Cheater (7 page)

He puts both hands in her hair. It’s so soft, so fine, he feels he’s touching a goddess. Nonetheless—
Courage!—
he kisses her again.

She smiles. “Well done.”

RULE #5: Don’t stick with the same techniques, year after year. Even though most teachers are so dim they’ll fail to notice a newspaper-size cheat sheet Under their noses, there are always a few maniacs who live to catch cheaters. Once these obsessed types catch on to a system, you’re dead if you Use it. I repeat: vary your methods.

Chapter 5

In a survey of high-achieving teenagers a few years back, more than three-quarters admitted that they had cheated in school. Of these cheaters, nine out of ten said they’d
never gotten caught
.”

With eighteen teachers jammed into Mr. Klimchock’s small office, there’s no room for him to pace the floor dramatically. He can’t even throw his arms out to the sides, or he’ll knock over Mr. Grantley’s Diet Pepsi and Ms. Singh’s Snapple, perched on opposite edges of his desk. The smell of Mrs. Kazanjian’s tuna salad dominates the room; posters for
Man of La Mancha
,
Cats
,
Pippin
, and
Fiddler on the Roof
surround the teachers, making them feel as if they’ve wandered into the lair of a mad theater fan, for whom time stopped in the 1970s.

“You can’t
persuade
students to behave ethically. You can’t tell them that cheating doesn’t pay when they see dishonesty rampant in politics and business. In the 1940s, only twenty percent of college students interviewed admitted to cheating in high school. But the world has changed since then.”

Mr. Watney gulps down a bite of turkey on rye so he can retort, “The change in numbers may just mean that students answer surveys more honestly now.”

The widespread chuckling shows that most of these teachers oppose Mr. Klimchock and his campaign to wipe out cheating—but the assistant principal doesn’t need their love or their approval. He lives by the famous words of President Lyndon Johnson, “If you’ve got ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

“As I was saying, schools are the last best hope for restoring honesty to our society. We can’t do it with logic or by pleading. But we
can
produce honesty through fear.”

The only sound in the room is Mr. Grantley, chomping on his pickle.

From his coat closet, Mr. Klimchock wheels out a mannequin on a rolling desk chair. The mannequin, slumping limply to one side, wears a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses.

“Know Your Enemy!” Mr. Klimchock blares.

“I have that boy in my algebra class,” says Mrs. Kazanjian—an unexpected joke from the famously cranky chess team adviser.

“Did it ever occur to you that he’s hiding more than his hair?” Mr. Klimchock asks.

With the flair of a magician yanking a tablecloth out from under a ten-course banquet, Mr. Klimchock pulls the hood back, revealing headphones on the mannequin’s ears. The wires disappear inside the sweatshirt; Mr. Klimchock reaches into the pouch and comes out with a CD player. “What’s our little dummy listening to during his biology test?” He pops the player’s lid and shows them the CD label: Lethal Doopy,
WA$$UP?
“Let me guess. If you got this far, you would now tell your student, ‘I don’t know how you can listen to that awful noise,’ and that would be that. Am I right?”

“No, I never insult their music. I don’t want to sound like my mother.”

“Come here and listen, please.”

Mrs. Kazanjian threads her way among the knees and feet and chair legs. Mr. Klimchock hands her the headphones, and she puts them on. When he plays the CD, her jaw drops. “Diploid cell—chromosomes in homologous pairs,” she hears. “The diploid number, 2n, equals twice the haploid number.”

“This CD was confiscated by a teacher I know in Ho-Ho-Kus. I’ve been doing my research, you see. They have methods we never heard of ten years ago. You can go back to your seat, Fern.”

As Mrs. Kazanjian returns to the back of the room, Mr. Klimchock produces a Thom McAn shoe box from behind his desk. The box is filled with seemingly random objects: a watch, a water bottle, an eyeglass case, a mechanical pencil.

“Now let’s see. What’s the point of this innocent paraphernalia?”

He dazzles his audience with one amazing revelation after another. Taped to the back of the watch is a teeny-weeny, folded-up cheat sheet. There’s a similar index card inside the eyeglass case, hidden behind the lens cloth, and a rolled-up page of physics formulas inside the mechanical pencil, where the extra lead belongs. If you turn the water bottle around, wonder of wonders, you can read a list of Egypt’s pharaohs and the monuments each one left behind, with an asterisk for Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh—all magnified by the liquid inside, all discretely tucked behind the label.

“From now on, the rule prohibiting cell phones will be strictly enforced at Abraham Lincoln High School. Hooded sweatshirts, mechanical pencils, and water bottles with labels are hereby banned. The same goes for mp3 players, graphing calculators, and PDAs.”

“Public Displays of Affection?” Ms. Vitello whispers to Herr Franklin.

“Quiet back there,” Mr. Klimchock barks. “I expect every one of you to visit these websites tonight, and learn more about how your students have made fools of you.”

He hands out a list of sites such as CheatersProsper, CheatStreet, and
EZA.com
.

Mr. Watney clears his throat.

“All right, let’s hear your rebuttal, Timothy.”

(Killer instinct: Mr. Klimchock has correctly guessed that Mr. Watney
hates
to be called by his full first name.)

“Some of us have been talking—“

“I see. A mutiny.”

“And we agree with you that the cheating has to stop, that it’s bad for the school and bad for the students.”

“Go on. Plunge your dagger in.”

“What we can’t agree with is the harshness of the penalty. What you’re doing is way out of proportion.”

Ms. Singh—a lovely young pistol, full of dazzling white teeth and energetic gestures—dives into the fight headfirst. “You have to understand where they’re coming from. There’s so much pressure on them. If they want to get into a top school, they have to perform at a superhuman level. Not only do they need perfect grades in the hardest subjects, but they also have to excel in an extracurricular activity, and that takes time. The system practically
pushes
them to cheat—it’s almost impossible to meet the requirements any other way.”

Herr Franklin adds, “Instead of severely punishing them, I think we should have them take a Saturday class in ethics. That way, they might learn something from all this.”

“Anyone else?” Mr. Klimchock asks. “Go ahead, this is your big opportunity. Hit me with your best shots. Don’t be afraid—what can I do? Fire you?”

The room goes quiet again. No one dares to speak—except frail, white-haired Mrs. Rose, who comments tremulously, “It’s just a shame the way everything has gone downhill. Just a shame.”

“I agree, Amelia. Things
have
gone downhill—including teachers’ understanding of right and wrong. Isn’t there anyone else in this room who sees that we have to crush dishonesty?”

Miss Verp, built like a football player but with a pixie haircut and an itty-bitty voice, raises her hand.

“Ah. An ally.”

“I’ve never met a student with a conscience,” she pipes sweetly. “Nothing makes an impression on them except severe punishment.”

Mr. Klimchock rewards her loyalty with praise—though he despises her for currying favor. “That’s the first sensible comment I’ve heard so far. As for the rest of you, your ‘sympathy’ and ‘understanding’ are misplaced. By coddling wrongdoers, you let them thrive and multiply. You might as well fight bacteria by putting them in a damp, warm intestine.”

“But you’re—”

“When you run this school, Timothy, you can run it your way. Until then, disagree in silence.”

“Speaking of running the school,” says Ms. Vitello, “ where’s Mr. Hightower? Why isn’t he leading this meeting? Does he know what you’re doing?”

These are excellent questions. No one has seen the principal in months. Mr. Fernandez, who joined the staff mid-year, right out of college, after Mrs. Langerhans collapsed in the bio lab, has never met Mr. Hightower and isn’t convinced that he really exists. (Mrs. Langerhans is doing better now, thanks for asking, and sends greetings to friends and colleagues from her retirement condo in Pompano Beach, Florida.)

“Mr. Hightower has a lunch meeting with the superintendent today,” Mr. Klimchock explains. “There are certain staffing issues they need to work out. I wouldn’t worry for now—not till we hear something definite. As for your other question, yes, I met with him this week and explained my plans, and he gave me his blessing. I couldn’t do this without his support, could I?”

His forced smile leads Mr. Watney to suspect that Mr. Klimchock may be doing the exact thing he’s denying, i.e., running this whole reign of terror behind the principal’s back. If he could just get the principal alone and ask some questions—

A firm
knock knock knock
on the door derails Mr. Watney’s train of thought.

“Open that, please, Charlene,” Mr. Klimchock says, frowning at the interruption. Miss Verp obeys.

Standing at the door is a student, someone we haven’t met before. Her hair frames her face in a neat, spray-hardened oval. Her gray slacks, with a straight crease down the front of each leg, seem to have been delivered by time machine from a more conservative decade. She wears too much makeup, more than a girl her age needs, including a thick coat of foundation. This leads the women in the room to assume she’s covering up acne scars, but in fact, there’s nothing underneath the makeup but fierce ambition and a peculiar directness.

“Mr. Klimchock, I’m Samantha Abrabarba,” she announces. (Her voice, loud and grating, reminds Mr. Watney of a car engine, backing up fast.) “I’m writing a story for
The Emancipator.
Could I speak to you in private?”

He’s about to ask, Can you see that we’re in the middle of a meeting?, but she adds, “I’m investigating cheating at school.”

Never too busy to hunt his quarry, Mr. K. excuses himself and joins Samantha in the hall.

As soon as the door closes, the murmuring begins.

“He’s demented!”

“He’s psychotic!”

“How does a person get like that?”

“Obviously he was abused as a child.”

“Can’t we go to Mr. Hightower and say this has to be stopped?”

“Good luck finding him.”

“Then we should go to the superintendent. If the whole teaching staff goes downtown and protests—”

“Whoa, Nelly. I don’t know about the rest of you, but there’s no way I’m going to complain to the superintendent. I’m too old to start job hunting.”

“It doesn’t have to be unanimous. Who’s willing to go with me to the superintendent’s office?”

Four hands go up.

“I can’t believe this! You’re cowards!”

“What about you, Mr. Grantley? You haven’t said a word.”

“I’m staying out of it. That’s how I’ve survived here for twenty years. Let the storms rage on the surface; down here the seas are always calm.”

“Great. You’re an inspiration to us all.”

Miss Verp chirps her dissent. “Looks to me like some of you are on the cheaters’ side.”

“You—you just want Attila the Hun to ask you out.”

“It’s such a shame, such a shame.”

“If we could just—“

And so on. Now you can see why evil madmen and nasty politicians win as often as they do: because everyone else wastes time squabbling instead of uniting to oppose them.

While the teachers bicker among themselves, let’s see what’s up in the hallway.

“Yes, Miss . . . Abracadabra, was it?”

“Abrabarba. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me.”

She whips out a memo pad, bound in black leather, with her initials on the front in gold script, S.A.

“Yes, I’m quite interested in this subject, as you know. And I appreciate your coming to see me. Now what information do you have for me in that little black book?”

She opens the pad to a blank page. “I don’t have any information yet. I wanted to ask if you’ve caught anyone since Ivan Fretz, and what you’re planning to do next. This is a really important story. If I do a good job, I might be able to sell it to the
New York Times,
as a stringer.”

Mr. Klimchock exhales slowly through his nostrils, venting his disappointment. “In other words, you’d like to publish my plans and alert the student body so they can take the necessary precautions.”

“I—
what
?! Are you kidding? I
hate
cheaters. I’d like to see them all expelled. That’s why I’m doing this story—to expose them.”

“I see. Well, then, maybe we can help each other. Keep your eyes and ears open. Be cagey—don’t go around announcing what you’re up to. If you hear anything that could be useful, share it with me. And I promise, in return, if I have any news to report, I’ll give you the scoop. How’s that for a deal?”

“Okay, but are you sure you can’t tell me anything right now?”

He considers giving her a dramatic quote, something along the lines of “Let the cheaters be warned, the day of reckoning is near.” In the end, though, he sticks with his No Comment strategy. The goal, after all, is to catch them, not to scare them straight.

“I’m sorry, but secrecy is essential.”

She jots those words on her pad.

“But you
do
have a plan, right? Is that what you’re meeting about in there?”

It’s not hard to imagine Samantha, a few years down the road, thrusting a microphone in a disgraced senator’s face and asking, When did you first start taking bribes to support your drug habit?

“I have to ask you,” Mr. Klimchock says, with as much paternal benevolence as he can simulate, “not to even mention my plans. If you do, you’ll compromise the entire effort.”