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.
I glance over toward the infirmary, and that’s when I see Ryan Kent coming out. He’s alone, and he blinks back a little against the sun, and then, for a second, I think he sees me. I give him a tentative wave (we’re supposed to be friends, aren’t we?) and then he waves back, and seems to be coming in my direction.
I finger the spell satchel Blade gave me. Could it actually be working?
I glance around to see if maybe he might be walking toward Parker or someone else, and that’s when I see Heathcliff, coming up from the other end of the commons, and walking right toward me.
Okay, Blade didn’t say anything about attracting two true loves. I glance back at Ryan. He’s about the same distance as Heathcliff and they’re walking at the same pace. I’m no whiz at physics, but it looks like they’re going to reach me at about the same time.
I have a sudden flash of a word problem: Your ex-boyfriend is heading toward you at a speed of five miles per hour from the north. Your forbidden boyfriend (of sorts) is heading toward you from the south at five miles per hour. Which one will get to you first, and on a scale of one to ten, just how awkward is this encounter going to be?
I watch in slow motion as the two boys halve and then quarter the distance between them and me.
It’s Heathcliff that reaches me first.
He doesn’t say anything, being a boy of few words. He just plops down next to me, pushing his dark hair out of his eyes. Ryan, four feet from me, stops, eyes Heathcliff, and then suddenly changes direction, heading off toward the library. He doesn’t even miss a beat. He simply pretends he had never planned to stop. I can’t help but feel a pang of disappointment.
Next to me, Heathcliff reaches into his pocket. He pulls out the locket that contains the piece of Wuthering Heights.
“How did you get this?” I cry, grabbing it from his hand.
He only shrugs. I can’t help but notice that he’s watching the retreating figure of Ryan Kent, heading away from us. Heathcliff pulls his attention from Ryan and then back to me.
“Happy birthday,” he tells me, taking the locket back as he fastens the chain around my neck. His fingers just brush the base of my neck as he does so, and they feel warm.
“But how did you know it was my birthday?”
I glance up at him, and he’s just inches from me, so close to me that I can see his eyelashes. They’re long and dark and thick. There’s another surprise, I think. Heathcliff has girl lashes. Who knew?
Our noses are nearly touching and all I can think is what his lips will taste like, when abruptly, he pulls away from me. He’s looking over my shoulder, and I turn and see that Coach H has spied us and is giving us a disapproving look.
When I turn back around toward Heathcliff, he’s already picked himself up off the grass and is walking away from me.
“But…” I start, even though I know it’s already too late. Heathcliff is off, just as quickly as he came.
I run my fingers over the smooth gold locket hanging outside my Bard shirt, and watch Heathcliff until he turns the corner around Macduff dorm, and I can’t see him anymore.
From two boys to none — in five seconds flat.
That has got to be a new record.
eBook Info
Title:
The Scarlet Letterman
Creator:
Cara Lockwood
Date:
2007
Type:
novel
Format:
text/html
Identifier:
ISBN 1-4165-3147-5
Source:
PDF
Language:
en
Relation:
None
Coverage:
None
Rights:
Copyright © 2007 by Cara Lockwood
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
One
Two
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
&
nbsp; Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two