The Scarlet Letterman by Cara Lockwood Page A

you happy now?”
    Then, deep in the woods we hear a wolf’s howl. I glance quickly in the direction of the sound, but Parker just looks at me and laughs. “Do you sleep with the light on, too?”
    “Why don’t we go inside?” Ryan says, glancing at me with a worried look on his face. I can’t tell if he thinks I’m a total idiot or if he’s uncomfortable that I’m uncomfortable.
    “How much would you pay me, Miranda, to walk five feet into the woods right now?”
    “I wouldn’t pay you anything, Parker.”
    “What if I paid you one hundred dollars to do it. Would you?”
    “Parker, quit fooling around. Let’s go inside.” Ryan sounds less patient now.
    “What? I’m just saying. Look,” she says. She walks into the woods and is quickly enveloped in shadow. We hear her footsteps in the leaves and then, suddenly, they stop.
    I glance over at Ryan, and he looks over at me.
    “Why don’t we just leave her in there?” I whisper to him. He laughs.
    “Parker?” Ryan calls. “Parker, come on.” She doesn’t answer. Ryan tries again. “Parker! Seriously. Quit it. Come on.”
    Still no answer.
    “Parker. Come out, already. We’re cold,” Ryan says.
    I have that eerie feeling. You know the one. Like Parker’s been slashed into a million pieces by some chain saw–wielding maniac or a monster with red eyes, and we’re next.
    “Parker?”
    The next thing we hear is a scream.

Ten

    Ryan leaps into the woods, because he is ridiculously brave and good-looking. He is so going to be a firefighter one of these days. I go in after him, not because I want to save Parker, but because I really don’t want to be left alone.
    We only make it a step or two before Parker nearly collides with us. She has something dark and sticky on her hands.
    Blood.
    She’s mumbling inconsolably, pointing backward. That’s when the clouds covering the moon lift and it suddenly gets brighter. There, lying only five feet away, is the carcass of a dead bear. Its mouth is open, and its tongue is out, and it has a big bloody gash down the side of its neck.
    Instantly I think of the creature with red eyes I saw in the woods. Could it have done this? I shiver.
    I look at Parker and realize she must’ve tripped over the bear, or fallen into it. She’s got bear blood on her hands and a big dark smear down the front of her white Bard shirt.
    She buries her face in Ryan’s chest, and he folds his arms around her to comfort her. My stomach shrinks, and not because of the dead bear. I don’t like Ryan hugging Parker.
    “Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of here.”
    The next morning, everyone is talking about Parker’s run-in with the bear. I’ve about decided that it doesn’t matter what Parker does. People will still want to talk about it anyway. I can just see the next Bard Weekly headline: “Parker Pops Zit, Entire Campus Watches.”
    “Don’t look now, but Parker has co-opted your boyfriend again,” Hana says, nodding in the direction of Parker and Ryan, who are standing in a group of Parker’s clones and relating the bear story. “I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing about this all day.”
    “Did you hear about the bear?” Blade asks me, finding us in line. Hana rolls her eyes.
    “Duh — Miranda was there.”
    “Really? Why don’t you tell me these things?”
    “I would’ve, if you’d been awake.” Blade was fast asleep when I got back to my dorm. And that was at eight o’clock.
    “So did Ryan kill the bear with his bare hands like they say?” Blade asks as we take our seats at a table near Parker’s. I try to get Ryan’s attention, but he’s too busy pantomiming the act of saving Parker from a bear carcass. I’m still peeved he told Parker about my monster sighting. How could he have betrayed my trust like that? And to Parker, of all people?
    “No. The bear was already dead.”
    “Was the bear big? I heard it was five hundred pounds.”
    “It was huge,” I say. “But what we should worry