Free The Scarlet Letterman by Cara Lockwood

that, but the others…well, they aren’t so easily convinced. You have a motive, Miranda. And the means.”
    “I’ve never been near the vault since last semester. I don’t even know how to open it!”
    “Just be careful. They’re looking for a reason to come after you. The only reason they haven’t is because they can’t prove you were in the vault. But Coach H’s disappearance is very serious. It’s scared a lot of us, and we’re not sure what to do. I could get into trouble just by telling you this.”
    “I understand,” I say, appreciating Ms. W’s trust in me. “What do you think happened to Coach H?”
    Ms. W gets a faraway look in her eye. “I don’t know, but some souls can’t make it,” Ms. W says. “He might have decided to end it.”
    “End it? Like suicide? But he’s a ghost. How is that possible?”
    “There are ways,” Ms. W says, mysteriously. “Anyway, that’s our time for today.”
    I stand up and Ms. W catches my arm. “Miranda, there’s one more thing…” she starts. “It’s about your future here at Bard.”
    “Yes?” I ask her.
    She looks at me and then hesitates. It seems there’s something she wants to tell me, but decides not to.
    “Just watch yourself, okay? Because people are watching you.”

Twelve

    After my talk with Ms. W, I’m beginning to feel like everyone is watching me. I’m becoming extremely paranoid, and it doesn’t help when I walk into theology and see that Coach’s H’s replacement is none other than Blake, the very teacher who caught us snooping around Coach H’s room.
    Nothing about this is good. Is he going to turn me in? Or has he been assigned to keep a closer eye on me?
    For the first part of class, my stomach is in knots, waiting to see what he’s going to do. But he doesn’t do anything.
    Well, nothing, that is, except spending most of the class talking to his invisible friend “Gabriele.” Just like Mr. Garrison’s hand puppet on South Park . Wow, Blade was right. This guy is crazy.
    I can’t tell if he’s seriously hallucinating or if he’s just using “Gabriele” (he calls him “one of the Lord’s angels”) as a teaching tool. Either way, he does have a magnetism and charisma that keeps most of the class interested. That’s not easy with a group of delinquents. But I suppose, given the high rates of past drug use among the Bard student body, they have a healthy respect for the bad drug trip.
    “Ms. Tate,” Blake says to me suddenly, his eyes brightly, lit with a fire that’s usually reserved for people with fevers or psychological problems. “Gabriele would like to know why you think chastity was so important to the Puritans.”
    There are a few snickers in the class. Great. It figures I’d get the chastity question.
    “They were trying to live sin-free lives, according to their beliefs in the New Testament and Calvinism,” I say.
    At “sin-free,” other people laugh. I am really trying to be a bigger person here, but it’s really getting difficult.
    “But Gabriele says they believed in predestination, which means that God had already decided who goes to heaven and who goes to hell. So why try to lead a pious life?”
    Blake has me there. I really don’t know.
    Before I can answer, a Goth girl in the back raises her hand. Blake nods in her direction.
    “Because no one knew for sure if they were predestined for heaven, duh ,” she says. “Only God knows for sure.”
    “Very good, Ms. Kelly,” Blake says. “Now, for everyone else, Gabriele has assigned you some homework. Why, if God is omnipotent, does he allow the devil to exist? And does the devil exist? Eight pages. By the end of the week.”
    There are groans around the classroom.
    “Gabriele doesn’t like pouters,” Blake says, giving us all a look. He settles on me last. “God is watching you all. No cheating. Gabriele will know.”
    “I think he means you,” Parker says, leaning over and whispering into my ear just as the bell rings,