Cheater (11 page)

A girl has come up behind him: the weird one from school, with the immobile hair and the plaid slacks that always have a straight crease—the one who drags around a small rolling suitcase instead of a backpack, and therefore looks like a flight attendant as she strides through the halls.

She sticks her hand out straight, to shake his. “Samantha Abrabarba. Nice to meet you. Why are you hiding behind a tree?”

“No reason. I just—didn’t have anything to do.”

“On a Friday night? Tut, tut. But look on the bright side: that means I can interview you. How about this bench— shall we?”

Samantha, it turns out, wants to profile him for
The Emancipator
, as the quiet genius of the junior class and next year’s presumed valedictorian. The prospect of having the whole school read about his prodigious brainpower appeals to him in the same way that large quantities of water appealed to the Wicked Witch of the West—but he doesn’t want to walk away, because that would mean losing sight of Cara and the Stringbinis.

He follows her to the yellow bench outside the Enchilada Encantada, the Mexican restaurant, and answers her questions distractedly—about his study habits, and who was his most influential teacher, and what extracurricular activities he’s involved in. Hearing that he, um, doesn’t do any extracurricular activities, she rests her leather-bound pad on her lap and lectures him. “That’s really not smart, you know. Even with grades like yours, colleges want to see that you’re, quote, well-rounded, unquote.
Every
body does something. You’re not abnormal, are you? Just kidding. I mean, I don’t love tutoring dumb, lazy freshmen, but I do it—and working on the newspaper, you wouldn’t believe how much crap I have to do, pardon the expression.”

Though depressed and a hundred feet away in spirit, Karl can’t resist: “You do a lot of crap on the newspaper?”

“I know, you think I’m just a trained dog, doing what I’m supposed to do, when and where I’m supposed to do it. But not everyone has your grades. The rest of us have to find any way we can to shine.”

Despite her announced ambition to become a
New York Times
reporter, Samantha talks much more than she listens. When Karl (not wanting to sound like a walking computer in her article) tells about the projects he works on in the garage, like the thermosensitive shingles, she says, “So you’re the next Thomas Edison, tinkering in your basement laboratory, pouring chemicals into beakers?”

“No. In the garage. Without beakers.”

“But you’re planning to go into chemistry, right?”

“Not exactly. I don’t really know what I want to do.”

“Too bad. I do. I want to interview foreign heads of state, and get them to reveal their secret plans. My strategy is, the pretty face will put them off guard. While they try to impress innocent little me, I’ll be digging for classified information.”

She does have a pretty face, sort of—angular, sharp-featured, with elegantly elongated eyes—but it’s weird to hear someone call herself pretty, and she uses way too much makeup and hair spray, and also she’s so oblivious to him, even as she asks him questions, that the main impression she gives is of someone born with a defective social-interaction gene.

“I guess I’ll go home now,” he says.

“That’s rude. I’m not as interesting as your beakers?”

“I’m just tired.”

“What if I told you I’m working on a top secret exposé? Can you keep this . . .” She lifts a nonexistent hat and pantomimes putting something under it.

“Excuse me?”

“
Under your hat.
Are you slow?”

“What are you talking about?”

She peers around, left and right—a hokey gesture that he’s never seen an actual person perform. “Mr. Klimchock told me not to tell anyone, but I can trust you. I’m trying to catch the cheaters, at school, so I can expose them.”

Normally fair-complexioned, Karl feels himself growing paler. “Hm,” he says, and then adds, “hm.”

“The big question is, Who’s Doing It? So far I haven’t caught anyone, but I’m on the case.”

“That’s really interesting. But, I’m sorry, I was up late last night, I have to go.”

“Not so fast. Just answer a simple question: have you heard anything?”

“No. I really don’t know a thing.”

Across the street, his old friends are executing the Quick Pick-Me-Up of Death. Lizette crouches, and Jonah and Matt each put a foot on one of her hands, and then she stands fast and flips them up and away, so that they fly, flailing, up and onto the grass. (No, she doesn’t have the strength of Hercules. The trick is to perform the move quickly, before the audience, if there is one, notices the boys springing up with their knees.)

“Hey!” his three friends shout.

“Look at those dorks,” Samantha says. “Get a life.”

“Well. See you at school.”

“I guess I could go ask them what they know. I just hope their nerdiness isn’t contagious.”

She stands up; Karl grabs her by the wrist and pulls her back down.

“A little aggressive, aren’t we?” she says, smirking. “Not so shy after all.”

“No—I just wanted to ask: are you keeping your eye on anyone in particular?”

“I have certain suspicions. But I wouldn’t want to name any names until I have proof.”

“That sounds like the right thing to do.”

She does her left-right sneaky peek again, and lowers her voice. “Do you see Cara Nzada, in that window across the street? Doesn’t it seem a little
strange
that she gets on the high honor roll every year? What’s someone like that doing on the high honor roll? Methinks me smells something rotten in New Jersey, and it’s not a chemical factory.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.”

“Come on, Karl. If it walks like a duck and tastes like a duck.”

“But you just said you need proof.”

“I’m in English and Spanish with her. I’ve been sitting behind her, one seat over. It’s just a matter of time before I catch her in the act.”

In the café window, the rock star is leaning way forward and singing to Cara. She seems pleased and amused—as if this were her due, as queen.

They have a test on
Moby-Dick
coming up on Monday
.
He has to warn her.

Unless he doesn’t.

In the park, Jonah and Matt are doing the Winter Pepper, the opposite of a somersault. Lizette is staring at Karl.

He turns his head sharply, away from Lizette, away from Samantha.

“I can see it now: ‘First High School Student Ever to Win Pulitzer Prize.’”

“But why are you so fixated on this?” Karl asks. “Cheating isn’t that big a deal—relatively speaking. It’s not the worst thing in the world.”

“Are you kidding? This is a sensational story: ‘Behind the wholesome suburban facade lurks a festering pit of dishonesty.’”

“A ‘festering pit’?”

“Come on, Karl, doesn’t it bother you that people like Cara get better grades than everybody else, without even studying? When I catch them, I’m going to print their names in three-inch letters on the front page, with the headline, ‘DIE, CHEATERS, DIE.’
”

Lizette takes a step toward Karl. Whatever blood was left in his face now drains at high speed.

She doesn’t cross the street, though. She calls to the others and leads them away, out of the park, up State Street.

“You know, you’re actually a decent conversationalist. Most people are so boring—all they want to talk about is Me Me Me. They’re so self-involved. I hate that, don’t you?”

He watches his three friends plus his replacement recede into the distance. Sadness nearly smothers him.

“Hey—I just thought of something. You could help me catch the cheaters!”

“I could?”

“You’re the guy they’ll all come to, to see if you’d give them answers. You’re the perfect bait. I bet people have approached you already.”

“No, not really.”

“Well, it’ll happen. And when it does, you’ll say, Yes! You can go undercover and catch the whole rotten bunch of them!”

She reaches around and pats herself on the back. “Who’s clever? Who’s a muckraker? Thank you, thank you.”

A police car races past them with its lights flashing, blue, white, and red. The siren gives one startling blast, and Karl jumps off the bench.

“I’d better get going now. See you, bye.”

“I’ll check in with you, Karl. Very discreetly. We’ll make a great team.”

She laughs, behind him, a happy little bird.

His mother is reading a book in the living room, with her nightly mug of tea wrapped in one hand. (It’s the bright orange jack-o’-lantern mug Karl painted in second grade, faded now, but still her favorite.) Before she can speak even one teasing syllable about his date, she sees the look on his face and censors herself.

For that, he’s grateful.

RULE #8: Don’t do what the lowlifes do--the ones who were supposedly your buddies, your allies, and then the minute you’re caught, they treat you like a contagious mutant or worse. I can’t stand that.

Chapter 8

Monday morning, on line at the Muffin Man’s truck, is that Cara, or does she have an identical cousin who’s even more attractive?

The hair is shorter, it swoops across the top of her forehead, then plunges down like a curved blade to just under her chin. She’s wearing a short black skirt and a red halter top with flowery golden Chinese-style brocade. (Wow.)

The iPod cover, leopard-spotted, answers the question: yep, that’s Cara.

Karl hasn’t been able to get her out of his mind since Friday night. Ten times he dialed her number minus the last digit. His options basically boil down to these: tell her off and walk away, or ask if she had some good reason for treating him like a small flying insect, the kind you swat without even noticing, and
then
walk away. He can’t do either, though, because what if there was some extenuating circumstance? Then his angry accusations will bounce back and splatter him in the face.

She smiles sleepily as she waits her turn, white wires trailing down from her earbuds. He could keep walking and pretend he didn’t see her, but that would be so cowardly. Really: Lizette was right, at some point, you have to get a spine.

“Hi,” he murmurs, joining her on line.

She nods—to the music, not him—and then shuts it off.

“Morning, Mister Nice Guy.”

“You better not be cutting in,” growls the slovenly student behind her.

“I’m not buying anything,” Karl mumbles.

This isn’t a good place to confront Cara, but Karl prods himself.
No excuses.

“You weren’t home Friday night,” he says.

“Uh-oh, stalker alert.”

“Around seven-thirty, I mean.”

“Double alert: stalker with a wristwatch.”

Then she remembers.

“Ohhhhhh,” she says. “Oops—memory failure.” She blinks ironically, impersonating a silent-movie heroine. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“You really just forgot?”

The blinking stops. An evasive smile bends her lips. “No, I didn’t forget.”

He can’t speak the words out loud:
So, you blew me off

“I wanted to hear this band play, and the singer invited me. But I didn’t want to hurt your feelings. I guess I handled the situation poorly, huh?”

There’s no point answering.

“But it’s over now, it’s in the past. We can laugh about it. Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Karl doubts he will ever laugh again.

“Come on, don’t hide in your Tomb of Gloom. Give me a chance to make it up to you. Tell you what: after school today, I’ll go home with you and we’ll play Genie and Master. Your wish is my command. Would that pay off my debt to society?”

He stumbles as they step off the curb. The lady inside the Muffin Man truck says, in a thick Russian accent, “Yes, what muffin today?”

Karl has a decision to make: to let go of the humiliation and see what might happen in his room later, or to refuse, because she will treat him like an endlessly abusable puppy for as long as he allows it.

He can’t decide, but he holds her books for her as she unwraps her chocolate-chip muffin. They’re heading up the winding path to the school’s side entrance
(What could I ask for if I’m the Master?)—
when Jon Higginbottom, a dancer with huge shoulders, appears from nowhere, dips Cara in his arms so they look like the
Gone With the Wind
poster, and starts purring to her in pseudo-Italian.
“Mi scatellini, mi pocciabelli, non me sapito, rigatoni, che questo!”

She laughs as he kisses her pale throat.

“Who is-a this person?” Jon asks, nodding at Karl. “I kill-a heem!”

“No, you mustn’t,” Cara says, “for he is my long-lost half-brother from Latvia.”

From there to the lockers, where he hands over her books, Karl trails just behind them. It’s the longest two-hundred-yard walk of his life, but at least it settles the Cara question once and for all.

Not until Samantha Abrabarba pinches his arm at the doorway of Ms. Singh’s classroom—where an essay test on
Moby-Dick
will begin just minutes from now—does Karl realize that he forgot to warn Cara about Samantha. It’s too late now, but he races down the aisle and snags the seat that’s behind Cara and one over, so Samantha can’t sit there.

She pounces on the seat next to his, hissing, “Dum-dum, I
told
you that’s where I have to sit! Trade with me!”

Stalling until Ms. Singh arrives, Karl pretends to agree, but “accidentally” drops the contents of his backpack on the floor—at least, that’s his plan, but there are too many books in the backpack, they’re jammed in tight and won’t come out. He has already said, “Whoops,” and here he is, shaking the upside-down pack while Samantha sneers, “What’s your problem?” The moment seems to last a century, as if they’d turned into a diorama at the Museum of Natural History—until Ms. Singh enters the room and three books slide out of the backpack, slapping the floor loudly, one after the other.