Cheating Lessons: A Novel

by Nan Willard Cappo

  Mr. Malory leaned against the front of his desk. She caught a faint trace of almond spice scent. It was “Intrigue,” she knew, having sampled all the testers at Hudson’s cologne counter. They should need a license to sell it.

  “Certainly,” he said. “First, the NCS people score the answer sheets. The highest student becomes one hundred percent. Then the top five individual scores from each school are calculated as a percentage of that single score.”

  Bizarre. “You mean, say I got an eighty-five percent on the test—”

  “If that was the highest overall score, it would be calculated as one hundred percent.” He paused. He took off his glasses, and his eyes looked more gray than green. “In actual fact, you got an eight-seven percent. The highest score in the state.”

  “I did? Wow.” Bernadette couldn’t control her smile. She pulled her calculator from her back pocket and punched in some numbers. “So an eighty percent would be recorded as—eighty-seven into eighty—a ninety-two?”

  “Precisely.” He seemed pleased. “Wickham didn’t actually average ninety-two on the test. Our raw scores were simply normalized to that.”

  The whole process seemed a roundabout way for a computer company to proceed, Bernadette said. Not that she wasn’t tickled to death to have won—

  “Let’s consider it from their perspective.” Mr. Malory leaned back as though there were nowhere he’d rather be. “NSC wants people to talk about how rugged their test is. You think those bogus scholars at Pinehurst weren’t sweating it out? Do you think any school, no matter how much shrubbery it plants, could cover all the material?”

  “It is a pretty school, isn’t it,” Bernadette said pensively. At debate tournaments Pinehurst hosted, she and Nadine had privately exclaimed at the putting-green-luxury of the campus. Bleachers with awnings. Cobblestone walkways. Bathrooms with working tampon machines. “I wouldn’t mind some of that fanciness at Wickham.”

  “No, no. That’s the beauty of this win, Bernadette, don’t you see?” He had that “Oh, you Americans” tone as he chopped the air with one hand. “It proves that you don’t need minor Impressionists hanging in the hallways, so-called experts in Elizabethan drama, students dressed like an army of plums. What counts is how well a school fosters its students’ natural competitiveness.”

  She loved how he said her name. “You think so?”

  “Of course.” He looked straight at her and inclined his head forward. Bernadette treasured his words in advance.

  “I’ve known since September that this was Wickham’s year.” He wouldn’t confide this to just anyone, she saw. “You and your friend Nadine have brains like sponges. It’s inspiring. And Anthony Cirillo is nobody’s fool, though he can show a maturity deficit at times. This team can have The Power, Bernadette. Just you wait.”

  She would wait. She would wait forever.

  He broke the spell then by glancing up at the classroom clock. Bernadette scooped up her books. She wanted to race out and memorize Goethe in the original German. To sleep with Greek myths under her pillow. To write sonnets better than Keats. “Ode to a Gray Shirt” sprang to mind.

  “You’re a good teacher, Mr. Malory,” she managed to say.

  His smile would have melted her retainer, except that she’d removed it before class. “I have good students, that’s the secret. Shall we adjourn to the cafeteria?”

  Nadine would freak. “Sure,” Bernadette said.

  He didn’t go so far as to eat with her, naturally. But he went through the line right behind her, which forced Bernadette to select her food with care.

  Finally she ordered chicken rice soup and crackers. The fare of someone interestingly frail, not a teenager who ate like a healthy lion.

  Mr. Malory walked off toward the teachers’ lounge while Bernadette scanned the room. Lori Besh’s eyes were popping, which made Bernadette grin. But where was Nadine? If she would only show herself, Bernadette would grovel on demand. Wait’ll her partner heard that they could have The Power.

  She gulped down her soup and got back in line for some real food. The stewed plums on ice made her think of Pinehurst’s blazers. Mr. Malory certainly had their number. She thought of something. During his brief time in America, when had Mr. Malory visited That School?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  … be wery careful o’ widders all your life …

  —Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

  In biology, the sight and smell of the formaldehyde-filled grass frog on the lab table caught Bernadette off-guard. She’d forgotten about today’s dissection.

  Breathing as lightly as she could, she cut into the little stomach just as an office runner came into the room. Bernadette Terrell was wanted at the principal’s office. Bernadette was out the door before Mr. Fodor finished giving the message. Of course her parents might have been killed in a car crash. But it was much more likely that some administrative mania for detail had uncovered an outdated tetanus shot. And meanwhile, no frog guts.

  Down at the office, Mrs. Standish had stepped out. It was she, apparently, who wanted to see Bernadette. While Bernadette waited, she looked on the bulletin board for the yellow NCS brochure, resolved to study the Scoring section this time instead of Prizes. But the brochure was gone.

  “Classics Contest? Isn’t it up on the board?” The secretary’s attention was split between dispensing change for the telephone to one boy while keeping a close watch on a pasty-faced girl who stared down at her own shoes as though they were a crystal ball.

  The girl hiccupped and swayed toward the wastebasket.

  “Oh, no you don’t, missy, you can just make it to the girls’ room—”

  Bernadette had seen enough stomach contents for one day. She backed out, turned, and ran smack into Mrs. Standish.

  The principal steadied her with a surprisingly strong grip. Bernadette shifted into respectful principal-mode. “I’m awfully sorry, Mrs. Standish. Are you all right?”

  From behind them came unmistakable sounds of gastric distress. “Fine, fine. Oh, dear. Let’s just use the other door . . . .” Mrs. Standish steered Bernadette out the main door and around the corner, to where a hallway led past the guidance counselors’ rooms and back to the principal’s private domain. “Don’t spare the Lysol, Katherine,” she called into the reception area as she ushered Bernadette inside. She closed the door firmly behind them.

  “Have a seat, dear. Just let me see . . .” Mrs. Standish settled herself behind her desk and picked up a manila folder on which Bernadette could read her own name. Maybe she had won another award.

  While Mrs. Standish fussed with papers, Bernadette looked around. She’d never been back here before. On the desk was a framed photograph of—she craned forward—a kindly looking gray-haired man in a suit and tie. Mr. Spic ‘n’ Span, she presumed. On the wall to her right hung a framed blowup of a cartoon from Wickham’s student paper, the Warrior Cry. Bernadette recognized David Minor’s handiwork and smiled. The cartoon showed a castle wall with turrets and WICKHAM scrolled in an ornate arch. On the ramparts helmeted warriors (labeled HALL MONITORS) poured cauldrons of lye and boiling water down upon giant germs on horseback, who screamed “AAARGH!” in capital letters and waved swords in their tentacles. A crowned Queen of Clean beamed from a tower window. The caption read: “Soap and Water: Stop the Filth!” Bernadette was a little surprised to see it there. Spic ‘n’ Span must have a sense of humor after all.

  “Is it Bernadine Terr·ell or Terr·ell?” Mrs. Standish asked.

  “Terr·ell. Bernadette Terrell.”

  “Terr·ELL,” Mrs. Standish murmured, making a note. “I don’t get to know the students the way I did when I was teaching.” She looked up. “I taught business typing for twenty years, did you know that? Of course,” she added, as though anxious to establish her academic credentials, “I can teach English, too. I always pitched in on Silas Marner during flu season.”

  Bernadette smiled politely. If there weren’t going to be refreshments she’d just as so
on get to the point.

  Mrs. Standish clasped her hands together on the desk. “Is there anything you want to tell me, dear?” she asked, with the resolutely unshockable air of some social workers and homicide detectives.

  “Pardon?”

  “Anything you want to confide in me? About the NCS Classics Contest, you know. Any concerns, any worries—about the scoring, for instance?” She began to doodle with her pen, at the same time shooting sharp little glances across the desk.

  Ms. K.! It could only have been her. “Oh, that! At first I was a little surprised to hear we had such high scores. Not everyone in my class is . . . a big reader, I guess you could say. But then Mr. Malory explained it to me.”

  The pen stopped in mid-doodle. “Mr. Malory explained it?”

  “Uh-huh. About how they normalize the scores.” The principal looked at her in mystification. “You might call it, percentaging?”

  “Percentaging. Oh, right. Good, good.” Mrs. Standish scratched behind her ear with her pen. “How do they do it? I’ve always been unclear on that myself.”

  This surprised Bernadette, who had just assumed a principal would know these things, but she obligingly went through the arithmetic lesson she’d heard two hours ago. When she finished, Mrs. Standish was wearing a frown of concentration. “So that’s how it’s done! Thank you, dear. You have a gift for explaining things. And I’m glad you did, in case someone at the next school-board meeting asks about it.” She pushed off with one hand, spun her chair completely around very fast, and came to rest in the exact position as a second before. Seriously she asked, “So you’re comfortable now with all aspects of this competition? No lingering suspicion that anyone might have, oh, made a mistake? Notified the wrong school? Cheated, anything like that?”

  Bernadette was trying to convince herself she’d seen that chair spin thing. “No, no problems. I’m fine.”

  “Because I want every single Wizard ready to work. You wouldn’t believe how people are reacting to this, Bernadette. The superintendent has called twice to make sure I’m taking this seriously. I told him he doesn’t need to worry! And two parents who work for NCS called to say how pleased they are that their child’s school has a team in the Bowl. They said it looks very good for them at work. And—I loved this—one of the admissions staff at Michigan State told us just this week that she’d never realized Wickham was a private school!” She chortled, and this time Bernadette’s smile was genuine. That was funny. Mrs. Standish gave a sharp bark of laughter. “Ha! Private school!” She arranged her face more solemnly. “Now, then. What is it Coach Finley tells his players? ‘Kick butt’? How about if you and your teammates go in front of those TV cameras and kick Pinehurst’s butt!” Another chortle escaped her, and again she spun her chair around. “Or butts, I should say. Private school! What do you think about that?”

  Bernadette thought Wickham had a principal with a few screws loose. “That’s a good one, all right. I’d better get back to class now, Mrs. Standish.” There was something odd about this whole interview. Bernadette welcomed the chance to ponder it over a dead frog.

  On the way out to the bus, she heard girls’ voices floating from the gym.

  “Come on, Warriors, go! Go! Left, right, ready, GO!”

  Bernadette peeked in the open doors. The varsity pompon squad—as opposed to the j.v., she loved that they had a farm team for pompon—posed in a pyramid in front of the empty bleachers, big green W’s blazing from their chests. Lori Besh stood like smiling steel on the bottom row while two squad-mates ground their sneakers into her shoulders.

  Bernadette imagined that weight pressing into her own neck, and tensed. She exhaled very slowly. The group went through some routines, moving with a polish and precision which even she recognized as top-notch. She could not mock their work ethic. She thought of the Governor’s All-Star Pompon Competition which Lori had dumped like it had fleas, and said a word even easy-going Joe Terrell would have washed her mouth out for.

  This Bowl thing was getting complicated.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Do I contradict myself?

  Very well then I contradict myself,

  (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

  —Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

  “ ‘Kick butts. Can you imagine? I don’t believe she ever taught English. Unless it was English slang for immigrants.” Bernadette blew into her Styrofoam cup. The coffee was too hot to sip even if she’d wanted to, which she didn’t especially. Coffee repelled her. But it was so adult. Nadine was the one who’d been hungry. Bernadette was so relieved that Nadine was speaking to her again—her partner’s triumph at cutting biology without getting caught had made her forget she was mad at Bernadette—that when Nadine intercepted her at the bus line and suggested they stop at McDonald’s, Bernadette had agreed readily.

  Across the booth from her, Nadine wielded a plastic knife with the skill of a surgeon as she removed batter-fried coating from her fish fillet. “Maybe instead of Washington Square, she taught Washington Butt.”

  “Yeah. Or David Copperbutt.”

  “Tess of the D’Urberbutts.”

  “Moby Butt.” Bernadette considered that. It was actually an improvement.

  “I hate to break this to you, but lots of people say ‘butt.’ ”

  “Oh, I know that. But it’s crude. And from a principal!” Bernadette shuddered, and gingerly tested her coffee with her fingertip. She poured in another creamer. “Though she wasn’t as bad as people say—she didn’t make me take my shoes off at the door like I thought. But don’t you think it’s strange she’d call me down to her office just to make sure I was ‘comfortable’? It was like she was afraid I did see something suspicious. Like it was her duty to check it out, but she hoped to God there was nothing to it.”

  Nadine saw nothing strange about it. “It shows she’s paying attention.”

  “Oh, she’s paying attention. You should have heard her crowing over someone thinking we were a private school. I think it made her year. Us winning the Bowl might just unhinge her altogether.” Bernadette pictured Spic ‘n’ Span spiraling into the sky in her swivel chair.

  “She has a lot riding on this,” Nadine said. “My dad told us she’s still paying off medical bills from when her husband died. He had a brain tumor. They tried all kinds of cures—I think they even went to Mexico—but the insurance didn’t pay for everything.”

  Bernadette paused in midchew. “I didn’t know that.” A vision forced itself into her mind of Spic ‘n’ Span sitting in an antiseptic kitchen late at night, calculating how long she had to live. What a year, a month, would cost. A mangy dog at her feet, a cup of cold tea at her elbow. A man’s old suits and wide neckties all tagged for a garage sale . . . . She sipped her coffee and grimaced. Her next sentence surprised even herself. “I don’t suppose it’s possible she cheated?”

  Nadine regarded her with pity. “Bet, give it up. How’s she supposed to have cheated?”

  “Don’t laugh. But the tests went to the office to be picked up by Federal Express. They would have been there long enough for her to change our answers.” The more Bernadette thought about it, the more sense this theory made. It would certainly explain how Lori and David had achieved that out-of-character spurt of brilliance. “It’s like that picture puzzle of the old woman and the vase. You look at it one way, and Spic ‘n’ Span is just doing her job; close the other eye, and she’s trying to find out if I’ll blow the whistle on a fraud she cooked up to weasel money out of the school board. It’s like Sarah Sloan always says—half the time you don’t know who the bad guys are until they tip their hand.”

  “Sorry,” Nadine said, not sounding sorry. “But I can only see it the first way, no matter how many eyes I close. Hey, not to change the subject, but do you see that guy behind the counter? Don’t turn around! With the really cute—”

  “You know what?” Bernadette slapped the tabletop. “I must be crazy. Spic ‘n’ Span is so weird, it’s a wonder she rememb
ers where her office is. She couldn’t have changed our tests in cold-blood. You’re right. Forget I mentioned it. The important thing now is to clobber Pinehurst.”

  Nadine pulled her gaze away from the cashiers behind the counter. “You mean you’re prepared to kick butt?”

  Bernadette flinched. Then saw that Nadine was laughing. “You could say that.” She reached for a French fry and knocked over her nearly full cup of coffee. The milky liquid raced toward Nadine.

  “Eee-you!” Nadine scrambled out of the booth.

  “Sorry, sorry, oh, dammit . . . .” Bernadette grabbed the lone napkin and tried to mop up the puddle, but it was like using a Q-tip to soak up a river.

  A McDonald’s worker materialized from nowhere.

  “Thanks.” She accepted his fistful of napkins and waited for him to leave.

  He didn’t. “Hey. My brother’s in your English class,” he announced, as though delivering good news. “You know, Anthony?” When he smiled his teeth flashed white against a fresh olive complexion. He could have stepped out of a TV commercial. Bernadette read his name tag: ASST. MGR. VINCE CIRILLO.

  She gaped at Nadine, who was not looking at her. McAss had a brother?

  Asst. Mgr. Vince took the soggy napkins and stuffed them in the trash can, talking the whole time. “Man, Anthony’s all hyped about that book thing with Pinehurst. I hope your team smashes them. If you’re in the market, I know a guy giving three to two.”

  Bernadette’s forehead creased.

  “On Wickham,” he added helpfully.

  Nadine came out of her trance. “You mean, like, a bookie?”

  Her rough voice seemed to fascinate him. “You got it. But the minimum bet’s twenty.” He shouted over the counter for a fresh coffee, then looked at their baffled faces. “Dollars, that is. In case you’re thinking pesos.”

  Oh, joy. Another Cirillo smart aleck. He did look like Anthony, in a way, tall and athletic, with the black curly hair Nadine had already noticed. But Vince was clearly older, with an air of worldliness Anthony lacked. He had a crooked wise-guy smile some people might find attractive.