Happy Kid! (23 page)

“Cheating?” Melissa croaked.

“If he helped you with the test, then he was cheating. Did he help you with the test?”

“No! Yes . . . ch-cheating?” Melissa said.

“I discussed this with Melissa in class,” Mr. Borden said. “I thought I had reassured her about this issue. As far as cheating is concerned, how could I have done something like that? She took the test in her advisory with her advisory teacher. I wasn't even there.”

“Not cheating. No, not cheating,” was all Melissa managed to say.

“Assigning an essay question that later appeared on the SSASie?” Mr. Alldredge asked Mr. Borden. “It sounds a lot like cheating.”

“I gave them the assignment weeks before this year's tests even arrived here at the school,” Mr. Borden insisted. “It was one of many essays they wrote in September. I took all the topic questions from old SSASies.”

Melissa couldn't say anything more than “ch—ch—ch.”

I guessed she had pretty much finished saying whatever it was she had planned to say.

“The superintendent of schools is going to want to investigate this,” Mr. Alldredge muttered. “And the school board. The PTO will have something to say about it, I'm sure. And then the newspapers.” He looked over at me. “Accusations like this never go away, you know.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. It would have been nice if he'd thought of that back in June when he was waving the student-parent handbook at my father and me.

Mr. Alldredge turned to Melissa then. “I want you to think very carefully about whether or not you want to do this. Mr. Borden might be removed from his classroom for at least a little while. You and your classmates may be questioned. I'm just telling you these things so you can make an informed decision. Whatever you decide to do, you will have my total support.”

Sure she would.

Melissa turned toward me. Her eyes were filled with tears. She opened her mouth once as if she were going to say something, but didn't.

Hard as it was to believe, Melissa Esposito was speechless. If anyone was going to say anything now, it was going to have to be me.

“Melissa never accused Mr. Borden of cheating, Mr. Alldredge.” I looked at Mr. Borden. “She didn't accuse you of cheating when she talked to you in class, either. You were the one who used that word. Melissa never
blamed
anybody for anything. She just wanted someone to fix this, to make it fair again for everybody. We're not talking about cheating at all. We're talking about an ‘irregularity.' ”

Both men looked at me as if I'd just said “constipated.” Then Mr. Alldredge looked at Mr. Borden and said, “That's right.”

“Melissa thinks it's wrong that our class had an advantage over the other kids. Mr. Borden didn't cheat, because he didn't know what questions would be on the test. What happened with the test was an accident, but if Melissa and I didn't do something to try to correct it, that wouldn't be an accident. That would be intentional.
We'd
be cheating now if we didn't try to fix this.”

I got that part from Luke. He was going to be really excited when I told him I used his argument with the principal.

Then, just to wrap things up, I very carefully added, “No one is really to blame for any of this.”

Mr. Borden looked over at Mr. Alldredge, who was gazing into space. Then Mr. Alldredge looked over at Mr. Borden and started to nod.

“That's right,” he said. “There was no intent to do anything wrong so—no one's to blame!”

He looked at us and stood up, which, when a principal does it, is always a sign that a meeting is over. “Thank you both so much. You did the absolutely right thing by coming to tell me about this.”

Mr. Borden patted Melissa on the back. “I don't want you to worry about class. I really respect what you did. I know it must have been hard.”

I guess he didn't notice I was there.

Melissa sniffed and smiled and almost wiggled like a puppy she was so happy to have a teacher pleased with her.

“And you, Kyle, am I ever pleased to see you here backing up Melissa. Good work.” Mr. Alldredge shook my hand.

He was about to open the door when he paused and said, “By the way, how many people know about the essay?”

I shot a quick look at Melissa out of the corner of my eye. She was biting her lip. Don't say anything, Melissa! I wanted to shout. He'll send his secret police out to collect them. They'll never be seen again.

“All the kids in our English class know. And some of them knew we were coming here today, too. Maybe four or five other kids know, and so do both my parents,” Melissa told him.

She didn't give any names, and she made it seem as if a lot of people knew. Okay. I could see where she was going with that. There's safety in numbers. I wished I'd told more people.

“Let's try not to let it get all over the school until after we've decided what we should do about it,” Mr. Alldredge suggested. “That way Mr. Borden can have some privacy while we're sorting things out.”

Mr. Borden was going to get privacy. I got my picture in the paper.

“I really appreciate that, guys,” Mr. Borden said, as if that would force us to agree to keep our mouths shut.

I could tell Mr. Alldredge didn't plan to do anything about that essay because he had that same look on his face that politicians and police officers get in Sci Fi Channel Original Movies when they're part of an alien plot to take over the world and are only pretending to help the main character stop it. It didn't matter to me. I said I would help Melissa, and I did. What happened afterward was none of my business.

But Melissa must watch the Sci Fi Channel, too (who knew?), because she had also figured out what was going on. She was twitching and squirming and clearing her throat as if she had something to say.

“I have another question,” she finally said just as Mr. Alldredge was saying good-bye to us. “How long will it take to sort this out?”

I couldn't believe she'd found the guts to start the discussion all over again, especially given how badly she'd done during the first round. Brad was right. She just didn't give up.

“It's hard to say,” Mr. Alldredge said, just as my grandmother and Mr. Kowsz came walking into the office.

“You get everything worked out?” Mr. Kowsz asked us.

I took one look at Mr. Kowsz, the guy who made trouble for Mr. Alldredge over a gym teacher swearing at a seventh-grader, and saw one of those “surprising new opportunities” to make the best of a bad situation I found myself in.

“Oh, Mr. Alldredge,” I said, turning back to him. “By the way? Mr. Kowsz knows about the essay, too.”

The smiles left both Mr. Alldredge's and Mr. Borden's faces.

“I'm going to get right on it,” Mr. Alldredge told Melissa. Then he tapped Mr. Borden's arm and said, “Come on back inside. I'd better call the school superintendent and tell him what happened.”

“Does this mean you're done? What perfect timing,” Nana said. Then she leaned toward me and whispered, “Tim and I are going to the home show at the civic center this weekend. We're going to look at tile for him to use on his lamp bases.”

I heard way more about Mr. Kowsz than I wanted to on the ride home. He's fine in the dojang, but I don't know how I'd feel about him showing up with Nana for dinner on Sundays.

Nana left me off at home and went back to her office. I ran upstairs and picked up
Happy Kid!
I thought I deserved a new message. Maybe one that praised me instead of telling me what to do.

I was going to have to give away my book?

Mr. Alldredge had asked us not to let the SSASie story get around school until after he'd decided what to do about it. But since the meeting ended with him calling the school superintendent, I figured, Well, he's decided. So when Luke phoned me that night to see what happened, I told him. Melissa must have felt the same way, because Jamie and Beth said that when they called her, she told them, too. That was how the information spread throughout the seventh grade before we went to bed.

By the time we got to advisory the next morning, Mrs. Haag had heard and wanted all the details. Jamie and Beth squealed through the whole story and asked us over and over again if we hadn't just wanted to, like, die when Mr. Alldredge called Mr. Borden to his office.

“Everyone's talking about you,” Luke told me in art.

Which was true. All the talk was about me standing up for the regular students in the school and not letting the kids in accelerated English get away with taking an easier test. I started thinking very positively. I was positive Chelsea was going to see what a heroic and noble thing I'd done and like me more for it.

“Everyone is really impressed,” Luke went on.

“Ah, all Kyle had to do was threaten to kick Borden's ass,” Jake scoffed.

“Yeah, that would have gone over well,” I said.

My triumph would have been more . . . triumphant . . . if I could have reached into my backpack to sneak a peek at
Happy Kid!
and found a better message than “Share Your Cookies.” I didn't want to give away
Happy Kid!
What if I gave it away to someone who didn't “get” the book? What if the person laughed at me, dumped the book somewhere, and never used it? Giving it away would be kind of a waste then, wouldn't it? To say nothing of how little I'd enjoy the being-laughed-at part.

But I looked in
Happy Kid!
whenever I had a chance, and there was no change. The book was determined to go to someone else.

Before social studies started, a bunch of A-kids came up to ask me how Mr. Borden liked getting called to the office. All the time I was talking with them, I could see Chelsea watching from across the room. Chelsea could see that I was with A-kids, that they wanted to talk with me. Even Ms. Cannon wanted to talk with me. I was handing in some papers at the end of the class, and she whispered, “Good for you, Kyle. You cannot imagine how much underhanded activity goes on at the university where I'm working on my Ph.D. No one does a thing about it. I could tell you stories . . .”

She looked as if she was getting wound up to tell one right then, but the bell rang and I was saved.

Then I got to English.

At first when I saw that Mr. Borden wasn't there, I was relieved. I'd been worried about what kind of mood he'd be in. Melissa, however, didn't look anywhere near as pleased as I felt. She looked suspicious. And in her typical Melissa way, she went right up to the substitute and asked where Mr. Borden was.

The sub looked as if she'd graduated from college just that morning. She got all flustered and said, “I'm not supposed to talk about it.”

“Well,” Melissa insisted, “how long will he be gone?”

“I think only a few days. Just until they can schedule some kind of a test. That's all I was told.”

It was enough.

Immediately, the room felt different. People looked around at each other. There was sighing and grumbling. Somebody muttered “I hope you're happy” to no one in particular, though I'm certain he meant for Melissa and me to hear it. Melissa must have thought so, too. She went to her seat and slowly sat down. She kept her back straight and her head up as she opened her copy of the book we were reading. As if anybody could read under those circumstances.

Never in my whole life had I been so happy to leave a class. And I've been happy to leave a
lot
of classes. I thought I'd made my escape when I heard someone calling my name.