Cheater Read online

  “It takes strength to separate yourself from your peers,” Klimchock says. “But I believe you have what it takes.”

  What was it Lizette said on his front steps? Look yourself in the eye and be honest.

  Good advice, but it doesn’t seem to apply here.

  “Pick up the pen, Karl. Time’s running out.”

  “Sorry. I can’t.”

  Klimchock slaps the Fiddler on the Roof poster with a flat hand, so hard that particles of ceiling plaster drift down on them. A wormlike vein has popped up on his forehead. Uck.

  “All right. There’s one other way. If you can’t bring yourself to tell me their names, you can let them hang themselves. You’ll cheat one more time, on the next test. I’ve suspected for a while that you people were sending each other answers via radio signal. I’m right, am I not?”

  Karl sees no point in lying. “Mm-hm.”

  “Fantastic! Because I’ve ordered a system that will let me see who’s receiving your signal. I’ll have them dead to rights. You didn’t sell them out-they gave themselves away. But, if you warn them, and no one picks up the signal, then I’ll know you tipped them off, and it’ll be Bye-Bye, Karly.”

  The next test, though, would be… the SAT.

  “You don’t mean the SAT, right?”

  Klimchock considers that for a moment, then smiles contentedly. “Why not? It’s perfect-the widest net, to catch the most fish.”

  Karl can’t stretch his brain around this.

  “You seem perplexed.”

  “I just-you can’t do this. Not on the SAT.”

  “I can’t?”

  If Klimchock is so far beyond the gravitational force of sanity that he doesn’t understand, then nothing Karl can say will bring him back down to earth.

  “Remember the goal, Karl. Sometimes justice requires extreme measures.”

  Even if Karl were willing to lure what remains of the Confederacy into Klimchock’s net-which he’s not-he would never do it on the SAT. That would be like… like… spray painting his name, address, and Social Security number all over police headquarters. This isn’t some trivial little grammar quiz-Klimchock is messing around with the Educational Testing Service!

  “I wonder,” the assistant principal says, “if we’ve been wrong about you all this time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We all assumed your grades were real. Maybe they’re not. Maybe you’ve been cheating since grammar school. Is that how you always get everything right?”

  “No-I just started a few weeks ago.”

  “Says you. But if the school newspaper reports that you’ve been caught red-handed, people are going to start wondering. There goes your reputation, Karl.”

  “I didn’t get answers from them. I gave answers to them.”

  “You enjoy being thought of as a genius, don’t you? Behind that modest facade, you really thrive on it. It’s all you’ve got, really. But maybe you don’t deserve your status.”

  Klimchock plops into the rolling chair behind his desk and lets the insults sink in. The weird part is that, except for the false accusation, he has nailed Karl, exactly. This is extremely disturbing. When a sadistic psychopath comes out with a startling, accurate insight into your soul, what do you do with the information?

  “Either way, Karl, it looks like you’ve come to the end of your reign. The Reign of the Brain. Soon you’ll just be one more doofy adolescent.”

  Karl shakes his head-not in despair, but to throw off confusion. This is not the time to mistake the enemy for a psychoanalyst. He can deal with his new self-knowledge later; right now, he’s got a duel to fight.

  In Greek mythology, Athena equips Perseus with the magical weapons he’ll need to survive his encounter with Medusa. Karl has no heavenly helper, but he does have some useful, strategic knowledge, gained from watching hundreds of episodes of Law and Order. He can see what Klimchock is trying to do-apply pressure to his weak point, his pride, until he snaps and blurts out something self-incriminating, like, I AM a genius! They MADE me help them. The small-brained idiots-they USED me. THEY’RE the criminals, not me!

  Knowing this, he disengages his emotions.

  Klimchock keeps studying him, waiting for him to crack. It’s embarrassing to be watched so closely. Karl looks down at his hands, wishing he could blink and rematerialize on another continent.

  Maybe he should tell Samantha. If he explains what Klimchock wants him to do-if she prints it in the school newspaper-that would wreck Klimchock’s plan, it would disgrace him.

  And it would create a different sort of permanent record. A public proclamation of Karl’s cheating, in print.

  “I wonder if you’ve realized yet,” Klimchock says loudly, jarringly, “that, even if I choose to ignore this incident, no highly selective college will admit you.”

  He waits for Karl to ask the obvious question, and Karl obliges him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because you haven’t done anything for three years except get perfect grades. That won’t fly, Karl.”

  “I’ve been working on independent projects outside of school.”

  “I don’t care if you’ve cured cancer, AIDS, and hemorrhoids, they still want to see that you’re capable of functioning in a group. You know: plays well with others. When you have your pick of the best and the brightest, there’s no reason to accept a social misfit.”

  This sounds true. The news would have paralyzed Karl with despair under other circumstances, but right now, it’s just… incidental. Gravy. The icing on the cake.

  “I could make that problem go away for you,” Klimchock says. He rolls a yellow pencil playfully across his desk blotter with a flick of a fingernail, then rolls it back the opposite way with the other hand.

  “How?”

  “I can put you on the fencing team, which I coach myself. And I can write a letter of recommendation, praising your inspirational team leadership, your awesome powers of concentration, and the astonishing grace of your lunges.”

  The offer doesn’t feel real. Klimchock’s just spouting words, babbling. He would never do what he says.

  “Do I sense distrust? I really can do this, Karl. And will. In exchange for you know what. You can walk out of here right now and tell your friends I just wanted to chat about colleges. There’s no reason for anyone to know about any of this. You help me, and I’ll help you.”

  “But-wouldn’t that be cheating?”

  Klimchock rubs his watery eyes with his pinkies, frowning. Karl can’t tell if the assistant principal will see the error of his ways, or throw a stapler at him.

  “I’m willing to bend the rules,” Klimchock says, “just this once. In pursuit of a higher goal.”

  He swivels in his chair, 180 degrees, giving Karl privacy so he can decide.

  Karl weighs the alternatives one more time: turn the Confederates in, or sacrifice himself for their sake. He remembers that they blackmailed him and don’t deserve his loyalty. He remembers that he doesn’t want to be a slimy snitch.

  “I’m late for the superintendent,” Klimchock says to the wall behind his desk. “I need your decision now.”

  Karl says, “Okay.”

  Klimchock swivels fast and stops himself by slapping the blotter with two flat hands.

  “My decision is… I have to think about it.”

  The pink fingers on the blotter retract slowly, and turn into fists.

  Mrs. D’Souza offers Karl a cookie on his way out. He doesn’t hear her.

  (She understands: it happens all the time.)

  RULE #11: You Play chess, right? Say your opponent gets you in a fork, and you’re going to lose either your queen or your castle. Don’t give UP! Put him in check instead! Then, on his next move, he has to Protect his king, not loot and Pillage you. Maybe it’s just delaying the inevitable-or maybe it’ll save your behind! The same holds true if you get caught cheating. Sure, it looks hopeless… but your opponent may be vulnerable. I’ll leave it at that, wink win
k.

  Chapter 11

  Shell-shocked, pale, basically blasted to pieces, Karl takes his backpack from his locker and heads out of the school. The bell sounds just as he reaches the front steps. It’s the first of the lunch periods, and swarms of students follow him out.

  “Karl!”

  He keeps his back to her and speeds up, but the clatter of little wheels on concrete gets louder and louder, closer and closer. It’s like waiting for a torpedo to hit.

  “What did he say to you? What was that about?”

  Samantha and her small rolling suitcase accompany him as he turns toward the corner. His main objective is not to fall apart in front of her.

  “Nothing. He just wanted to talk to me about colleges.”

  “I seriously doubt that. You’re hiding something, aren’t you? Let’s see if I can guess. He wants to catch cheaters. What would he want with you? Hmmm.”

  Time oozes forward. Another ordeal to get through.

  “Did he ask you the same thing I did? About people approaching you for help? And he swore you to secrecy?”

  “Er-I shouldn’t say.”

  “Listen, Karl, if you tell him anything, you can leak it to me, too. You have to.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Do you want to come over to my house for lunch?” she asks, out of the bluest blue. “I live right over there.” She points to a pink and purple house with a great deal of decorative molding. “I could show you my room,” and she winks at him, which is the second most terrifying event of the day.

  “My parents are expecting me at home,” he lies.

  “You could call them. If you came with me, we’d have the whole house to ourselves.”

  “I better not,” he mumbles.

  She shakes her head. “I wish you didn’t have to play so mysterious with me. We’ll never get anywhere that way.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s like you’re always hiding something.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yes you are.” She pokes the side of his head with her index finger. “I know you’re in there, secrets. Come out with your hands up.”

  They’ve come to her house. Lining the edges of the front walk like soldiers are two parallel rows of bushes, each a perfectly pruned sphere. Up on the second floor, one of the windows reveals a baby blue ceiling through sheer lavender curtains. A row of stuffed animals sits on the sill.

  Her finger tickles his scalp. “You will come to my room,” she says, hypnotist-style. “You will obey.”

  A silver Mercedes goes by, with Phillip Upchurch at the wheel. Upchurch watches them with a malevolent sort of fascination. He heard the announcement on the P.A., no doubt. Karl gets the message: you couldn’t stay out of trouble,could you? Well, I can’t save you this time, moron.

  He veers away from Samantha. “Sorry. I’ll see you later.”

  There’s an ominous quiet behind him: the little wheels aren’t clattering. He doesn’t look back.

  Just before dinner, he finds three new messages in his email, not counting the pharmaceutical spam. He opens Lizette’s first.

  I HOPE THE KLIMCHOCK THING WASN’T WHAT IT SOUNDED LIKE. BTW, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LATE. I’M STILL NOT TALKING TO YOU.

  If he could climb into the monitor, he would search until he found her, so he could tell her-what?

  To his relief, Blaine’s message doesn’t contain a threat against his property or his loved ones: it’s just a question mark. He deletes it without replying.

  Since he can’t have Lizette’s sympathy, he sends Cara a note. KLIMCHOCK CAUGHT ME, TOO. THERE GOES MY LIFE.

  Will she respond? Don’t hold your breath, he advises himself.

  Jonah’s note, last of the three, includes a mysterious link to YouTube. When he plays the video, it’s the Fabulous Flying Stringbinis, that night on State Street. Their faces freeze in absurd, clowning expressions each time the stream buffers. He consumes the small blurred images hungrily, and when the clip ends, he plays it again.

  The Quick Pick-Me-Up of Death: Jonah and Matt go flying. “Hey!”

  “One of my high school friends went to Princeton,” Karl’s dad is saying, “and he used to tell crazy stories about the fraternity pranks there. Supposedly, this one guy hung naked from the top of my friend’s door, and when he came back to his room, the guy grabbed his head in a naked scissor-lock. I always wondered if my friend was exaggerating.”

  Karl stares queasily at the highway directions on his dad’s old iMac, while the printer spits out the route.

  “Don’t let it scare you, Karl, that was a long time ago. And he ended up liking the school a lot.”

  The hard wooden back of his father’s spare office chair presses uncomfortably against Karl’s vertebrae.

  “Am I making everything worse? Sorry. Maybe I should shut my big trap.”

  He types in his next route request: from Princeton to the University of Pennsylvania.

  “One last thing: did you know that Albert Einstein taught at Princeton? Can you wrap your brain around that?”

  “Dad,” Karl blurts out, “a friend of mine is in trouble. I’m worried about him.”

  His father goes solemn. He asks quietly, “What sort of trouble?”

  “He got caught cheating on a test.”

  “Whew!”

  His dad’s cackle offends him.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “Sorry-not to minimize your friend’s problem-it’s just that, when a son says, ‘My friend is in trouble,’ a parent always assumes he’s talking about himself, in code. You had me scared for a minute. Go on, tell me what’s up with your friend.”

  His father divides his attention between Karl’s story and the route to Philadelphia. Karl wishes he could get his dad to listen more carefully, but he’s afraid to demand it, because then his father might guess the truth.

  After many Hms, his father takes his fingernail from the monitor glass and says, “Your friend really got himself into a jam. I hope, if nothing else, you can learn from his mistake. Although I can’t imagine you ever screwing up to that degree. Hey, look at this, it’s under an hour from Princeton to Philly. We’ll just have to be careful to avoid rush hour.”

  “What should my friend do, Dad? Can you give me some legal advice, that I can tell him?”

  “Sorry, I don’t have a clue-this is way out of my field. If he were my kid, I’d be tearing my hair out right now-and you know how I prize what’s left of my hair.”

  While Karl mentally drills a hole toward the earth’s core, in which he can hide for the rest of his life, the phone rings.

  “Petrofsky and Son,” his father answers. Then, “It’s for you.”

  “I tried your cell but it’s turned off,” Blaine says. “And you didn’t answer my email. You really shouldn’t cut the lines of communication in a crisis, Carlos. So-what did Klimchock say?”

  “Um, I’m here with my dad doing MapQuests.”

  “Understood. I’ll ask yes or no questions. Did he ask for names?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you give him any?”

  “No. I’d better go, I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Karl, we have to know what’s going on. You honestly didn’t tell him anything?”

  “Right. Bye.”

  His dad is scrutinizing the little map underneath the directions. “You can talk to your friends, I don’t mind. You sounded a bit rude there, FYI.”

  “He’s not really my friend.”

  “Oh.”

  His father zooms in on Philadelphia. While the iMac’s colorful little Wheel of Waiting spins, Karl seeks refuge from the catastrophe that’s hurtling toward him. The bookshelves are full of histories and biographies-no sanctuary there. Fist-size busts of Jefferson, Lincoln, and FDR stand up from the desk like strange bronze vegetation. There’s also a mobile of photos showing him, Karl, at various stages of growth, all happy.

  The panic swells until it bursts. “Can an assistant principal even do the
things he’s doing? Can he put signal detectors around the building? Isn’t there a law against spying on people? And what about kicking people out of school and putting notes on their records? He’s ruining their lives forever-how can he be allowed to do that? And making someone cheat on the SAT can’t be legal.”

  Hopeful for the first time since he heard his name over the P.A., Karl clutches the spiral cord of his father’s phone and eagerly awaits the verdict.

  His father leans back in his chair and swivels toward Karl. “You’re a good friend, to care this much. Okay, let’s take your points one at a time. First-I believe the school does have the right to install surveillance devices in classrooms, because they’re considered public places. And it’s my understanding that the principal or assistant principal can take any disciplinary action that’s appropriate, whether it’s expulsion or putting a note on a transcript.”

  The Eagle of Hope, shot dead, lands head down in the water with a splash.

  “On the other hand, he absolutely can’t tell a student to cheat on the SAT. Basically, he can’t do anything illegal.”

  What’s this? A white-feathered head rising from the placid surface?

  “Would that include offering to lie on a college application?” Karl asks.

  “Mmm-I don’t think that rises to the level of breaking the law. But it’s so improper, he could be fired for it.”

  The brass section blares a patriotic fanfare. Our national symbol soars again!

  “The problem is proving he said these things to your friend. Also, if your friend really did cheat, then he’s in deep doo-doo no matter what happens to the assistant principal. Going public won’t get him out of trouble.”

  Karl releases the phone cord and stares at the blotches imprinted on his palm. They look like Morse code-but if there’s a message, he can’t read it.

  On his father’s monitor, meanwhile, the route from Princeton to Philadelphia is a lavender worm with a magenta digestive tract: a squiggle connecting two places that have nothing to do with his future.