The Scarlet Letterman (15 page)

I close my eyes and burst ahead, taking the stairs two at a time, hoping that the office at the top of the staircase is open.

At the top of the stairs, I swing open the office door and then shut it hard behind me, slamming my whole weight against it. Then it occurs to me that if there
is
a tiger out there somewhere, and he wants in to this office, I’m probably not going to be able to just hold the door closed. Slowly I scoot up, and glance out through the door’s window. There’s nothing on the landing, or on the stairs. The tiger didn’t follow me.

I let out a small sigh of relief and glance around the office, looking for something to shore up the door with.

That’s when I see a crew boat sawed in half, laying facedown on the floor, and it seems to be groaning. I turn the boat over. Beneath it, I see a guy, tied up, with his back to me.

Gently, I roll him over.

He’s got dust in his hair and a gag in his mouth, but I’d recognize those dark curls and those fierce black eyes anywhere.

It’s Heathcliff.

Twenty-two

“Heathcliff!” I cry,
frantic. He looks dazed and out of it. I wonder how long it’s been since he’s eaten anything. And by his bruised face, it looks like someone has been manhandling him. I desperately try to free his hands and legs, but the ropes are too thick. I head to the nearby desk, where I search for anything sharp. I come up with a pair of scissors, but even then it takes me a while to cut through the thickly layered ropes.

Once I get his gag free, and his arms, Heathcliff just slumps to the side.

“Heathcliff! Can you hear me? Are you okay?” I ask him, helping him into a sitting position. His eyes flicker and he groans again.

“Catherine?” he chokes out.

“No, it’s Miranda. Remember?
Miranda
,” I say as his eyes flicker open, wider this time. Recognition flitters through them as he looks into my eyes and then strokes my cheek with one finger. He gives me a weak smile.

“Miranda,” he says and sighs, coming to a little more. “I knew you’d find me,” he adds, and then passes out.

“Heathcliff!” I call, shaking him a little, but he doesn’t come through. I’ve got a bottle of water in my backpack (courtesy of the Bard cafeteria) and I grab it and put a little on the sleeve of the sweatshirt, which I use to pat his forehead, and try to get him to come to. He groans again and his eyes flicker.

“Can you drink? You need to drink,” I tell him, holding the water bottle up to his dry lips. He raises his head a little and takes a sip. After a few seconds, he takes a deeper swig. He seems to be coming around.

“Who did this? Was it Coach H?”

Heathcliff shakes his head from side to side.

“Ms. W? Headmaster B?”

“No.” Heathcliff chokes, sitting up a bit. He downs the rest of the water bottle. “It wasn’t them. They would’ve finished me. It was someone else.”

“You don’t know who?”

“I was in the woods. And I got jumped by a…” Heathcliff shakes his head as if he still can’t quite believe it. “A tiger.”

“A tiger? Attacked you?” I think about what I saw down below. The tiger might just be guarding Heathcliff.

“Knocked me unconscious,” he says. “When I woke up, I was here, tied up. That was two months ago.”

“Did anyone feed you?” I ask, beginning to wonder if he’d been here all this time without food and water. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? Even for Heathcliff.

“A man came, to give me water and some food, but I don’t know him,” Heathcliff says. “He hasn’t been here in a while.”

“Did you see him? Do you know what he looks like?”

Heathcliff shakes his head. “He came alone, but he would talk to someone he called Gabriele.”

“Blake!” I exclaim. “So Blake
is
behind this.”

“Who’s Blake?”

“A crazy faculty member — it’s a long story,” I say.

“He left those,” Heathcliff says, nodding over in the direction of the desk in the corner. I walk over and find it’s stuffed with drawings of tigers — all kinds. They match exactly the color and style of the pieces of paper I’ve been finding around campus. And even more unsettling, they’re all signed by Blake.

It dawns on me that Blake has got to be involved in this whole thing. It’s
his
tiger, and he’s also the one who railroaded me at my hearing. I know I’m not the one animating the tiger. Chances are, either he’s behind this or he knows who is.

I turn back to Heathcliff.

“Can you stand? Are you strong enough? We should get out of here.”

As I help Heathcliff to his unsteady feet, I hear a growling sound on the other side of the office door. Heathcliff’s head snaps up. He puts his finger to his lips to show me to be quiet and then he puts himself between me and the door.

He’s half-dead and he’s still trying to protect me.

I hold my breath, as I listen to what sound like paw-steps outside the door. Along the windows in front of the desk, I see black-and-orange ears go past, as well as his long, thick tail. That is
definitely
a tiger.

The tail stops and flicks back and forth. It’s like he’s trying to listen for us. Like he can hear us breathing.

Without making a sound, Heathcliff takes the water bottle that he’s half finished, screws the cap on, and then hurls it through the open window to my left. It hits the tree outside with a thud. The tiger’s head bounces up, ears perked. And then, in a flash, it leaps through an open window and jumps out to the tree limb less than a foot from the boathouse. It makes the jump with ease. The tree branch shudders under its weight, but the leaves of the tree almost entirely hide it. All I see is a tail, flicking back and forth, from beneath the tree limb.

In a rush, Heathcliff picks himself up and closes the window shut, latching it, but the tiger seems completely unperturbed. Either he doesn’t care about us, or he’s much happier in his tree.

“Now what?” I ask Heathcliff, who once again has his trademark scowl on his face. I think he’s feeling better, at least better enough to show some of his old attitude.

Heathcliff stumbles a little, his legs still a bit weak. I rush over to him, to help him up, and he puts some of his weight on me. He’s not light, I can tell you that.

“Can you walk?” I ask him, and he nods.

We take a few steps out of the office and down the stairs of the boathouse. I’m not sure what we ought to do now, since there’s a tiger outside, and Heathcliff senses my hesitation.

“Miranda,” he says, stopping. He turns his body into mine so we’re facing each other.

“Are you okay?” I ask him, my first thought that he might be about to faint again. And I’m definitely sure I can’t hold up his whole weight. He’s a big boy. Tall and broad.

He just stares at me, intently, and touches my cheek. His dark eyes assess me, drinking in my features as if he hasn’t seen me in years. There’s something magnetic about those eyes. I can’t look away.

The door creaks open then, breaking the spell. We both turn and look. I fear it’ll be the Guardians, having found me, but instead it’s two members of the crew team, arriving at the boathouse for their daily practice. There’s no point in trying to hide Heathcliff. He’s too big to hide. We’re caught.

The looks on their faces go from puzzled to worried, as they take in my red vest of shame.

“Dude, that’s why the Guardians are swarming the place,” one of them says.

I guess the Guardians I ditched outside haven’t stopped looking for me.

Not sure quite how to handle the situation, the other pauses awkwardly. Then he recognizes Heathcliff.

“Hey, I
know
you,” says one of the crew team members, a look of recognition dawning on his face. “You’re that guy. The one who beat up the Guardians last semester.”

“Whoa,” says another of his teammates. “You’re
right.
This is the dude. Heathcliff, right?”

“You don’t look so good, man,” says the first crew guy. “You okay?”

Heathcliff straightens and nods.

“Why don’t we help you back to the dorm?” the other says, taking up Heathcliff’s other arm. The other one moves in, as I back away. Neither one acknowledges my presence other than a flittering glance.

“I don’t know what kind of brawl you got into, man, but it seems serious,” says the other.

“And you,” says the other to me. “Unless you want to get us all in trouble, I suggest you head outside first and face those Guardians.”

Heathcliff makes a move to stop me, but I stop him with a glance. “It’ll be okay,” I say. “You let these guys take care of you.”

Reluctantly Heathcliff nods. He doesn’t like the idea of me leaving him and frankly, I don’t, either. I have no other choice.

Outside the boathouse, I run into two Guardians, who look pretty angry. I would be, too, if I had to scour the woods for the last twenty minutes.

“Hi, guys,” I say, putting on my sweetest smile. “Miss me?”

Twenty-three

For my little stunt
of losing my Guardian guards, I’m held to my room for the remainder of the night, which includes not being able to go to the cafeteria for dinner. Dinner — a messy, lukewarm glob — is delivered on a tray by a Guardian straight to my room. The food, if you want to call it that, is gross, and it makes my room smell vile.

Not to mention, I am dying to get out of here and see how Heathcliff is doing.

I’m relieved on two fronts — one, Heathcliff is alive, and two, there’s no way he could be the Hooded Sweatshirt Stalker. It’s pretty obvious to me at least that he was too weak to be running around attacking people. He’d been there in that office a long time.

But if I’m honest, the real reason I’m so happy is that he hasn’t been ignoring or avoiding me all this time. And how could I ever doubt him? He didn’t abandon me or run away from me. I should’ve listened to my dreams earlier, I think. I could’ve saved him weeks ago.

I only hope that those crew boys are taking care of him. Still, Heathcliff is the strongest boy I know. He’s probably going to make a fast recovery.

While I dig at my lukewarm dinner, I hear a tapping on my window. Soft at first, and then more insistent. It sounds like a really big moth at first, but I soon realize it’s something else. A folded note hangs outside my window. At first I think it’s floating there all on its own, but upon closer inspection, I see it’s dangling from a fishing line.

I glance over at my door, which has to be kept open (three inches minimum) at all times, so that the Guardian outside can listen for any inappropriate noises, like me trying to make my escape. Then I quietly make my way to my window. The window opens with a creak, which I’m sure will bring the Guardian running. But it doesn’t. It’s not like I can climb out the window. It’s only about four inches across, and a foot high. I gingerly take the note off the fishhook. I recognize the bubbly handwriting immediately — Hana’s.

It reads,

Sorry about the low-tech communicado! We think Blake is behind the tiger, but we don’t have proof yet. Hang in there. We’re trying to clear your name. And any time you want to write us a note, leave it in the copy of
War and Peace,
third from the shelf, at the end of the fourth row in the library, and we’ll do the same.

P.S. Use one of your compact mirrors to check us out.

I grab a compact from my drawer and hold it out the window; after a few adjustments, I can see the roof above, and beside a gargoyle, Hana and Blade are leaning out over the edge of the roof, steadying themselves on one of the rooftop gargoyles. They both wave at me.

I’ve never been so glad to see them my whole life.

I wave at them and then I give them the international sign for “wait a minute.”

Hurriedly, I rush back to my desk and scribble a note:

Blake is behind this. He kidnapped Heathcliff. Found him in the boathouse. You’ve got to trust me on this one — he’s innocent, I swear. By the way, I LOVE you guys!

I put the note on the hook, and just as the girls reel it in, a Guardian bursts into the room.

“Step away from the window,” he commands.

“Can’t a girl get some fresh air? My dinner stinks,” I say as I step back.

The Guardian looks around suspiciously.

“I may be skinny, but I’m not skinny enough to fit through there,” I say, pointing to the narrow window.

He seems to take this under consideration. After glancing around my room once more, he leaves.

I let out a long sigh of relief. When I look out the window again with my compact, I see Blade and Hana are gone.

I reread Hana’s note again and this time I notice Blade’s also left her mark on it — a crude drawing of some kind of family crest symbol for the LIT society, complete with books and a skull and crossbones.

This makes me smile.

My friends haven’t abandoned me. I sit down at my desk and start writing a longer note to leave in the library.

The next morning, I can’t wait to get to the library. I whiz through breakfast, anxiously sit through morning assembly, and can barely sit still during first period. My eyes are trained on the slow-moving second hand of the clock above Mr. S’s head. Could it move any slower? I head straight to the library at my first opportunity. In my haste to get up the steps, I lose my grip on my notebook and as I swing around to try to catch it, it slips out of my fingers and falls straight at the feet of Ryan Kent.

Of course.

Because this is how I wanted to see him, when I’m wearing my red vest of shame.

“Ryan,” I say, startled, and because I’ve temporarily forgotten that I’m not allowed to speak to anyone.

Ryan automatically stoops down to pick up my notebook and then he hands it to me. There’s recognition in Ryan’s eyes and something more, I think, before his eyes flick down to my red vest and then back up to my eyes. It looks like he is going to say something. My name, maybe? Or just “hello”? Or “I forgive you for yelling at me at the gym. Why don’t we give this boyfriend-girlfriend thing another try?”