Read Online The Scarlet Letterman by Cara Lockwood - Free Book Online

adventure?” Samir asks me. He’s the one who let us into the dorm.
    “As if you have a single adventurous bone in your body,” I whisper back. Samir is the biggest coward I know.
    “I ate the foul goopy stuff they called dinner. That’s the very definition of adventurous.”
    “Shhhhhhhhh,” Blade hisses at us. A light at the end of the hall comes on, sending us all scurrying to find hiding spots.
    I duck behind one of the giant shadows — a couch, thankfully. Blade flattens herself against a bookcase, and Samir, caught without a place to hide, simply stands in the corner of the room near the fireplace with his chin jutting out, like some kind of pajama-wearing statue.
    The light flicks off, but then a flashlight beam bounces along the floor. It’s being wielded by a Guardian, who is patrolling the halls, looking for curfew breakers. He must not be looking very hard, because he passes by the living room with only a cursory look, managing to miss Samir, who is standing in the corner with his hand inside his pajama lapel like he’s imitating Napoleon.
    After the Guardian disappears around the corner, I let out the breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
    “A statue?” Blade hisses at Samir, sounding disapproving.
    “What? It worked for Shaggy on Scooby-Doo .”
    The three of us move down the hall — in the opposite direction of the Guardian — toward Coach H’s room.
    The door is locked.
    Blade whips out what looks like a Swiss army knife and proceeds to pick the lock.
    “How did you learn how to do that?” I ask her. “Is that in your Wicca training?”
    “No, you dummy. I got busted for breaking and entering. I picked our neighbor’s garage and stole their set of lawn gnomes.”
    “ That’s why you got sent here?” Samir asks. “Lawn gnomes? You have to be kidding.”
    Blade shrugs. “That and my dad is a pastor. He thinks pagan worship is the devil’s work.”
    “Wait. Rewind. Your dad is a pastor?” Samir can’t believe his ears. Neither can I.
    “I’m going to guess that your Satan poster didn’t go over really well with him,” I say.
    “Definitely not. He thought I might be possessed by demons,” she said. “Anyway, are we going to snoop, or what?” Blade asks, pushing open the door. She lights her mini skull lighter, which casts a flickering glow to parts of the room.
    Coach H’s room looks normal. No papers are out of place. There’s nothing that would suggest a struggle. Like all teachers’ rooms, his doesn’t have a bed. Ghosts don’t need to sleep.
    “So what are we snooping for exactly?” I ask Blade.
    She gives an exasperated sigh. “ Clues ,” she breathes, as if it’s obvious. I’m not sure how she expects us to find them. I can barely see two feet in front of me. Straight ahead, there’s a window, and it shows a perfect full moon hanging above the tree line. We’re on the first floor, so the window also has a view of the chapel, about fifty feet away. The moon outside makes it look brighter out there than it is in here. While I’m considering this irony, a big black shadow moves quickly across the window.
    “Did you guys see that?” I ask Samir and Blade.
    “See what?” Samir asks, suddenly sounding nervous. I was wondering how long his fake-bravery act was going to last.
    I look up at the window, but there’s nothing there. Maybe I just imagined it. Like you imagined the red eyes in the woods? a voice in my head tells me. Against my better judgment, I take a few steps closer to the window to get a better look. If I were in a horror movie, this is the point where you’d tell me I was an idiot for putting my nose up against the glass when something most definitely is going to jump up suddenly and scare the bejesus out of me. But this isn’t a horror movie. At least, not that I know of.
    I put my hand on the desk to peer out the window, and that’s when I feel a bit of paper. It’s the only thing on the desk and it sticks to my finger. When I