The Scarlet Letterman (21 page)

“Also, Ms. Tate, it is
very
important that he not form any
romantic
entanglements while here.”

She stares at me pointedly.

“But —”

“If we see or hear of
anything,
ahem,
untoward
going on between you two, we will have no choice but to banish Heathcliff immediately,” she says. “This is for Heathcliff’s own good. When it is time for him to return to the novel, he
has
to go. Are we agreed, Mr. Heathcliff?”

Heathcliff looks at his shoes and nods. I think about the kiss he landed on me in the secret passageway. I feel a pang of disappointment.

“Are we agreed, Ms. Tate?” Headmaster B asks me.

I look at Heathcliff and then at Headmaster B. I see no alternative. Reluctantly, I nod.

Outside Headmaster B’s office, Heathcliff turns and looks at me.

“Thank you,” he says.

“For what?” I don’t think I did anything other than agree to let them send him back to
Wuthering Heights
in two years and four months. It hardly seems like a good ending.

“For believing in me,” he says.

“But they’ll only let you stay two years and four months,” I say. “That’s so unfair. And we…I mean, we can’t…” What? Kiss? Date? Get it on like rabbits? No words seem appropriate here, so I just trail off awkwardly.

Heathcliff gently takes my hand and turns it over in his palm, as if studying it. Then, ever so gently, he bends down and kisses the upside of my wrist.

“Any time I can spend with you, I’m grateful for,” he says. He gives me a piercing look.

The spell is broken by the approach of Coach H. “So I hear I need to find a room for you,” Coach H tells Heathcliff, clapping him on the shoulder and pulling him away from me. “Let’s get started with that, shall we?”

I watch the two of them walk across campus. Every so often, Heathcliff turns back to look at me.

I can feel the spot on my wrist he kissed. It tingles.

So much for no romantic entanglements, I think.

Thirty-one

“Your love life
is more convoluted than
The OC
,” Hana tells me as we walk together across campus.

“Tell me about it. What am I supposed to do?” I’ve confessed to Hana that I think I have feelings for both Ryan and Heathcliff.

“Well, considering that romance with Heathcliff is forbidden, and he’s from 1847, you know my pick would be Ryan.”

“Who knows if he would even take me back?” I ask, still not sure how I feel about Ryan. Do I even want to be his girlfriend again? I just don’t know. How sad is that?

“You don’t know until you try,” Hana says.

“I don’t know what to do,” I say, thinking about the place on my wrist where Heathcliff kissed.

“You’d better figure it out quickly,” Hana says. “We’re here.” Hana stops outside the infirmary, where I’ve come to visit Ryan. After his run-in with a tiger, he’s been resting until Coach H is sure he’s ready to go back to class.

“I don’t know what to say,” I say.

“Start with ‘how are you feeling?’ and go from there,” Hana says.

“You mean if he doesn’t throw me out first,” I say.

“Just
go
,” Hana huffs, giving me a little shove inside.

Ryan is sitting up in a cot. He’s got his head bandaged, but otherwise, he looks good. He’s talking to Derek Mann when I get there.

“Miranda!” Ryan says, his face lighting up when he sees me. I’m surprised. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but this definitely isn’t it.

“Hi, Ryan. Um, how are you feeling?” I ask, taking Hana’s advice.

“Good,” he says. “I’m glad you came.”

“You are?” I ask, still surprised. Just last week he hated me.

“Of course I am. You saved my
life
,” he says. “If you hadn’t distracted that tiger when I was helping Parker, we’d have both been goners.”

I guess that part is true. “But you saved my life right back,” I say. “So we’re even.”

“I don’t know about even,” Ryan says. “I can’t believe how brave you were. You weren’t afraid of that tiger at all. Unlike Derek here.”

Derek turns bright red. “I wasn’t afraid.”

“No, you were petrified,” Ryan corrects. “Speaking of Derek, I think he has something to say to you.”

Derek Mann clears his throat and looks at his shoes. Ryan gives him a nudge.

“Uh, yeah. Um, I, uh…I’m sorry,” Derek Mann says.

Are my ears working? Did Derek “the” Mann just
apologize
? That’s a first. And I thought since his public abstinence pledge, I’d seen it all.

“You’re sorry for…?” Ryan prompts.

“For, uh…believing those rumors about you. And, uh, helping to spread them. I know now they’re not true. Mr. B suggested I write the column, and well…”

So Blake was behind that, too!

“And I’m going to write an op-ed piece for the student newspaper, explaining how the rumor was all wrong, and how we were wrong to ostracize you over something so stupid.”

“Well,” I say, glancing over at Ryan. I know this is all his doing. “Thank you, Derek. Apology accepted.”

Derek mumbles something I can’t quite hear and then leaves the room. Clearly Derek “the” Mann isn’t used to apologizing to anyone.

“How did you get him to do that?” I ask Ryan.

“I threatened to write a letter exposing the fact that he’s a virgin.”

“He’s a
virgin
?” I cry, and I can’t help it — I laugh. “But the rumors. The reputation that he’s a ladies’ man?”

“All lies. His doing. I don’t think he even kissed a girl for the first time until two months ago.”

“But what about him supposedly knocking up the principal’s daughter — at his old school?”

“Total fabrication,” Ryan says. “I don’t know what the real reason is, but I think it had to do with the fact that he threw a party at his house when his parents weren’t home. Only I don’t think anybody
came.
I heard that he ordered a big keg, but it just sat there, sweating on his parents’ living room rug.”

I have to laugh at that. A free keg — and still nobody showed up? How unpopular do you have to be for that to happen?

“Wow,” I say. “I guess you really can’t believe rumors.”

“Exactly my point all along,” Ryan says.

I can see with perfect clarity that I’ve treated Ryan terribly. He really is a good guy.

“Listen, Ryan, I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened. I think you were right. I overreacted.”

Ryan smiles and then looks down at his hands, folded in his lap.

“Look, it’s no problem, really,” Ryan says. “It helped me do some thinking actually. I was thinking that maybe we should start over,” he says. My heart skips a beat. He
does
still want to be my boyfriend. A tiny voice in my head says, What about Heathcliff?

I am such a headcase. A boy-crazy headcase. Still, if Ryan is willing to give us another shot, then shouldn’t I be open to that possibility, too?

“Yes, I think so, too,” I say.

“Hear me out,” Ryan says. He glances down at his hands. “Miranda, I
really
like you.”

“I
really
like you, too,” I say.

“But…”

“But?” I echo. Where did the “but” come from? “Buts” are never good.

“But, I think maybe we ought to just be friends.”

The words hit my stomach like a bowling ball. Just friends?

“I mean, I’ve had more experience than you. And I’m older, and maybe, well, I just don’t think we’re a good fit right now. Maybe things will change, but I think we want different things right now. And I think I rushed things with you.”

“You mean sex?” I cry. “It’ll be different this time, I’m —” I was about to say “ready,” but Ryan cuts me off.

“No,” Ryan says, shaking his head. “Be honest with me. You don’t even know what you want.”

This is true. But I’m fifteen (sixteen in less than twenty-four hours). Am I supposed to know everything right now?

Ryan pulls me forward, and just when I think he might kiss me on the lips and make everything he’s said go away, he gives me a peck on the forehead. Like I was his kid sister. It feels like a slap.

“Let’s just be friends for now, and see how things go?” he suggests.

“Ouch,” Hana says, when I fill her in on the details as she and I and Samir walk to the mailroom to pick up our mail.

“The friend speech — I
hate
that speech,” Samir seconds.

“I just don’t get it,” I say, shaking my head. “I mean, I go from having two boyfriends to none. How is that fair?”

“It isn’t,” Hana agrees.

“I mean, I save the world, but I don’t get the boy? How is that
fair
?”

“Whoa —
you
saved the world! What about us?” Hana cries.

“Okay,
we
saved the world,” I amend, putting my arm around Hana.

“Yeah, don’t forget me, either,” Samir says.

“Oh yeah, a lot of good you did nearly dying,” Hana says.

“Hey! I’d like to see how well you deal with the plague,” he shoots back. “Besides, it’s called being a
martyr
. Look it up.”

“Guys! We
all
saved the world, okay? I stand corrected.”

In my mailbox, I find one letter and two brightly colored envelopes. The two envelopes are from Mom and Lindsay — they’re birthday cards.

At least they remembered. In her card, Mom promises to throw me a party in June, when I’m back home. It won’t be like the
My Super Sweet 16
bashes on MTV, but frankly, a trip to Pizza Hut would seem like a luxury after another few months of Bard food.

Lindsay’s card is about sisters who borrow each other’s shoes. It would be funny except that I know Lindsay is totally raiding my closet right now, and she has Fred Flintstone feet.

The last envelope is from my dad. Did he actually send me a birthday card? I open the envelope to discover a folded letter.

Miranda,

Your stepmother Carmen has suggested that a summer job might prove you’re mature enough to drive, and she has been generous enough to offer you work at her new clothing boutique. To make up what you spent on her credit card, you won’t be getting a salary, but will be working a minimum of 35 hours a week. Any complaints or back talk from you on this issue and I will report your theft of my car to the police.

I’ve talked this over with your mother, and she’s reluctantly agreed that working might be the best thing for you.

Sincerely,

Dad

Happy birthday to me.

I doubt he even remembered.

I can’t believe I’m going to be Carmen’s slave for the entire summer. I’d rather deal with the horsemen of the Apocalypse, thanks. And since when did she have the money to open up her own clothing store? Now I
know
that had to come from my college fund.

Slowly I ball up the letter in my hands until it’s the size of a big gumball.

“Bad news?” Hana asks me.

“Just my dad — ruining my life as usual,” I say through gritted teeth.

“How do parents always know
just
how to do that?” Samir asks, holding up a letter from his mother. It’s got a picture of his would-be wife, the girl his mom has arranged for him to marry when he turns nineteen.

“At least your parents bother to write,” Hana says, tilting her head toward her empty mailbox.

“I’d
prefer
the silent treatment, are you kidding?” Samir says, echoing my own thoughts.

I have to agree. It was better when Dad just ignored me.

Thirty-two

The morning of my
sixteenth birthday, I wake up feeling like my life is already over. How am I ever going to survive an entire summer as Carmen’s slave? I can’t even tolerate her company for fifteen minutes without wanting to slash my wrists. Not to mention, she is only twenty-four. What could she possibly have to teach me?

“Happy birthday!” Blade chirps at me. I blink away eye sleepies and see that Blade has decorated our room while I slept. I don’t know what is more sweet — the fact that she remembered my birthday, or that she sacrificed her regular eleven hours of sleep to do it.

“I have a special birthday gift for you,” she says, pulling a small satchel from behind her back. “It’s a spell. You wear it around your neck.”

I sniff it warily. Usually Blade’s “spells” smell like feet. This one, however, smells like apples.

“What’s it supposed to do?” I say as I put the small beaded rope around my neck.

“It’s supposed to make your true love come back to you,” she says.

“But Ryan says he just wants to be friends.”

“Not after he gets a whiff of
this,
he won’t,” Blade says, sounding certain. I have absolutely no confidence that it will work, but it’s thoughtful all the same.

“Thanks, Blade,” I say, and I give her a hug.

“Ew! What was that for?” she asks me, squirming away from the hug.

“Sorry,” I say, but I notice even Blade, who is opposed to anything approaching a mushy emotional moment, can’t help but smile a little.

At breakfast, Hana and Samir have somehow gotten a Hostess Ding Dong cake from somewhere, and they’ve put a match in it for a candle. They light the match outside the cafeteria and put it in the chocolate Ding Dong, and sing “Happy Birthday to You” as I blow it out.

Outside it’s a warm and sunny day, which is the best kind of birthday, and after I chow down on the Ding Dong, Hana, Samir, and Blade wander off to their classes, while I’m left in the commons. My class (theology) doesn’t meet today because Coach H has given us all “research paper” assignments, so we’re supposed to do research in the library.

I, however, feel much more like sunning myself on the commons, which is what I do, as I lay out my Bard blazer on the green grass and plop down with the hundreds of history pages I have to read (I am so far behind it’s not even funny). I read a little bit about Queen Elizabeth and then my attention starts to wander, and I find myself looking around me. There are a few other students on the grass, even as Guardians take up impromptu posts by some trees to watch us. You can’t go anywhere at Bard without someone watching.