Careful not to turn his head, Karl swivels his eyeballs all the way to the right, far enough to see Ivan at the end of the row. Ivan seems to have suffered an attack of premature rigor mortis.
“In order to stop you, we’re going to have to get tough. You leave us no alternative. If your generation understood the meaning of honor, things would be different, but the word seems to have fallen out of use. Can anyone here define it? Can you, Mr. Fretz?”
Corpses can’t speak, and neither can Ivan.
“I thought not. And so, we fall back on the old methods. Reward and punishment, the carrot and the stick. Each has its adherents. Which way do you think I lean? Mr. Fretz? Care to guess?”
Eyeballs straining painfully sideways, Karl detects movement on Ivan’s face: his lower lip is trembling.
“Rhetorical question, no need to answer. So, let’s get down to business. You cheat, because honor means nothing to you. All right. Now you’re caught. (Isn’t it sad? After all these years in school, you still haven’t learned that we can see you from the front of the room.) You cheat. You’re caught. What shall we do with you? What do they do at other schools? I’ll tell you some of the options.” Here Mr. Klimchock, in his sober brown suit, raises his pitch to a namby-pamby drone. “’First offense, zero on the test. Second offense, course grade lowered. Third offense, fail the class, detention, community service, notify parents.’ What horse manure! Cut to the chase! Throw the criminals out and be done with it!”
The trembling has spread to Ivan’s entire head.
“As it happens, I’m not the expelling kind. I’ve got a different plan. Are you ready? If you cheat and get caught, a note will be attached to both your student record and your official transcript. You will NOT have the opportunity to expunge it. Every college you apply to will see this note. We’re pioneers here, in the war against cheating. Some would call the penalty harsh, but I say it’s only fair. Agreement? Disagreement?”
Silence has fallen on the auditorium-absolute, except for the faint buzz of the microphone.
“What will the admissions officer think when he sees a note, in bold type, saying, Ivan Fretz cheated during a Chemistry exam? Consider that the college has two thousand applications for five hundred slots, and this admissions officer is tired, very tired, his eyes are twitching from overwork. Well, you never know. He may be a generous, forgiving soul. Then again, let’s get real.”
The air in the auditorium has thickened to a paste of astonished horror. Even by the standards of Abraham Lincoln High, this speech strikes the students as outrageous, demented. Klimchock, it seems, has flipped his beany.
An anonymous student calls out, “April Fool,” although that was two days ago.
Mr. Klimchock doesn’t hunt down the offender, or even acknowledge the outburst.
“Please stand up, Mr. Fretz.”
Ivan stands, though not to his full height. He stays slightly bent, cowering-and that sight flips a switch in Karl’s brain. Not that Ivan is an admirable or even likable person, but old memories are seeping back, from the prekindergarten days when Karl used to go over to Ivan’s house to play, and his messy mom would serve them chocolate chip cookies at a jelly-smeared kitchen table already covered with crumbs, and one time Karl refused to interrupt a game of Candy Land to go pee and then it was too late and he wet his underwear and Mrs. Fretz lent him a clean pair of Ivan’s Batman briefs, and washed and dried Karl’s underwear before he went home, saying, “I won’t tell if you won’t tell.”
“You will serve as an example to the rest of the school, Mr. Fretz. You will have a note attached to both your record and your transcript. The next student caught cheating will have the same and will also be suspended. Welcome to the new zero tolerance policy. And, because I believe in positive reinforcement as well, anyone who reports a cheater will receive the Lincoln High School Honor Code Award- which, I admit, is just a certificate that I haven’t designed yet, but the words will look quite impressive on a college application.”
Ivan’s head has been dropping slowly, steadily. His upper body is now nearly horizontal, as if he were bowing to the assistant principal.
Karl wishes he could give Ivan the strength to stand tall, to walk out of the auditorium, place himself between the pillars at the front door and, like Samson, push them apart until the whole building collapses.
But no one can give Ivan that strength, and anyway, the pillars are too far apart. If this cruel school is to come tumbling down, someone will have to find a different way.
The tiles in the bathroom are supposed to evoke the blue Caribbean, but to Karl, they look more like the chlorine stain in his grandmother’s bathtub.
While he’s washing his hands, Blaine Shore appears behind him like a conscience angel. “Quite a guy, that Klimchock. He forgot to say, ‘Mwa-ah-ah.’”
Karl’s hands are shaking. He watches them as if they belonged to someone else.
Blaine wanders over to the stalls and taps his fingernails against the putty-colored steel, where a graffitist has written ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE-DO NOT DISTURB. “I just had to ask,” he says. “I know you said you wouldn’t mention what you saw, but I just wanted to make sure, since-“
“I’ll help you,” Karl croaks.
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.