Cheating Lessons: A Novel (23 page)

“That’s
right,
” Mrs. Hamilton said, excitement making her voice quaver. “That’s absolutely right.” She addressed the audience. “Ladies and gentleman, in quite the closest and, I must say, the best-prepared NCS Classics Bowl in our history, our winner today is Pinehurst Academy.”

We had them beat.
In the midst of deafening applause, Bernadette rose. Pride in her teammates made her step as light as a blown kiss as she ran up onstage.

The Wizards of Wickham. In her book they were winners.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“Then over wine—a serious cabernet,

I think—the post-mortem.”

—Sarah Sloan,
Stacked

T
he next twenty minutes were a rush of impressions. People laughing, taking pictures (Pinehurst). Looking like they’d gotten a telegram from the War Department (Wickham). Hugging (everyone).

The Wizards posed for an NCS photographer who snapped one shot before being yanked away to take a picture of Mrs. Hamilton with the winners.

Bernadette’s parents. Joe Terrell gruffly proud and consoling, Martha sneaking glances at Bernadette while puffing out angry sighs. Bernadette was thankful it was so crowded, her mother wouldn’t yell at her here. She put on a brave smile with a touch of self-blame. It didn’t fool her mother, but it brought her father’s arm around her in a comforting hug. She was
fine,
Bernadette insisted; no, she wasn’t too upset, she must have drawn a blank up there, what kick? And of course she still wanted to go to the team dinner . . . .

And while she talked her eyes scanned the crowd for her teammates.

There was Mrs. Walczak, wearing a face of long-suffering resignation at Vince’s arm around Nadine, who was talking as fast and insistently as Bernadette.

A rusty-haired man with military posture had come up to Lori and Miss Tanya. The infamous Mr. Besh. So
that
was a lying cheat. It didn’t show, but then—Bernadette’s glance lit on Mr. Malory—in the best ones it never did. Miss Tanya’s face went stiff, and Lori drew herself to her full height to look down on the skinny woman in black leather pants whose possessive arm was linked in her father’s. Mr. Besh clapped Lori on the shoulder and pressed a bill—a fifty, it looked like—into her hands. Lori stared at it as if it held old gum. Then she threw it to the ground where the black leather woman covered it with her boot. Lori spat out something that didn’t look like “thank you.”

Ms. Kestenberg, cast held high, cut a determined lime-green swath through the crowd. Her becomingly flushed cheeks owed nothing to Revlon and everything to fury. She had heard Bernadette answer those questions correctly in practice and she looked ready to blow. Behind her came Mrs. Standish. Her face was harder to read. But definitely she did not appear as grateful as she’d been after the bee rescue. Bernadette had a bad feeling about this encounter. Whether Spic ‘n’ Span had helped Mr. Malory or not, she had certainly wanted Wickham to win. So had Martha. So had Ms. K. Bernadette didn’t think she would hold up well under torture. All together or taking turns, these three could make an unholy fuss.

It seemed like a good time to leave. She excused herself to her father—“Got to find Mr. Malory see you at home I love you too”—and slipped away.

Talk surged and eddied around her.

“—don’t tell
me
she didn’t know—”

“—they were marvelous, weren’t they? Thank you for your—”

“—Chocolate Macadamia Bread, it’s a cinch and the house smells great—”

“—God, Leslie, she kicked him right in—”

“—the end of Thirteen Mile Road, and they won’t be late, I’m—”

“—sexy or what? He can read
me
a bedtime story any night!”

This last, from a teenaged girl in green eye shadow and a miniscule tank top, made Bernadette just shake her head. Get in line, sister.

Mr. Malory glided from cluster to cluster like an attentive host, congratulating the families, saying he wouldn’t trade his knowledge of the world’s great literature for any computer no matter how advanced, and acting, in short, as though they
had
won. Bernadette dodged him, but she was awed. If he’d been born in America he could run for president.

“Nadine.” Bernadette greeted Vince and pulled her friend aside. “Let’s beat it. Lori’ll find us any minute.”

“Yeah. I heard him telling the boys about the restaurant. I’ll meet you at the car.”

The last thing she saw as the elevator doors closed was Nadine giving Vince a good-bye kiss that indicated a quality of research well up to her partner’s usual standards.

Bernadette sighed. Of course she was glad for the things she
could
change, but she couldn’t help wishing there were more of them. A gray-haired man with a Pinehurst Panthers button on his lapel watched her in the mirrored doors. At her sigh he gave a grunt of sympathy. “That was a very stimulating match, young lady. Well-done.”

Bernadette smiled tightly. Stimulating, oh yes. It took true discipline, but she did not snatch his video camera out of his hands and beat him over the head with it.

She must be maturing.

The second-floor table Mr. Malory had reserved commanded an excellent view of the front parking lot of Gordon’s Grill. Bernadette and Nadine sipped the sparkling (nonalcoholic) wine that had been waiting in a silver bucket.

“Hey, Nadine?” Bernadette said.

Nadine raised her eyes from the menu.

“What made you change your mind?”

Nadine did not pretend she didn’t know what Bernadette meant. She selected a bread stick and turned it around and around before she finally answered. Apology was written in every line of her face. “You did. To see you blow those questions . . . on purpose . . . in front of everyone . . .” She crumbled the bread stick into atomic particles. “It killed me. I couldn’t let you do it by yourself. I mean, we’re partners.”

The wave of tenderness that washed over Bernadette temporarily robbed her of speech.

“My parents might sue you, though,” Nadine continued. “For a couple of minutes there they were counting that ten grand like it was in the bank.”

“Were they?” Bernadette asked anxiously. “How mad are they?”

“They’ll get over it. When I tell them I want to major in Asian Studies they’ll forget all about this.”

“You
do?
” Bernadette tried not to sound hurt. This was news to her.

“Of course not—Korean is hard! Anyway, you know I want to be a TV reporter. No, I’ll let them talk me out of it, and they’ll feel like they had a close call.” She grinned, and Bernadette grinned back. “I’ll tell you
one
thing.” Nadine wagged a new bread stick at her. “We could never have thrown the Bowl if he hadn’t made us study so hard.”

Which struck Bernadette, and a second later Nadine herself, as hilarious, in a sick sort of way.

They were still giggling when the boys arrived.

“Champagne!” David pulled the bottle out of the bucket and read the label. “For babies!”

“It’s good. Here. To the Wizards.” Nadine held up her glass.

“And the dwarfs!” Bernadette said.

“Would someone please tell me what happened back there?” David asked.

“Shhh! We’re toasting,” Anthony chided. He raised his glass. “We coulda been contenders,” he said in his best Brando voice. “Instead of bums, which let’s face it, is what Malory is.”

David gulped his wine and fell into a fit of sneezing.

“There’s Lori,” Nadine said.

Below them on the pavement, long legs and a short skirt emerged from a little red car. The valet parkers jostled each other for the privilege of handing Lori her parking receipt.

“Did they do that for us?” Nadine asked Bernadette.

“Not that I noticed.”

“Now, now. Don’t be greedy,” Anthony admonished. “You girls have a
subtle
beauty. It takes time to appreciate you.”

“Years,” David added.

Bernadette laughed. Maybe, just maybe, Anthony’s good mind wasn’t wasted on a jerk. Her smile faded as she looked down at the sidewalk. “Lori won’t wait that long. I think she’s going to kill me.”

The silence which met this seemed to indicate general agreement. David coughed delicately. “Well, she’s sure going to ask questions. I will, too. I was there the whole time and I still couldn’t tell you what happened.”

“But you’re so cute when you’re confused.” Nadine chucked him under the chin. “We don’t mind that you’re dumb.”

“Hey!”

“Anthony started it! ‘Subtle beauty,’ my—”

Bernadette interrupted. “Look!”

Below them, the Porsche slid to a stop behind Lori and caused another scramble, this time for the car. Mr. Malory handed a bill to the attendant, who pocketed it and pointed to the back of the lot.

“In their dreams,” Anthony said. They all watched while the Porsche cruised to the end of the lot where a brick latticework wall was under construction. Pallets of bricks waist-high were cordoned off by the kind of yellow DANGER—KEEP OUT tape that figured so often in Bernadette’s favorite books. Mr. Malory maneuvered his car horizontally across two spaces.

Nothing was parked within rows of the spot. “He didn’t need two spaces,” Bernadette said.

“Sure he did,” Anthony said. “Whatever Malory may be, that car is a work of art.”

“Yeah,” David echoed, but luckily Lori came in before they could get into an argument about cars, one of the few topics Bernadette did not feel confident discussing.

Lori turned heads in Gordon’s Grill the same way she did in the Wickham cafeteria, but she seemed even less aware of it tonight. Temper showed in the flush on her cheeks and in the wild state of her hair, freed from its knot. Her blue eyes glittered with a fever that made Bernadette glad to see even Mr. Malory behind her.

“Hey, Lori, you lost an earring,” David said. “What? What’d I say?”

Bernadette poured out some wine. Lori ignored it. “Well?” she demanded. “What’s the story, Wizards? What happened back there?” She sat forward on her chair like a cougar about to strike. The glittery eyes zeroed in on Bernadette.

Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
 
.
 
.
 
.

Mr. Malory said nothing. He pulled out a chair and sat down and then he, too, looked toward Bernadette. And waited. She should not have been able to smell the almond spice scent of him. But she could, and it almost undid her. Some weak part of her craved his approval still.

Under the table, Nadine squeezed her hand.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Anger is a short madness.

—Horace

T
he boys leaned forward. Lori drew lines on the tablecloth with the tip of a butter knife.

“Hid
where?
” David interrupted Bernadette’s tale.

“In his closet. Pay attention,” Nadine snapped.

“I saw you hide the papers in the binder,” Bernadette told Mr. Malory. “I heard you talking to Gena on the phone.”

The green eyes were politely curious, nothing more.

“What papers? Who’s Gena? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” David turned to Anthony. “Did you know?”

“Not for sure.”

“Anthony Cirillo!” Bernadette forgot about Mr. Malory for a moment. “You mean to say you thought—”

“Shhh! Gena is Dr. Fontaine,” Nadine told David. “That’s who he kept visiting all month—there was no Gene.”

“No Gene? You mean nobody died?” David seemed put out that his sympathy had been offered for no reason.

Lori listened, dazed, her wide eyes fixed in disbelief on their teacher. That’s how she must have looked when she heard about her father’s girlfriend, Bernadette thought, and glanced away.

The waiter set Mr. Malory’s Guinness down and discreetly vanished.

Mr. Malory rubbed his eyes. “Bernadette’s right—I did try to make sure you won.” He paused, clearly choosing his words. “You had all worked so very, very hard, you see.”

He took a long swallow of a dark brown brew Bernadette wouldn’t drink on a dare. “It started as a whim more than anything else. I thought, dammit to hell—Pinehurst makes it to these finals every year. Let
us
outscore
them
for once on that test. The braggarts.”

Anthony, Lori, and David registered fresh shock, realizing that they’d been cheated into the Bowl as well as out of it.

“Of course you caught it right away,” Mr. Malory said casually to Bernadette.

Now the shocked faces turned to her. In the act of drinking, Bernadette choked. He made her sound like an accomplice.
(Weren’t you? No! No, I believed him. I did.)

“
We
didn’t cheat.” Nadine’s deep voice was so righteous, Bernadette might have dreamed their conversation in the park.

“Of course not.” Mr. Malory seemed surprised. “To involve students would have been unconscionable.” He ignored the ripple of confusion that ran around the table. “And then the scores came back and we’d won the blasted thing, and I thought, so be it. Let’s take them on.” He took another drink. “Everything I knew about Pinehurst indicated you’d lose, of course.”

“And if you’d been caught?” Anthony asked. “They’d have called us all cheaters. What then?”