Michael Laser - Cheater

He ducks away from Vijay and Ian after class, and catches up with Phillip Upchurch on the stairs.

“Why did you do that?” he asks.

Upchurch rolls his eyes. “You’re welcome.”

Karl says, “Sorry-I meant to thank you. I just don’t get it.”

“Consider it charity.”

Karl still doesn’t understand. Why would P.U. want to save him from disaster?

“All right, if you really have to know, I’ll tell you-but this is just between you and me. Everyone around here expects you to be the valedictorian, but I’m planning to beat you. What happens if you get expelled? Every moron in the school is going to say, Phillip wouldn’t be the valedictorian if Karl were still here. So, whatever you were up to in there, I had to save your behind, unpleasant as that was. Now do you understand?”

Bizarre as it sounds, there’s no other plausible explanation. “I don’t know what to say,” Karl murmurs.

“That’s because, deep down, you’re really dumb. And untalented, too.”

Phillip accelerates, leaving Karl behind-stung and confused.

Sometimes it happens this way: you find yourself owing a large debt of gratitude to a nasty jerk. There isn’t much you can do about it, except wait for a chance to save his life and erase the debt.

In his garage, installing gear wheels with a screwdriver bit attached to the electric drill, Karl doesn’t hear the VW Beetle pull up to the curb. A scent of musk enters his nostrils; he assumes it’s a trick of the brain, a memory masquerading as a real fragrance. If Cara comes to see me, I’ll just tell her I’m through with the whole thing.

“Wow. What’s the invention, Mr. Edison?”

He covers the stainless steel dome quick as a flinch (well, not really, because sheets tend to float slowly downward, darn them) and stands before Cara, tongue-tied.

“It looks like a metal turtle with little pipes coming out of its back,” she says. “Let’s see… is it a remote-controlled spy submarine? That shoots poison darts at enemy scuba divers?”

He shakes his head.

“Am I close?”

Another head shake, since he can’t speak.

She pats the outer shell through the sheet.

“Goofy and Pluto. Hm. Which is which, anyway? I can never keep them straight.”

It occurs to him that she may be a foreign-born secret agent. That would explain the missing vowel in her last name, Nzada. Maybe they sent her here to corrupt America’s youth.

“So, I assume you’re thumbs-down on the cheating thing.”

“That’s right.”

“Understandable, after a near-death experience. A lesser man would’ve fainted on the spot.”

“It’s not just about almost getting caught.”

“Oh?”

She says this with a sparkle, as if anticipating an extremely creative lie.

He watches his sneaker rub the garage floor. “The dishonesty is bothering me.”

“Really?”

She comes closer. He steps backward and bumps against the rim of Project X’s shell.

“Tell me more about this-what do you call it? A conscience?”

Annoyed and hyperstressed, he lets loose a flood of misery over his parents’ sleazy work, and how he doesn’t want to be like that. “I just don’t like what I’m doing.”

“I have a question,” she says. “You’re seventeen, right?”

“I will be in a few weeks.”

“Close enough. Aren’t you a little old to believe in the tooth fairy?”

He sees where she’s going, and it disappoints him. Everything he said came from the heart. If all she can say in reply is that honesty is a fairy tale, intended only for small children, then she’s not as captivating as he thought, because she’s trying to sell him a lie-and it’s not even an original lie.

Cara responds to his sour face by turning in a new direction. “The whole world is unfair, Karl. It’s just a fact of life. Your parents aren’t bad people-they’re normal. Cheating is just a quick, efficient way to reach your goals. There’s no room for purity and virtue once you get a job. Name any career and there are compromises that go with it.”

“Doctor.”

“I didn’t mean name a job , Karl, I meant it’s a universal thing. But okay, since you don’t believe me-let’s say you’re Dr. Petrofsky, and you know that your sick patient, Mrs. Bobo, needs to stay in the hospital two days, but the HMO says, Sorry, outpatient surgery. Next! You argue, you protest, but in the end you do what you’re told, because otherwise you’re out of business.”

He doesn’t know if she’s right or wrong. How could he know? The only job he’s ever held was scooping ice cream last summer at Baskin-Robbins, and the only compromise he had to make was when an entire soccer team came in: a couple times, he didn’t dunk the scooper between flavors.

“I don’t understand why you should be lecturing me about how the world works. It’s not like you’re five years older than me.”

“Probably it’s because you spend your life in a garage. This is all common knowledge, Karl. My dad used to say how funny it is, the way people talk so nobly and meanwhile there’s all this thievery and backstabbing going on. He said, ‘The ones that preach the loudest are the always the biggest crooks.’”

He wishes he could disprove everything she’s saying, but he can’t.

“Personally,” she adds, “I think it’s cool that your mom’s boss built those extra floors. That’s nerve.”

Grimly studying the garage floor, Karl notices the silvery flecks left over from painting his first thermosensitive shingle. Those were the good old days.

“Hey, Edison-don’t pout, it makes your mouth look weird.”

She prods his skinny midsection (you can’t really call it a belly) with her index finger. He fears the long, sharp nail will pierce the skin and draw blood.

“Question,” she says. “Did school suddenly get less cruel and unfair than it was yesterday?”

He shakes his head gloomily.

“So let’s be honest, since you like honesty. You got scared because you almost got caught. Really, if you peel away all the talk, this is about fear, not lofty principles. It’s about nerve-so get some! Like your mom’s boss.”

A long shelf covered with dusty tools and doodads travels the length of the garage, shoulder high. Karl stares at the jug of blue windshield washer fluid-clinging to it like a shipwrecked sailor bobbing on the waves, just trying to hang on and survive.

She plucks a chocolate crumb from his collar. (Must have been there the whole time, a souvenir of his after-school Mallomars.) “Changing the subject slightly, do you agree that it would be a good thing to act on your desires once in a while, instead of giving up in advance because it’s scary and you might get in trouble?”

“I guess I can agree with that.”

“Good!”

She leans back against the top tube of his bike, smiling mischievously. Her silver satin shirt shimmers.

She’s waiting for something.

“What’s going on?” Karl asks nervously.

“I’m giving you a chance to practice.”

Karl is roughly as scared as he was when Mr. Watney called him to the front of the room. “What do you mean?”

“Uh-uh-uh. That’s a delaying tactic. You know what I mean.”

Because he lives on a cul-de-sac, there’s not much chance that a car, bike, skateboarder, or knife-wielding psycho will pass by. He has no excuse whatsoever to look anywhere but into Cara’s eyes.

She shifts her weight, crosses her ankles the other way. She seems willing to wait indefinitely.

“I don’t understand all this,” Karl says.

“Yes you do.”

“No, I don’t. I mean, why are you doing this?”

“Ohhhhh. You think I’m… using you.”