The Scarlet Letterman Read Online Free

of lunch. “I’ve got to go see Ms. W,” I say, leaving Hana standing near the bus.
    On my way to my counseling session, I walk close to the library, near where the skater types are flinging themselves off the railings.
    “Hey,” I ask the one who sails into the air and lands on bended knee in front of the stairs. His hair is dyed red, with long bangs in front and a cropped, shaved cut in back. “Do you know Heathcliff?”
    “Do we know him? Dude — everyone knows him,” the skater says.
    Heathcliff’s reputation at Bard was made last semester when he single-handedly took down three Bard Guardians, the glorified mall security guards that keep us delinquents in line. Heathcliff knocked out three of them in the cafeteria and escaped in front of nearly the entire school. In his absence, his legend has only grown, and he’s about to join the league of Campus Legends, which include Kate Shaw’s Ghost and the Haunted Library.
    “But have you seen him? I mean, lately?”
    He looks at me as if I’ve taken one too many bong hits.
    “But you called his name?”
    “Dude, that’s a mad move, ‘the Heathcliff,’ ” he says. “I’ll show you.” He rears up, jumps on the staircase railing, and slides down it like he’s skating, and then does a flip at the end, landing on his feet at the bottom of the stairs.
    “That, dude, is a ‘Yo! Heathcliff.’ ”
    “So you haven’t seen him?” I can’t help but be disappointed.
    “No,” he says, shaking his head. “You heard the rumor, right? Headmaster sent him to juvie.”
    That’s one rumor that I know isn’t true. You can’t send a fictional character to juvenile detention. But where is he? And why is he staying away from me? Maybe if I knew what had happened to him, then I wouldn’t be so obsessed with him.

Four

    “Thinking about Heathcliff?” Ms. W asks me, zeroing in on my thoughts with uncanny precision like she always does. I’m sitting in her office where I’ve appeared for my monthly counseling session, during which we normally talk about how I feel about my complicated relationship with my absentee dad. But lately we’ve been talking more and more about Heathcliff and about my fictional ancestor and about coping with that.
    “Is it that obvious?” I ask her.
    “It was the book that clued me in,” Ms. W says, nodding toward my backpack, where my dog-eared copy of Wuthering Heights is sticking out. “You’re never without it. How many times have you read it now?”
    I shrug. “A couple,” I say, although it was probably closer to a dozen. The book is my only insight into Heathcliff. I can’t decide if he’s a good person or a bad person, but the book is all I have to explain him.
    “You know, it’s okay that you miss him,” Ms. W says.
    “It is?” I ask, surprised. “I thought you hated him.”
    “I don’t hate him. I don’t think he’s good for you, but I don’t hate him. I think he belongs in his world and not ours. I do see that the two of you had a strong connection.”
    “You think we have a strong connection?”
    “Had, Miranda. Not have ,” Ms. W corrects. “It’s natural for you to feel strongly about someone who saved your life. He put himself in danger to rescue you more than once, and you’re likely to feel a sense of obligation. But don’t confuse that sense of obligation with something deeper than that.”
    “But why —” I start, and then stop myself. I was going to ask her why, if he was willing to risk his life to save me, now he didn’t seem to want to talk to me. I can’t believe I almost blurted out the secret that Heathcliff was still alive in this world.
    “Why what?”
    Quickly, I try to cover up my near mistake. “Why does he have to stay in Wuthering Heights ?”
    “You know he can’t live in this world permanently,” Ms. W says. “If he did, he’d disappear from Wuthering Heights, and think about all the people who would miss knowing him. In fact, the entire book might disappear