A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (14 page)

When we walked through the large automatic doors, there was a big fountain bubbling water and bright-sounding violin music pumping through the overhead speakers. It seemed like someone had aimed for “ritzy hotel lobby” in the large, cushioned seats scattered near the fountain, but the arrangement wasn’t fooling me. Nothing about this was going to be like a restful vacation. The woman behind the help desk directed us to the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit on the third floor.

There was a much smaller waiting area near the CICU. Up here, the chairs were a deep burgundy and they weren’t as plush or large as the chairs in the lobby. These chairs looked like they were made for serious worry and waiting. They were straight-backed and had metal arms. There was no way you could get a “ritzy hotel lobby” feel in these. But maybe that was by design. The ICU wasn’t supposed to be a comfortable place. 

Mom was sitting in the middle row of chairs. Next to her was her new husband, Mr. Perkins, who was holding her hand silently. Mom looked pale and drawn and worried. Even though she’d been divorced from Dad for years, I suspected she still held a candle for him. A small one. The concern on her face was real, anyway. I wondered what my face looked like.

When she saw us, she stood, and held her arms out. Lindsay bounded into them and enveloped Mom in a huge hug and wouldn’t let go. They stood together in Lindsay’s death grip embrace for what seemed like an eternity.  That left me standing in front of Mom’s new husband, Mr. Perkins, or I should say John, since that’s what he asked me to call him. We exchanged an awkward handshake and he said, “I’m really sorry about all this, Miranda,” as if he’d had something to do with Dad’s clogged arteries.

I was about to say this, but then I pressed my lips together and told myself to shut it. I needed to dial back the snarky. Sometimes smartass comments just popped up for me like acne, breaking out at inappropriate moments. I needed to learn more self-control. I figured standing in an ICU was as good a time as any.

Mr. Perkins was very nice. Gentle, even. He was good for Mom, so I should do my best to be nice.

“Uh, yeah, me, too,” I said. 

“It’s good you two are here,” Mr. Perkins said. I wasn’t sure that was true. It was good that Lindsay, the beloved daughter, was here, sure, but me? Dad and I had been barely speaking for the last three years. I felt like a hypocrite now suddenly acting like the loving daughter just because he was sick. Everyone—even Mr. Perkins—knew that Dad and I had a love-hate relationship, heavy on the hate these days. 

So the idea of pretending I was a good daughter just seemed like a lie.

What I wanted was to be back at Bard, where I didn’t have to pretend to be something I wasn’t. Half the people walking around Bard might be ghosts or fictional characters, but I never felt more real than when I was there. And I was more sure than ever that I was needed there.

I slipped my hand into my Bard jacket and felt the locket Heathcliff had given me. I wished more than ever I had just said I would marry him right then and there. Why had I hesitated? Now, I was a thousand miles away, and the offer might not still be standing when I finally did get back. Would Heathcliff change his mind about wanting to be with me? The longer I was away from him, the more likely it would be that Catherine would draw him in. If I wanted to fight for Heathcliff, I needed to get back to Bard as soon as possible.

Then again, part of me said that if I had to fight for him at all then maybe I’d already lost him. You either love someone or you don’t. It’s not like I could have a hair-pulling throw-down with Catherine and win Heathcliff’s heart. Either he loved me or he didn’t. There wasn’t much I could do about it.

I also felt a growing sense of dread about Sydney. Someone had brought him into this world for a reason. And given Bard’s history, I doubted that reason was good.

Mom’s voice brought me out of my thoughts.

“If you want to go see your dad, girls, he’s in room 302,” she said. “The doctors said it might help his recovery if he could hear your voices.” She looked at me as she said this, but I was pretty sure that the sound of my voice would give Dad another heart attack. Either that or it would send him running and screaming straight into the bright white light.

Lindsay stood, furiously wiping the tears from her red face. At that moment she looked even younger than sixteen. “Let’s go. I want to see him.” Lindsay swallowed a sob and I was actually a little relieved. She didn’t have to act like a good daughter. She’d always been one. Even when Dad skipped out on us, Lindsay never got mad. She made excuses for him. She was never angry and sarcastic like me, she always was just genuinely glad to see him whenever he showed up. The difference was that I held a grudge and she didn’t. If Dad ever said anything harsh to her (which he rarely did) she forgot it five minutes later. I was the one who remembered everything. And never let him forget it, either.

But in the end, Lindsay was never mad at Dad; never surly, never caustic. She just loved him no matter what, and he spoiled her in return. Whatever she wanted, she got. Designer jeans, video games, trips to Six Flags. Sometimes, if I was honest, I envied Lindsay’s way of pressing the
right
buttons in Dad. Anytime she came into the room, his face would break out in a big smile. He always thought everything she did was amazing and perfect.

I was the exact opposite.

 We stood outside Dad’s hospital room. I could see him through the half-open blinds of the window. He was lying in his bed, tubes coming out of everywhere, hooked up to all kinds of machines that beeped and hummed and flashed with strange lights. He had a big thick bandage wrapped around his chest that poked up through the neckline of his hospital gown from the emergency surgery he had already had. There had been complications. Now, they told us, he was in a coma. They weren’t sure if he was going to wake up or not.

The shocking thing was just how
small
Dad seemed in that bed. In life, he was a big gruff bear of a man who was always angry (at least at me). He also was always on the move. He always had something to do or somewhere to be. Now, lying on the bed he looked just deflated, somehow.

“I can’t.” Lindsay froze in the door, her eyes wide as dinner plates, staring at Dad lying in bed. It was like he was already dead and she was looking at him in his coffin. Her face lost all its color and she turned away from the door. Mom enveloped her in a hug and sent me a pleading look.

“Maybe you should go in,” Mom said.

“Me?” I squeaked. What was she smoking? I looked at Lindsay, whose face was buried in Mom’s shoulder, and then back at Mom again. Me? Seriously? Had she lost her mind?

“Go,” Mom mouthed urgently and then glanced back down at Lindsay. This was her way of saying I needed to get in there because it was my duty and because Lindsay felt bad enough as it was.

I let out a long sigh. I didn’t want to go in, but I knew I was going to go, anyway. For Mom’s sake and for Lindsay’s. And maybe for Dad’s, too. I walked into Dad’s room. There was a chair by his bedside already, one of the stiff ones like those I’d seen in the waiting area, and I slumped into it. I looked at Dad, whose eyes were closed and his face was the color of the gray hospital tile beneath my feet. I had no idea what to say. I glanced back at Mom. She shooed me with one hand as if to say,
Go on. Say something.

“So, Dad.” I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Guess you’re stuck with me. I know I’m not your first choice.” I glanced up at the monitors above his head. I felt sure my voice would send him into defib, but his heartbeat continued at a regular pace.

“They say that if I talk to you, it might help you recover. But we both know I’m way more likely to give you a stroke.”

I stared at Dad’s blank, unconscious face. There wasn’t a single reaction. Not even a twitch of his eyebrow. And the steady
beep, beep, beep
of the monitors continued. Okay, so I wasn’t killing him, yet. So far, so good.

“On the bright side, you can’t blame me for the heart attack,” I said. “I wasn’t even here.”

This was the kind of comment that would’ve made Dad furious if he’d been awake. He would’ve cursed and shouted at me because he hated it when I implied he blamed me for stuff because he and I both knew he did.

I stared at Dad’s impassive face for a few minutes, trying to think of something to say. Lindsay would be so much better at this than me. She’d be eagerly telling him about every dumb little thing that ever happened to her at Bard, or about what she ate for breakfast, or about some goofy, cheeseball memory she’d had like that week we all went to Disney World for spring break and she and Dad got their picture taken with Mickey Mouse and they were both wearing mouse ears. But I don’t have any touchy feely memories. I remember Disney as one long trip where Dad shouted at me the whole time. 

“So, I guess, now is kind of the time when I’m supposed to tell you that I’m sorry for everything I ever did to you. You know, in case you don’t make it or whatever.” I paused. Still nothing from Dad. “But the fact is Dad that I’m
not
all that sorry. I mean I know I said some awful things to you, but you said some pretty crappy things to me, too. I gave as good as I got.”

This is the first time I’d been able to talk to Dad without him exploding on me. Usually, by now, he’d be roaring at me, and grinding his teeth, and shouting at me to be quiet and show some respect. And then I’d tell him you have to earn respect and then he’d get all red in the face and tell me I was grounded. It was weird to have him silent and still.

At that moment, I realized I knew I baited Dad and that on some level I was always trying to tick him off. Because really that was the only real way I knew to get his attention. I was invisible to him otherwise. I never wanted to make Dad furious. I just wanted him to hear me. Really hear me. And maybe now—when he was unconscious—was my only chance. 

“So, here’s the deal, Dad. I know you hate it because I tell the truth, and because I don’t kiss up to you like Lindsay. And I know you hate it because I remind you of every way you every screwed up in your whole life—which, by the way, is exactly what you do to ME every single day. You can’t ever let any of my mistakes go, and so I don’t let any of yours go, either, Dad.  And that’s why we can’t get along and that’s why we scream at each other all the time.”

Dad’s hand twitched slightly, so I reached up and grabbed it. It was warm and dry.

“So, Dad. Here’s what I think we should do. Maybe if you forgive me for all my screw-ups and I forgive you for all your screw-ups, maybe we can…I don’t know. Have a normal conversation for once?”

Dad moaned a little.

“Maybe forgive is a stretch. Maybe we should just start with avoiding talking about them. Maybe we can call a truce?”

Dad’s eyes fluttered open then, and he really started to groan, and he clutched my hand a little too hard, and then he was thrashing on the bed. Then, all kinds of alarms went off on the machines near his bed. I glanced up and saw Mom hovering at the door, and she turned and shouted to the ICU nurse, who rushed in and told me to get out.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

I didn’t kill my dad if that’s what you’re thinking. Don’t get me wrong, it was a thought that had flashed through my head more than once as the nurses and doctors rushed a crash cart into his room and began rushing around in a way that was a little more urgent than I liked. But, almost instantly, they all settled down and the monitors began beeping again as usual, and the doctor came out and told us Dad was stable.

Still, it had been a close call.

“Told you that was a bad idea,” I told Mom.

Mom just looked at me and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I still think he was glad to know you were there.”

After the craziness subsided and everything resumed being something that looked like normal, Lindsay and I took up positions in the stiff chairs of the waiting area.  Mom and Mr. Perkins headed home to get changed and showered since they’d been at the hospital for going on twenty hours. Lindsay still wouldn’t go in to see Dad, but she didn’t want to leave the hospital either, so I waited with her. She stared with blank eyes at the mute TV screen up in the corner that was stuck on CNN. I had my backpack with me. We both did, and I wondered if it would be callous if I took this time to get caught up on some homework. I glanced over at Lindsay’s near catatonic face and decided that since I wasn’t in that state, I might as well get some reading done.

I pulled out some of my books from my backpack and decided to work on English. I was behind in my reading
A Tale of Two
Cities, so I read a few more chapters of that.

Now that I had met Sydney Carton in real life it was strange to read about him in the book. He was as sarcastic, flip, and drunk in the book as he was most of the time I’d seen him in real life. He was funny, too. Even kind of charming, if you went for dark humor.

Still, what I couldn’t figure out was why someone would bring him over to this world. What would they use him for?

There was so much about Bard and the vault I didn’t understand. I didn’t think the faculty even fully understood how the portals between the dimensions worked. Every time I’d ever seen a character come to life, someone had to be reading from a vault book, and even then, you couldn’t always control
who
came out. I thought again about the vault books Heathcliff had stored in the cabin. Did he have another reason to take them from the vault other than just to have leverage against the faculty?

And why had he taken so many?

I tried to remember the books that had been on the shelf. Had
A Tale of Two Cities
been there? If so, that would mean that both
Wuthering Heights
and
A Tale of Two Cities
were hidden in a place that only Heathcliff knew about.

Could Heathcliff be at the center of all this? He had told me to trust him and that he would take care of it. Was this somehow all part of his plan?