Cheating Lessons: A Novel Read Free

Standish, knocked on the open classroom door. “May I interrupt you, Mr. Malory?” Her face was a mass of fine wrinkles all upturned at the moment in an inquiring smile.
    “Absolutely, Mrs. Standish. Always a pleasure.” Mr. Malory settled a hip on the edge of his desk and loosened his tie. More than one girlish moan was quickly converted into a cough.
    The principal opened her mouth to read from a paper in her hands as David Minor delivered himself of a truly impressive sneeze.
    Everyone waited expectantly. Would Mrs. Standish, a.k.a. Spic ‘n’ Span, send David to scrub his hands as she often did to students who disturbed the germ-free order of her school? Not today, it appeared. She ignored him.
    “Mr. Malory. Class. I’ve just heard some intriguing news from Dr. Genevieve Fontaine.” She gave the first name a French pronunciation, with a soft G, and looked over her paper at them. “Dr. Fontaine chairs the research committee of the National Computing Systems Classics Contest.”
    Mr. Malory’s foot stopped swinging.
    “Dr. Fontaine informs me that Pinehurst Academy”—she waited out the usual boos—“finished second in the Classics Contest this year with a score of eighty-five percent. A very good score on so challenging a test, I thought.”
    More boos. Nobody cared what Pinehurst did.
    A bizarre thought occurred to Bernadette, and her glance flew to her teacher. A tiny nerve under Mr. Malory’s left eye was jumping. His skin, always pale, gleamed damply paper-white.
    “ Wickham High School,” the principal continued, watching Mr. Malory now with arched eyebrows, “received . . . ninety-two percent. The highest score in Michigan!”
    She tried to hand Mr. Malory the paper, but he didn’t seem to see it. “You’re”—he swallowed—“you’re certain? They said Wickham?”
    Mrs. Standish gave a roguish laugh and stuffed the paper into his fingers. “Now don’t act so shocked, Mr. Malory. Your students might think you didn’t expect this of them.”
    Mr. Malory didn’t answer. He was reading.
    Nadine shattered the silence with a croaked, “We won ?”
    “We beat Pinehurst?”
    “Get out of here!”
    “We won!”
    “I don’t believe it!”
    “Oh, I knew we could!” That would be Lori. What a twit. Bernadette’s own mother wouldn’t have put money on them. Not to beat Pinehurst.
    Pandemonium reigned.
    Mrs. Standish folded her arms across her chest with all the pride of a coach at the Special Olympics and studied the ten students making the noise of fifty.
    Pinehurst students, it had been reported more than once in the Creighton Courier, studied to the strains of Mozart. Some of them spoke fluent Mandarin Chinese (and they weren’t Chinese). It was an off year when only one Pinehurst senior got into Harvard. This year the Panthers had wiped up the football field with the Warriors 42-6. At home. From sports to academics to faculty credentials, the private school dominated. Even Wickham dropouts knew enough to spit at the Pinehurst name. The only good thing about the place, as far as Bernadette was concerned, was the hideous purple blazer all its students had to wear. Served them right.
    Nadine’s fine black hair swung across her glasses as she pounded Bernadette’s shoulder. “We beat them! We beat Pinehurst, Bet!”
    Bernadette choked. “You know what this means? We’re gonna be on TV!”
    There was always a televised Classics Bowl matchup between the top two schools in the written Contest. Cable TV, but still. National Computing Systems (NCS), the Detroit-based company that sponsored the contest, promoted it heavily and awarded personal computers as prizes.
    Nadine gave a throaty cry. “The Classics Bowl! I forgot!”
    “Let’s go ask if we’re on the team.” Personally, Bernadette could not imagine Mr. Malory not choosing them.
    They joined the group of chattering students surrounding Mr. Malory, who looked as if he’d just heard Robert Browning’s poems had been ghosted