Social Suicide Read Free Page B

periods a day.
    “Have a seat,” he said, indicating a desk in the front row.
    I did, pulling out a micro-recorder from my book bag.
    “What’s that?” Mr. Tipkins asked.
    “Recorder. Just so I don’t forget any important points.”
    He frowned. “What’s wrong with taking notes? Your hand broken or something?”
    “Um. No. I just . . . This is easier.”
    He narrowed his eyes at me. “Easier. God, technology has made your generation so lazy.”
    I cleared my throat, not sure I had a response for that. Instead, I put my recorder away and took out a piece of binder paper and a pen.
    “Um, I wanted to talk to you about Sydney Sanders.”
    He nodded. “Another lazy kid.”
    “You caught Sydney cheating, correct?”
    Mr. Tipkins nodded again. “That’s right. She thought she was so clever. Can you believe she actually tried to tell me it was just the current fashion to paint letters on your fingernails?”
    I grinned, making sure I wrote that quote down. “So, she tried to deny it?”
    “‘Tried’ being the key word,” Mr. Tipkins emphasized. “Poor thing’s about as sharp as a sphere.”
    I blinked at him.
    “Because a sphere is completely round without any angles or edges?”
    I nodded. I knew. It was just the first time I’d heard geometry used in a simile. “So you caught Sydney, and she tried to deny it. At what point did you realize that Quinn was involved as well?”
    “About the time we hauled Sydney down to the vice principal’s office. When her parents showed up, she said the whole thing had been Quinn’s idea.”
    I raised an eyebrow. Ouch. Giving up your best friend like that was cold. “And did you confront Quinn?”
    He nodded. “Sure did. When I told her Sydney gave her up, she was about as discreet as a set of real numbers.”
    I wasn’t sure how discreet numbers could be, let alone fake versus real, but I thought I got the gist. “She confessed?”
    He nodded. “She said that it was her idea, but that Sydney had gotten the actual answers and painted both their nails with the letters.”
    “How did she get the answers?”
    Mr. Tipkins threw his hands up. “How should I know?”
    “They didn’t say?”
    He shook his head. “No. They wouldn’t tell us how they obtained the answers, so they were both suspended and the administration is looking into it.” He leaned in. “Honestly? We’ll probably never know.”
    Not necessarily. In fact, I hoped to answer that very question this afternoon when I talked to Sydney.
    “Tell me about the test,” I said, switching gears. “How hard would it be for Sydney to steal the answers?”
    “Very. I have four different exams for each section we study. I rotate them every four years, so that no student is ever taking a test that anyone else on campus has ever taken. Meaning no upperclassmen can give answers to lowerclassmen. No test ever goes home, even corrected ones. Before the start of every exam, all cell phones are collected to prevent anyone texting answers across the room. I tell you, I spend more time trying to make test answers secure than I do teaching.”
    I bit my lip. I had to agree he’d devised a pretty good system. “Where are the tests kept?”
    “Cabinet.” He pointed to a gunmetal gray file cabinet beside the whiteboard. “And I keep it locked whenever I leave the room.”
    I glanced at the thing. It looked about as old as Mr. Tipkins’s cords. I was no expert, but I had a feeling that anyone with a paper clip could break into that thing. Add to that the fact that most classroom doors were left unlocked, and it was hardly Fort Knox in here.
    “Are there any other copies?” I asked.
    “A master copy is kept in the teachers’ lounge, but,” he added, wagging a finger at me, “only teachers have access to the lounge. There’s no way a student could have slipped in there unnoticed.”
    This I knew for a fact. Teachers guarded the lounge, their one student-free haven, more heavily than the secret service