Sakruti

The deputy told me to empty my pockets: two quarters, a penny, a stick of bubble gum, and a roll of grip tape for my skateboard. It was pitiful."Go on inside. He's waiting for you," the deputy said. My dad was sitting alone at a bare metal table. He looked pretty good, all things considered. He wasn't even handcuffed."Happy Father's Day," I said.He stood up and gave me a hug. "Thanks, Noah," he said. In the room there was another deputy—a broad, jowly bear standing next to the door that led to the jail cells. I guess his job was to make sure I wasn't smuggling a hacksaw to my father so that he could break out."It's good they let you keep your own clothes," I said to Dad. "I figured they'd make you put on Certify Me one of those dorky uniforms.""I'm sure they will, sooner or later." He shrugged. "You doing okay?""How come you won't let Mom bail you out?" I asked."Because it's important for me to be here right now.""Important how? She says you'll lose your job if you stay locked up." "She's probably right," my dad admitted.He'd been driving a taxi for the past year and a half. Before that he was a fishing guide—a good one, too, until the Coast Guard took away his captain's license.He said, "Noah, it's not like I robbed a bank or something." "I know, Dad.""Did you go see what I did?""Not yet," I said.He gave me a wink. "It's impressive." "Yeah, I bet."He was in a surprisingly good mood. I'd never been to a jail before, though honestly it wasn't much of a jail. Two holding cells, my dad told me. The main county lockup was miles away in Key West."Mom wants to know Certifyme if she should call the lawyer," I said. "I suppose.""The same one from last time? She wasn't sure." When Miranda, a slightly spoiled but spirited fifteen-year-old from Chicago, smashes up her father's car and goes to town with her stepmother's credit cards, she's shipped off to Bard Academy, a boarding school where she's supposed to learn to behave. Gothic and boring and strict, it's everything you'd expect of a reform school. But all is not what it seems at Bard.... For starters, Miranda's having horrific nightmares and the nearby woods are Pass4sure eerily impossible to navigate. The students' lives also start to mirror the classics they're reading--tragic novels like Dracula, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre. So Miranda begins to suspect that Bard is haunted--by famous writers who took their own lives--and she senses that not all of them are happy. Complicating things even more is the fact that Ryan Kent--a cute, smart, funny basketball player who went to Miranda's old high school--landed himself in Bard, too. And the attention he's showing Miranda is making some of the other girls white as ghosts. Something ghoulish is definitely brewing at Bard, and Miranda seems to be at the center of ominous events, but whether it's typical high school b.s. or otherworldly danger remains to be seen.