Cheat

by Kristin Butcher

  If kids were cheating in my math class, I had no doubt it was happening in other classes too. I’d stumbled on a real issue—one that a lot of kids probably didn’t even know existed. If the editor at the Islander liked my last article, he was going to love this one.

  I was at the dentist when the paper went on sale, and lunch hour was over when I got back to school. I snuck into the math room as quietly as I could and handed Mrs. Abernathy my late slip. Then I turned to take my seat and stopped. Everybody was glaring at me.

  They weren’t just frowning because I’d disturbed them. They were totally telling me off with their eyes.

  I wanted to run. It took all my willpower to walk to my desk and pretend everything was normal. I sat down, opened my books and made a big production of getting to work. It didn’t help. I still felt every pair of eyes in the room—except maybe Mrs. Abernathy’s—shooting death rays at me.

  But why?

  Jarod Bailey got up to sharpen his pencil. As he walked past, he dropped something on my desk and muttered, “Traitor.”

  I looked down. There was a copy of the school paper with a big black X through my story.

  My mouth went dry, and my stomach did a flip. Apparently I’d gone from hero to villain.

  “I don’t get it,” I complained to Tara and Liz as we walked home after school. “Everybody in my math class hates me! You should’ve seen the looks on their faces. Except for Jarod, not a single person spoke to me—nobody. And when the bell rang, the whole class took off like I had the plague.”

  Liz snorted and shifted the books she was carrying to the other arm. “What were you expecting? A ticker-tape parade?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tara clucked her tongue. “Think about it, Laurel. You just ratted out your class.”

  “I did not!” I protested. “I didn’t say who the cheaters were. I just wrote what they did.”

  Tara and Liz didn’t look convinced.

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “I can understand why Jarod and Dale would be mad at me. They won’t be able to cheat anymore. From now on, Mrs. Abernathy is going to be watching everybody like a hawk.” My forehead buckled into a frown. “But why are the other kids mad?”

  Tara rolled her eyes. “Because Mrs. Abernathy is going to be watching everybody like a hawk?”

  “So?”

  “So that means everyone is a suspect.

  Everyone except you, that is.”

  As Tara’s words sank in, I said, “Oh. I never thought about it like that.”

  It was true. Not for a second had I considered that I was putting my classmates under a microscope.

  Liz shifted her books again. “Why did you write that article, anyway?”

  I blinked in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Liz shook her head.

  “Liz!” I said. “Kids were cheating!”

  All she did was shrug.

  I couldn’t believe it. “Liz!” I exclaimed again.

  “Oh, Laurel, take a pill,” Tara said. “It’s not like somebody robbed a bank.”

  “Yeah, it is,” I argued. “Dishonesty is dishonesty. People who cheat on a test are the same kind of people who’d rob a bank.”

  “Oh, please,” said Tara. “You’ve never copied an answer off someone else’s paper?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Like I believe you,” Tara snorted. “Everybody cheats.”

  I shook my head again. “Not everybody. I don’t.” I gestured toward Liz. “Liz doesn’t.”

  I didn’t know that for sure, but it was a pretty safe guess. Liz is the smartest kid I know. If teachers don’t give her homework, she makes up her own. In all the years I’ve known her—and we go back to fifth grade—I have never seen her leave school without a stack of books.

  I was shocked when she said, “Well, no, I’ve never copied someone else’s answers—luckily, I’ve never had to. But I have let kids copy mine. Not very often,” she said, “but when I know somebody needs a little help.”

  “That’s not help!” I protested. “It’s cheating!”

  To my surprise, she grinned. “Oh, come on, Laurel. Lighten up. It’s not a big deal. So somebody gets a couple of extra marks on a test. So what? It isn’t going to stop the world from spinning. It might save a kid from getting grounded or cut from a team though.”

  “I can’t believe what you’re saying.”

  “Why?” asked Liz.

  “Because you’re smart. You’re going to be a doctor or a lawyer or the prime minister or something. Why would you help kids cheat?”

  Liz just sighed. “Because it doesn’t matter. What happens at school only matters at school. The real world doesn’t care.”

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised by my friends’ attitudes. I thought I was doing a good deed by writing that article. But nobody else saw it that way.

  When I asked Jack what he thought, he said I was overreacting too. Was I the only person at Barton High who knew the difference between right and wrong? Or were Liz and Tara and Jack right? Was I getting all bent out of shape over nothing?

  I had to find out. And I knew just how to do it.

  It took a bit of pleading to convince the editor of the school paper, but finally he agreed to let me run a survey on cheating in the next issue.

  Monday morning I headed straight for the newspaper office. Through the window of the door I saw strips of paper strewn on the floor below the mail slot. Yes! Kids had filled out the survey. I let myself in. I didn’t bother to move the survey slips to a table. I just flopped down on the floor in the middle of the mess.

  I organized them into piles. The results were pretty discouraging. The box most often checked was Not Concerned. A few students selected Slightly Concerned. There were several Unaware of Cheating responses too. Only a couple of people checked off Very Concerned.

  A lot of kids wrote comments. Most of them were less than friendly. Get a life! Who cares? Don’t be a troublemaker were some of the kinder ones.

  I sighed. This was not going the way I’d hoped. Then I saw it. It was a strip just like the others, except no box had been ticked. Instead, scrawled across it in red felt marker were the words DRAPER’S SCANTRON TESTS. BIG-TIME SCAM.

  Chapter Five

  I’d heard of Mr. Draper, but I didn’t know anything about him. It’s funny how that works. Unless teachers are standing in a classroom, you don’t notice them. I’d probably passed the guy in the hall a hundred times, but I couldn’t even tell you what he looked like. All I knew was that he taught grade-twelve math and biology. And the only reason I knew that much was because I asked around.

  My informant had said a major cheating scam was going on in Draper’s classes. Probably a lot of people were involved. The scam had something to do with the Scantron tests—those fill-in-the-bubble sheets. Scantron tests were marked by machine, so there had to be answer keys around somewhere. My guess was that someone had found them and made copies.

  But I was only guessing. I had no evidence, and I couldn’t write a news story based on an accusation scribbled on a scrap of paper. The Islander would never print it. I needed to prove the kids in Draper’s classes were cheating.

  Then BAM! It came to me. Their grades, of course. The cheaters should have better marks than the kids in the other classes.

  It was a good theory, but once again I needed proof. Getting it was going to be a challenge. I couldn’t go around asking kids to tell me their grades, and there was no way teachers would let me snoop through their mark books.

  Wait a minute. What about the office? The marks of every single kid in the school had to be on computer. I couldn’t walk in and print the marks off, but if I said I needed them for a story, I might be able to convince the principal to give them to me. But what kind of story would mean I had to look at student records?

  I considered asking Jack’s advice, but there was no point. He was too obsessed with choosing a basketball scholarship. He kept waffling
back and forth, bouncing his arguments off anybody who’d listen. All he could talk about was which university he should choose.

  Wait a minute, that was it—university. I would say I was writing an article about the connection between grades and university placement.

  I decided to run my idea past Tara. “Forget this scam,” she said. “I bet you anything it’s a hoax. Some kid probably made it up to send you on a wild-goose chase. I say go with the university placement thing. It would make a good article—if you can get the office to give you the records.” It sounded like Tara didn’t think I could.

  “Mr. Wiens isn’t going to give me records with kids’ names—I know that,” I conceded, “but he might give me a breakdown of marks by subject.”

  “What good will that do?” Tara asked. “If you don’t know who the marks belong to, how are you going to figure out who their teachers are?”

  I waved away Tara’s objection. “I’ll make up a reason to get class lists too.”

  She frowned. “How is that going to help?”

  “Easy.” I grinned. “The student records will be in alphabetical order. I’ll simply combine the class lists into one huge list also in alphabetical order. Then I’ll match the two up and bingo! I’ll know who is getting what mark, and I’ll know what class they’re in.”

  Tara opened her mouth to say something, but all that came out was a squeak. I wasn’t sure if she was impressed with my brilliance or shocked by my sneakiness.

  Even though I’d had all the answers for Tara, I knew Mr. Wiens would be harder to convince. But it was worth a try, so on Tuesday I made an appointment to meet with him after school. I spent the last period, English class, planning what I was going to say.

  I was only in Mr. Weins’s office five minutes, but it felt like an hour. I’m not very good at lying—lack of practice, I guess—so I was really nervous. A hot river of perspiration started running down my back the second I sat down. By the time I stood up again, my T-shirt was pasted to my back.

  Mr. Wiens didn’t say much. Mostly he just leaned back in his chair, made a tent of his fingers and nodded. So I just kept talking. When it was over, I couldn’t remember a thing I’d said.

  I must have made a few good points though, because the next afternoon he called me back to his office and handed over everything I’d asked for.

  “Barton students have an impressive history,” he said, placing the papers inside a file folder. “Statistics indicate that about thirty-three percent of Canadian high school graduates continue on to university. Barton High is well above the national average. Last year thirty-nine percent of our graduates were university-bound. I expect that number to be even higher this year.”

  He pulled one of the papers from the folder and showed it to me. “You didn’t ask for this, but I thought it might be helpful,” he said. “This is a comparison of last year’s grade-twelve marks and this year’s. As you can see, math and biology averages are significantly improved.”

  That made sense. If kids were cheating in those subjects, averages would go up. Of course, I didn’t say that to Mr. Wiens. I just nodded and mumbled, “That’s very interesting.”

  He stuck the paper back in the folder and handed it to me. “I hope this helps you with your story, Laurel. I look forward to reading it.”

  Inside, I cringed. Why did he have to say that? Now I felt like I really had to write the article.

  I forced a smile. “Thanks, Mr. Wiens.

  I’m sure this information is going to be a big help.”

  It was the truth, in a roundabout way. It might help me get to the bottom of the scam. I felt a little guilty about misleading Mr. Wiens though. But being a reporter meant digging, and that could be dirty. If it meant uncovering the truth, it was worth it.

  As I left the office, I spotted Jack slouched against a wall of lockers. He was talking with Sean. I could only see Sean’s back, but I had no doubt who it was. I’d recognize his back anywhere.

  I started toward the two of them but had only taken a few steps when Jack banged his fist on the locker and growled, “Forget it!”

  I stopped walking.

  “No.” He pushed himself away from the lockers and got right into Sean’s face. “Not again.”

  He was obviously angry, and from the way Sean kept clenching and unclenching his fists, I could tell he was too.

  What was going on? Jack and Sean never argued. I held my breath. Then suddenly Jack shrugged, and the tension seemed to leave his body. He said something I didn’t hear, and Sean looked over his shoulder in my direction.

  Sean faked a smile and waved. “Hey, Laurel,” he said. Then he turned and jogged off down the hall.

  I walked over to Jack. “What was all that about? You guys looked like you were getting ready to punch each other’s lights out.”

  Jack shrugged. “Don’t exaggerate. We were just having a difference of opinion about a play Sean wants to run. It’s no big deal. See you at home.”

  Then Jack took off too.

  Chapter Six

  My original plan was to study the information Mr. Wiens had given me in the privacy of my bedroom. But once the file folder was in my hands, I couldn’t wait. I needed answers right away.

  The school had pretty much cleared out. I slipped into an empty classroom and spread the papers on top of a couple of desks. There were about two hundred grade-twelve students at our school. It would take forever to make a master list, so I settled for a mini-list of math students whose names started with A, B, and C. I hoped it would be enough to tell if there was a pattern to the marks.

  Mr. Draper taught the only grade-twelve biology classes, so I didn’t have to bother combining lists for that subject. If my informant was correct, kids in those classes were cheating. Not a single student was failing biology. That confirmed that at least some of them were cheating.

  I was still surprised by the marks. I had expected them to be higher. There were a few As and Bs, but there were also a bunch of Cs and even a couple of Ds. If kids were cheating, the marks should have been better.

  Unless the cheating scam hadn’t been going on very long.

  Of course! That had to be it. Students had probably only messed with one or two tests. It would take more than a couple of tests to bring course marks up a couple of letter grades.

  I decided to check out Mr. Draper’s classroom. I had no idea what it was going to tell me—maybe nothing. It didn’t really matter. I needed to get a feel for the scene of the crime.

  Mr. Draper taught math in room 132, which was connected to the biology lab by a small office. When I got there, the door was closed. I peered through the window. The classroom was empty. I knocked. Nothing. I grabbed the doorknob and turned, fully expecting it to resist. But the room wasn’t locked.

  “Mr. Draper?” I called as I pushed open the door.

  My words hit the walls and slid to the floor. Mr. Draper wasn’t there. This was good, because if he’d answered me, I would have peed my pants. I took a deep breath, peered up and down the hall and tiptoed into the room.

  It was just another grungy, end-ofthe-day classroom. There were scraps of paper on desktops and crumpled paper balls on the floor. Beneath my runners, I felt the accumulated grit of eight periods of kids tracking in dirt. The whiteboard was filled with math equations in red, blue and green marker.

  Mr. Draper’s desk at the front of the room was heaped with textbooks and binders. There was one dinky little corner where a coffee-stained mug and a tin can of pencils clung to the edge. I wondered how many times Mr. Draper had gone for a gulp of coffee and ended up with a mouthful of pencils.

  Across from me was a wall of windows with the blinds pulled down— probably to keep kids from looking outside. Teachers are always shutting out the day. It makes you wonder why they bother putting windows in classrooms in the first place. Between the windows and Mr. Draper’s desk was a filing cabinet.

  I tiptoed past the desk to check out the glass-walled office. Cupping my hands a
round my eyes to cut out the glare, I squinted through the glass. The only furniture was a chair, another filing cabinet and another desk mounded with books and papers. On the far wall, a second door opened into the biology lab.

  I tried the doorknob. This door was locked. Was the answer key in there?

  I wandered around the classroom. There wasn’t a lot to see except a notice on the corner of the whiteboard announcing an upcoming test. Another opportunity for the cheating scam to kick in? I made a mental note of the date.

  Even though I was skulking in a strange classroom uninvited, I couldn’t bring myself to snoop through Mr. Draper’s desk. When I’d learned as much as I could from walking around— which was almost nothing—I decided to leave. As I headed back to the door, I heard footsteps in the hall. They were close—and getting closer—

  I looked for a hiding place. I didn’t want to have to explain to anyone what I was doing there—not even the custodian. Whoever was out in the corridor might walk right on by, but I didn’t want to take the chance.

  The only cover was the filing cabinet. I squeezed in between it and the wall of windows. I had to scrunch down so that my head didn’t show.

  Right away, I regretted my choice. I’m not good in small spaces. Being wedged into a crevice barely big enough to hold a flip chart—which was already there—felt more than a little cramped. My arms and legs were going in different directions. I felt like one of those distorted figures in an ancient Egyptian painting.

  Then, suddenly, I wasn’t alone. I heard the soft padding of feet followed by the scraping of wood on wood. There was a jangling noise and then more footsteps.

  Was it Mr. Draper? I wished I could see. I needed to move, but I didn’t dare. My legs were aching with the strain of crouching. My arms felt like they’d been shoved into their sockets backward. The more I thought about how uncomfortable I was, the worse I felt. If I didn’t distract myself, I was going to go nuts. I pictured myself jumping out of my hiding spot like a jack-in-the-box.

  I shut my eyes to make the image go away. I forced myself to focus on the sounds. I heard the jingling noise again. Keys! Whoever was in the room unlocked the door to the little office. The keys must have been in the desk—that was the wood-on-wood scraping I heard. Then there was a metallic rolling sound.