Cheating Lessons: A Novel (10 page)

Mr. Malory nodded. “Then you’ll work. The Bowl is, as Mr. Cirillo has pointed out, only three and a half weeks from now. Obviously we won’t discuss the books. You’ll simply plow through them. Not the best way to meet them, I know, and for that I apologize. But next year, and—well, for the rest of your lives, actually—you can read them with the deliberation they deserve.”

He gave them the smile that turned Bernadette’s bones to Cream of Wheat. “You
can
do it. You can earn The Power.” His voice held them mesmerized. “I wouldn’t go forward with this if I didn’t honestly believe you have it in you.”
Especially you,
his green eyes said to Bernadette.
I’m counting on you.

He was the Pied Piper.

Nadine wore a small, grim smile that dared Glenn Kim to get in her way. David’s spine stiffened like a marine’s. Lori’s eyes went all starry like a musical heroine who’s been kissed by the man of her dreams.

Anthony studied his kneecaps and didn’t look like anything much. So that was normal.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

If there is a paradise on the face of the earth,

It is this, oh! it is this, oh! it is this.

—Mogul inscription in the Red Fort at Delhi

N
adine offered to drive Bernadette home, and Mr. Malory agreed, which Bernadette accepted with resignation. She couldn’t expect two such rides in one lifetime.

Outside the library he thanked them for coming. Again he predicted a Wickham victory in the Classics Bowl. Then he set off down the street, away from the parking garage, whistling and tossing his keys.

Lori watched him with worried eyes. She said, to no one in particular, “Guys? I don’t know about this.”

“I do. He’s crazy. Cracked, nutso.” Anthony’s hair lay oddly flat against his head, as if the curl had been scared out of it.

“I know what
I’m
going to do.” David zipped and unzipped the breast pocket in his black leather jacket. He was fair and handsome and favored aggressively masculine attire, like camouflage shirts and work boots. He was also three inches shorter than Bernadette. Tonight he looked like a Boy Scout kidnapped by Hell’s Angels. “I’m outta here. LaShonda was bummed not to make the team, and I’m about to do a noble thing.”

Bernadette wanted to shake all of them. “You chickenshit, David Minor, you—”

“He’s not chickenshit!” Anthony yelled. “He’s just not hot for Malory! If you didn’t get that simpy look every time Malory scratches himself you’d know he’s completely—”

“Crazy?” Nadine cut in. “He’s not crazy. Bet can read her whole list in a week and yours, too.”

Bernadette shifted her backpack to her other shoulder. Let’s not go overboard here, partner.

Nadine whirled on David. “Why didn’t you tell Malory you’re just not up to it? Hmmm? No guts?”

“He’s not a whiner,” Anthony snarled, and then Bernadette lost track of who said what.

“What do you call
this—”

“
I thought you guys would know all those books—”

“I hope Pinehurst wipes up the floor—”

“You’re such a little quitter, that’s—”

The shrill whistle shocked them into silence.

“Move along, people. You’re blocking the sidewalk.” The policewoman sounded bored. But her shiny gun in its leather holster was far from dull.

They moved. Under the streetlight at the corner, they stopped. They stood at an intersection on the University of Michigan campus in downtown Ann Arbor. Restaurants, bars, and bookstores lined the streets in three directions, all open and bustling at nine-thirty at night. Aromas of curry and spare ribs and fresh-ground coffee drifted over sidewalk bins of sale books—thousands of them. Bernadette didn’t know where to look first. An old man with a curling white mustache and a straw boater strummed a banjo while people paused to listen in the mild evening. Down the street a young girl played Gershwin on a saxophone, and people tossed money in her cap on the ground.

It was as far from familiar Creighton as Nepal. Bernadette’s heart filled with a desperate longing to be a part of it. “I’m starved,” she said, but she meant more than she could put into words. Starved for drama. For acceptance. For life after her mother’s house.

And for food.

“Me, too.” Anthony spoke mildly. “Chickenshit” might be a word he’d never heard.

“I’ll go somewhere if someone has money,” David offered generously.

Lori and Nadine admitted to being in funds. Hunger, it seemed, was one topic they could agree on.

They walked up one side of the block and down the other. They argued the merits of cafés versus cantinas, pizzerias, delis, bistros, and rathskellers, but in the end, Dmitri’s Coney Island won out. It was cheap.

The waiter pushed two tables together.

In one booth a pair of young men clasped hands across the table. David nudged Anthony. Two tables away and paying them absolutely no attention, a group of girls in holey jeans pored over fat textbooks. Bernadette heard an Indiana drawl and a Brooklyn accent.

Four young men wearing turbans, Red Wings shirts, and pen protectors devoured chili dogs and shouted at each other in an Indian dialect. Probably arguing linear versus digital integrated circuits. Or hockey.

Bernadette breathed deeply in pure happiness. So this was college! Everyone looked so intent. So intellectual. Not a fake nail in the place—except Lori’s.

“Bet, order.” Nadine poked her. The waiter tapped his pad on the table.

“Oh. Um, a foot-long and a Coke, please.”

Lori and David asked for coffee, to Bernadette’s secret admiration, though when it came, Lori added milk and Sweet ‘n’ Low. David, ever the man’s man, drank his black.

“That’ll stunt your growth,” Anthony said. “Oops, too late.”

David burped in Anthony’s ear.

“Cut it out!” Bernadette snapped. “You want people to think we’re in high school?”

Nadine’s throaty laugh drew smiles from the talkative Indians. “Like they can’t tell! Hey, Bet, why didn’t you get coffee?” She told the others about the coffee-spewing at McDonald’s, making a funny story of it, describing Vince, including Anthony, and soon they were all trying to outdo each other by telling their most embarrassing moments. Bernadette sent Nadine a grateful smile. She’d much rather they laugh at her than bicker among themselves. Complaining was no way to win.

When David told how he’d stood up to go to the men’s room during a movie and gotten his belt buckle stuck in the hair of the elderly man in front of him, only the hair turned out to be a hairpiece, Bernadette laughed so hard, the waiter had to bring water.

“Hey, speaking of movies. Did anyone see
Stand and Deliver
on cable last week?” Lori asked.

No one had.

“It’s about these poor Hispanic kids with this great math teacher who makes them take the AP Calculus test, and they score so high, the test people think they cheated.” She took a ladylike bite of her chili dog. “I don’t know why, but I thought of us.”

Bernadette felt Nadine’s worried glance at her.

“We’re not poor,” she said quickly. She’d promised—no more second-guessing.

“Or Spanish,” David pointed out.

“And nobody thinks we cheated,” Anthony said. “Unless you have something to tell us, Lori.”

Bernadette had never seen anyone eat a chili dog without getting sauce on their fingers. But the pale green nails remained immaculate. “What I meant was,” Lori said, unperturbed, “we’re the underdogs.”

“Oh, like U of M–Michigan State,” Anthony said.

“Right,” Nadine said with relief. “Which one are we?”

“State, of course. Working-class but spunky.”

“Spunky” sounded like somebody’s dog. Not to mention that, working class or not, Bernadette considered herself Ivy League material. But tonight she didn’t quibble.

The talk moved from films to TV shows. To families, music, teachers, the upcoming dance, cars, colleges. They made so much noise, they’d have been thrown out of Creighton’s local Big Boy, but the staff at Dmitri’s didn’t seem to mind. Maybe they were used to it. David drew amazing little caricatures of them all on the back of his place mat. Bernadette’s cheeks grew warm, and she found herself smiling from the rare pleasure of having more than one person to talk to at the same time. If she could have traded that evening for another ride alone with Mr. Malory, she’d have had to think hard before choosing.

Finally Lori poured the last cup from their second pot of coffee. “I should get going. I told my mom I wouldn’t be too late.”

Anthony cleared his throat. “We need to talk about the reading list.”

Constraint descended on the table. They looked everywhere but at each other’s faces.

“I’ve been thinking—” Anthony paused. Everyone waited. “I’ve been thinking—videos.”

“Videos?” Lori repeated.

“Yeah. Of the books. They’re classics, right? I bet every one of them is a movie. That we can rent.” His curly hair practically bounced off his head.

Bernadette held up her hand. “Hang on there.” Based on the tape they’d just watched, Mrs. Phoebe Hamilton was indeed more interested in breadth than depth. Characters, authors, broad plotlines. And Creighton Community Library carried almost every series ever aired on PBS. Had anyone said they had to
read
their assignments?

They were looking at her. “Movies might work,” she said, and it seemed to her that a little sigh of relief went round the table.

As though she’d been waiting for just those words, Nadine chimed in. “Books on tape!”

“Abridged,” Lori breathed.

“Cliff’s Notes?” David asked.

“Excelente, amigo.”
Anthony pulled out his pen and began to make a list. “I’ll be Primary on videos. My brother’s friend runs a video store, so we won’t even have to pay.”

“My neighbor is blind,” David said. Everyone looked at him. “For the audio books! She gets them from the library for the blind—she says they have a great selection. And I do her yard work.”

Bernadette sighed in relief, and even pride. They weren’t quitters after all.

Anthony noticed her sigh. He always seemed to be watching her. “Did you think we’d give up, Ms. Terrell? Wizards like us? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”

She only smiled. “Children’s books,” she said. “All those myths and Bible stories, and Shakespeare? They do them for kids.” She looked at Lori. “Big print. Colored pictures. You’ll like ’em.”

“You mean, like, I have to get a library card?” Lori used two fingers to flick back her hair in good-natured self-parody.

Even as Bernadette laughed and glanced at Nadine with a shrug that said,
all right, so I like her,
she couldn’t help feeling tricked. How could Lori
bear
to let people think she was stupid? Bernadette would sooner be a hunchback.

“Don’t tell Malory,” David ordered. “He thinks we’re going to do this the right way.”

David hadn’t seen the Porsche parked in the handicapped space in the garage. Or Life Saver foil gone with the wind. “I wouldn’t worry about that,” Bernadette said.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Stuff the head

With all such reading as was never read…

—Alexander Pope,
The Dunciad

T
hat was Thursday night. Friday morning David came up behind Bernadette while she was putting her books in her locker. “Pssst.”

She jumped, and scraped her head against the top shelf. “Jeez Louise, David.” She rubbed her head and eyed him sourly. He looked like a cat who’d consumed an entire aviary.

He opened his binder cover an inch. “What do you think?”

“I can’t see a thing.”

He used the locker door as a shield from prying eyes. “
Now
do you see it?”

The comic book’s cover showed a dark, sinister man on a horse looming over a terrified girl whose bosom was about to spill out of her skintight, laced-up bodice. One breast sported a big red “A.”

“The Scarlet Letter,
by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Classic Comix.”

Bernadette’s eyes widened, and a favorite saying of her mother’s ran through her mind: Even the great chefs use canned soup sometimes. She clutched David’s arm. “Is this the only one you have?”

“Nope.” He radiated smugness. “They only had five titles in stock. But they checked online, and it looks like we can get at least twenty more.” Modestly he added, “I’m one of their best customers.”

Bernadette pumped the hand of this short, handsome pervert she had clearly underestimated. “I’ve got to give you credit, David,” she said. “There’s Pinehurst up there translating
Beowulf
from Old English, and we’re reading it in comics! And people think
they’re
the geniuses!”

David’s fair skin reddened. Bernadette Terrell was not known for handing out compliments. “Thanks, Bernadette. Hey, wait’ll I show Anthony. He’s gonna croak.”

He strutted down the hall. Bernadette leaned against her locker and watched him. Well, well.
See
, she told the pesky voice of doom in her head.
We do have a chance.

Other people agreed. The whole town had Wizard fever.

The
Creighton Courier
ran a front-page story with the headline “Wickham Wizards Out-Class Pinehurst Panthers.” Martha Terrell bought copies for all the relatives, and Bernadette pinned one to her quote-board.