The Scarlet Letterman (5 page)

I have never felt so in need of a shower.

Seven

“Ms. Tate, you’re late,”
Coach H says, accidentally rhyming and causing a couple of snickers from the stoners who sit in the back of the class. They wear their hair in their face and find everything funny.

“Sorry, I —”

“Sit!” Coach H bellows, waving his hand to show he doesn’t want any excuses. I like Coach H under normal circumstances. He’s sort of like a big grizzly bear. As long as you don’t take his curtness personally, you realize he really does care about you.

I mean, last semester he and Ms. W saved me from Dracula, so I know he cares about me, even if he doesn’t like to let on he does. The fact is, he doesn’t have great people skills, and besides, Ernest Hemingway isn’t known for his patience. Plus, he’s stuck teaching theology, which I can tell isn’t his favorite subject. He was much better suited for last semester’s history class, where he could show off his World War I artifacts.

I slide into my seat, right next to Parker Rodham, and can’t help but notice she’s gloating. She’s always happy if I get in trouble. Theology is one of several courses that’s a mix of sophomores and juniors.

Like all classrooms at Bard Academy, this one is predictably dark and grim-looking. Instead of modern desks with plastic chairs, we have to sit in these old, wooden chairs with small desks attached to the arms. The desk-chairs are bolted to the ground, so you can’t move them at all. Hana tells me this was because one year a student hopped up on crystal meth threw a chair through a window and tried to escape. I don’t know if this is just another Campus Legend or not, but whatever. It’s as good an explanation as any for why we have to sit on ancient chairs that don’t move.

I glance over at Parker and notice she’s wearing a button on her Bard blazer. It’s got an artist’s rendered drawing of the Hooded Sweatshirt Guy, and says “Catch the Stalker!” She sees me staring at her button and she leans over and whispers, “Ryan says ‘hi.’ ”

I frown at her. She must know I haven’t seen him yet today. He’s probably already walked her to and from a dozen buildings by now.

“By the way, thanks for being so understanding,” Parker continues, her voice dripping sarcasm. “I mean, other girls would get jealous about lending out their boyfriends. Especially a boyfriend like Ryan.”

What she really means is: “I am so stealing your boyfriend and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Before I can respond, Coach H clears his throat, signaling the start of class.

Reluctantly I settle in to listen to the lecture while I try to think of ways I can kill Parker. Maybe a Bic pen to the jugular would work.

We’re currently in the middle of studying the Puritans, and as in most classes at Bard, we’ve found a way to link it to classic literature. We’ve just finished reading
The Scarlet Letter,
and now we’re going to start on the play
The Crucible,
both of which deal with Puritan extremism. I’m not a huge Hawthorne fan (they all made far too big a deal out of a little affair, if you ask me. I mean, Hester Prynne’s husband was presumed dead, lost at sea, and she’s supposed to be celibate her whole life? As far as I can tell, her only crime is not using birth control, and that wasn’t exactly her fault since it was pre-Trojan times).

“First, we have business to take care of. Your papers,” Coach H barks. Boy, he’s in a particularly foul mood this afternoon.

He walks down the aisles of the class, handing out our papers. I thought I did an unusually good job on mine (“The Real Scarlet Letter: Puritanism in America”). Even after one semester at Bard, I’ve learned the importance of putting colons in your paper titles. They make you sound smarter than you are.

I’ve yet to break the A barrier in this class, but if any paper could do it, it’s this one. I did research, I even have a bibliography; basically above and beyond the opinion essay we were supposed to write. I even made a cover sheet, which is more than I can say for most everybody else.

So it comes as quite a surprise when Coach H plops down my paper and on the cover there’s a big, fat, red…F.

An F? How can this be? I flip to the end of the paper where it simply reads: “Plagiarism will not be tolerated. This is your one and only warning. Next time, severe disciplinary action will follow.”

I glance around me as if I can find the answer in the air. I didn’t plagiarize anyone! This is 100 percent my original work, such that it is. My eyes fall on Parker Rodham’s desk, which is next to mine, and I see that she’s got her paper faceup. It’s got a bright red A on it, as well as “good work!” with an exclamation mark. And the title is…“The Real Scarlet Letter: Puritanism in America.”

“Hey…” I hiss at Parker, who just looks up at me and gives me a slow, deliberate smile. She’s done this on purpose. She’s framed me for plagiarism. And then I remember seeing one of her clones in the library two weeks ago. The one who asked to borrow some notebook paper, the one who was sitting at the table when I got up to find a book in the stacks and bumped into Ryan, who kept me distracted for longer than I intended. I’d left my backpack there, along with the first draft of my theology paper. The clone must’ve copied it, replaced it, and then given a copy to Parker. That was a few days before the paper was due. I bet she gave Coach H an early draft, just to plant the seed that
she
was the one with the original work. She framed me. Evil witch!

Parker just straightens the papers on her desk and acts as if nothing is wrong. I suppose I should count myself lucky. Being framed for plagiarism is better than getting my Pellegrino spiked with rat poison, which is allegedly what she did to her own mother.

I fume until the bell rings, signaling the end of class. But as I try to present my case to Coach H, he doesn’t seem to want to hear it.

“You can’t really believe I copied this paper,” I say. “The colon was
totally
my idea!”

“I’m sorry, Miss Tate, but Parker told me about her paper in advance. She showed me a copy.”

“But Parker copied
me.
One of her friends took my paper in the library. And —”

“Miranda, I
want
to believe you,” Coach H says, his tough exterior showing a little unexpected tenderness. “And I do believe you. Because I know Parker, is well, simply put…lacking in scruples. But she didn’t leave me much choice here. The evidence — which I’m sure is planted by her — is all on her side, and I can’t play favorites.”

“But —”

“Just be careful next time, and be glad I don’t send you to Headmaster B, because she takes a far harder line on plagiarism than I do. She believes it’s a figurative expulsion offense.”

Like the Puritans in
The Scarlet Letter,
Bard faculty sometimes punish students by shunning them. Figurative expulsion is one of these shunning punishments, in which a student is ordered not to talk to or interact with any other student or faculty member for a certain amount of time. No students are allowed to talk to you, either. You wear a red sweater vest, so basically you walk around campus like a ghost, unable to talk or interact with anyone or have anyone talk to you. It’s one of the worst punishments at Bard, and more feared even than toilet cleaning duty.

“But Coach, this is not fair. I didn’t do this,” I say, trying to keep my voice at a reasonable level, but failing. The unfairness of it is just too hard to swallow. Not to mention the fact that Parker got an A because she stole all my hard work.

“Is there a problem here?” asks Headmaster B, who appears from nowhere as she often does. She’s more ghostlike than any of the teacher ghosts around here, and by far the strictest. She’s only about four feet tall, but she’s not someone you want to mess with.

“We were just finished here, weren’t we, Ms. Tate?” Coach says, nodding his head in the direction of the exit.

“Fine,” I grind out. I heave a frustrated sigh, snatch my paper off his desk, and stomp out of the room. It’s not very mature, but I can’t help it. It’s so not fair.

Outside class, on the stairs leading out, I nearly bump straight into Ryan. He’s wearing his Bard blazer open, and his tie loose. He looks good enough to eat. And, even better, Parker is nowhere to be found. For once!

Immediately some of my anger at Parker fades a little, as I take in Ryan’s smile of recognition and feel the warmth of his arm as he swings it around me.

“You look like you’re on the warpath,” he says, his arm casually around my shoulder.

“You have no idea,” I say.

“How about you tell me over lunch?”

Eight

One of the
unwritten perks of having a boyfriend is that you never really have to worry about eating alone again. It’s what relationships are about, really. You have a permanent, standing date for movies and meals.

I’m not sure how Ryan will react when I tell him his new charity project, Parker, has framed me. When I tell him about the plagiarism, he seems to take her side.

“I can’t believe she’d do that on purpose,” Ryan says, shaking his head. Ryan is not someone who likes to believe there are bad people in the world. He’s sort of an eternal optimist. It’s probably the result of having so many things come so easy to him. He just doesn’t realize the lengths other people will go to have what he has naturally.

“She definitely did it,” I say.

“Maybe it was just an honest mistake,” Ryan says.

“Are you defending her?”

“Well, no, I mean, not exactly. It’s just, I didn’t think she’d do something like that.”

I roll my eyes. Ryan has no idea what Parker is capable of. I’m sure she only shows him her Mother Teresa personality.

As we stand in line for our food, a few girls walk past us and giggle. I think for a second that they might be laughing at me, but then I quickly dismiss the idea. I should be used to Ryan’s effect on girls by now. He turns even forty-year-old soccer moms into giggly little girls. He’s got that kind of charisma.

“I know you find this hard to believe, but she’s not as nice to other people as she is to you. You know the rumor about her and her mother.”

“Look, I don’t know all the details, but I do know that you can’t believe everything you hear.”

I find myself annoyed that Ryan keeps defending Parker. What gives?

“Yeah, like what they say about your car wreck,” I say, and then immediately regret it. We haven’t actually talked about Ryan’s car crash, the one that sent him here a year ago. He was driving his girlfriend home and wound up wrapping his car around a telephone pole, killing her. Rumor was that Ryan may have been drinking, although it’s also rumored he passed a blood-alcohol test. Ryan never brings it up at all, which I think is a little strange. At some point, you might want to confide in your girlfriend about it, or at least admit it happened. But he doesn’t even acknowledge it.

Like right this second, when he abruptly changes the subject.

“They call this steak?” he says, pointing to the mushy, brown lump of meat covered in brown gravy that’s shoved unceremoniously onto our dinner trays. He’s dodged the issue, again. “Say, I have a surprise for you.”

“You do? I hope it isn’t that you know where this steak came from,” I say, eyeing the food in line with some trepidation.

“It’s in my blazer pocket. Go on. It’s a gift.”

I reach into his left pocket and pull out a small, pink drawstring bag.

“What’s this?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what day it is,” Ryan says. When I look blank, he says, “Happy Valentine’s Day — ring a bell now?”

Valentine’s! I’d totally forgotten. It’s not like I’m used to having someone give me a valentine. Normally it’s a holiday where I lay low and try to pretend I don’t care that I don’t have a boyfriend. Except this year, I
do
have a boyfriend. A boyfriend who’s giving me a present! For a split second, I completely forget Parker.

“I’m guessing this means you didn’t get me something,” Ryan says, but he’s smiling. He doesn’t seem to care.

“I
totally
forgot,” I say, feeling embarrassed. Not to mention guilty. I was too busy obsessing over Heathcliff to remember my own boyfriend on Valentine’s Day.

“That’s okay,” Ryan says, shrugging. “I like that you’re different from other girls, and you don’t think Valentine’s Day is a big deal.”

I wonder if he’s talking about one of his exes. Specifically,
the
ex, Rebecca, the one who died in the car wreck. I tear into the package and pull out a small silver bracelet with a heart charm.

“Ryan! I love it,” I say, immediately putting it on. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad,” he says, and leans down and kisses my nose. This causes more giggles behind me, but I ignore them.

We take our so-called food from the line, and I can’t help but think that people might be staring at us as we make our way across the cafeteria. I tell myself this isn’t anything new. After all, people like to look at Ryan Kent.

We find Samir and Hana sitting in the corner and join them. They seem to be intent on some serious discussion in urgent whispers because when we come to their table, their conversation abruptly stops. Not them, too! I tell myself they were probably talking about the Bard ghosts, but for some reason that explanation just doesn’t feel right to me. Something else is going on here.

“What’s up, guys?” I ask them, but they both fall resolutely silent. And when I sit down, Hana won’t make eye contact with me and Samir turns a dull shade of red, like he’s seen me naked and doesn’t want to admit it. Just what is going on around here?

“Uh, nothing,” Hana says, staring at her soggy green beans.

“Where’s Blade?” I ask the table.

“Over there,” Samir says, nodding toward an adjacent table where Blade is sitting on the lap of Number Thirty-one, her basketball crush.

“She’s dating Kinsey! No way,” Ryan says, not quite believing his eyes. From the shell-shocked look on Kinsey’s face, he doesn’t believe it, either.

“Kinsey? Is that his name?” Hana asks Ryan.

“Well, he’s sort of sex-obsessed, so we call him Kinsey. You know, after the sex scientist. I think his real name is Kilgore or something like that.”