Michael Laser - Cheater

“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.”

“But that’s a violation of freedom of the press. You can’t ask me not to do the story.”

“I’m not ordering you to be silent. I’m asking you, as a citizen of this school, not to tip off the bad guys. Talk it over with Mr. McPune, he’s your faculty adviser.”

Note to self, Mr. Klimchock thinks. Threaten McPune later. The paper can’t print one word about this.

Back in his office, with only a few minutes left in the period, Mr. Klimchock booms, “Finishing up. Our goal right now is to capture as many of the enemy as possible, and make examples of them. To do that, we’re going to set a trap. This weekend, when the building is empty, technicians will install hidden video cameras in each of your classrooms. No matter what personal opinions you may hold”-he sears Mr. Watney and Ms. Singh with two consecutive glares- “you will keep this plan secret. You WILL NOT warn the students about the cameras, because you will remember which side you’re on. If that’s not enough, I’ll add one more encouragement: if any of you tell your students in spite of my warnings, I’ll find out, and you’ll find yourselves not only unemployed, but unemployable. Even the all-powerful teachers’ union can’t protect people who aid and abet cheaters.”

Sensing that the others aren’t quite as exhilarated as he is-Ms. Singh has her head in her hands and she’s shaking it from side to side-he shifts gears and tacks on an inspiring conclusion. “This isn’t forever, my good instructors. It’s just a surgical strike. We’ll rid ourselves of the creeping menace and terrify the others so thoroughly that they’ll walk the line for the rest of their lives. Just as Herr Franklin hoped, this will be a valuable educational experience. The floor is about to drop from beneath the feet of some very deserving students-and I wouldn’t be surprised if we find some unexpected faces caught in our net. Honesty will prevail at Lincoln High. Thanks for coming, everybody.”

As the teachers file out-their opposition expressed only in the noisy clenching of paper bags-Mr. Klimchock pops the CD of Guys and Dolls into his boom box. They’re out in the hall by the time he starts singing along, but they can hear his vigorous, piercing tenor , “When you see a guy reach for stars in the sky…”

Just another ordinary AP calculus test, ∫(2sec 2x- 5csc 2x)dx. A bit hard to make it out, though, because of the weird angle. Next time they definitely have to find a better place for the camera than Karl’s wrist.

“What’s that?” Vijay asks, pointing to a tiny squiggle on his laptop screen. “Does it say ‘squared’ or ‘cubed’?”

“Can’t tell,” Noah replies-but Karl, sixty yards away in Mr. Imperiale’s classroom, obligingly shifts his hand, and the itty-bitty exponent is revealed to be a 2.

Blaine’s parked car sways. It’s Cara, leaning against the door. “Is this study hall?” she asks through the window.

“Ssh! The test is next period,” Blaine says as the three scholars industriously copy Karl’s solution onto their tiny cheat sheets.

Upstairs, meanwhile, Karl performs his role so smoothly that Mr. Klimchock, studying the monitor in his office, detects nothing.

There’s one hairy moment, though, when Mr. Imperiale hovers over Karl as he works. The hairiness is due to the fact that Karl’s shirt cuff has slipped back a centimeter, revealing the front end of the small black camera.

As soon as he notices, Karl starts to sweat. He must hide the camera without calling attention to it, immediately.

Inspired, he yawns and stretches-not with his arms up in a Y, but down at his sides. Shaking his wrists a bit, a plausible finale to the yawn, he gets the cuff to slide back down over the camera.

“Uh-oh,” Mr. Imperiale says, freezing the blood in Karl’s veins. “If you’re yawning, I guess I’d better come up with some tougher questions next time.”

Karl leaves his left arm dangling over the edge of his desk, hiding the bulge in his cuff. “No, I was just up late last night.”

“Good for you! Human computer AND party animal. Breaking the stereotype, twenty-four seven. You wild and crazy guy.”

The teacher moves on, murmuring to Conor Connolly, “Remember the Power Rule”-leaving Karl to finish the test and the transmission in peace.

Climbing the hill toward Sunrise Place that afternoon, past the diamond in Blortsmek Park where a girls’ softball game is in progress, Karl worries that he should have worn different clothes. Cara will be there: what will she think of his dull box-check shirt and his ill-fitting jeans?

Once he sees which house is Blaine’s, other worries take over. It’s the really big one, made of gray stone, with the giant sloping lawn and the brick driveway that swoops up the hill and around behind. His whole life, Karl has wondered who lived here, and what did they do with all those rooms. (Dive into mounds of gold coins?) But now he’s going to a party here, and his sneakers suddenly look unacceptably soiled, the once-white rubber pathetically worn in front and coming off a bit, and there are frayed threads at the bottoms of his jeans.

The only path from the driveway to the front door consists of a few small squares of slate set in the grass. It rained this morning, and the lawn is still wet, and now so are his sneakers, from scuffing over the grass.

Blaine opens the door, chuckling, and explains that no one actually uses this entrance. If Karl feels a bit foolish, the foolish feeling fades fast in the face of the furnishings within. The marble floor gleams, the staircase is a spiral; the life-size photorealist paintings show men in suits doing ordinary things like sneezing and blowing a bubble-gum bubble. Everything here reflects light, dustlessly. When Blaine asks him to take off his wet sneakers, Karl obeys instantly.

Familiar but incongruous noises from the basement prepare Karl for the sight of Blaine’s amazing antique Fun Land, featuring Skee-Ball, arcade bowling (you know, the kind where you slide the steel puck and the pins fall up instead of down), Ping-Pong, foosball, a pool table, darts, and six friends enjoying themselves.

Inserting a dime in the old Coke machine, Blaine takes the glass bottle from behind the little window and hands it to Karl. “All hail our honored comrade,” he announces, putting his hand on Karl’s shoulder. Tim tootles a trumpet fanfare on his fist, and the Confederates interrupt their play to hoist their beverages.

“We thank you, Karl,” Blaine says, “for all you’ve done, and more importantly, for all you’re going to do. Your smartness is matched only by your generosity.”

“For he’s a jolly good cheater,” they sing, which inspires Karl to inspect his sock toes.

That’s about it for hoopla. The gathering is low-key, and more comfortable than Karl expected. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes-there are none to be found here. The party actually seems wholesome. Tim and Ian are smashing the Ping-Pong ball as hard as they can, a comic sight until Ian’s paddle whams the table and breaks. (“Oops-sorry, old chap,” he tells Blaine.) SCHOOL IS PUNISHMENT FOR THE CRIME OF BEING YOUNG, says Noah’s T-shirt; he banks Skee-Balls off the left wall of the ramp as he describes his career plans (study Chinese, get recruited by the CIA, destroy the agency from the inside), while Vijay, his audience, chuckles and slides the steel puck. Cara dances sinuously as she aims her darts, like a soft reed in slow-moving water.