by Matt Fazio
It seemed important to find the artist, even though he wasn’t sure what he would say if he did. He felt connected to the picture, as though he were meant to find it – almost like the picture had been drawn specifically for him. There was just something about that pencil-drawn ocean that eased his scrambled mind.
The nameless runner who fixed Mr. Johnston’s flower arrangement could’ve been just about anyone, but the Mystery Artist had to be one of those five previous owners of the book.
“Time is up. Books away. The only thing on your desk should be a pencil. As always, you have ten multiple choice questions, and you have fifteen minutes to take the quiz. Today’s quiz is on major bodies of water.” Mrs. Steinbeck spoke with precision, enunciating each letter, consonant and vowel, as though she were interviewing for a broadcasting job. She walked up and down the aisles and placed a quiz on each student’s desk, faced down. “When I tell you, you will turn your paper over and begin your quiz. Keep your eyes on your own paper. You have fifteen minutes, and your time begins …” she said, with her eyes glued to her gold watch, “now.”
Mrs. Steinbeck continued to pace steadily throughout the room, her hands clasped behind her back and her narrowed eyes searching for suspicious behavior.
After answering the first five questions, Drew lifted his head to check the time. As he glanced at the clock on the wall, he saw Trevor Lambert whispering something to Jeff. Immediately Drew looked for Mrs. Steinbeck. She would give both Trevor and Jeff detention if she saw them talking during a quiz. Luckily for them, though, she was on the opposite side of the room with her back turned.
Drew put his head down and covered his forehead with his hand, as though he were concentrating on his quiz, but his green eyes were locked in on Trevor and Jeff. When Mrs. Steinbeck turned to face the boys, it looked as though nothing were out of the ordinary. But once she turned around again, Drew noticed Jeff dropping his left arm, which had been guarding his paper. Trevor, who sat next to Jeff (and in front of Drew), was now searching Jeff’s paper to find his answers for each question.
“One minute left,” Mrs. Steinbeck declared, sending a wave of panicky jitters through the handful of students still working. Drew still had three questions to go and knew he needed to focus all his energy to get through them in time.
“Time is up. Pencils down.”
Drew had only finished nine of the ten questions, but he quickly filled in ‘B’ for number ten without reading it. He had imagined that, after the quiz, he would be focusing his thoughts on the unknown artist from his book, but instead he was consumed with what he had seen Jeff doing.
****
After science class was lunch. Drew wanted to ask Jeff about what happened, but with teachers and other students hovering all around, he couldn’t risk anyone overhearing, so he waited until they went outside for recess.
Tommy had a football he’d brought from home. He ran to the far end of the fenced-in pavement and yelled “Catch!” to Jeff. Jeff caught the ball on the run and passed it to Drew. The three usually split into a triangle while catching, but Drew walked over toward Jeff so he could talk to him. Tommy didn’t seem to mind, as he simply alternated who he threw the ball to each time.
“I saw what happened during the science quiz. What was that all about?”
Jeff’s cheeks reddened. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Jeff, this is Steinbeck we’re talking about! You know how much trouble you’d get in if she caught you?”
“I know,” Jeff said sheepishly.
“Then why’d you let him copy?”
“Well … did I really have a choice?” His words were meek, and Drew immediately felt bad for his friend.
“Couldn’t you pretend like you didn’t hear him or something?”
Jeff caught the ball and held onto it as he answered. “I did. But then we made eye contact. And he was telling me before class that he didn’t have a chance to study.”
“Come on, Jeff!” yelled Tommy.
Jeff chucked the ball to him and continued. “I just don’t wanna get beat up. So I made sure Mrs. Steinbeck wasn’t looking whenever I dropped my arm. I was real careful.”
“Wait, did he say he would beat you up?”
“Drew, look at me. Trevor’s a giant. He would’ve pounded me if I didn’t let him copy.”
“Have you ever seen him pound anybody?”
“I don’t have to,” said Jeff. “He’s twice my size, he plays football, and he accidentally knocked Emma down in kickball last week running the bases, remember? She had to go to the nurse. And he didn’t even mean to hit her. I’m sure if he meant to hit me, it would be way worse.”
Drew pictured a fight between Jeff and Trevor and shuddered at the thought. Jeff was average-sized, and Trevor was by far the biggest kid in the fifth grade. Not only was he much taller than Jeff, but he might truly have weighed almost twice as much.
“Well, I don’t know, man. You could’ve got in a lot of trouble.”
“I know,” said Jeff. “I just didn’t know what to do. He was telling me about how he broke Kyle Olinski’s wrist at football practice. At practice! Not even in a game. And Kyle’s in sixth grade. Trevor plays on the older team ‘cause he’s so big. They don’t even let him play with other fifth-graders. Then he said all this stuff this morning about not wanting to fail the science quiz ‘cause he’s already failing math. I’m telling you, I had no choice.”
Drew spent the rest of the day trying to figure out a solution. He thought about confronting Trevor himself, or even telling Mrs. Steinbeck about it, but he figured either way it would result in a pounding.
Lying in bed that night, Drew finally made his decision: he would do nothing. After all, this was just a one-time issue. Trevor didn’t study, so he pressured Jeff to help him cheat. Fortunately, they didn’t get caught. Drew was able to rest his tired eyes knowing the problem was over. He could now concentrate on more important things, like the Mystery Artist. He fell asleep that night brainstorming how to go about asking Jason Porter, Tommy’s brother, if he was the one who drew the picture.
****
A week passed, and it was time for another science quiz. Mrs. Steinbeck issued the same instructions she did every week. “Time is up. Books away. The only thing on your desk should be a pencil. As always, you have ten multiple choice questions, and you have fifteen minutes to take the quiz …”
A few minutes into the quiz, Drew lifted his head to check the clock and saw Jeff’s head turned slightly to the right, in the direction of Mrs. Steinbeck. She had her back toward him, so he dropped his left arm, and Trevor leaned over to copy his answers, just like the week before.
The rest of the afternoon was a daze. Drew barely ate his lunch and chose not to play basketball with his friends during recess. He figured other students tried to cheat sometimes, but he never thought Jeff would. Most kids are taught that cheating is wrong, but Drew had been taught why. He always remembered his lesson on cheating because of how his dad had explained it to him.
About a year ago, his dad was having a conversation with Ken, the neighbor who lived with his wife in the other half of Mr. Daley’s duplex. The two men were talking about performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. Drew loved baseball, so he moved from the swing on the front porch toward the steps to hear what they were saying. Though he didn’t know the technical terms his dad and Ken were talking about, he could tell that both men were frustrated. After they finished talking, Ken went into his garage and Drew stood there, silent, hoping his dad would continue. Mr. Daley could sense Drew’s curiosity and tried to explain the situation the best way he knew how.
“It’s not just the drugs, it’s what they stand for. Baseball’s a pure game, or at least it was, and those guys who used those drugs took away from the game being pure. And any records they break aren’t truly theirs, you see?”
“Well, I guess so.”
Seeing the look of confusion on his son’s face, Mr. Daley continued: “Here’s the thing,
as a person, you’ve gotta be … you’ve gotta be authentic. Being authentic is just being you. It’s natural, it’s genuine … it’s real. See what I’m saying? When you cheat, whether it’s in a game or on a test in school, you aren’t being you. You’re being someone else. You know why I never yell at you when you don’t do great on a test?”
Drew shook his head side to side.
“It’s because I know it’s you taking that test. I don’t know about you, bud, but I’d rather get a C that I earned than an A that I didn’t. So when you have your own baseball cards one day with your picture on the front, the numbers on the back will be yours, nobody else’s.”
Drew replayed that scene in his head while his classmates played basketball until the bell rang. Jeff, one of the kids playing, looked over at Drew every few seconds, but Drew wouldn’t meet his eye line.
He felt like he would explode if he talked to Jeff, so he avoided him all afternoon. He tried to pack and repack his book bag in hopes that his friends would begin walking home without him, but they were waiting for him at the bottom of the school’s steps. As Drew emerged from the building, he thought of all the things he wanted to say to Jeff: how stupid he was being, how he was going to get caught, and why cheating was wrong. But he didn’t get a chance to say any of those things, because Jeff spoke first.
“Listen, Drew, I talked to Trevor before homeroom this morning. He asked me if I studied for the quiz and I told him I did. He was like, ‘Aw, good.’ Then he started talking about Kyle Olinski again and how he broke his wrist. Kyle can’t play the rest of the season. I know he did it by ‘accident,’” said Jeff, framing the word in the air with finger quotes, “and everything, but I think he was giving me a warning: ‘If you don’t let me copy, you’re next.’”
Tommy looked up from his phone. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you talking about?”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“No, I figured you did,” said Drew.
For the first time since the bridge had closed, the long walk home was convenient. Drew and Jeff needed the entire 15 minutes to fill Tommy in. They were still discussing it when they reached the end of Jeff’s street.
“It’s like he has nothing better to do than ruin my life,” said Jeff.
“Maybe he don’t have time to study ‘cause he’s trying out to be an extra in Zombie Days,” said Tommy. “The kid’s so pasty white he looks like a zombie!”
The boys laughed at Trevor’s expense while Tommy stuck out his tongue, rolled his eyes back, and dragged his feet through the heaps of golden leaves piled along the curb.
“Well, what are you gonna do?” Drew asked Jeff.
“I dunno,” Jeff murmured.
Drew sighed. He realized now that Jeff was stuck in a situation beyond his control.
“So …” said Tommy, raising his thick eyebrows in uncertainty.
“Well,” said Drew. He didn’t have a plan, but he sensed Jeff and Tommy were relying on him to figure out the next step. “My dad’s picking me up in a little to go out to dinner. You two are hanging out tonight, right?” The boys nodded. “Try to think of something over the weekend. I’m not sure if I’ll be home tomorrow or not. Either way, we gotta figure out a way to help Jeff get out of this. But remember, let’s make sure we don’t talk about it in school. No use getting caught that way.”
“Yeah,” said Tommy, “that’d be the worst way to get caught cheating – when you’re just talking about it and not even doing it.”
****
That night, Drew and his dad went to Rizzo’s Pizza, Drew’s favorite place to eat. He considered asking his dad for advice but wasn’t sure how to do so without telling on Jeff. He brought up baseball, hoping to nudge his dad toward the topic of the “authentic,” but it never came up. Still, the two of them had a good evening.
But later that night, as he tried to fall asleep in his bed at his dad’s place, one thought was racing to the next. If we don’t do anything to stop Trevor, they’ll eventually get caught and Jeff will get in big trouble. If I tell Mrs. Steinbeck and she confronts Trevor, Trevor will think Jeff told on him and then he’ll beat Jeff up the next day. Jeff would never forgive me. If I tell Dad, he might tell Mr. Gray, then Mr. Gray would tell Mrs. Steinbeck and Trevor will still think Jeff told on him. We can’t risk Trevor thinking Jeff told on him. Could Mr. Sawyer help? No, he’d still have to go through Mrs. Steinbeck …
Everything seemed to lead to Jeff getting in trouble, and Drew knew he couldn’t let that happen. Besides, Trevor was the one doing something wrong. If only there were a way to get Trevor to back off without him thinking Jeff had anything to do with it.
After an hour of tossing and turning, the picture from the science book popped into Drew’s mind. He sat up and turned the key-shaped knob on the light next to his bed. He looked around his room before remembering that he hadn’t brought his science book to his dad’s. Disappointed that he couldn’t look at the picture before he fell asleep, he shut off the light, closed his eyes, and tried to actually hear the waves in the drawing. Within minutes, he drifted asleep.
Instead of hanging out with Jeff and Tommy, he decided to spend the weekend at his dad’s. On Saturday afternoon, while they were playing catch in the front yard, Mr. Daley invited Zobby to join. When Mr. Daley went inside to get some drinks, Drew considered asking Zobby for advice about Trevor but decided against it. He knew he could trust her to keep the secret, but he felt like he would betray Jeff by letting anyone else in on it.
On Sunday, Drew and his dad finished up their volunteer work at Emerson Park. Over the summer, Mr. Daley had decided to help with a community project to renovate the old park. He was an architect’s apprentice. He once had an office job but found himself unsatisfied. About six years ago, before he and Penny divorced, he changed his career entirely, planning to one day become an architect.
Due to his architectural background, he was given the job of constructing the swing set, and he asked Drew to help. The two of them worked on building the swing set all summer long, and Drew even got to paint it after they finished. When they were at the park on Sunday, Drew snuck a peek under the tarp that was covering the swing set, and he was filled with mounting excitement for the reopening of the park at the upcoming Fall Festival.
The weekend with his dad was just what Drew needed to escape all the anxiety caused by the cheating incident. He went to school on Monday feeling refreshed. For the first time in almost two weeks, he was able to greet Jeff free of awkwardness.
“What’s up, man? How was your weekend?”
Jeff looked slightly surprised at the casual greeting. “Um, good. Me and Tommy and Caleb went to the mini golf course on Saturday. It was okay, even though Caleb acted like he was playing hockey instead of golf and we almost got kicked out.”
As the boys retrieved their books from their lockers, Drew saw Trevor lumbering toward Jeff with a big grin across his face.
“Hey, how was your weekend?” the burly bully asked Jeff.
“Uh, good.”
“Yeah, I had to study for this math test all weekend. I hate math. I’m way better in language arts. And you know I’m pretty bad in science sometimes, too,” Trevor said with what appeared to be a laugh. Surprisingly, his laugh was squeaky and high-pitched, the last thing Drew expected from a big tough guy.
Jeff forced an awkward laugh. “Ha, yeah, well, I gotta go. Almost time for homeroom.”
“All right, see ya, buddy,” said Trevor, and he gave him a hard pat on the back before departing. His big paw landed heavily between Jeff’s shoulder blades, causing him to stumble forward and nearly drop his books.
Now, having seen Trevor’s intimidation tactics firsthand, Drew felt even worse for Jeff than before. Something had to be done. He spent most of the morning drawing pictures in his notebook and trying to come up with ways to get Jeff out of this dilemma, but every solution seemed to lead to the same inevitable conclusion: the big bully pulverizing Jeff into a fine powder. By the time Drew go
t to science class, he couldn’t think of anything except that good-for-nothing Trevor, and how he was ruining his best friend’s life.
“Mr. Daley? I said Mr. Daley.” Mrs. Steinbeck had called on him, but he hadn’t even heard the question.
“Um …”
As Drew tried to stall, Trevor leaned back in his chair, stretched his huge, pasty arms as if yawning, then turned his head to cover his mouth with his shoulder as he whispered, “Condensation.”
“Uh, condensation?” said Drew.
“Correct. Now stop daydreaming and start taking notes,” said Mrs. Steinbeck, holding her glare on him for an extra second before moving on.
Drew and Jeff exchanged baffled glances. How could Trevor, the cheater, know that answer?
After class they ran to the cafeteria, shoveling down their meals so they could get outside to talk. Tommy had brought a basketball. Even though a pickup game was forming on the near court, the three boys traveled down to the far court for privacy.
“So, did you tell him my plan?” Tommy asked Jeff.
Jeff clearly didn’t like Tommy’s plan. “No, I didn’t get a chance. But I –”
“Come on, man,” Tommy interrupted. “It’s awesome. So listen to this, Drew. Jeff can’t tell Mrs. Steinbeck ‘cause then Trevor will pound him. He can’t tell his parents ‘cause his parents will tell Mrs. Steinbeck. And he can’t talk to Trevor ‘cause Trevor will just pound him and keep copying off him …”
Drew was impressed. It seemed like Tommy had contemplated the problem just as much as he had.
“So the best idea is to change seats,” Tommy continued. “That way no one knows Trevor was cheating, and Jeff don’t get his face rearranged.”
Drew ran that idea through his head. “Yeah, maybe that’ll work.”
“No,” said Jeff, “wait for how I have to do this.”
“Yeah, well, the thing is, we always gotta sit in the assigned seats Mrs. Steinbeck gave us, right?”
“Right.”
“Yeah,” said Tommy, “so all he has to do is tell Mrs. Steinbeck he needs a seat near the door ‘cause he got explosive diarrhea, so he might have to run to the bathroom at any second.” He was laughing so hard he could barely get the words out.
