A Tale of Two Proms (Bard Academy) (17 page)

Okay, now I was really starting to freak.

“What’s up with this?” Lindsay asked. “Where’s Mr. T?”

“I don’t know.” I said. We climbed inside the bus and took our seats. We waited for what seemed like ever, but Mr. Thompson never showed.

“This is officially weird,” Lindsay said. “If Parker really is the only one left on this island, I am totally getting on that ferry and getting the heck out of here.”

Just as the words were out of Lindsay’s mouth, a loud metal-on-metal wrenching sound behind us told me the ferry was pulling up anchor. In seconds, it was steaming away from the shore, as if it didn’t want to stay a second longer than necessary.

“Nice,” Lindsay said, frowning. “The spooky haunted ferry is chickening out and doesn’t want to stay here, either.” She rolled her eyes. “Coward!” she shouted at the retreating boat, before it slunk into the fog and disappeared.

“So much for a speedy exit in case things go wrong,” I said.

“Call me crazy but if things go wrong, I think we’ll have an exit,” Lindsay said. “Untimely death, stage right.”

“You always know just the right thing to make me feel better.” Even Lindsay would have a hard time missing the sarcasm in my voice.

“Well, let’s go,” Lindsay said. “It’s getting dark so we should go deeper into the woods where it will be even creepier than here on the shore. Let’s go see what’s trying to kill us right about the time it’s pitch black out.”

“Hey, no worries,” I said. “I brought flashlights.”

I wasn’t kidding. Two of them, industrial strength spotlight varieties, in my backpack.

“You came prepared. I like that, Grasshopper.” Lindsay gave me a fake bow of her head, but even I knew she felt better with the flashlights.

I sat in the driver’s seat and found a key poking out of the ignition. I turned it over, and the engine roared to life.

“How come you get to drive?” Lindsay whined.

“Because I have my license,” I said, and put the bus in gear.

“I have my learner’s permit! Besides, the last time you drove, you wrecked Dad’s car,” Lindsay said.

“Would you rather walk?
That
can be arranged.” Lindsay didn’t, so she shook her head. “You don’t have to worry. There aren’t any other cars out here.”

I put my foot on the gas.

“Yeah, but there are plenty of trees, and
that’s
what you hit the first time.”

“Funny. Ha. Ha.” I met her eyes in the rearview.

“Not a joke, Miranda.” Lindsay shook her head.

“Hang on,” I said and I steered the old bus to the road, stopping in front of a faded wooden sign, which had most of the writing worn off. I caught the letters “a” and “d” and “acad” and the sign pointed west. I knew it was the way to Bard. I’d been on this path so often after my many trips back and forth for school holidays and summers, I was pretty sure I could travel the path without any signs at all. Lindsay was sitting in the seat right behind me and I could see her white knuckles grasping the rail.

It seemed like forever on that small, winding road. The headlights on the bus were weak, and when the sun went down, it was very hard to see anything. The road wasn’t paved and there weren’t any street lights either. Overgrown tree branches whipped the side of the bus, making an eerie scratching sound. I had never missed Mr. Thompson so much as now. Even with his quirky fashion sense.

 At times, it felt like the woods themselves were trying to keep us away from Bard, hoping to snare us and flick us back the other way. The dim headlights caught trees at every turn, and it seemed like the closer we got to Bard, the narrower the road became. Pretty soon, we wouldn’t have any clearance.

“We’re almost there,” I told Lindsay, as I saw with relief the familiar turn up ahead that would lead us directly to campus. A giant branch blocked the way to the entrance, but I could still see the wrought iron gate nearby. I drove through the branches and when they swept past the windshield, I saw the Bard Gate. I drove through, and quickly saw that something was missing.

Scratch that, lots of somethings. Like, the whole school.

Instead of gothic, gargoyle-decorated buildings there was nothing in front of us but an open green field.

There was no library. No greenhouse. No dorms. No cafeteria. No chapel. There were just big squares of dirt in the ground where these buildings had once stood.

“What the…” Lindsay exclaimed behind me.

I drove straight up to the round dirt circle where the statue of Shakespeare had once stood and stopped the bus. I pulled the lever that opened the doors and Lindsay and I both tumbled out, glancing around not believing what we saw.

“What the…what?” Lindsay put her hands on her head.

I couldn’t even speak. The buildings weren’t the only things missing. So were all the people. No students. No faculty. No sign of anyone.

There were lots of scenarios I’d imagined finding upon returning to Bard. This was not one of them.  

“Miranda,” Lindsay said, as the reality of our situation sank in. “How does a whole school just disappear?”

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

I thought I had seen everything at Bard, but as it turns out, I had a lot to learn about the kind of crazy stuff that can happen when you least expect it. Full dark had come and the moon was low in the sky. All I could do was walk over the patches in the ground where the buildings once had stood. They were gone. There were no students. No ghost faculty. No Blade, Samir or Hana. The moon shone a sliver of light on the patches of ground where the buildings had once stood.

There was no Heathcliff.

No Catherine.

Not even Parker.

Everyone and everything was gone, like the school had never even existed.  

I grasped my locket, the one Heathcliff gave me. Frantically, I opened it, wondering if the message on the scrap of paper he’d written for me had disappeared as well. But the small bit of notebook paper was still rolled up inside, and Heathcliff’s handwriting was still visible.

Be my present and my future. Yours in this world and the next, H.

I ran my finger over the words. Where was Heathcliff now? 

“The vault isn’t here, either,” Lindsay said, as she stood in the big muddy hole where the Library had once been. “All the books are gone, too. There’s nothing left.”

Somewhere, not too far, I heard what sounded like dance music.

“Wait… do you hear that?” I asked Lindsay.

“Is that… Katy Perry?” Lindsay asked. It sure sounded like it. We looked at each other, and we were thinking the same thing: maybe Bard students were still out there. We scrambled out of the pit and back into the bus. We drove with the windows down, following the music. We took a twisted path that was barely wide enough for the bus and turned into the woods. The headlights shone into the brush, picking up the outline of leaves and occasionally the iridescent eyes of some small tree dweller.

We were on the path that led to the river. I hoped we wouldn’t have to cross. The bus wouldn’t fit across the bridge and we’d have to get out and walk. Besides, I was in no hurry to see the other side of the river again.  I’d been before. There was an old Indian burial ground there.  You know, because a creepy island just isn’t complete without one of those. All we needed was an abandoned old mill or a boarded up mental institution and we’d be all full up on clichés. 

We took a turn across the path, and we both recognized the song that was playing.

“Who’s blaring Katy Perry?” Lindsay asked, partly sticking her head out the open window to listen.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s not Blade,” I said.

Just as the path grew so narrow that it was getting hard to steer the bus, the headlights illuminated a clearing, and beyond that, a huge stone house, something that you’d expect to find in the English countryside.

“Where did that come from?” Lindsay asked. I didn’t know. The last time I’d been to this spot, the crew house had been here. Not an ancestral estate.

 There was a massive stone fence surrounding the place, and a stone archway. I pulled to a stop right in front of the arch, the bus being too wide to go in. I got the impression the gate was designed for a horse and buggy, not a big yellow school bus.

 Along the curve of the large stone arch, there was a giant swirly N. Beneath that the words
Netherfield Park
were carved in stone.

“Netherfield – wait – I know that name,” Lindsay said. “But… from where?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. 

The music was coming from inside. We walked the rest of the way to the house, drawn to the light spilling out of the side windows. Lindsay and I crept forward and peeked in the first window. Inside, there was a big ballroom. It was decorated for a dance with glittery strands of tinsel hanging down from the ceiling, and there was a DJ station in the corner with a man in black turning knobs and two big black speakers pumping out music. Behind him, hung a giant banner that read “Bard Academy Prom.”

“No way,” hissed Lindsay beside me. “This wasn’t supposed to be for two more weeks.”

“That’s not the only thing wrong with this picture,” I said.

There was the problem that while the DJ was modern, everyone else was dressed up in clothes from 1815. The girls all had those high-waisted dresses you usually see on Masterpiece Theatre.

 “Do you see anyone you know?”

I scanned the crowd, but all the faces were strangers to me. This was weird. Bard wasn’t that big a school. I knew most people, not all. But, it was rare to have a gathering this large and not see any familiar faces.

 A burst of giggles near us exploded as two girls rushed past. Lindsay and I sunk further into the shadows.

“Can you believe the Bennets? Making fools of themselves in front of the Bingleys. That Elizabeth Bennet is not as clever as I hear she should be, especially if she’s turning down proposals!”

The girls rushed off across the lawn. Lindsay glanced at me. “
Pride and Prejudice
,” she whispered.

Bingo.

“Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy,” I said, realization dawning. Netherfield Park was the house near Elizabeth Bennet’s in Jane Austen’s most famous novel.

“Wait. I see Parker,” Lindsay said.

She was standing by the dance floor, and she was wearing a sash that said “Prom Queen” across her very modest pink ball gown. This was as much fabric as I’d ever seen Parker wear at one time. She usually gravitated toward micro minis. She managed to even make the Bard uniform look more provocative. It was just her signature style.

Parker looked miserable in her nineteenth century dress. I wondered if she had to wear a corset. 

“What is this? I don’t think Jane Austen wrote a prom in
Pride and Prejudice.
”

“No, she didn’t,” I agreed. “Maybe it’s all distorted, melded with the present.  But something is definitely off. Do you see any danger? Any reason Parker should be screaming like she did on the phone?”

All I could see were boys and girls in old-fashioned clothes waltzing to Katy Perry. It was an odd sight, for sure, but it was no Amityville Horror show.

Then, as I looked on, a pudgy, older man stepped from the crowd and approached Parker.

“Looks like Parker has an admirer,” Lindsay said. Parker saw the man, and her eyes went wide with terror. She bolted so fast, her crown bounced off her head and onto the floor with a plinking sound. She hit the side door and bounded out of the room.

“Elizabeth!” cried the man, sweat gleaming on his large bald forehead. “Elizabeth Bennet!”

“Go to hell, Mr. Collins!” shrieked Parker as she ran from the ballroom. “And my name is not Elizabeth!” 

“Parker!” I shouted after her. She stopped mid-run and spun to see me. In a few big steps, she was in front of me.

“Miranda? Is that you?” She grabbed me by the arms and shook me. But then her face grew skeptical. “Or are you Catherine?”

“Not Catherine,” Lindsay confirmed, stepping out of the shadows.

“Oh, lord, am I glad to see you!” She said and threw her arms around me. She hugged me so tightly that I couldn’t breathe. I should be used to Parker trying to hurt me, but she’d never used a hug as a weapon before. “Thank you for coming. You’ve got to save me from this place.”

“You were freaking out because you’re Elizabeth Bennet in
Pride and Prejudice
?” Lindsay asked. “You know that people would seriously kill to be you.”

“And have that awful Mr. Collins after me? No thank you.”

Inside, Mr. Collins had been stopped in his pursuit of Parker. He’d temporarily been waylaid by a group of girls who were talking to him.

“You don’t marry him. You marry Mr. Darcy,” Lindsay explained. “He’s handsome and rich.”

“And I’d rather not marry anybody, thank you very much.” Parker sounded certain on that score.

“You sounded terrified on the phone. I thought someone was trying to kill you,” I said.

“And you really freaked us both out. Thanks for giving us a stroke for no good reason,” Lindsay added.

“You’ve got to help me,” Parker pleaded. “I’m wearing a bedspread, for crying out loud,” she added, picking up the hem of her ample skirt.

“This is what you call life and death? God, you never change.” I shook my head at Parker. Queen of manufactured drama. 

“What happened to Bard?” Lindsay asked. “That’s what you should be worrying about.”

“I don’t know.” Parker held out her hands, as if to show she wasn’t hiding anything. “I swear, I don’t know.”

“You had a deal with Catherine,” I pressed. “Was this the deal? You help her destroy the
entire school
?”

“I didn’t know it was going to disappear when I agreed to…. Look, this isn’t what I wanted.” Parker’s eyes darted back and forth. She was definitely guilty of something.

“Start at the beginning, Parker. Tell us what happened.”

“Okay, well, I did agree to help Catherine. She told me if I did her a favor, the prom would be mine. The school would be mine. And
you
would be gone.”

“Wait—you were plotting to kill my sister?” Lindsay was all anger now.