir agreed.

For a second, I allowed myself some hope. Maybe it hadn’t been Heathcliff kissing Catherine in the library at all. Maybe it had always been Sydney. Maybe Heathcliff and Catherine weren’t a couple after all.

And maybe I should be worrying about how I was going to save the school and not whether or not my boyfriend is cheating on me. Yes, I know, I need to work on my priorities. But, give me a break, already.

“Where are they taking him?” Lindsay asked.

I turned to the crowd around me. “Where is this wagon going? Can anyone tell me?”

“Miranda,” Hana said, grabbing my arm. But I wouldn’t be dissuaded.

 “Does anyone speak English? Excusez-moi! Parlez-vous Anglais?” I trailed off, having exhausted my French.

A stout woman standing next to me with a flat face and a round nose snorted and eyed me with suspicion. “To the guillotine, girl,” she said. “All traitors to the Republic lose their heads today!”

I realized then why Sydney was giving me a melancholy smile, and why he looked so sad and resigned.

He was about to be executed.

“We have to save him,” I said to Hana, grabbing her arm.

“But, Miranda, I was trying to tell you that this is in his story,” Hana said. “
This
is how he’s supposed to die.” She pointed to the stage down the street. On it, there was a guillotine, its sharp blade glinting in the sun.  The contraption had a steel blade on rails that a hooded man hoisted up by a rope. Beneath the blade there was a block of wood where you rested your head and small gate closed down on your neck, ensuring you couldn’t move. And conveniently located in front of you was a bloody basket to make sure your head didn’t roll straight off the stage.

Ack.

Even in the dimming light, I could see the blood. It was everywhere. On the block of wood and all over the panels of the stage. It dripped down the wooden support beams in large rivulets and off the blade that was more red than silver. The guillotine had seen a lot of customers today.

And it was about to see a few more.

The old gray mare was pulling the rickety cart containing Sydney and the others directly to it.

“Sydney’s story sucks,” I said, squeezing Hana’s hand.

 “Well, he chooses this,” Hana said. “He sacrifices himself for a girl.”

I must’ve looked like I wasn’t completely following, because she added, “You picked a lousy week to fall behind on your reading assignments.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“Anyway,” Hana continued. “Sydney looks exactly like Charles Darney, his love Lucie’s fiancé. Sydney knows Lucie can’t—and probably won’t ever—love him. But he makes the ultimate sacrifice for her anyway. When Charles Darney is accused of treason in France and set to lose his head, Sydney gets the bright idea of sneaking in to take his place, so that his love, Lucie, can be with Charles forever.”

“That’s kind of romantic,” Blade said.

“What’s romantic about killing yourself so the chick you love can be banged for years by
some other dude
?” Samir just shook his head. He and Ryan exchanged a glance. I think they both felt the same way.

“You have to read the book,” Hana said, sounding a little defensive.

“I guess,” Ryan said.

Lindsay grabbed my hand and together we pushed through the crowd, following Ryan, Hana, Blade and Samir. We beat the cart there, but only by minutes. Before we knew it, Sydney was being roughly pulled from the back. He was headed straight to the bloodied guillotine.

“I can’t let this happen,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s not right.”

“It’s his
fate
, Miranda,” Hana said.

“But he could help us find….” I stopped myself before I blurted out Heathcliff’s name. I doubt that would win me any converts among this crowd. “The other Bard students. He may know something.” I paused. “I mean can’t we question him now and worry about his fate
later
? He knows something, I really think he does.” Like, for instance, he might know if he was the one who making out with Catherine. You know, instead of Heathcliff.

Ryan cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe in fate. We make our own destiny.”

“I’m with you,” Blade said.

“Me, too,” Samir agreed.

“Am I the only one who thinks this is a bad idea?” Hana asked the group.

“Not the only one,” said Coach H, appearing from seemingly nowhere. But then he could do that. He was a ghost.

There were cries of surprise all around and hugs, too. Coach H was not the hugging type, but he made the exception this time. I was guessing he was as surprised to see us as we were to see him, and as glad.

 “Nice outfit, Coach,” Samir said and grinned. I agreed that in the costume lotto, Coach H lost out. He looked less like a basketball coach and more like a pirate. He was wearing an eye patch and was in the same old-fashioned clothes we were, but for some reason his pants were cut short at the knees. He had a big brown belt on, and hanging from it was a knife and a one-shot antique pistol.

“I was going to ask you the same question,” he said. Coach H glanced around and all of us, his face drawn with concern. “I thought you all were….” He let his sentence trail off, but I knew what he thought. That we were all gone forever. Dead or disappeared, it didn’t really matter. Either way, he had thought we wouldn’t be found.

“It’s dangerous for you in here,” Coach H said. He glanced nervously around at the angry mob that was shouting at the men and women sentenced to die.

“Well, it was either this or be eaten by Cyclops,” Samir told him. “We decided to take our chances with bloodthirsty revolutionaries. At least they aren’t cannibals.” Samir paused, then looked stricken. “Are they?”

 “Not yet,” Blade said. Just over Coach H’s shoulder I could see the prisoners were disembarking from the cart and climbing up the stairs to the platform. They were forming some kind of line, waiting turns to have their heads lopped off. Sydney was roughly pulled to the front. He would be the first to die.

“We need to save Sydney Carton,” I told Coach H, urgency in my voice.

 “No,
we
don’t.” Coach H shook his head firmly to show he wasn’t on board with my plan.

“Don’t tell me this is his story and we can’t change it,” I said. “He might know what happened to Bard. We
need
him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know anything,” Coach H said.

“But maybe he does. I don’t think it’s an accident that he looks like Heathcliff.”

“I don’t either.” Hana crossed her arms. 

“That’s not a good enough reason to save him,” Coach H. “We might be upsetting timelines we know nothing about. You have no idea how complicated this can all be.”

“I’ve been in three classic lit stories in the last ten hours, so, yeah, I do know,” Blade shot back.

“And what about the other Bard students? Who knows what kind of timelines they’re destroying right now?” I asked Coach H. “If Sydney can help get all of Bard back where it belongs, isn’t that our priority here?”

Coach H chewed on this awhile. Since he didn’t contradict me right away, I decided to press my advantage. “Besides, isn’t this guillotine going to be here tomorrow? Does he
have
to die today? Postponing his death doesn’t change anything.”

 “Hmpf,” grumbled Coach H. He wanted to poke holes in my theory, but he was having a harder than usual time doing so. “You’re making a lot of sense today, Miranda.”

“Don’t I always?”

Coach H didn’t answer me. He was busy studying Sydney Carton, who now was standing near the blade of the guillotine. Sydney was going to say something. The crowd momentarily stopped booing and the shouts had died down. I could see bloodlust on the faces of everyone in the crowd. They watched, rapt, listening to the condemned’s final words.

“Tis a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done…” he began.

“Coach,” I pleaded. “Ernest,” I said, saying his real name aloud. I didn’t do that very often. He looked at me. “He might be the key to figuring this out. If we let him die, we might never find out what really happened to Bard. If we’re alive and you’re still here, maybe there’s a chance to save the others.”

The frown on Coach’s face told me he hadn’t unraveled the entire mystery of how this had all happened. In his face, I could see him trying to weigh the benefits of two different courses of action. He wanted to keep the purity of Charles Dickens’ novel intact, but he also knew he was responsible for the lives of all the students at Bard.

“And, besides, since we’re here at all, hasn’t that upset something already?” Hana asked. “If we save him and he helps us fix everything, then we will be gone from the story and so will anything we ever did to him.”

“True,” Coach H said.

Sydney was still making his speech. Someone from the crowd, however, had tired of it, and launched a stone. Sydney sidestepped it—just barely. It was evident the crowd was getting restless. Pretty soon, they wouldn’t tolerate any more last words. They wanted blood. Apparently, the gallons already dripping from the guillotine hadn’t satisfied them.

Coach H muttered something under his breath that sounded profane, but when he looked up again I knew he was going to help.

“What should we do?” I asked him.

Right at that moment, the hooded executioner pulled Sydney to the guillotine and harshly shoved him to his knees. Sydney wasn’t putting up a fight, but the man in the black hood was rough with him, anyway. Right before Sydney put his head down he managed to catch my eye in the crowd. He smiled once more at me, a sad, tight smile. I looked up, my eyes fixed on the blade high above Sydney’s head. It caught the sunlight, and the crusted blood on the edge burned a bright shade of rust in the late afternoon sun.

Do something!
I shouted in my head. But it was no use. Coach H held me fast. I couldn’t move.

“Wait for it,” he said.

Wait for what? Sydney to lose his head?

I stared at the blade, my whole body tense. I felt everyone near me holding their breath. And then, the executioner released the blade. I gasped, and covered my face with my hands. I couldn’t watch.

But, there wasn’t any sound. No awful slice of flesh. No thumping sound of a rolling head into a basket. No cheers from the crowd. After a second, I opened my eyes again. I saw that somehow, the blade had gotten stuck midway between the top of the contraption and Sydney Carton’s neck. The hooded man on the platform gave the guillotine a hard kick, but the blade was stuck there.

I glanced up at Coach H and saw his eyes were closed in concentration. A small bead of sweat appeared on his forehead. Somehow, he was making the blade freeze in mid-air. 

Everyone in the crowd registered the absurdity of this at seemingly the same time. There were some boos and hisses from the crowd. The people were unhappy they didn’t get the blood they had been chanting for. After all, this guillotine was supposed to be infallible, like an assembly line of death, where you could march dozens of people and behead them one after another without it ever getting tired or worn down. The executioner on stage kicked the guillotine again, but the blade didn’t budge.

Coach H’s eyes never opened. The strain of holding up the blade was showing in the way his mouth was pressed in a thin white line.

The executioner grew as frustrated as the crowd. Eventually, another man on stage walked over to help him. Neither one could get the death machine working again. The man held up his hands and addressed the crowd in French. I didn’t understand all he was saying but I got the gist it was along the lines of
sorry folks, we’re having technical difficulties. We’ll be back in a little while.

The crowd, seeing there wouldn’t be blood immediately, began to disperse. Sydney was shoved into the cart once more, and the horse was sent on its way back to the Bastille. Coach H appeared by my side then. He had a hand wrapped around my arm.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said.

“But what about Sydney?” I asked, watching him being wheeled away. “We can’t let them take him.”

“I’ve got it covered,” Coach H said and nodded to the opposite end of the platform and that’s when I saw the short, petite figure of Headmaster B.