Cheater Read online

  “You would be unique,” Cara says. “The Genius Who Cares.”

  Her lips are thin, her smile crooked and sort of mocking, as if all of this is just teasing and only a fool would take it seriously. On the other hand, she keeps gazing into his eyes like a snake charmer.

  Behind the counter, the pizza guys are watching a soccer game with the commentary in Spanish. The cute kid pounds the table and studies his fist curiously. Ordinary though his surroundings may seem, Karl has the feeling he has fallen down a rabbit hole. Tumbling dizzily, end over end, he hears people say things they would never say in real life-Blaine inviting him cheerfully to cheat, Cara Nzada almost flirting with him. Any minute now, men made of playing cards may start swinging axes at his neck.

  “I’ll tell you what I like about you, Karl,” Cara says. “You don’t pretend to be cooler than you are. You’re just you. That’s a good thing-but you need to break out of your little world. Don’t be so afraid! You have the potential to be more than a brilliant nerd and a social disaster.”

  Obviously, she’s manipulating him-shamelessly, outrageously. If he could make a wish, though, it would be for her to keep going.

  She reaches over and puts her hand on top of his. It’s cold from the soda can. “Is your life so wonderful the way it is that you don’t want it to ever change?”

  He sits very still and waits for these hallucinations to end.

  “It’s kind of fun to break the rules,” she says.

  She strokes the backs of his fingers with one of hers, and he looks up again. In her eyes, he sees the strangest sight of all: a small person flying through the air.

  “Bye bye bye!” the little boy calls happily as his mother carries him, over her head, out of the pizzeria.

  Karl, too, is flying. If only he could get back to solid ground.

  RULE #2: The stakes are high, so think twice before you brag to a buddy who may blab your secrets around the school-because, if your bud blabs to the wrong Person, you’re going down like the Titanic.

  Chapter 2

  Okay. What do you want me to do? Are these the words you’re expecting poor bedazzled Karl to mumble? Don’t hold your breath. Even in the face of Cara’s flirtation and Blaine’s confusing logic-even though part of him longs to keep sitting here with this gorgeous pair, as if they were all friends-Karl is still Karl, and he has more common sense than your stereotypical math genius or absentminded professor.

  “So, are you with us?” Blaine asks optimistically.

  “Are you crazy?” Karl sputters. “NO, I’m not with you!”

  The only question in his mind, really, is whether or not to walk straight out the door. He chooses not to, mostly because it would seem hostile, but also because he would have to jog the mile and a half back to school.

  Blaine takes the rejection amiably. “You never know unless you ask.”

  Cara gives Karl a mischievous grin. “I hope you don’t look down on us, Karl-just because we weren’t born with your advantages.”

  “I’m not looking down on you.”

  “That’s good. Because, if you change your mind, the door’s always open.”

  An awkward patch follows. Karl watches the Ecuadorian team score a goal on the TV, and is grateful to the announcer for filling the silence with his crazed howl, “GOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!”

  At the last minute, Blaine and Cara decide to skip the last three periods, leaving Karl in a minor panic-even at a sprint, he’ll get to German late-but Blaine generously offers to drop him off a block from school. His last words, as Karl climbs out of the car: “Don’t worry, amigo. Be happy.”

  Cara’s hair whips behind her as she waves good-bye, arm straight up, looking forward, not back.

  Of all the mind-bending words spoken that lunch period, these are the ones that haunt Karl: Is your life so wonderful the way it is that you don’t want it to ever change?

  His friends are coming out of the cafeteria with aluminum foil antennae sticking up out of their hair (or, in Lizette’s case, her baseball cap). So soon after gazing into Cara’s green eyes, the three of them are not a pretty sight. Jonah has enough steel on his gigantic teeth to open a small hardware store, and his hair stands up like stiff straw. Tiny Matt can’t keep all of his body parts still at the same time. (No, it’s not a neurological disorder, just a case of hyperactivity he should have outgrown by now.) And Lizette-well, actually, Karl found her so appealing when she first moved here from Florida that he almost got up the nerve to ask her for a date (she’s a tall beanpole just like him, with shaggy, shortish, chestnut hair, a long nose, and a southern accent, and the whole package just tugged at his heart, in part because she seemed to actually like him), but Jonah fortunately pointed out that she was obviously gay before Karl embarrassed himself. With her Devil Rays cap pulled down to her eyebrows and her loose gray sweat suit, she could easily pass for a guy-to be honest, her nonhetero orientation is what took the pressure off and let him relax around her and become friends-but right now, Karl wishes she would dress just a little more attractively, no matter which gender she prefers.

  Yes, he knows it’s disloyal, superficial, and basically odious to judge his friends by their exteriors, but the radiance of Blaine and Cara has blinded him temporarily, and he’s still waiting for his eyes to adjust.

  “Where’d you disappear to?” Jonah asks. “What did Sweater Boy want with you?”

  “We saw you drive away with him,” Lizette says accusingly. “Very strange, Karl.”

  “He just wanted me to explain something. From the chem test.”

  “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 di
nner, 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.

  Is your life so wonderful the way it is…

  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 w
ould 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.”