Cheater (3 page)

“Like what?” Matt demands, arched eyebrows leaping, as if to say,
Now we’ve got you.
“Ionic bonds? Savings bonds? Barry Bonds?”

The school bell sounds—not a bell, really, but the fivenote beginning of reveille, played on tinkly chimes. Karl never noticed before how obnoxious this recording is.

“Hydrogen bonding,” he mumbles. “He just wanted to know—“

“Okay, okay,” Lizette says, “stop, we surrender. Turn off your Lethal Boredom Ray.”

After school, he whips through his calculus, history, and music theory homework so he can get to work in the garage. Karl’s parents have always worked long hours, and from toddlerhood on, he has learned to entertain himself with projects of his own devising. In fourth grade, he built a Hamster Generator, which enabled little Hamilton to power his own night-light by running on his wheel. In ninth grade, he concocted a thermosensitive paint, which turned silvery gray in the heat and black in the cold; his parents let him coat the shingles with it, and now the roof absorbs the sun’s warmth in winter and bounces it away in summer. (Unfortunately, the U.S. Patent Office wrote back that Armine Fodek of Chillicothe, Ohio, had a similar patent pending.) At present he’s working on his most ambitious project to date—but he refuses to tell a soul what it is until he finishes and tests it. Suffice it to say that this project blends elements of fluid mechanics, combustion, and sound, and that working on it absorbs him completely.

While tinkering in the garage with an ignition device, adjusting the flame size, he hears a loud motorcycle engine and looks outside. It’s his neighbor Norbert, the apprentice electrician, coming out of his parents’ garage. A girl holds on to his waist from behind, orange hair flying out from beneath her helmet as they roar away.

When the noise fades away, he looks at the pipe wrench in his hand and hears Cara again:
Is your life so wonderful the way it is?

His father stops in the garage on his way inside. Karl quickly blows out the flame and covers it with the small, galvanized pail he keeps at hand for this purpose, then pulls the paint-stained Goofy and Pluto sheet over the workbench.

“I just hope,” Dad says, “that whatever it is can’t be hijacked by enemy combatants and used to wreak havoc on our streets.”

“No comment.”

(At least Dad is semifunny, unlike Ivan Fretz, who threw out a mocking guess last week while walking the family Labradoodle: “A robot girlfriend?”)

Over a late dinner, Karl’s parents cheerily discuss the family’s college touring schedule: Princeton and Penn one week; Yale to Brown to Harvard the next, with a possible stop at M.I.T.; and Columbia the first afternoon they can both take off work. The issue of Stanford inspires some teasing. “You wouldn’t really want to put that many miles between us, would you?” his dad asks.

Karl thinks it over. His feelings are mixed.

“I don’t know,” he says. “What’s it worth to you to keep me on the East Coast?”

His mom cuts the joking short. “You need to prepare some questions in advance. How accessible the professors are, class sizes, how happy the students are in general. And you should decide if you want to sit in on a class at each school.”

“It’ll be good to spend some time together,” his father says. “For once in our hectic lives.”

Karl sort of agrees, but he also wonders how it’ll be, spending several entire days traveling around with his parents. Part of him already wants to scream,
Let me out! I’ll do anything! Just get me out of this car!

Since he can’t share that with them, he raises a different issue. “I don’t think those schools are going to take me. All I have is grades.”

His father hunches closer to the center of the table, as if spies from a competing family might be listening in. “I talked to a private college adviser,” he confides. “According to her, some universities would consider your independent work an acceptable substitute for standard extracurricular activities. If it’s impressive enough.”

“What
independent work?” Karl practically spits.

“Your Mystery Project. What else?”

Just as he feared.

“You’ll finish before it’s time to apply, right? You’ve got”— he counts on his fingers—“seven months.”

“Sure, I’ll finish, but—that’s not—that’s—personal. I’m not doing it to impress a college.”

“Perfect!” his mother says, and squeezes his hand. “You’re driven by your own passionate curiosity, not by a desire for self-advancement. If they’re impressed, that’s just . . .”

“Incidental,” his father offers.

“Gravy.”

“The icing on the cake.”

Could they be happier with their brilliant son? Not much. In their different ways, they have both placed all of their hopeful ambition squarely on Karl’s shoulders. His father, a tax lawyer, went to a state college near the Canadian border and has always felt dwarfed, status-wise, by his Ivy League partners. His mother, right-hand woman to Manhattan real estate developer Paul Tralikian, has an M.B.A. from Wharton but considers herself the dimmest light among her siblings, a neurosurgeon, a judge, and a congresswoman. By a happy accident of fate and biology, Karl’s brain turned out to be a more powerful engine than either of theirs, and they have reason to believe (ecstatically) that he will achieve more than either of them ever hoped to.

And he knows it.

Lying in bed in the dark, he analyzes the situation this way:

His parents want him, always, to stay ahead of the pack. But
ahead of the pack
means all by himself, out there in front of everybody else, looking over his shoulder at people who resent him for being so far beyond them. Is it right to strive to do better than everyone else? Isn’t it a little . . . greedy? Truth is, the whole Number One Student thing disgusts him. Much more appealing than any superachiever are the graceful, confident, beautiful ones—people like Cara and Blaine.

He remembers her hand on his—cool, and so soft—and her amazing green eyes, and the thin-lipped, mocking smile. The fact that it was pure manipulation doesn’t stop him from wanting more.

Usually, he falls asleep within ninety seconds of lying down. Not tonight, though. Not even close.

But each new day is a fresh start, and even with crusty gunk cementing his eyes shut, Karl accepts the sunshine on his face and gladly observes his spirit rising from the muck of yesterday. No, his life isn’t perfect—but what does that have to do with cheating? Not a thing.

Even the dull routine of school feels comforting today. Yes, it’s a strange and absurd place—with pepless pep rallies, longer hours spent preparing for standardized tests than on any actual subject, teachers who act like exhausted bureaucrats waiting to collect their pensions, and a principal who hasn’t been seen in months (rumor has it he suffered a nervous breakdown long ago and the assistant principal has him locked away in an attic storeroom)—but, viewed with the right distance, the absurdities can be seen as amusing.

For example: the assistant principal calls an assembly during seventh period. Recent assemblies have featured a rotund dietician who lectured them on the perils of junk food, and a uniformed police officer who tried to instill in them a righteous terror of scooters, skateboards, and Roller-blades. (“Gore and mayhem on wheels,” in his words.) You never know what kind of preposterous harangue you’re in for at one of Mr. Klimchock’s assemblies.

“He’s going to announce a new dress code,” Jonah predicts. “Shorts in the winter and plastic sweat suits in the summer.”

Lizette shakes her head. “I say he’ll make room for more test prep by cutting out chemistry and history.”

Though too sleepy to contribute, Karl enjoys listening to their quips. That is, until Klimchock opens his mouth.

“Cheating,” the assistant principal says, breathing into the microphone, deep as death.

Mostly hidden behind the lectern, Klimchock lets them wait for the rest of the sentence. The steel rims of his glasses catch the spotlights and concentrate them in two painfully bright specks; a larger patch of light shines on his polished pink scalp.

“Cheating,” he repeats, this time in his usual sonorous baritone. “Is. Epidemic.”

The oddly disconnected delivery catches the students’ attention but also makes some of them wonder if he has gone insane.

Mr. Klimchock, a small, sturdy man, gives the impression of great density, as if a football player had been compressed to the size of a jockey. His mouth curls sourly as he informs the students, “You may not think we know what you’re doing. But. We. Do.”

Careful not to turn his head, Karl swivels his eyeballs all the way to the right, far enough to see Ivan at the end of the row. Ivan seems to have suffered an attack of premature rigor mortis.

“In order to stop you, we’re going to have to get tough. You leave us no alternative. If your generation understood the meaning of honor, things would be different, but the word seems to have fallen out of use. Can anyone here define it? Can you, Mr. Fretz?”

Corpses can’t speak, and neither can Ivan.

“I thought not. And so, we fall back on the old methods. Reward and punishment, the carrot and the stick. Each has its adherents. Which way do you think I lean? Mr. Fretz? Care to guess?”

Eyeballs straining painfully sideways, Karl detects movement on Ivan’s face: his lower lip is trembling.

“Rhetorical question, no need to answer. So, let’s get down to business. You cheat, because honor means nothing to you. All right. Now you’re caught. (Isn’t it sad? After all these years in school, you still haven’t learned that
we can see you
from the front of the room.) You cheat. You’re caught. What shall we do with you? What do they do at other schools? I’ll tell you some of the options.” Here Mr. Klimchock, in his sober brown suit, raises his pitch to a namby-pamby drone. “’First offense, zero on the test. Second offense, course grade lowered. Third offense, fail the class, detention, community service, notify parents.’ What horse manure! Cut to the chase! Throw the criminals out and be done with it!”

The trembling has spread to Ivan’s entire head.

“As it happens, I’m not the expelling kind. I’ve got a different plan. Are you ready?
If you cheat and get caught, a note will be attached to both your student record and your official transcript.
You will NOT have the opportunity to expunge it. Every college you apply to will see this note. We’re pioneers here, in the war against cheating. Some would call the penalty harsh, but I say it’s only fair. Agreement? Disagreement?”

Silence has fallen on the auditorium—absolute, except for the faint buzz of the microphone.

“What will the admissions officer think when he sees a note, in bold type, saying,
Ivan Fretz cheated during a Chemistry exam
? Consider that the college has two thousand applications for five hundred slots, and this admissions officer is tired, very tired, his eyes are twitching from overwork. Well, you never know. He may be a generous, forgiving soul. Then again, let’s get real.”

The air in the auditorium has thickened to a paste of astonished horror. Even by the standards of Abraham Lincoln High, this speech strikes the students as outrageous, demented. Klimchock, it seems, has flipped his beany.

An anonymous student calls out, “April Fool,” although that was two days ago.

Mr. Klimchock doesn’t hunt down the offender, or even acknowledge the outburst.

“Please stand up, Mr. Fretz.”

Ivan stands, though not to his full height. He stays slightly bent, cowering—and that sight flips a switch in Karl’s brain. Not that Ivan is an admirable or even likable person, but old memories are seeping back, from the prekindergarten days when Karl used to go over to Ivan’s house to play, and his messy mom would serve them chocolate chip cookies at a jelly-smeared kitchen table already covered with crumbs, and one time Karl refused to interrupt a game of Candy Land to go pee and then it was too late and he wet his underwear and Mrs. Fretz lent him a clean pair of Ivan’s Batman briefs, and washed and dried Karl’s underwear before he went home, saying, “I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”

“You will serve as an example to the rest of the school, Mr. Fretz. You will have a note attached to both your record and your transcript. The next student caught cheating will have the same and will also be suspended. Welcome to the new zero tolerance policy. And, because I believe in positive reinforcement as well, anyone who reports a cheater will receive the Lincoln High School Honor Code Award— which, I admit, is just a certificate that I haven’t designed yet, but the words will look quite impressive on a college application.”

Ivan’s head has been dropping slowly, steadily. His upper body is now nearly horizontal, as if he were bowing to the assistant principal.

Karl wishes he could give Ivan the strength to stand tall, to walk out of the auditorium, place himself between the pillars at the front door and, like Samson, push them apart until the whole building collapses.

But no one can give Ivan that strength, and anyway, the pillars are too far apart. If this cruel school is to come tumbling down, someone will have to find a different way.

The tiles in the bathroom are supposed to evoke the blue Caribbean, but to Karl, they look more like the chlorine stain in his grandmother’s bathtub.

While he’s washing his hands, Blaine Shore appears behind him like a conscience angel. “Quite a guy, that Klimchock. He forgot to say, ‘Mwa-ah-ah.’”

Karl’s hands are shaking. He watches them as if they belonged to someone else.

Blaine wanders over to the stalls and taps his fingernails against the putty-colored steel, where a graffitist has written ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE—DO NOT DISTURB. “I just had to ask,” he says. “I know you said you wouldn’t mention what you saw, but I just wanted to make sure, since—“

“I’ll help you,” Karl croaks.