Michael Laser - Cheater

On the folding table with her necklaces and makeup, there’s a picture of a man in an Indiana Jones hat. He’s got a bushy mustache, a black shirt and yellow tie under a striped jacket, and a joking sort of sinister look. The picture looks like an album cover from the 1960s or 1970s; he’s almost definitely a musician, the type who totally disdains mainstream people.

“Is that your father?” Karl asks.

She strokes the cat’s head. The purring sounds like snoring. “Yup.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Hope so. We haven’t heard from him in a long time.”

To Karl, that seems just as bad as getting expelled.

“I wish I could do something to help,” he says. “About school, I mean.”

“I don’t need help. It’s a relief, to be done with that stinkin’ hole.”

“What about your mother? She’s not going to be happy.”

“She’s not going to know. I can get to the mail first-since I’ll be home all day.”

He doubts she’s right. Sooner or later, her mother will find out.

“I’m done with them,” he announces. “Just for your information. I’m not going to help them cheat anymore.”

“That’s your business, not mine.”

Disappointing: he thought she’d at least appreciate the gesture.

“Look, Karl. We’re extremely different people, in case you hadn’t noticed. We might as well get real.”

Since he has nothing to lose, he says what he really thinks. “You’re so smart. You could do anything you wanted. You don’t have to break the rules every minute of the day. It looks like you’re trying to get in trouble.”

She stands up; the cat leaps away. She puts a CD in the boom box on her dresser and turns it on, loud. He doesn’t recognize the song: voice like a buzz saw, drummer smashing the cymbals over and over, fast. Without answering him, Cara nods her head to the music, keeping her back to him.

“I guess I’ll go,” he says.

She doesn’t stop him.

Halfway down the stairs, he realizes that the purpose of his visit got lost somewhere along the way. He came here to offer comfort and friendship in her time of trouble-but somehow that didn’t happen.

Karl has been searching for Blaine all day long, so he can officially quit the Confederacy. But Blaine is nowhere to be seen. Vijay explains why: today was the regional Model U.N. conference. Karl’s announcement will have to wait.

Memories of Lizette distract him all through his last period. That second day of school, when she came up to him and Jonah and Matt at their cafeteria table and asked if she could eat with them-that must have been hard for her to do. But she got past the nervous introductions, and after a while Jonah and Matt calmed down (a girl! at their table!) and they went back to talking about how you could play baseball in the snow if you had a black ball, and then Lizette said, in her swampiest Florida accent, “Y’all talk like a bunch of Yankees,” and they didn’t know if she was serious or kidding until she snickered (under her cap’s visor), and the sight of her front teeth peeking impishly over her lower lip marked the beginning of Karl’s early crush… the best part of which, for Karl, was that she laughed at his jokes, like at the assembly where Klimchock announced the removal of all vending machines for health reasons, Karl whispered, “His real name is Mr. Tater-first name Dick,” and Lizette let out such a loud hiccup of a laugh that she got sent to the office.

The way she used to look at him sometimes, with that mischievous, sealed-lip grin, it really seemed as if she liked him the other way. But then she would punch him in the arm and call him Donkey Head, and yell at him for missing the ball when they played Footnis. And there was that time when they saw Beanie Markowsky refereeing a kids’ soccer game in the park, and Lizette sighed and said, “She’s so graceful.” There was just no way to figure her out.

He’s leaving the building as he thinks this-and there, across the street, is Blaine: still in jacket and tie from the Model U.N., leaning against his car in the shade of a locust tree, talking to the cheerleader Nikki Tunis, who’s bathing him in beams of adoration. Blaine seems to be enjoying the worship and gives her arm a friendly squeeze, which encourages Nikki to bring her face even closer to his.

Karl approaches them; Nikki rolls her eyes at the intrusion. “Can I talk to you?” he asks Blaine.

“Is it a quickie?”

“No, probably not.”

Blaine sighs and tells Nikki he’ll call her tonight. She gives him a coy, promise-filled smile (for Karl, there’s a wrinkled nose) and departs with an unnaturally straight back and an oscillating behind.

“Karl, if you weren’t the most important man in my life, I’d pound your head into the ground. Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”

In the convertible, Karl lets Blaine report on his day. “The representative from Myanmar was cute. When I said her country could overthrow their military dictatorship just like mine did, she said, ‘Good golly, Mister Mali!’”

Karl can see why that might be funny under other circumstances. But now it’s his turn to talk, and for some reason, he’s having a hard time breathing. “I wanted to tell you-I decided to quit. I’m not going to help you guys anymore.”

Blaine drives with his right hand on top of the wheel, casually. If he’s experiencing panic, he keeps it hidden. “Just one problem, amigo. You can’t run out on us. A lot of people are depending on you.”

“Not a lot, not really. Only a few.”

“What I meant was, we’re counting on you. Your friends. Me, Vijay, Ian, Noah. And Tiny Tim, too. We’ve got a lot at stake.”

“I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m done.”

Mr. Cool isn’t taking this too seriously. “Karl, not too many people in this world can say that they single-handedly got their friends into good colleges. You’re our hero. And heroes don’t bail on their buddies. Right?”

“I hate doing this.”

“Don’t you remember the reason you started helping us in the first place? Just because Cara’s gone, that doesn’t change the big picture-Klimchock’s still evil. He hasn’t gone humane all of a sudden.”

“I don’t want to help you, after the way you treated her.”

For once, Blaine can’t find an easy comeback. He nods as he drives, searching for an answer.

During the silence, certain details come into sharp focus for Karl: the stainless perfection of the beige leather seats, the dustlessness of the charcoal gray dash. (Does he have a cleaning service come in once a week?) Then there’s the driver himself, with never a hair out of place nor a bulge in any pocket. On Karl’s own jeans, meanwhile, the thighs have worn thin and lost most of their blueness, and his key ring has nearly eaten a hole in the pocket. Shabby, shabby, shabby.

“You would never have talked to me except for wanting my help,” he says.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Don’t be. There’s more to this than meets the eye. See, my mother has been telling me, my whole life, ‘Certain people can be useful to you, and you should cultivate them as friends.’ I always thought she was kind of insidious-but now I see it differently. Let’s say, someday, you’re Bill Gates and I’m the CEO of Shore Investments. It’s not that I need you, I’m doing just fine on my own. But wouldn’t it be cool if we were old high school buddies and I could call you up and say, ‘Billy, you old digital dog, what’s up? Feel like investing a few million in Romanian salt mines today?’ You’re going to do really well in life, Karl. I like the idea of being your amigo from high school.”