Cheater (4 page)

Blaine doesn’t answer right away. Caught by surprise, he half-smiles but doesn’t seem to understand what sort of help Karl is offering. “You will?”

“You wanted me to cheat with you and Cara. I changed my mind. I’ll do it.”

The half-smile opens up into the real thing. “Sweet,” he says and puts a friendly hand on Karl’s shoulder.

Blaine’s features fit his face perfectly, in both size and placement. By contrast, Karl’s eyes are a bit too close together, and his jaw is too narrow. His reflection in the bathroom mirror would depress him, except for Blaine’s enthusiastic gratitude. With a new friend like this, there’s no telling how his life may change.

Yeah,
his inner pessimist comments.
Maybe you’ll end up in jail.

RULE #3: You may be tempted, out of the goodness of your heart, to share your cheating methods with lots of friends. Resist temptation! As we discussed in Rule #2, the odds you’ll get caught are directly Proportional to the number of people who know what you’re UP to. A small, tight circle is the hardest to break.

Chapter 3

Where can a bunch of teenagers conspire to overthrow the established order without attracting attention?

Duh.

In the middle of the food court at Eden Tree Mall, at a rectangular table formed by pushing together two small square ones, Blaine introduces Karl with a sweep of the arm. “Meet the Confederacy, Karl.”

The soldiers in this rogue army are:

Vijay Roy, crisply attired in white shirt and dark slacks.

Tim Bean, mischievous prankster slob, whose stringy dreadlocks have earned him the nickname Rasta Pasta Man.

Ian Higgins, bored as always, tapping his nose pensively with a plastic spork.

And Noah Marcus, foamer at the mouth, whose T-shirt of the day reads DISMANTLE THE MACHINE. (ASK ME HOW.)

Karl has known these people for years, though not well. That they have teamed up with Blaine and Cara to outwit their teachers and cheat their way through high school boggles his mind. The student body at Abraham Lincoln divides fairly neatly into subcultures—Preps, Goths, Skaters, Druggies, Jock Brutes, Politicos, Science Nerds, and Outcasts— and Karl would have placed each of the cheaters in a different one of these slots (Vijay has been programming computers since he got out of diapers, Tim giggles inexplicably at random moments, Ian wears khaki twenty-four hours a day, and Noah owns so many ideological T-shirts that Karl has never seen the same one twice), but they’ve all fooled him. Like undercover CIA agents, they have used their various styles as camouflage for their true identities.

The seven blue trays don’t quite fit on the two small tables, so the first moments of Karl’s membership in the Confederacy are taken up with rearranging the chicken strips, Beef-Ka-Bob, meatball marinara sub, egg drop soup, Double-Decker Taco Supreme, and Mango Smoothie.

Is it his imagination, or is there an unfriendly tension in the air? None of them, except Blaine and Cara, will look him in the eye, and there isn’t a heck of a lot of chitchat, either.

“Karl, are you a spy for Klimchock?” Blaine asks casually.

He doesn’t get the point. “Uh. No.”

“I’m convinced,” Ian says, meaning the opposite.

Now Karl understands the averted gazes. They’re like Mafiosi hiding their faces behind newspapers as they climb the courthouse steps.

“Are you kidding?” Karl begins. “You think—“

Cara cuts him off. “You people don’t understand Karl. You’re such feeble judges of character! Just because he’s smart, that doesn’t mean he’s on the other side. Karl has a deep inner longing to defy authority and prove he’s more than a brain. Am I right, Karl?”

That she understands him so well—that she has
noticed him—
makes Karl’s heart flutter. It’s one of the great moments in his life so far, right up there with winning the backstroke race at Camp Wakanaki.

“You’re right,” he says.

“Let’s stop wasting time,” Blaine tells his band of cheaters, “and show our new comrade what’s what.”

While the P.A. system thumps a song no one can identify over the many voices and clattering trays, and Tim hums the
Mission: Impossible
theme, Vijay reveals the secret tools of the Confederacy: (1) the graphing calculator programmed so that a swift series of keystrokes brings up handy formulas, such as: A’S ATOMIC NUMBER x A’S ION CHARGE = B’S ATOMIC NUMBER x B’S ION CHARGE; (2) the CD Walk-man that plays not 50 Cent, as the disk’s label advertises, but Vijay’s voice reciting key dates and events leading up to the Civil War; (3) the small wireless camera taped to his wrist under his shirt cuff, which transmits the fine print on Noah’s Giant Roast Beef sandwich wrapper to Cara’s laptop monitor (the blue letters on the crinkled foil are clearly legible, as is the cowboy hat logo); and (4) the iPod loaded with songs whose titles, conveniently, are French vocabulary words with their English translations.

“Technology,” Tim intones. “Better tools for better living.”

“Don’t forget my cell phone,” Blaine adds. “Before the chemistry test, I sent myself a few helpful text messages.”

“Personally, I don’t completely trust computers,” Cara says. “They tend to crash right when you need them most. I like to back myself up with a hard copy.”

She flips up the hem of her short skirt to reveal typed notes taped to the inside.

“She’s just an old-fashioned girl,” Vijay says.

“The best part is, they can’t demand to see my notes.”

Though there’s some nausea mingled with his amazement, Karl covers that up and asks, “Do you guys buy term papers online?”

“Not anymore,” replies Blaine. “The teachers have a search service that scans for plagiarism. That’s one of the reasons why we want your help.”

Wouldn’t it be easier
, Karl wonders,
to just study?

Uncharacteristically bold, he asks the question out loud.

Mount Noah erupts. “Skipping the work isn’t the point!” (Cara gives Karl a flicker of a smile,
Just humor him
.) “School is a machine serving a warped society. Its purpose isn’t to teach, it’s to sort us out—who gets to go to Harvard and who gets to clean toilets. If it was really about learning, grades wouldn’t matter. The Machine doesn’t care about us. Why should we care about the Machine? Sabotage it! Rebel! Cheating is freedom! Cheating is integrity!”

A bit of Noah’s cinnamon bun comes flying out and lands on Karl’s plate. “Is that what the rest of you think?” he asks.

“I think he needs medication,” Tim says.

“Then why do you cheat?”

“Uhhhh—for fun?”

“School is so tedious otherwise,” Ian says.

“Everyone is doing it,” Blaine adds. “If I don’t, I’m at a disadvantage.”

Cara comments, “This is how America works, Karl. People cheat whenever they can—on taxes, on the golf course, in elections. You know who lives by Boy Scout ethics? Nobody.”

“You’re putting me to sleep,” Ian complains. Making his own fun, he flings a nugget of sesame chicken over his shoulder. The breaded missile lands on a blind lady’s table; her dog leaps to its feet, claws scratching the stone tile floor.

“To me, it’s a sport, a technical challenge,” Vijay explains. “We invent a system—they catch on—we refine the system. Mr. Imperiale makes everyone erase the memory in our calculators—so I program mine to
look
like the memory’s erased, but really everything’s still there, in cache.”

“I hope you’re impressed, Karl,” says Cara. “I know I am.”

He doesn’t know what to say. He’s not sure what he thinks or which way is up.

“There’s one other thing to teach you,” Blaine says. “The Code.”

“You mean for communicating in secret?”

“No, Code as in Code of Behavior. What is The Code, rebels?”

“Do not share our methods with outsiders,” Noah warns, pointing at Karl, Uncle Sam style. “One of our former members did that, and he got caught the next day. Coincidence? I think not.”

“Even if they see you cheat, deny everything,” Tim says, smirking.

“And most important of all”—a steely gaze from Blaine— “if you get caught, you go down alone. Never reveal the names of your comrades.”

A hunk of meatball has gotten stuck halfway down Karl’s throat, or at least it feels that way: a large, distressing mass, close to his heart, that doesn’t belong there. He focuses on his plate, wishing he could make the world go back to normal.

“Come take a walk with me, Karl.”

Cara puts her hand on his—that softness again!—and keeps it there until he stands. She leads the way out of the food court, over to the square fountain where the spokes of the mall converge.

Small children lean on the low marble ledge and harass their mothers for pennies. “I want a wish!” one girl insists. Cara sits down on the ledge, and Karl sits near her.

“Second thoughts?”

She has on a fuzzy white short-sleeved sweater with a low, scooped neck. The fuzz blurs her edges.

“I’m just—uncomfortable.”

“Makes sense to me. Getting used to a new universe takes time.”

She’s doing it again, melting his brain. You don’t expect someone who looks like Cara and dresses like Cara to see into your soul.

“So, what do you think, are you going to back out? Please say no.”

“I can’t, right? Now that I know their secrets—they’d hunt me down like a dog.”

Her laugh is a squawk. Doesn’t matter: the fuzz is soft enough to make up for it.

A kid with long tangled hair hurls a penny sideways, and it hits Karl’s cheek. “Sorry!” the mom calls over. Cara takes the penny from Karl’s thigh and holds it out to the little munchkin. “You’re pretty,” she says, as the tiny fingers grab the penny.

“I’m a boy!” the kid protests.

They lock their laughter inside. If she were a different person, then someday they might end up in front of a fireplace together, reminiscing.
Remember the kid at the fountain?That was so funny!

“I have a philosophical question for you, Karl. Is a code of honor worth anything if you’re the only one in the world who lives by it? Isn’t that more like a crazy personal obsession?”

“I’m not sure. You’ve got me pretty confused.”

At a nearby kiosk, a green river flows beneath the Brooklyn Bridge, one of many lit-from-behind pictures for sale. The water looks so real—but it isn’t.

“Well, Karl? Are you in or out?”

He can’t answer, isn’t sure, just sits there like a stunned fool. She slides across the hard marble until her knee touches his. The fuzz on her sweater shifts, too, drawn toward him by static electricity. “I wonder what I’d see if I could peek into your brain,” she says.

The truth? She’d only see perplexity. He can’t understand why she’s flirting like this, when she can’t possibly want anything from him except the right answers.

A little splash hits their hands.

“You should toss a penny,” she says. “Make a wish. You never know.”

The water that falls from the square central pool into the surrounding well makes a soothing
sssssshhhhhhh—
but it’s not soothing enough to keep his face from reddening.

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Karl—all the brains in the world won’t do you much good if you think you’re beat before you start.”

He sits silently, his insides gnarled, and waits for the turmoil to end.

She rubs her arm up against his. “Courage, Karl. Your world is about to change for the way better.”

She tousles his hair and heads back to the food court. Karl stays on the ledge a while longer, watching the long rippling sheet of water spill into the well. Little waves cross the narrow channel and then bounce back again, making the bright copper pennies below seem to shift back and forth. Now they’re here, now they’re there—but where are they really?

Something strikes his arm. A second later—it takes that long to process the information—pain shoots up and down, to his elbow and his shoulder.

“What did I just see?”

Lizette is holding a softball bat, tightly wrapped in a Sports Authority bag.

“Are you out of your mind? You hit me with a bat!”

“It was a checked swing. And don’t change the subject. What’s happening here, Karl?”

Sneaky and guilty, he steals a glance at the food court. Cara reports to the others, shaking her head.

“Why would Cara Nzada rub her arm on you? Something real strange is going on.”

“No it’s not. She just . . .“

But the famed Petrofsky Cerebrum comes up blank. (What if Lizette asks how he got here, when he doesn’t have his license yet? What will he say?)

“I know what it’s about, Karl. Your face gives it all away.”

His mouth, he realizes, is hanging open. He shuts it before small insects can fly in.

“There’s only one thing a girl like that wants from a guy like you.”

Lost, he waits for clarification.

“She wants to copy your homework, right?”

“Yes!” he lies, happily.

“It’s not a good thing, Karl.”

“I know.”

A boy is pointing at the Brooklyn Bridge picture, tugging on his mother’s arm, begging her to buy it. The mom has her doubts.

“So what did you tell her?”

Karl keeps quiet.

“Don’t tell me you said okay!”

“I said maybe.”

She shakes her head, upset for real now, no longer teasing—if she ever was. “All she had to do was rub your arm.”

For an instant, he feels the unfairness of this world, where girls like Cara get treated like royalty and girls like Lizette get ignored, at best.

Wait. Is Lizette
jealous
?

But that would only make sense if she . . .

Behind Lizette, Blaine is waving to Karl. The Confederacy is leaving, threading its way out of the food court, toward the exit doors. Cara blows him a kiss.

Lizette turns to see what he’s looking at. Fortunately, Cara has passed behind the Piercing Pagoda.