Cheater (12 page)

Usually, Ms. Singh bounds into the room with a bright, toothy smile, but today she’s subdued. Instead of roaming the room and gesticulating from one bell to the next, she takes a seat behind her desk and asks her students to please settle down.

They await a grim personal announcement—
I’ve been diagnosed with a rare skin condition, and will soon turn into a reptile
—but that’s not what they hear.

“I want to talk to you about cheating.”

Karl’s stomach becomes a clenched fist. How much does she know?

“Apparently, some students, no one knows how many, have been breaking the rules. In case any of you are involved, I just want to spend a minute talking you out of it. I understand, it’s hard to preach honesty when you see CEOs on trial all the time on the news. I know it may seem like you
have
to cheat to succeed. But that’s not true—and look what happens to them when they’re caught. Aside from the fines, and going to prison, they’re disgraced. Their names become synonymous with dishonesty. Do you really think they can laugh that off and say, ‘Who cares?’ I don’t. How would you like to go through life knowing that every person who hears your name thinks,
crook
? To me, that sounds like hell on earth. I’m not saying you have to be a saint. I don’t claim to be perfect myself—I kept using my student ID for discount tickets long after college—but there are plenty of things I won’t do. I won’t keep money a cashier gave me by mistake, because it comes out of their pocket at the end of the night. And I never cheated on a test, ever. Seriously. Speaking of which, you all need to remember how high the stakes are, if you get caught cheating. I want you to be honest because you’re good people, not because you’re terrified that colleges will find out you cheated—but if honor isn’t enough, then okay, let’s have a moment of silence and think about the consequences before we start the test.”

During the ensuing quiet, Karl makes a decision: he wants out of the Confederacy.

The trouble is, Blaine and the others are depending on him.

As if to confirm this, Blaine gives Karl a little raise of the eyebrow, as if to say,
Amazing, isn’t it, how these teachers jabber on?

As for the others, Noah doodles in his notebook, ignoring Ms. Singh altogether; Tim, in his own private time zone, seems to be counting his teeth, touching each one with his fingertip.

“All right, let’s get started. Of the four essays I told you to prepare, I’m going to ask you to write number three: ‘Even monomaniacal Captain Ahab has more to him than the quest for revenge against Moby-Dick. Referring especially to the chapter entitled “The Symphony,” discuss the complexity of Ahab’s character. (Hint: Note his symbolic references to greenery and land, as a contrast to the sea.)’ I made up this question myself, and I happen to know you can’t buy an answer online. Also, you won’t be needing your laptops today.”

She takes a stack of baby blue test booklets from her desk drawer and hands half of them to Juliette Chang, half to Phillip Upchurch, who hands all but one over to Tim with an expression of severe disgust: looking forward, Karl can tell, to the day when he will no longer have to sit in a classroom full of pathetic losers.

“In case my sermon wasn’t convincing,” Ms. Singh explains, “I’ve learned that it’s harder for students to cheat when they take tests longhand.”

Who would dare to groan, when a groan equals a confession of guilt? She has stopped the Confederates cold, and she doesn’t even know it. Karl wrote essays for all four questions and emailed them to the others, but now they have no way to use his work—and, knowing them, they didn’t even bother to read what he sent, just copied the text and formatted it so the letters would look white and invisible on their screens, until they turned the words black and paraphrased them during the test. They’re on their own now, unprepared. Karl couldn’t help them if he wanted to.

An unexpected calamity: they’ll all become suspects now, Blaine, Tim, Noah, and Cara, because why would all four of them suddenly flunk a test after getting As all year?

When the blue books arrive, Karl takes one and passes the rest to Samantha, who keeps her ravenous eyes on Cara’s back, hungry for a glimpse of wrongdoing that she won’t get today.

Or will she?

After writing a paragraph from memory about Ahab’s sorrow over his young wife, abandoned a day after the wedding when he returned to sea, Karl glances up at Cara—more in compassion than resentment—and sees something peculiar. As she writes, she keeps flipping up the hem of her short skirt and then flipping it down again.

Oh.

He remembers that day at the food court, centuries ago:
I don’t completely trust computers.
An old-fashioned girl.

To his right, Samantha is craning her neck, trying to see around Brett Handshoe’s shoulder.

There’s nothing on his desk that Karl can drop that would make a noise loud enough to attract Ms. Singh’s attention. (Working at the front of the room, she keeps her head down, willfully refusing to hunt for cheaters.) With no other options, he fakes a coughing attack.

Ms. Singh looks up. “Are you all right, Karl?”

Clearing his throat, “Sorry. Yeah.
Cccchhhhmmm.
Thanks.”

Noticing Samantha’s neck gymnastics—Karl’s goal, achieved—Ms. Singh says, “Samantha, please settle down.”

The students don’t hear that last word, though, because an announcement over the P.A. system drowns her out: “Will Cara Nzada please report to the assistant principal’s office? Cara Nzada—to the assistant principal’s office. Don’t finish your test. Come now, and bring all of your belongings.”

The voice is Mr. Klimchock’s, and his words go through Karl like a spear. It’s almost as if Klimchock were watching them through a hole in the ceiling.

Cara says to Ms. Singh, “So, I guess I’m supposed to go now.”

Ms. Singh gives Cara a mournful gaze. “I guess that’s right.”

Cara drops her purple pen into her black bag. She hands Ms. Singh her test booklet. “Oh well.”

Ms. Singh takes the booklet and turns her face away.

Cara gives Karl an amused little pucker of a smile. He has no idea what she finds amusing, or how she can smile. He’s churning inside, and he’s not even the one who got caught.

When the door closes behind Cara, Ms. Singh says tensely, “Concentrate on your work, people.”

“Karl, what’s the matter with you?”

He’s passing the band room, where the empty black music stands crowd around randomly like a flock of crows, when Samantha catches up with him, in a huff.

“I
told
you I wanted to sit there. I could have caught her. I could have reported on her in the paper.”

“Sorry.”

Fortunately, Samantha takes French and he has German next, so he doesn’t have to listen to her ranting once the bell rings.

Halfway through the period, window gazing, he sees a girl in a short black skirt escorted into the student parking lot by the security lady. Cara is carrying a lumpy Hefty bag: the contents of her locker, he assumes. She’s not smirking any more. She tosses the Hefty bag into the backseat of her grape-colored VW bug, and climbs in. She seems fairly calm, for a person who has just gotten kicked out of school—that is, until she starts the car, and roars out of the lot at highway speed.

They meet at Blaine’s convertible. Except for Tim, chomping on an Italian sub with stinky onion slivers hanging down, none of them takes a bite of lunch.

Noah gets straight to the point: “Do you think she gave him our names?”

“Whoa, hold on.” That’s Blaine, smiling, trying to impose calm on the others. “We don’t even know for sure why he called her down.”

“Yes we do,” Vijay says. “There’s only one explanation.”

That they would suspect Cara of betraying them all seems unfair to Karl. “She wouldn’t give him our names. That’s not what she’s like.”

Noah lets out a snort. “You think she’d really say no if he offered to let her off? Just to protect
us
?”

“Hold on, let’s think logically,” Ian says. (There’s sweat on his forehead—a first.) “If she gave him our names, why would he send her home with all her stuff? He wouldn’t.”

“Could be a cover-up,” Vijay says. “So we’ll think we’re safe, while he collects evidence against us.”

Tim talks with his mouth full. “Wow, that’s so paranoid.”

“Maybe he sent her home to think over his offer,” Blaine suggests. “Maybe he said, ‘You have two choices: tell me their names, or forget about college. Take a day to make your decision.’”

Ian agrees. “That sounds like his style.”

Vijay has more sweat on his face than Ian. “We have to talk to her. If she hasn’t already told him everything, we have to get to her before she does.”

Noah shakes his head miserably. “I don’t see what we can say. What would convince her to act against her own self-interest?”

Karl reminds him: “How about,
You go down alone
?”

Blaine shakes his head. “That’s great in the abstract, but not if Klimchock has her by the throat.”

“There’s really only one way to convince her to keep quiet,” Ian says.

“There is?” Tim perks up. “I didn’t think there was
any.”

They all look to Ian for their salvation. Before he can speak, though, Karl spots Samantha at the school’s back door, surveying the parking lot with a flat hand shading her eyes. He dives down behind Blaine’s BMW: an instinctive reflex, but also heroic, in that he’s saving the entire Confederacy from her scrutiny.

“What’s up, Karl? You’re not going to throw up on my car, are you?”

“Ssh! Don’t say my name!” He stays down, crouching. “That girl at the door—don’t look at her!—is she coming this way?”

“No, she’s going back inside. Who is she, your ex-wife?”

Karl peeks over the hood before standing.

“She’s hunting for cheaters so she can put their names in the school newspaper.”

A spontaneous moment of silence . . . then Noah croaks a string of four-letter words.

“One crisis at a time,” Blaine says. “Ian, what’s your plan? How do we keep Cara from giving Klimchock our names?”

“We have to threaten her.”

“No!” Karl blurts. “That’s ridiculous!”

“It’s better than getting kicked out of school.”

“We wouldn’t have to threaten anything really awful,” Blaine muses. “Just enough so she’d rather not talk.”

No one has any suggestions to offer. And no one is volunteering to make the call. Maybe the odious suggestion will sink into the earth and be forgotten.

“We don’t have to call her,” Vijay says. “We could send an anonymous email.”

“You can do that?” Noah asks. “How?”

“It’s not hard. I can set the Reply To and From headers to any name we choose. It’s called spoofing an address.”

“I know what to put in the email,” Ian says grimly. “Start spoofing, Veej.”

“No!” Karl protests. “This is crazy!”

“Matter of life and death, Buds.” Blaine lays a hand on Karl’s shoulder. “She’s not exactly the most reliable person in the world. You must have figured that out by now.”

Karl steps back, away from Blaine’s hand. “I don’t care. We shouldn’t do this.”

But Vijay already has his laptop open, he’s tapping away, and here comes Ian to type the message.

A few moments from now Karl will wish he’d taken Vijay’s laptop, thrown it on the blacktop, and stomped on it—but that’s hindsight. At the crucial instant he just watches with his mouth agape as Ian types, DON’T GIVE HIM ANY NAMES OR WE’LL DESTROY YOUR CAT.

“Are you out of your mind?” Karl shouts.

Vijay clicks the Send button.

“It’s a desperate situation,” Ian says.

“You’re going to kill her cat?!”

“I didn’t say anything about a cat.”

“You did, you said you’d destroy her cat.”

“I said we’d destroy her
car
.”

“No you didn’t—you said CAT.”

Vijay opens his Sent Messages box. There’s the proof.

Ian stares down at the keyboard. “The
r
is right next to the
t
,” he mumbles.

“Should we send a correction?” Vijay asks the group.

“Wait a minute,” Noah says. “Does she have a cat?”

Karl and Blaine answer in unison, “Yes.”

“Well, it’s okay, then,” Noah says. “It’ll work either way.”

In grievous turmoil, Karl stalks away, hating them, wanting never to see them again. He ignores Blaine, who’s calling his name, and goes back inside the school.

Then he remembers that his lunch is sitting on the hood of Blaine’s car.

Too bad. Consider it lost.

In spite of the way she stood him up so her singer friend could serenade her, Karl heads straight to Cara’s apartment after school—at a trot for most of the way, in case the Confederates decide to bully her in person.

She’s still wearing the same outfit she had on this morning—the short black skirt, the red and gold halter top—even though that seems like a lifetime ago. Her eye makeup is unsmeared; she hasn’t been crying.

It’s almost as if the whole day never happened . . . until she speaks. “Who are you, the Cat Destroyer?”

“I tried to stop them but they wouldn’t listen. They panicked.”

“Wimps.”

“They didn’t mean to threaten your cat, by the way. That was a typo.”

“What do they really want to destroy? My hat?”

“Your car. But they didn’t mean it.”

She goes down the narrow hall to her room. He follows, hoping that’s okay.

Lying on her side on the bed, she plays with the cat, who lets her roll him back and forth, oblivious to the death threat. Karl has never seen a sloppier room: she’s got dirty laundry on the floor, a half-eaten cookie on a tissue on the dresser, CDs strewn all over the place, and a chaotic sea of necklaces on the table that serves as her desk, along with a flotilla of makeup.