Michael Laser - Cheater

© 2008

Call it Petrofsky ’s Dilemma. Born with the sort of brain that absorbs information the way Bounty paper towels soak up spills, Karl Petrofsky has spent most of his eleven years in school trying to hide the 100s and A+s scrawled across the top of his tests. It’s no use, though. Everyone knows, and they all hate him for it-or, okay, that’s a bit strong. Let’s say they don’t appreciate how easy school is for him.

Einstein , the jocks call him.

Geek God , shout the skaters, zipping by on their boards.

Intel Inside , quips Mr. Imperiale, handing back Karl’s A.P. calculus homework.

Right now, for example, Karl is taking a chemistry test: ionic bonds, covalent bonds, van der Waals forces, that sort of thing. All around him, others sweat and writhe. You can almost hear the gastric juices swishing and bubbling in stressed-out stomachs. Meanwhile, Karl goes down the page, question by question, filling in answers with about as much agitation as a guy taking a survey. (Which of the following is not tetrahedral in structure? H20. Favorite cookie? Oreo Double Stuf.) It’s no wonder that most of his class-mates have had the urge, at one time or another, to wring his skinny neck.

This is his biggest problem in life: Unnaturally Powerful Cerebrum → Widespread Social Rejection. Frankly, there have been times when, if a mysterious stranger had offered him Average-Student pills, he would have swallowed the whole bottle. Because he’s not a nerd, he’s not a brown-nose, and he hates the identity people have pinned on him. True, he’s shy, and trips over his own large feet sometimes, and hasn’t yet worked up the nerve to ask a member of the female gender out on a date-but he has friends, and he even makes witty remarks sometimes. Just because he possesses a multigigabyte memory, that doesn’t make him a cybertwerp.

(In fact, in his secret fantasy world, Karl likes to imagine himself as a hero-not the muscle-bound type with heavy artillery strapped to his oiled chest, but the subversive kind, the lone skeptic who harpoons pompous fakes with terse, devastating remarks. That’s the Karl Petrofsky he wishes he could become. Or, if not that, at least not a timid, obedient valedictorian.)

Back in the real world, though-what’s a whiz kid to do? He’s not desperate enough to intentionally screw up on tests. So far, the only solution he’s come up with is to make wisecracks when the opportunity arises, to prove he’s not a suck-up-like when Mrs. Olay asked if anyone knew what the Russian czar’s son was called, and Karl raised his hand and said, “The Czar-dine?”

In response to which, dead silence fell upon the room.

His friend Lizette got the joke a half hour later, in the hall. “Wait a minute-you meant, like, sar- dine?”

“I didn’t think it was that subtle.”

“Hey, around here, any joke without a toilet in it is subtle.”

The periods at Abraham Lincoln High are forty minutes long. Karl finishes the chemistry test in fifteen, but (Petrofsky’s Dilemma) he can’t hand in his paper, he can’t be the first, because that would mean hammering another nail in his own social coffin. Instead, he pretends to check his work, gazing around in between at the rapid tapping of Conor Connolly’s right foot, and the visible bra straps under Jasmine Deukmejian’s shirt, and the annoyingly upright posture of Phillip Upchurch, who always seems to have a rigid pole up his, ahem.

Blaine Shore glances down at his cell phone, reads the text message there, and calmly goes on with the test. If envy produced a sound-say, the low bubbling of a coffee-maker-then Karl would be loudly gurgling right now. He can’t look at Blaine without wishing he could move through life with just a fraction of Mr. Cool’s ease and charm. Phillip Upchurch may be every teacher’s candidate for ideal student (straight As, infinite community service, and no trace of teen attitude), but Blaine Shore is every student’s hero, because he doesn’t take anything too seriously, gets pretty good grades without trying, looks a little like a sleepy Brad Pitt, and is a nice guy on top of all that. (The red BMW convertible doesn’t hurt the image, either.)

But wait, hold on. What’s this? One seat in front of Blaine, Ivan Fretz is peering into the palm of his hand, squinting because he can’t make out the tiny words written there in blue ink. Karl remembers Mrs. Kozar scolding Ivan in third grade for his abominable handwriting, and now he sees that she was right: bad penmanship will handicap you in all your pursuits.

Ivan peeks around Amy Villarosa’s head to make sure Ms. Nudell isn’t watching. Oh, what a mistake that turns out to be. The mysterious force that tells us when someone has an eye on us (scientists: please explain this!) tickles Ms. Nudell’s sensors, and she glances up from the pile of lab reports she’s grading, straight at Ivan. Drawn by teacherly instinct, she floats down the aisle and hovers over him.

He flattens his palm guiltily against the desk.

“Ivan, show me your hand.”

“What?” He laughs, looking left and right for support. What an insane request! This lady must be crazy.

“Don’t waste my time. Just show me the hand.”

Though not yet forty, Ms. Nudell has permanent bags under her eyes. Usually, she seems as bored with teaching as her students are bored by her monotonous drone-but when she sees Ivan’s crib notes, she comes blazing to life. “Are you serious, Ivan? Am I really seeing this? What are you thinking, that you’ll just cheat your way through life and hope nobody notices? This is incredible. Just… go. Go away. Get out of my classroom. Take your test, take your hand, and go show them to Mr. Klimchock. Let him deal with you. Go! And good luck down there-you’ll need it.”

Even though Ivan once lied to that same third-grade teacher that Karl stole the M &M’s from the mug on her desk (when it was he who stole the M &M’s, the filthy dog!), and even though Ivan’s parents peep over the hedge into Karl’s house all the time, Karl can’t help feeling sorry for him. Trembling, knocking his chair over, Ivan barely keeps from crying. The humiliation far outweighs the crime.

Once the evildoer is gone, Ms. Nudell decides it’s her obligation to deliver the Honesty Lecture. “In case you never gave it any thought before, there really is a purpose in our testing you. That’s how we know you’re learning, and measure your progress. If you cheat, you don’t learn. You defeat the whole purpose of coming here-you waste your time and mine. That’s what they mean when they say, ‘You’re only cheating yourself.’”

Karl appreciates the explanation-really-because the cliché always seemed meaningless before, nonsensical, the opposite of the truth.

While the rest of the class goes back to the business of test taking, Karl daydreams about sending a message via satellite to Ms. Nudell’s car radio, Don’t you think you were a bit harsh with the Fretz boy? And then, right here in this chemistry classroom that smells like vinegar, his life takes a sharp left turn. If you’re skimming, you’d better slow down and pay attention.