Cheater (13 page)

She wags the cat’s outstretched arm. “They really thought I would give Klimchock their names? What idiots. I guess they assumed I’m just like them.”

There are red, yellow, and blue knobs on Cara’s dresser: a leftover trace of childhood. At the opposite extreme, she also has half a dozen posters of guys taped to the walls— rippling chests, facial stubble, mirrored sunglasses. One of them is flying upside down with crossed skis. If Karl had seen this room sooner, he could have saved himself a lot of false hopes.

“So—are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine.”

“What did he say to you?”

“Basically, he said, ‘Give me all of your friends’ names or you’re permanently expelled.’ So, that’s that. Free at last.”

“He really expelled you?”

“He said I’m free to sue the school district, and he looks forward to it, because that would attract huge publicity and might inspire a zero tolerance movement nationwide.”

She jiggles the cat’s furry white belly. Her calm amazes him. If this happened to him, he would probably be weeping right now.

On the folding table with her necklaces and makeup, there’s a picture of a man in an Indiana Jones hat. He’s got a bushy mustache, a black shirt and yellow tie under a striped jacket, and a joking sort of sinister look. The picture looks like an album cover from the 1960s or 1970s; he’s almost definitely a musician, the type who totally disdains mainstream people.

“Is that your father?” Karl asks.

She strokes the cat’s head. The purring sounds like snoring. “Yup.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Hope so. We haven’t heard from him in a long time.”

To Karl, that seems just as bad as getting expelled.

“I wish I could do something to help,” he says. “About school, I mean.”

“I don’t need help. It’s a relief, to be done with that stinkin’ hole.”

“What about your mother? She’s not going to be happy.”

“She’s not going to know. I can get to the mail first—since I’ll be home all day.”

He doubts she’s right. Sooner or later, her mother will find out.

“I’m done with them,” he announces. “Just for your information. I’m not going to help them cheat anymore.”

“That’s your business, not mine.”

Disappointing: he thought she’d at least appreciate the gesture.

“Look, Karl. We’re extremely different people, in case you hadn’t noticed. We might as well get real.”

Since he has nothing to lose, he says what he really thinks. “You’re so smart. You could do anything you wanted. You don’t have to break the rules every minute of the day. It looks like you’re
trying
to get in trouble.”

She stands up; the cat leaps away. She puts a CD in the boom box on her dresser and turns it on, loud. He doesn’t recognize the song: voice like a buzz saw, drummer smashing the cymbals over and over, fast. Without answering him, Cara nods her head to the music, keeping her back to him.

“I guess I’ll go,” he says.

She doesn’t stop him.

Halfway down the stairs, he realizes that the purpose of his visit got lost somewhere along the way. He came here to offer comfort and friendship in her time of trouble—but somehow that didn’t happen.

RULE #9: If you start cheating, don’t even think about stopping. When your grades suddenly go into free fall, what will your teachers think? Maybe I should have called this Rule #1: Don’t start cheating Unless you Plan to keep it UP. If anyone out there wishes I’d shared that little tidbit UP front, all I can say is, Go ahead, sue me.

Chapter 9

Karl has been searching for Blaine all day long, so he can officially quit the Confederacy. But Blaine is nowhere to be seen. Vijay explains why: today was the regional Model U.N. conference. Karl’s announcement will have to wait.

Memories of Lizette distract him all through his last period. That second day of school, when she came up to him and Jonah and Matt at their cafeteria table and asked if she could eat with them—that must have been hard for her to do. But she got past the nervous introductions, and after a while Jonah and Matt calmed down (a girl! at their table!) and they went back to talking about how you could play baseball in the snow if you had a black ball, and then Lizette said, in her swampiest Florida accent, “Y’all talk like a bunch of Yankees,” and they didn’t know if she was serious or kidding until she snickered (under her cap’s visor), and the sight of her front teeth peeking impishly over her lower lip marked the beginning of Karl’s early crush . . . the best part of which, for Karl, was that she laughed at his jokes, like at the assembly where Klimchock announced the removal of all vending machines for health reasons, Karl whispered, “His real name is Mr. Tater—first name Dick,” and Lizette let out such a loud hiccup of a laugh that she got sent to the office.

The way she used to look at him sometimes, with that mischievous, sealed-lip grin, it really seemed as if she liked him the other way. But then she would punch him in the arm and call him Donkey Head, and yell at him for missing the ball when they played Footnis. And there was that time when they saw Beanie Markowsky refereeing a kids’ soccer game in the park, and Lizette sighed and said, “She’s so graceful.” There was just no way to figure her out.

He’s leaving the building as he thinks this—and there, across the street, is Blaine: still in jacket and tie from the Model U.N., leaning against his car in the shade of a locust tree, talking to the cheerleader Nikki Tunis, who’s bathing him in beams of adoration. Blaine seems to be enjoying the worship and gives her arm a friendly squeeze, which encourages Nikki to bring her face even closer to his.

Karl approaches them; Nikki rolls her eyes at the intrusion. “Can I talk to you?” he asks Blaine.

“Is it a quickie?”

“No, probably not.”

Blaine sighs and tells Nikki he’ll call her tonight. She gives him a coy, promise-filled smile (for Karl, there’s a wrinkled nose) and departs with an unnaturally straight back and an oscillating behind.

“Karl, if you weren’t the most important man in my life, I’d pound your head into the ground. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”

In the convertible, Karl lets Blaine report on his day. “The representative from Myanmar was cute. When I said her country could overthrow their military dictatorship just like mine did, she said, ‘Good golly, Mister Mali!’”

Karl can see why that might be funny under other circumstances. But now it’s his turn to talk, and for some reason, he’s having a hard time breathing. “I wanted to tell you—I decided to quit. I’m not going to help you guys anymore.”

Blaine drives with his right hand on top of the wheel, casually. If he’s experiencing panic, he keeps it hidden. “Just one problem, amigo. You can’t run out on us. A lot of people are depending on you.”

“Not a lot, not really. Only a few.”

“What I meant was,
we’re
counting on you. Your friends. Me, Vijay, Ian, Noah. And Tiny Tim, too. We’ve got a lot at stake.”

“I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m done.”

Mr. Cool isn’t taking this too seriously. “Karl, not too many people in this world can say that they single-handedly got their friends into good colleges. You’re our hero. And heroes don’t bail on their buddies. Right?”

“I
hate
doing this.”

“Don’t you remember the reason you started helping us in the first place? Just because Cara’s gone, that doesn’t change the big picture—Klimchock’s still evil. He hasn’t gone humane all of a sudden.”

“I don’t
want
to help you, after the way you treated her.”

For once, Blaine can’t find an easy comeback. He nods as he drives, searching for an answer.

During the silence, certain details come into sharp focus for Karl: the stainless perfection of the beige leather seats, the dustlessness of the charcoal gray dash. (Does he have a cleaning service come in once a week?) Then there’s the driver himself, with never a hair out of place nor a bulge in any pocket. On Karl’s own jeans, meanwhile, the thighs have worn thin and lost most of their blueness, and his key ring has nearly eaten a hole in the pocket. Shabby, shabby, shabby.

“You would never have talked to me except for wanting my help,” he says.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Don’t be. There’s more to this than meets the eye. See, my mother has been telling me, my whole life, ‘Certain people can be useful to you, and you should cultivate them as friends.’ I always thought she was kind of insidious—but now I see it differently. Let’s say, someday, you’re Bill Gates and I’m the CEO of Shore Investments. It’s not that I
need
you, I’m doing just fine on my own. But wouldn’t it be cool if we were old high school buddies and I could call you up and say, ‘Billy, you old digital dog, what’s up? Feel like investing a few million in Romanian salt mines today?’ You’re going to do really well in life, Karl. I like the idea of being your amigo from high school.”

Here’s one way to measure Blaine’s charm: he has just admitted that he wants to exploit Karl someday, and how does Karl react? His insides are all warm and tickly, he loves Blaine like a brother.

As they pull up behind the unfamiliar white Volvo in front of Karl’s house, Blaine says, “So what do you think? Can we keep our successful partnership—”

“Hey!” Karl shouts, rudely interrupting—because, inside his garage, Samantha Abrabarba has pulled the sheet off his project, and she’s running her hand over the slick stainless steel dome, which shines blindingly as the afternoon sun angles in.

“Karl?” Blaine asks. “Why are you building a giant metal tortoise?”

Karl runs out of the car, grabs the sheet, and draws it over the shining dome.

“Very interesting,” Samantha says. She’s all in white today, slacks, blouse, and belt: a fashion statement in a language Karl doesn’t understand. “So smooth and tightly welded. Does it fly?”

“You can’t come in here and poke around in my stuff. That’s trespassing!”

“No it’s not. I’m your friend. Only strangers can trespass.”

Is that true? The confusion delays him for a moment—but only for a moment. “You shouldn’t be in here. You have to leave.”

“Why? Is it a surprise for me?”

It sounds just like something Cara would say, teasingly. But Samantha is serious.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. Depends on how it turns out.”

“That would be so amazing, if you dedicated an invention to me!”

Blaine has followed Karl in. He’s smirking.

“Hey, Karl. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

Samantha studies Blaine as if he were a museum exhibit. “You’re a friend of Karl’s?”

“You look surprised.”

“Karl doesn’t seem like he would have a friend who stepped out of
GQ.”

“Actually, we make a good pair, Karl and me.
GQ
and IQ.”

Putting Samantha and Blaine together in the same room (or garage) is like tossing lit matches around at an oil refinery. The faster Karl can get rid of her, the better.

“I’m kind of busy,” he tells Samantha. “Could I call you later?”

“You could if you had my phone number, but you still haven’t asked for it.”

“Could you write it down for me?” he asks, blushing because of the audience.

“My things are in the car. Got a pen and paper?”

He tears a flap off the top of an empty carton and digs an old carpenter’s pencil out of his father’s never-used toolbox. The pencil wears a coating of fine gray grime.

As she writes, she asks, “Have you two been friends a long time? Or is this something recent? Something sudden?”

She winks at Karl, but he refuses to receive the signal.

“We grew up together,” he says. “Cub Scouts.”

“Hm.” Samantha hands Karl her phone number, written in large, bold numbers. “On a different subject—does either of you know how to reach Cara Nzada? I can’t find her address or phone number anywhere.”

GQ
and IQ zip their lips.

“One of you has to have it. You’ve spent enough time hovering around her.”

“Why do you want to talk to her?” Karl asks.

She gives him an exasperated scowl, as in,
Are you totally stupid? This is a secret investigation, remember?
“No particular reason. Just to chat.”

Karl imagines Samantha grilling Cara in her apartment.
Who helped you cheat? You might as well tell me, I’ll find out anyway.

“Sorry,” he says, “I don’t know how to reach her.”

Blaine, incredibly, shows no anxiety whatsoever. “She just moved. She hasn’t given me her new info yet. Guess she didn’t give it to you either, huh, Karl?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“How about the old ‘info,’ then? There’s probably a recording on the line.”

“Nope. I tried. It just says the number’s been disconnected. Sorry.”

“Seems like you two would rather not have me talk to her.” Samantha wags the dirty pencil at Karl. “What does Cara know about you that you don’t want anybody finding out?”

Blaine guffaws. Following his lead, Karl chuckles.

“Okay,” Blaine says, “you nailed us. We’re smuggling ice cubes out of Canada. Too bad, now you know too much, we can’t let you live.”

“You’re so useless.” Samantha sighs. She taps the piece of cardboard in Karl’s hand. “Call me tonight. We can talk about your new friends. Don’t be shy—I’ll be waiting, Karl.”

She hands him back the pencil and walks out to the white Volvo with a weirdly jaunty stride.

“Lover boy,” Blaine says as Samantha’s car swings around in the cul-de-sac.

“I didn’t do anything to encourage her.”

“You don’t have to. You’ve got that brainy charisma thing going on.”

Alone with Blaine again, Karl remembers what they were saying before Samantha interrupted. Having to say no to Blaine is like wearing a lead cape over his shoulders. He wishes he could erase everything from the moment he joined the Confederacy until now.