Cheating Lessons: A Novel (9 page)

Mr. Malory took a roll of peppermint Life Savers out of his shirt pocket. “Mint?”

“Thanks.” Her fingers brushed his. “My dad had a Corvette once,” she said, to make conversation.

He made a “pah” noise with his mouth, like a seat cushion being jumped on. “Vettes,” he said with scorn, and popped a Life saver into his mouth. He cracked his window, rolled the excess foil between his fingers, and let the airstream suck it away.

She opened her mouth, then shut it. Her foot knocked against a case on the floor. “You sure have a lot of CDs.”

“Here, let me get those out of your way.” He kept one hand on the wheel and reached down for the CD case. The back of his hand grazed her leg. A sensation of such intense desire shot through her that she whimpered. She made herself cough. “Went down the wrong pipe,” she gasped, and pounded her chest.

“False Idols.” Mr. Malory fed a CD into the slot in the dashboard and gave no sign of noticing her distress. “You like them?”

“They’re great,” she croaked. She would have approved Gregorian chant. The driving pulse of electric guitars revved up her own heartbeat. Her leg tingled where he’d brushed it, as though his touch had scorched the denim.

He hummed to the music. “So, Bernadette. What do your parents think of our chances in the Classics Bowl?” She was “Ms. Terrell” in class, but “Bernadette” in his car. He flicked on the headlights, and two bright circles stabbed the dusk in front of them.

“My mother wants us to crush Pinehurst in front of the world. Although if one of the boys on their team asked me out afterward, that would be okay with her, too.”

He laughed delightedly. “Beat ’em then join ’em, eh? I like your mother’s attitude. What about your father?”

“Oh, whatever we do will be just fine with him. He’s the one I’d like to win for, really.”

Mr. Malory drummed his fingers on the wheel in time to the music. “Don’t worry. At the risk of pleasing your mother, I’ll bet you all a team dinner we win.”

Bernadette was not short on confidence, but she could not feel as certain of victory as her teacher did.

Idly her fingers explored the compartment in the passenger door beside her. Nothing there except . . . matches? Yes, a book of matches.
His
matches. She slipped them into her jacket pocket. “Mr. Malory?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think Mrs. Standish is . . . all there?”

“All where?”

“I mean, normal.” One of her mother’s phrases came to her. “Firmly anchored in reality.”

His mouth quirked in amusement. “As much as any of us, I’d say. Why do you ask?”

Bernadette told him about the interview in the principal’s office. “So I told her what you’d told
me
about the percentaging.”

“Did you, now?” Something in his voice made her glance at him. “And did that reassure her?”

“Oh, yeah. When I left she was practically dancing.”

“Well, there you are, then. Nothing to worry about. I gather Peg is quite exited about the community support she’s receiving. You Wizards have put Wickham on the map, metaphorically speaking. Naturally she’d want to investigate any rumors about her team’s validity. But it sounds as though you set her mind at rest nicely.” He seemed relieved himself, and his manner became more expansive. “To tell you the truth, Bernadette, even if there’d been a foul-up somewhere—which there wasn’t, luckily—there’s no doubt in my mind that this team could still outshine Pinehurst, given the chance. It’s a question of motivation.”

“Really?” That hard work could catch up with years of every cultural advantage was something she liked to say herself, all the time. But in her heart she was less sure. Hearing Frank Malory say it—and he should know, as educated as he was—worked on Bernadette like a drug. “Hey, did you know Lori invented a cheer for us? ‘Break their pencils, stomp the finks, bust their buzzers, Pinehurst stinks!’ ”

She loved that she had made him laugh.

“Our Lori scored 720 on the verbal SAT. You didn’t know? She’ll do very well in the Bowl. And I never underestimate the power of red hair on elderly contest judges.”

He gave her a subtle wink. It so clearly signaled their shared understanding about Lori’s useful—but secondary—physical assets that Bernadette smiled, and didn’t wonder until much later how sex appeal could possibly matter in a contest where you either knew the right answer or you didn’t. Did he say 720?

He downshifted for the exit to Ann Arbor.

There were no empty meters near the library. Mr. Malory swung into a parking garage and stopped on a tiny space crisscrossed with diagonal blue lines.

“Uh—this is handicapped,” Bernadette said.

The engine roar died away among the concrete pillars. “Not officially.”

She had to climb over the gearshift to get out. They were in a loading zone against the wall meant for wide-opening doors or wheelchair lifts. Another vehicle—a Yugo, maybe, or a Schwinn—could still squeeze in beside them. And the remaining handicapped spots
were
empty.

Mr. Malory hoisted a fat briefcase out of the trunk. The boot, he called it. “All set?” he asked. “We’re late.” She had to run to keep up with him.

They climbed the broad stone stairs of the library past a gauntlet of feminine appraisal that didn’t seem to faze Bernadette’s companion one whit. She sneaked a glance at their reflections in the entrance door. She looked older than sixteen, she decided. People might think they were a couple.

CHAPTER TEN

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

—Alfred Lord Tennyson,

“The Charge of the Light Brigade”

T
he Wizards were watching cartoons.

Anthony had powered up a TV-VCR on its portable cart and when Bernadette and Mr. Malory arrived in the library conference room, he and David were reclining in their chairs with their feet propped up on the long table. More wheeled carts sagged under books that, even from the doorway, had a “required” smell about them. Lori was twisting Nadine’s slippery hair into a French braid.

Both girls looked up at them with curiosity.

“My car wouldn’t start,” Bernadette said. She sat down, and Lori whispered, “Ooh. How’d you think of that?”

Bernadette had to laugh. She could see where, under certain circumstances, for short periods of time, Lori Besh might be fun.

Mr. Malory was all business tonight. He unpacked his briefcase and fed a tape into the machine. On the TV, Roadrunner was replaced by fuzz. He produced a giant bag of chocolate chip cookies, asked if anyone needed to use the loo, then doused the lights.

Swelling orchestra music.
NATIONAL COMPUTER SYSTEMS PRESENTS CLASSICS BOWL IX
, announced big yellow letters.

“Hey, like the Super Bowl,” David said.

“Shhh. I want to hear this.” Bernadette blinked her lenses into focus and rested her elbows on the table.

Mrs. Phoebe Hamilton acted as moderator. They would hear three rounds of questions plus a Champion Round, she informed the studio audience in a plummy voice reminiscent of Queen Elizabeth. Thirty questions per round selected from twenty-five possible categories.

Teams could substitute players once a round, if they wished. Each team had one time-out per round. Only four of a team’s five members played at a time.

The camera panned the teams. Pinehurst, of course. Versus St. John’s School for the Gifted.

Pinehurst selected “Greeks.”

“In Sophocles’ tragedy
Oedipus the King,”
Mrs. Hamilton read, “what is the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx?”

It was an Open, meaning either team could answer. St. John’s buzzed in first. “What is ‘Man’?” a plump boy with glasses asked.

There was a ripple of laughter from the audience. “Man it is,” Mrs. Hamilton said dryly. “No need to answer with a question. You’re not on
Jeopardy!”

The scorekeeper flipped over a card. Twenty points for St. John’s.

Pinehurst exchanged slit-eyed glances. They all wore their school’s purple blazer and tie, even the lone girl sitting out. Bernadette munched her cookie with a curled lip. Sexist pigs. At least St. John’s had three girls on their team, although people who called themselves “gifted” gave her a pain.

The tape ran on. Wizard wisecracks came slower and soon stopped altogether as they were drawn into the drama on-screen. Bernadette already knew Pinehurst would win, but for most of the hour St. John’s led. These scoring rules were courtesy of Mrs. Hamilton by way of the Mad Hatter. She jotted down notes in the dark, and felt Lori beside her doing the same.

A team could earn twenty points by answering an Open question, ten points for a Bonus. The scorekeeper kept a running tally.

“Name the next line in this well-known poem: ‘The world is too much with us; late and soon . . .’ ”

Bzzz.
A Pinehurst boy answered, “ ‘Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’ ”

“Correct.”

In the dark little room, Bernadette smelled fear.

During the Champion Round, Pinehurst blew their gifted opponents away. It was just like
Double Jeopardy,
Bernadette realized. The Champion Round could decide the match.

The last image on the screen before Mr. Malory snapped on the lights was St. John’s looking like they’d all been run over by the same train.

The Wizards blinked. The cookies were nothing but crumbs, and so was their confidence.

“That was
fast,”
Nadine said. “Wasn’t that fast?”

“Aah, they missed a bunch,” Anthony said.

“They
did.” Mr. Malory observed their stunned faces.
“You
won’t.”

“Mr. Malory, nobody could know all those books.” Lori’s voice had gone high and little. Sounded like the governor’s pompon thing was looking more appealing.

“Au contraire,
Ms. Besh. St. John’s could have known much more. They simply didn’t prepare.” Like Merlin instructing young Arthur, their teacher brandished a rolled-up set of charts that he pinned one by one to the cork strip above the chalkboard. “I don’t believe in ‘gifted’ students. I believe in students who work.”

Now how did he know there’d be a place to hang those? Bernadette wondered. Behind Lori’s back she poked Nadine. Debaters respected advance planning.

“Thirty-one categories.” Mr. Malory tapped the first chart. Each box held a word or phrase. “Every Bowl question has come from one of these categories.”

“How do you know?” David asked.

“I counted. While you’ve been perfecting the art of portraiture, Mr. Minor, I’ve been studying twelve hours of Classics Bowl tape.”

The others snickered. David put a hand over the sketch of his latest superheroine, who bore a suspicious resemblance to Lori Besh—if Lori owned thigh-high boots and a laser gun.

“How do you know they won’t add new categories this year?” Nadine wanted to know.

“I don’t. But if you learn these inside and out, you can cope with anything they add.”

The next chart said: 1,000 questions, 92 writers, 297 works. Then a table: novels, 109; plays, 31; long poems, 18; short poems, 72; essays, 10; stories/fables, 33; speeches, 7; bible books, 17.

“Study this,” he said.

Bernadette studied her teammates instead. They had a horrified roundness to their eyes, as though Jekyll had turned into Hyde in front of them.

More charts went up. One listed the names of books and—she squinted—authors. Very
small
names, typed and pasted on the chart. Hundreds of them.

“Two hundred ninety-seven works,” Mr. Malory told the quiet room.

“Oh, good. I hate when it’s more than three hundred.” But even Anthony sounded shaken.

“You’ve sure gone to a lot of trouble,” Bernadette said.

Mr. Malory’s smile flashed. “I feel responsible,” he said. “I owe this team everything I can do to help you to a respectable showing. Though I must say, routing Pinehurst would be even better.”

The fourth chart was their names.

They absorbed their individual categories. Each of them was a Primary in some, Backup in others. Lori Besh had drawn a lot of the shorter poetry as well as Children’s Classics. Mr. Malory lifted out a fat red binder, opened it, and handed around sets of stapled papers. Bernadette could have sworn hers was the thickest.

Mr. Malory said, “You see, Ms. Besh? With the proper organization, it
is
possible for one team to know it all. The right team.”

The silence was as loaded as a grenade.

Anthony pulled the pin. “Wait a minute.” His face was flushed, as though he’d leaned too close to the grill at work. He rolled his assignment sheets into a tube and used it to emphasize his words. “Let’s just think about this. The Classics Bowl is in three weeks, right?
Some
of us have to eat and sleep and, just maybe, do
other
homework. We can’t do this. It’s impossible.”

Bernadette’s eyes swiveled back to Mr. Malory. Part of her agreed with Anthony. Covering the material just outlined would stretch speed-reading grad students in solitary confinement. For five bright but not brilliant high schoolers, it was madness.

And yet—another part of her wanted to cheer. Frank Malory
believed
in them. Couldn’t Anthony feel it? Didn’t he want to show the world they could do this thing?

Mr. Mallory’s left eyebrow rose one millimeter. “Do you want to win?”

“That’s not fair,” David grumbled. “We’re talking ten grand. Sure we want to win.”

“
I
want to win.” Bernadette kicked Anthony’s chair. “This is our year, Mr. Malory. You said so.”

“My grandmother’s lighting candles at church,” Nadine said. “The last time she did that, we got a Polish pope. So yeah,
I
want to win.”

“I didn’t drop out of the Governor’s All-Star Pompon Competition to
lose.”
Lori’s blue eyes held a manic glitter, and the perfect chin was rock-like. She looked a lot smarter when she was angry, Bernadette decided.

Anthony shrank into his sweatshirt. “Don’t look at me. I want to kick their butts. Did you see those wimpy outfits?”