Cheating Lessons: A Novel (2 page)

The vacuum thumped down the stairs.

Bernadette’s mulish look changed to one of interest. Lasagna and coconut cream pie happened to be what she’d order for her final meal, even if they were the frozen kind. Which these would be. In spite of having received last Christmas the latest edition of
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook
(Bernadette had even sprung for the hardback), Martha had not made lasagna from scratch since the last neighborhood wake.

During countless phone calls, when they were not settling the finer points of immigration law for debate or arguing the exact color of Mr. Malory’s eyes, Bernadette and Nadine sometimes touched on Bernadette’s mother’s job. She was the office manager of a family counseling clinic. Nadine insisted that Mrs. Terrell saw so many dysfunctional teenagers all day at work, she probably felt guilty because her own daughter was so beautifully adjusted. No drugs, no pregnancies, no suicide attempts. “Maybe,” Bernadette said doubtfully. “But she sure keeps looking. I make president of the National Honor Society and she checks my arms for needle marks.”

Now, stretched out on her comforter, Bernadette stared up at the ceiling. Too critical, her foot. Suddenly she scrambled off the bed. From under her desk blotter she slid out a plain white envelope and reverently unfolded a closely typed sheet. Mr. Malory had given her a copy of the college recommendation he’d written. She would not actually mail her first application for four months—she had to wait for her junior grades—but Bernadette believed in thorough preparations.

“Ms. Bernadette Terrell is a quietly tough-minded, intelligent young woman.” She liked that: tough-minded.

She could recite the rest: “ . . . work that is consistently superior . . . displays an intellectual curiosity most refreshing . . .” Ah, here it was: “Both in her writing and her class participation, Ms. Terrell is courteous and fair, though she will criticize in an honest and forthright manner when she feels it is deserved. She sets a high standard for herself and for others—a challenge that will make her a stimulating presence in any classroom.”

She sighed happily. Take that, Martha Terrell. Her gaze traveled over the quote-board, and she played the tranquilizing game of letting a random quotation inspire her.

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

Bernadette read it out loud, but it was her teacher’s voice she heard, as though he and not Yeats had written the words—for her. She shivered.

A card on the far edge of the board made her frown, and she clambered onto the desk to see better. That was not her writing. “Before honor comes humility.—Book of Proverbs.” Bernadette stared at the firm, nun-taught penmanship, then at the doorway through which the vacuum cleaner had exited. The gall of some people. She unpinned the card and dropped it in the wastebasket.

Paper crumpled. She was kneeling on her college essay. She sat down and considered it one more time. Perhaps the wording
was
a tad strong for debate-impaired admissions officers.

She crossed out “Hitler Youth.” In a tough-minded, forthright manner she drew a little caret above it and printed “smug, arrogant rich kid.”

She could too take criticism.

CHAPTER TWO

His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.

—Song of Solomon, 5:16

P
ressed to describe Bernadette Terrell, most people at Wickham High would say: smart. Acute observers might mention the zealot’s gleam in her dark eyes, usually veiled by glossy brown hair as she bent over some book; or the poignant but deceptive underfed look of her angular body, which prompted her debate coach to press coupons on her for free sundaes at the Creighton Dairy Belle. Not a babe, Bernadette Terrell, but . . . interesting. Oh, and smart—if you liked smart.

Bernadette adored it. Clever dialogue in movies or books, real wit (not the crude comebacks of the boys on the bus), elegant logic, people who never said “preventative” when they meant “preventive”: these were the things that made life worth living.

And this year there was Mr. Malory.

Her mother would be appalled if she knew how much time Bernadette spent dreaming of her teacher’s face. She dreamed about the rest of him, too, but the expression Mr. Malory wore while he savored his students’ search for the answer was the picture that sweetened her sleep most nights. His greenish-gray eyes would scan each knitted forehead, his upper lip would thin in ever-so-slightly malicious amusement, and the hand not holding the clipboard would ravage his hair into a wiry reddish halo.

Like now.

“Green Team, listen up. In
Wuthering Heights,
Brontë introduces Heathcliff’s personality by using a nonhuman image.” Mr. Malory took off his reading glasses and slipped them into his sport coat pocket. “What is that image?”

He verified that the two lines of juniors facing each other across the desks in his Advanced Placement English class were paying attention. A smile flitted across his mouth. Oh, she liked his mouth.

“Come on, you loafers. At least pretend you read it.” His cultured, resonant, distinctly British voice slayed his girl students and made the boys feel dully American. And rightly so, Bernadette felt. She herself would rather die than muff a book bee question.

Brains were racked and memories probed, but
Wuthering Heights
had been four weeks ago.

Beside her, Nadine scowled behind 400/200 wire rims. The scowl was meant to suggest intense concentration. From long experience as Nadine’s debate partner, Bernadette knew it actually meant, “I don’t have a clue.”

“You get it, Bet.” Even in a whisper Nadine’s voice came out startlingly deep, at odds with her fragile appearance. She was the only person who called Bernadette by her initials (the “e” stood for Elizabeth).

Bernadette grimaced. She’d gotten the last two.

From her other side came the jingle of heart-shaped earrings. “Heathcliff, Heathcliff. Horseshit,” Lori muttered.

Try “Heathcliff, Heathcliff, he’s our man.” But Bernadette didn’t say it out loud. Lori Besh stood five feet ten inches and had biceps defined by years of cheerleading handstands.

“Eh, you bunch of sissies. Will you let the Blues eat your lead?” Mr. Malory’s mocking voice enchanted Bernadette. “Ms. Terrell? Is there more to life than debate?”

She could see the page etched in her mind. But she made her voice tentative. “A pack of dogs?” she asked. “They come in and they’re as brutal and unfriendly as their, uh, master?”

People were funny. They could hold a God-given gift like a photographic memory against you. But Frank Malory wasn’t so petty. His glinting smile made her stomach muscles tighten pleasurably. Mr. Malory thought her memory
and
her brains first-rate.

Catcalls and hissing came from the Blues. Her answer put them behind by three points.

“Give me two Hardy novels named for their protagonists,” Mr. Malory said.

“Jude the Obscure
and
Tess of the D’Urbervilles.”
Anthony Cirillo snapped out the answer for the Blues. Figured. It annoyed Bernadette when a good mind was wasted on a jerk. Anthony probably thought it was his acne that kept him dateless, but she had news for him—it was his personality. His job at McDonald’s was not the only reason she and Nadine called him “McAss.”

He caught her eye and rounded his mouth into a fake “O” of alarm.

Just then Wickham’s principal, Mrs. Standish, knocked on the open classroom door. “May I interrupt you, Mr. Malory?” Her face was a mass of fine wrinkles all upturned at the moment in an inquiring smile.

“Absolutely, Mrs. Standish. Always a pleasure.” Mr. Malory settled a hip on the edge of his desk and loosened his tie. More than one girlish moan was quickly converted into a cough.

The principal opened her mouth to read from a paper in her hands as David Minor delivered himself of a truly impressive sneeze.

Everyone waited expectantly. Would Mrs. Standish, a.k.a. Spic ‘n’ Span, send David to scrub his hands as she often did to students who disturbed the germ-free order of her school? Not today, it appeared. She ignored him.

“Mr. Malory. Class. I’ve just heard some intriguing news from Dr. Genevieve Fontaine.” She gave the first name a French pronunciation, with a soft G, and looked over her paper at them. “Dr. Fontaine chairs the research committee of the National Computing Systems Classics Contest.”

Mr. Malory’s foot stopped swinging.

“Dr. Fontaine informs me that Pinehurst Academy”—she waited out the usual boos—“finished second in the Classics Contest this year with a score of eighty-five percent. A very good score on so challenging a test, I thought.”

More boos. Nobody cared what Pinehurst did.

A bizarre thought occurred to Bernadette, and her glance flew to her teacher. A tiny nerve under Mr. Malory’s left eye was jumping. His skin, always pale, gleamed damply paper-white.

“
Wickham
High School,” the principal continued, watching Mr. Malory now with arched eyebrows, “received . . . ninety-two percent. The highest score in Michigan!”

She tried to hand Mr. Malory the paper, but he didn’t seem to see it. “You’re”—he swallowed—“you’re certain? They said Wickham?”

Mrs. Standish gave a roguish laugh and stuffed the paper into his fingers. “Now don’t act so shocked, Mr. Malory. Your students might think you didn’t expect this of them.”

Mr. Malory didn’t answer. He was reading.

Nadine shattered the silence with a croaked, “We
won
?”

“We beat Pinehurst?”

“Get out of here!”

“We won!”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Oh, I
knew
we could!” That would be Lori. What a twit. Bernadette’s own mother wouldn’t have put money on them. Not to beat Pinehurst.

Pandemonium reigned.

Mrs. Standish folded her arms across her chest with all the pride of a coach at the Special Olympics and studied the ten students making the noise of fifty.

Pinehurst students, it had been reported more than once in the
Creighton Courier,
studied to the strains of Mozart. Some of them spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese (and they weren’t Chinese). It was an off year when only one Pinehurst senior got into Harvard. This year the Panthers had wiped up the football field with the Warriors 42-6. At home. From sports to academics to faculty credentials, the private school dominated. Even Wickham dropouts knew enough to spit at the Pinehurst name. The only good thing about the place, as far as Bernadette was concerned, was the hideous purple blazer all its students had to wear. Served them right.

Nadine’s fine black hair swung across her glasses as she pounded Bernadette’s shoulder. “We beat them! We beat Pinehurst, Bet!”

Bernadette choked. “You know what this means? We’re gonna be on TV!”

There was always a televised Classics Bowl matchup between the top two schools in the written Contest. Cable TV, but still. National Computing Systems (NCS), the Detroit-based company that sponsored the contest, promoted it heavily and awarded personal computers as prizes.

Nadine gave a throaty cry. “The Classics Bowl! I forgot!”

“Let’s go ask if we’re on the team.” Personally, Bernadette could not imagine Mr. Malory not choosing them.

They joined the group of chattering students surrounding Mr. Malory, who looked as if he’d just heard Robert Browning’s poems had been ghosted by Elizabeth.

“Mr. Malory! Hey! We beat the sissies!” Bernadette greeted him. The principal’s thin eyebrows snapped together.

Mr. Malory came out of his reverie. Determination dawned in his eyes. “We sure as damnation did, Bernadette,” he said, and earned his own glance from Spic ‘n’ Span. The use of her first name—her Christian name, he would say—thrilled Bernadette to her socks. He smacked one fist against his palm. “That’s nothing to what we’ll do in the Bowl. The Wickham Warriors will mow them down like the armies of Macduff.”

“ ‘Warriors’ is so jock,” Lori Besh put in. “Don’t you think?”

Bernadette and Nadine exchanged incredulous looks. Lori’s dedication to the ancient sport of pompon made her one of the biggest jocks in school.

Lori continued. “What about a name that’s more, you know, intellectual? Like, I don’t know—like ‘Wizards’?”

“The Wickham Wizards!”

“Go, Wizards!”

“All right, Lori!”

“Ms. Besh, that’s an excellent suggestion. Literary
and
alliterative. Let me see, who
are
our Wizards—”

With a fluttery start of recollection, Mrs. Standish handed him a second sheet.

“It appears that Mr. Anthony Cirillo, you yourself”—he nodded at Lori—“Mr. David Minor, Ms. Nadine Walczak, and”—Mr. Malory glanced at Bernadette’s outraged face with amusement—“Ms. Bernadette Terrell were the top scorers on the test. Which makes them the Classics Bowl team. Class, a round of applause for our Wickham Wizards!”

Groans of disappointment from the five not chosen were drowned out by the belch David reserved for special occasions. It rustled the window blinds and relieved them of Mrs. Standish.

“I’ll leave you to your fortunate—and, of course, studious—wizards, Mr. Malory. And class—well-done. This means so much to everyone at Wickham. The superintendent will be very proud of us.” There was a tiny quaver in her voice as, with a little wave, she departed.

Proud of “us”? Bernadette rolled her eyes. As if Spic ‘n’ Span had had anything to do with it. Mr. Malory grinned at her as though he read her mind, and suddenly she laughed. Oh, so what if the principal wanted to bask in their success. Let her. It would be a welcome change from checking the bathrooms for smokers.

The book bee was abandoned.

“This could be even better than a debate,” Bernadette said to Nadine in the general discussion. “It’s more about speed and memory than logic. And we’ve already read a ton of classics this year, and anything we haven’t read we can zip through if we skim, so I wouldn’t be surprised—”