The Scarlet Letterman (6 page)

At the word “sex-obsessed,” Samir clears his throat uncomfortably and Hana shifts in her seat. Just what in the world is going on around here?

Ryan scarfs down his food, even as the rest of us pick at ours, and then he hops up and tells us that he’s got basketball practice that he can’t miss.

“Coach H will make me run laps if I’m late,” he says, grabbing his backpack and giving me a quick, sweet peck on the cheek before he ducks out of the cafeteria.

“Okay, you two,” I say, looking at them both. “Tell me what the heck is going on. What were you two talking about before we got here?”

“Do you want to tell her?” Samir asks Hana.

“No way, I don’t want to tell her,” Hana says, shaking her head.

“Well,
I’m
a guy, so
I
can’t tell her,” Samir says. “It’s in the rules.”

“What rules?” Hana cries.

“The ones I made up just now. Besides, you’re the one who heard the rumor.”

“Would
someone
just tell me what is going on?” I cry, getting frustrated.

“Okay,
fine,
I’ll do it,” Hana says, sighing. She looks at me. “People are saying that you wearing Ryan’s jacket means that you had sex with him.”

“What?” I cry. I don’t add that this is impossible, since I am the big V.

“That’s not all. You, uh, also had sex with the starting lineup of the basketball team,” Hana says.

“Well, technically not sex. Just blow jobs.”

“WHAT!” I shout, and then lower my voice when other people start to stare. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s what people are saying,” Samir says.

I flashback to Derek slithering up to me in the hall. No wonder he was so flirty with me, since he thought I’d partied with the entire starting lineup of the Bard Academy varsity basketball team. He must’ve felt left out since he’s a benchwarmer, not a starter. Ugh. I think I might vomit.

“Wait, it gets worse,” Hana says.

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” I say.

“I think Parker is the one spreading the rumors,” Hana says. “She’s telling everyone that the reason why she returned the jacket to Ryan was because he asked her to do this and she’s not ‘that kind of girl.’ ”

Parker wore Ryan’s jacket for a brief period last semester, but Ryan says he’s the one who asked for it back, and he only leant it to her because she got caught in the rain and was cold. They’d never actually had a relationship, according to Ryan.

“That’s a lie,” I say. “She had to give back the jacket because Ryan asked for it back.”

“Not according to her,” Hana says.

“I don’t feel so good.” I put my head on the cafeteria table.

The very idea that everyone thinks I fooled around with the entire basketball team makes me really think I might be sick. I have standards, you know. High ones. I’d only had two kisses before I went with Ryan, and now suddenly it’s Miranda Does Bard?

I glance down at Ryan’s letterman jacket and see the bright red B. It feels like a brand: B for bimbo.

This is it, I think. The very last straw.

I am going to have to kill Parker Rodham.

Nine

Parker Rodham, however,
isn’t easy to kill.

She’s one of the most popular (and feared) girls on campus. Any girl not in her clique wants to be in it. And even those brave enough to say they despise her don’t dare say it to her face.

“How am I supposed to get even?” I ask Hana, as the two of us watch Parker Rodham and her clones walk past us. Hana and I are standing in front of a stone statue of Shakespeare, in the middle of the campus commons. Even Shakespeare manages to look creepy on the Bard campus. He’s got blank eyes, and his quill pen is raised at an odd angle. In the semidark of dusk, he looks a lot like a psycho killer, getting ready to stab someone. I only wish his victim were Parker.

“You don’t, unless you want to get dead,” Hana says. “I mean, do you see any of her ex-boyfriends around?”

This is one of the nagging rumors about Parker. All of her exes seem to magically disappear the minute they break up. Most people think she poisons them.

“Does that really happen, though? I mean, she can’t just kill people,” I say. “Where are the bodies?”

“The river,” Hana says. “Or the woods. Or the ocean. I’ve heard all kinds of stories.”

“You think Headmaster B would really put up with Parker killing people?”

“Let’s just say I don’t want to find out, okay?” Hana asks.

“What are you guys talking about?” Blade asks, jumping into our conversation midstream.

“Nothing,” Hana says.

“Parker Rodham,” I say.

“I could put a hex on her,” Blade offers. “All I’d need is a live chicken sacrifice.”

“Ew!” Hana says.

“What? It would
totally
work,” Blade says. “I’ve only tried it with Perdue frozen chicken breasts, but I
swear
a live chicken would work.”

“Um, no thanks,” I say.

“You coming to the pit?” Hana asks me while ignoring Blade.

The pit is a giant stone circle at the center of campus in front of the chapel. Every night there’s a lit fire there, which seems like a pretty bad idea given the sheer number of serious pyromaniacs around here. But so far, no one has burned down anything (except for last year’s Bard arsonist, and she wasn’t technically a student). This is probably because the pit is the only place on campus whose purpose is purely social. There are stone benches around it, and it’s too dark to study. The only other gathering places are the library and the dining hall, and both of them are heavily monitored by Bard faculty. The pit is monitored, too, just at more of a distance.

“I don’t think I feel like it,” I say. Parker will be there, her underlings having probably already scouted out the best seats, and besides, the pit is the perfect place for a ghost story. And the last thing I need at this point is a ghost story. I can still see those red eyes I saw in the forest, and I don’t need anything else around here to feed my bogeyman imagination, thanks.

“Besides, I want to find Ryan,” I add.

“Suit yourself,” Hana says.

“I’ll come,” Blade offers. Hana seems less than enthused, but Blade doesn’t seem bothered.

“Fine.” Hana sighs, sends me a look that says “see what you’ve done — now I’m alone with chicken-sacrifice girl,” and trudges off to the pit.

I turn and start down the path that will lead me to the gym, so I can talk to Ryan. It’s starting to get dark, and I suddenly wish that Hana had tried harder to convince me to go with her. The sun has long since sunk behind the trees, and the sky looks pink and blue at once. The lamps along the path flicker on while I walk, giving everything a kind of creepy glow. Even the icicles in the trees cast weird shadows on the ground. It’s so cold, my breath comes out in white puffs.

I don’t want to talk to Ryan about the rumors, but I don’t see that I have a choice, either. He’s the only one who can make this right.

Up ahead, I see a dark figure standing near the gym. At first, I think it might be a Guardian, but then I realize it’s someone else.

In fact, it’s the Hooded Sweatshirt Stalker. And he’s fifteen feet from me.

He turns slightly, but it’s too dark for me to see his face. He sees me and he pauses a second.

“Heathcliff?” I whisper, although he’s too far away to hear me. I stop in my tracks, as if worried that any sudden movement will send him running off to the woods. I try to glimpse his face, but I can’t. The size and shape of him could be Heathcliff, but then again, it could also be someone who has the same build.

Before I can decide for sure, he takes off at a sharp angle off the path at a trot. I run after him, but it’s no use. He’s faster, and it’s dark, and he’s into the woods before I even cover half the distance between us.

I can’t help but wonder, if it is Heathcliff why won’t he talk to me?

On the path to the gym, where he’d been standing, I find another scrap of paper on the ground. It looks like another piece of the same drawing I found the other week. Absentmindedly I put my hand into my Bard blazer. Sure enough, the piece is still there. I’d totally forgotten about it. I take it out and the pieces fit together. It’s definitely an ear, and an eye. It could be a cat, I think. Strange. Why do I always find these in the wake of the Hooded Sweatshirt Stalker? I put the two pieces of paper back in my pocket, as I swing open the gym doors and go in.

I find Ryan inside. He’s shooting hoops with Derek Mann, which makes me cringe. As I approach, Derek gives me a leer, making me want to go take a shower.

“Miranda!” Ryan cries, surprised.

“Can I talk to you…alone?” I ask, looking at Derek.

“Whatever you have to say in front of Ryan, you can say in front of me, sweetheart,” Derek says.

“Mann, come on.” Ryan gives Derek a playful shove.

“Anyway, practice is going to start soon,” Derek says.

“I don’t think Coach H is showing up. He’s never late, and it’s fifteen past,” Ryan says. He tosses Derek the ball. “Come on, Miranda. Let’s go.”

I fall into step beside him.

“Coach H skipped a practice?” I ask Ryan. “That’s not like him. He lives for sports.”

“I know, it’s kind of weird. Maybe he’s sick or something,” Ryan says.

“Yeah, maybe,” I say, not adding that ghosts don’t get sick.

“Did you walk here alone? You know it’s not safe.”

I shrug.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ryan says. “Parker really thinks this guy is for real. She really thought he was going to hurt her.”

“I know, but…about Parker,” I start. And then stop.

Yeah. This is the hard part. I’m not sure exactly how to tell Ryan about the rumor, and my face is bright red just thinking about putting it into words. This is worse than fifth-grade sex education when I was called upon to answer the question “What is a testicle?”

I decide the best approach is a direct one.

“Parker Rodham is spreading the rumor that I had to do you and the whole basketball team as a condition of wearing this jacket,” I blurt out at once.

Ryan stops in his tracks, looks at me, then bursts out laughing.

“This isn’t funny!” I say.

“It is kind of funny,” Ryan says. “Who would believe that?”

I’m temporarily relieved that Ryan has such faith in the power of my reputation as a good girl. “Derek Mann, for one. And lots of others,” I say.

“Well, that’s just stupid,” Ryan says.

“I know it’s stupid and you know it’s stupid, but everyone else thinks it really happened,” I say.

“If people want to make stories up, who cares? We know it isn’t true.”

“But you have to say something. People are talking about me in restrooms. It’s got to stop.”

Ryan gives me a puzzled look.

“What am I supposed to do? Stand up at morning assembly and announce that I haven’t laid a finger on you? And that you haven’t, as rumored, slept with the basketball team?”

“That would be a good start.”

“Miranda,” Ryan says, exhaling a frustrated sigh. “You can’t be so concerned about what other people think. People who are envious of what we have are going to spread rumors. If you start to let them get to you, then you’re only going to make yourself unhappy. If I stop this rumor, there will just be another one, sooner or later. That’s how people work. You just have to ignore them.”

“This is pretty hard to ignore. Derek nearly assaulted me in the hall,” I say.

“He
what
?” Ryan cries, and now I suddenly have his attention.

“He thought the rumor was an open invitation,” I add.

Ryan’s mouth settles into a thin line. “I’ll take care of him,” Ryan says. “Okay?”

“Okay.” I feel a little better. Still, I can’t shake a minor annoyance. Why isn’t Ryan as upset about this as I am? He seems to take it all in stride. Then again, he is a boy. Having a rumor about how you can get girls to do your sexual bidding for the privilege of wearing your jacket doesn’t exactly reflect badly on him. Instantly I banish that thought. Ryan isn’t that kind of guy. He’s a good guy. A nice one. Isn’t he?

“Come on, let’s not let a dumb rumor spoil our evening,” Ryan says, sliding his arm around my waist and tugging me closer. “Hey, let’s go to the pit. We’ve still got half an hour till underclassmen curfew.”

I guess he’s right. I shouldn’t let Parker spoil
all
my fun.

“Lead the way,” I tell him.

Unfortunately we don’t make it two steps outside the gym before we run straight into Parker Rodham. Speak of the devil, and she’ll crash your hot date. As if I should be surprised.

“Do you guys know it’s almost curfew?” she says in a singsong voice, as she puts herself between me and Ryan, and Ryan’s arm falls away from my shoulders to let her in.

“We have nearly a half hour,” I say, but Parker ignores me.

“I didn’t want you to get in trouble, Ryan,” she says, laying a possessive hand on his arm. She doesn’t even acknowledge me and I’m standing inches from her.

“Um, thanks, Parker,” Ryan says.

“Am I interrupting anything?” Parker asks, when she clearly already knows the answer to that question. “I mean, I was going to go to the pit, but I hate walking alone. With that
rapist
out there. Do you think you could walk with me?” She hangs on Ryan’s arm, still ignoring me.

“You made it this far by yourself,” I say, but she continues to ignore me. Ryan, however, chuckles, and then quickly swallows the laugh when he sees how earnest Parker is being.

“I was nearly killed,” Parker says, her face somber.

Ryan immediately looks sympathetic. “Sorry,” he says.

I roll my eyes. Sometimes Ryan is far too gullible.

The three of us start walking, and Parker has effectively staked out the territory between me and Ryan. As we walk, Parker loops her arm through Ryan’s possessively.

“I’m cold,” she explains, cuddling up to him. I don’t think I can take much more of this. Seriously. “And didn’t Miranda see something in the woods? A monster, I heard someone say.”

Parker gives me one of her most innocent-looking evil smiles.

Ryan gives me a funny, sidelong glance. Did Ryan
tell
her? Ryan told her I’d seen something in the woods? How could he
do
that?