Michael Laser - Cheater

“Hey!” Karl protests. “Stop that!”

“Are you wearing a wire, Karl? Is that it? Are you and Upchurch setting a trap?”

With the hidden microphone held in place only by a soft, malleable wad of gum, Karl states emphatically, “No! And get your hands off me-that’s totally inappropriate.”

Klimchock backs away. “Apologies. I suppose I’m overly suspicious.”

While Klimchock blushes, a wave of confusion and discomfort breaks over Karl. What am I doing?- he can hear the question asked in his own voice, internally but loudly. Observing himself from above, he doesn’t like what he sees. It’s just… sleazy , trapping these two men. Nasty and merciless as they are, he doesn’t want to be the sort of person who lies and schemes to destroy others. Yes, they deserve to be exposed, to be stopped-but look how devious he’s being. The whole thing nauseates him.

Keeping his voice to a murmur, Klimchock begins again. “Can we finish our business now?”

A clamor interrupts him. “There he is!” “How’s it going, Hopalong?” “What did the doctors say, will you ever tap-dance again?” “He needed this like he needs a hole in the foot.”

The boisterous off-duty cops keep teasing Officer Prell- and as they do, Samantha comes storming into the room, rips open the curtain, and says, “I know what’s going on! It’s a conspiracy! You want Phillip to be the valedictorian! You’re pressuring Karl to mess up on purpose, aren’t you? Aren’t you?!”

Before Mr. Klimchock can even process this accusation, Lizette is there, pulling on Samantha’s arm. “You’re crazy! Let them be.”

“You’re in cahoots with them!” Samantha accuses her.

“What kind of person are you? Nobody says cahoots.”

“You’re trying to shift the spotlight, but it won’t work.”

“Young lady,” Mr. Klimchock says, “you’ve misread this entire situation. Believe me.”

Samantha breaks free of Lizette ‘s grip. “I’ll stand by you, Karl. Don’t let them intimidate you. You’re Number One!”

Karl’s heart hasn’t beat for several seconds, at least that he’s aware of. He pleads with her. “They’re not pressuring me! Just go out there and sit on the bench-everything’s okay!”

“I’m not leaving until they do.”

“ Please go!”

Samantha shakes her head. “You’ve got him terrorized. I’m warning you two-if you try to cheat Karl out of his rightful place, I swear, I’ll get the story on CNN.”

“Would you just leave ?” Lizette says.

“Hello, Mister Petrofsky, are you feeling better now?”

The sweet little old lady with the clipboard is back.

“I just need you to sign these papers for me. I’ll bet you’re happy to be going home.”

None of the four of them says a word. One of the cops calls through the curtain, “Everything okay in there?”

A gurgling comes from deep in Karl’s gut. He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting down his rising gorge. “Karl?” Lizette asks. “What’s going on?”

“Could someone bring me a garbage can?”

Lizette, mistaking Karl’s illness for an Oscar-worthy performance, says, “Mr. Klimchock, will you stay with Karl while I go get a nurse?”

“Of course. The rest of you had better wait outside.”

“I think,” the lady with the clipboard says, “we’d better wait a bit longer before discharging you.”

When Karl opens his eyes again, he’s alone with Mr. Klimchock, surrounded by the drawn curtain. “Well done,” Mr. Klimchock says. “Now let’s finish our conversation before the earth quakes and swallows the entire hospital.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “You have to take the SAT, Karl. You have to cheat again, so I can catch the rest of them. You don’t have a choice. I’ve already offered to keep your cheating out of your school records and to lie to colleges that you’re a top-notch fencer. You can’t say no. Think of your parents. I’m sure it would kill them to see your academic career snuffed out before it began.”

That’s it: Karl is done. He has caught Klimchock in his trap.

“All right,” he says gloomily. “I’ll do it.”

Mr. Klimchock glows. Then he bursts into song-quietly, so the off-duty cops won’t hear, but still in a pure and handsome tenor. “Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles…”

Armed with the evidence to crush Klimchock and Upchurch, both of whom would cheerfully crush him, Karl doesn’t rejoice. Far from it. After all this frantic effort, he would like nothing better than to throw the recordings in the trash. He’s just not the Enemy-Devouring Type; the whole plan disturbs him more and more with each passing moment.

In this state of nausea, he remembers what Lizette said: I wish there were a way for Karl to duck and let them fire away at each other.

Karl wishes there were, too.

Midnight. A ringing noise pokes into Karl’s sleep, annoyingly, persistently.

His cell phone.

Eyes still closed, “Hello?”

“Karl, right?”

The voice belongs to a guy about his age, but Karl doesn’t recognize it. “Who’s this?”

“You can call me the Guru. I’m the master of deceit, the specialist in scams and schemes, the world’s champion cheater. A girl named Cara got in touch with me-she said you got caught, and now you’re planning to sacrifice yourself so you can bring down some tyrannical assistant principal. Do I have the facts right?”

Down the hall, at the nurses’ station, a radio is playing softly. In less than a minute, the guy on the phone has shown himself to be possibly the most obnoxious person Karl has ever listened to.

“It’s a little more complicated than that, but basically, yeah, that’s right.”

“Okay. Free advice: don’t let so-called Nobility fog up your brain. There has to be a better way-but you won’t find it till you expand your thinking.”

“All I’ve been doing is thinking. I can’t see any other way.”

“That’s why I’m here, kid. I’m your crisis hotline, your guardian angel, your personal mahatma. You’ve got to stop letting them intimidate you.”

The Guru’s chattering leaves Karl deeply skeptical. This guy is having way too much fun. He doubts that the self-proclaimed authority will have a single good suggestion to make.

“If you’ve got any ideas, would you please just tell me?”

“Hey, I can’t solve your problems for you. All I can do is open your mind and lead you to the Gates of Wisdom. You have to go the rest of the way yourself.”

If he doesn’t say something useful in the next thirty seconds, Karl resolves, I’m hanging up.

“Go ahead, Guru. I’m listening.”

In the empty air on the other end, Karl hears the sound of a mouse clicking in rapid bursts. While he’s supposedly saving Karl from doom, the great Guru is also playing a game on his computer. Wonderful.

“Okay. First we eliminate self-destruction as an option. Then we think: how can we scare the living crap out of this guy so he’ll leave you alone? I’m not talking about illegal weaponry here. More like butterflies with huge eyes on their wings-give the illusion of great size and menace. What could you say to this fiend that would…”

The rest of the Guru’s blather evaporates into the air, a harmless, odorless gas. He has said the magic words; he has given Karl the answer, without realizing it. Despite the emptiness of his boasts, he was right about one thing: there is another way out.

Karl hangs up and takes the pen and the hospital note-pad from the bedside table. He’s got a great deal of planning to do. Between now and the SAT, he may not have time to sleep.