Cheat

by Kristin Butcher

  Jack’s eyes pleaded with me to understand. “Sean’s my friend. I had to help him.”

  “But it happened again.”

  He nodded.

  “How many times?”

  “One time after that, and then I told Sean I was done. No more. Basketball season was pretty much over, so there was no reason for him to cheat anymore.”

  “But—”

  “But he didn’t want to quit. He’s been hounding me to help him one last time. But I told him flat out—no. So he said he’d do it on his own.”

  Jack looked miserable.

  “So you gave in.”

  His head shot up. “No! I already feel like crud for helping him as much as I have. I won’t do it again. I can’t do it again.” He paused before adding, “And I can’t let him do it either.”

  He picked up the envelope and opened it.

  “When you saw me today in Draper’s office, I was switching the real answer key for a fake. If Sean tries to sell cheat sheets using that, everyone is going to fail, and he’ll be as good as dead.”

  “So now what?”

  “So now I call him and tell him he’s got the wrong answers.” He flopped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. “He is going to be so pissed off.”

  “Maybe,” I conceded, “but at least he won’t get in trouble.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The cheating scam was supposed to be my ticket to fame. It was a juicy scandal I could take to the editor of the Islander. With a reputation as an ace reporter, I would finally be recognized for me and not just as Jack Quinn’s little sister.

  All I cared about was the glory my article was going to win me. Jack was right about that. As long as the scammer was some faceless kid in school, everything was fine. I didn’t think about what would happen after I exposed him. I was even okay with the situation when I thought Sean was involved.

  But when I found out Jack was part of the scam too, things weren’t so black and white anymore. Jack had done a bad thing, but he wasn’t a bad person. And there was no way I was going to tell everyone at school—everyone in the city!—what he’d done. But to reveal only Sean’s part wouldn’t be fair either.

  So my story was dead.

  I still had to write an article though. So I wrote about me. Well, sort of. I wrote about the things I’d learned while chasing the story.

  I wrote about how everyone hated me after the first article on cheating. I said I thought I had a responsibility to report the story. But maybe all those kids who were mad at me had a point. I’d only been seeing the facts, not the people. I said that Jarod and Dale may have cheated—I still didn’t mention their names— but instead of seeing what they did as a crime, I now saw it as an act of friendship.

  I wrote how there is always more than one side to a story, and I apologized for judging others. Sometimes the reasons people do things are just as important as the things they do. And most important, I told my readers—if there were any left—that at the end of the day, we have to be able to live with ourselves. It wasn’t the article I’d planned to write. It was the one I needed to write. I worked on it for days.

  It didn’t erase the harm I’d done. It didn’t make kids start talking to me again, but I knew I had learned from my mistakes, and that was a start.

  The morning after the paper came out, there was another envelope waiting for me in the newspaper office.

  As soon as I started to read it, I knew it was from my informant. It said, I gave you the story on a platter, but you jammed out. You blew it.

  Great! Now my informant hated me too. Most people were mad at me for the stuff I’d written. This guy—I assumed it was a guy from the handwriting—was mad at me for what I hadn’t written.

  After morning announcements, Sean got hauled into the principal’s office. Apparently my informant had taken matters into his own hands. Since I wasn’t going to write about the scam, he had decided to go to Mr. Wiens himself. But he didn’t know about Jack’s involvement.

  Even though Sean was still mad at Jack, he never ratted him out. Sean could have denied his own part in the scam too—it was his word against another student’s—but he confessed everything.

  Sean got kicked out of Barton High and was transferred to another school. That meant he wasn’t going to graduate with the kids he’d known since kindergarten.

  What Sean had done was wrong, but it’s not like he was headed for a life of crime. He’d just had a weak moment. If I hadn’t put out that survey, no one would ever have found out. On the other hand, my informant might have gone to the principal anyway. There was no way of knowing, but I still felt like the situation was my fault.

  My conscience was bugging me, but it was nothing compared to what Jack was going through. I stopped by his room the day Sean got kicked out to see how he was doing.

  “It’s my fault!” he groaned as he paced his room. “If I’d stuck to my guns the first time, the whole thing would’ve died right then.”

  “You’ve got a very convenient memory, Jack,” I said drily. “Sean had spent the money before he even handed over the cheat sheets. Remember? If you hadn’t helped him, he would’ve got the crap beat out of him. Would that have made you feel better?”

  He sent me a withering glare and continued to pace. “Well, I should’ve done something,” he muttered. “Pay back the money maybe.”

  “Since when do you have that kind of cash?” I hooted. “Sean made six hundred dollars for one math test!”

  “I could’ve—”

  “Give it a rest, Jack,” I interrupted him. “This isn’t your fault. Sean knows that. Which is why he didn’t take you down with him.”

  Jack sank onto the bed. “It’s not right that he’s taking the fall for this alone.”

  “What possible good would it do for you to be in trouble too? It wouldn’t change anything for Sean.”

  “I know,” he said. “But it might change things for me. You said it yourself, Laurel. At the end of the day, we all have to be able to live with ourselves.”

  Jack confessed to Mom and Dad, and the next morning he told the whole story to Mr. Wiens.

  He was stretched out on his bed, staring at the ceiling when I knocked on his door after school.

  “So what happened?” I asked after he gave me the okay to come in.

  “I’m suspended.” He didn’t sound angry or even upset. It was just a statement of fact.

  “For how long?”

  “Two weeks. Mom and Dad also grounded me.”

  “Is that all?” I asked.

  Jack lifted his head and squinted at me. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “What I mean is, did you get transferred to another school too—like Sean?”

  He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “No. But Mr. Wiens made it crystal clear that if basketball wasn’t finished for the year, I’d be off the team.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that’s sort of lucky then. You couldn’t have been scouted by all those colleges if that had happened.”

  “Yeah, well maybe that would have been just as well. Then I wouldn’t have gotten my hopes up.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked warily. He smiled, but it was pretty pathetic. “Do you remember how Mr. Wiens and my coach sent out letters of recommendation to all the colleges that were recruiting me?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. So?”

  “Well, Mr. Wiens says that now he is obligated to let all those schools know what I did.”

  “Oh no,” I gasped. “Does that mean they’ll take back their scholarship offers?”

  Jack shrugged. “I don’t know. Mr. Wiens said he doesn’t view what I did as a morality issue so much as a lapse in judgment, and that’s how he plans to present it in his letter.”

  “That’s good—right?” I asked hopefully.

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged again. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

  I nodded. I felt empty—flat. Everything had gone so wrong. The big article t
hat was supposed to put me on the social map had done exactly the opposite. It had turned me into an outcast, ruined Sean’s and Jack’s reputations, strained their friendship and maybe even cost Jack his basketball future.

  Yeah, things had backfired all right. All I could do now was hope they’d improve. But like Jack said—we’d have to wait and see.

  Kristin Butcher is the author of numerous popular books for juveniles, including Chat Room in the Orca Currents series. She has never cheated on a test. Kristin lives in Campbell River, British Columbia.

  orca currents

  The following is an excerpt from

  another exciting Orca Currents novel,

  Chat Room by Kristin Butcher.

  When Linda’s high school sets up online chat rooms, she can’t resist the urge to visit them. Fueled by interest in a student with the nickname Cyrano, Linda participates in online conversations using the nickname Roxanne and gains a reputation as the queen of one-liners. Soon Linda starts receiving gifts from a secret admirer who signs his gifts “C.” She is certain that her life has taken a turn for the better until “C” reveals his true identity.

  Chapter One

  Back in elementary school, assemblies meant sitting on the floor. In high school things are different. Because we’re older now, we sit in actual chairs—at least that’s the theory. If you’re one of the first people into the gym, the system works fine. But I always arrive after every seat’s been taken. If there’s not a person sitting in it, it’s being saved for someone. Basically, it’s a school-wide version of musical chairs, and I’ve always sucked at that game.

  Take Friday’s assembly. The gym was packed as usual, but for once it looked like I was going to get lucky. There was an empty seat at the end of the third row. I would have preferred something a little farther back, but it was that or nothing. So I grabbed it.

  Unfortunately Janice saw me and started waving from the middle of the row. I wanted to pretend I didn’t see her, but I knew if I did she’d unleash that bullhorn voice of hers, and in two seconds I’d have every kid in school staring at me. So I bumped my way through the line of knees separating us and shriveled into the seat beside her.

  “What class are you missing?” Whispering wasn’t a skill Janice had ever learned, and, even though everyone around us was talking, her voice drowned them out.

  “Math,” I said, shrinking a little deeper into my chair. I intentionally avoided asking her what she was missing, but that didn’t stop Janice.

  “It’s biology for me. Thank God! If I had to miss band I’d be ticked, but I can definitely do without forty minutes of Bio-Bernstein droning on about reproduction. What have they dragged us in here for anyway?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. The gym riot maybe? There are posters about it up all over school.” I nodded toward a group of students huddled around the microphone. “It looks like student council’s running the assembly, so I bet that’s what it is.”

  Janice rolled her eyes and flopped back in her chair. “Oh, joy! Just what we need—another chance for Wellington High’s favored few to show off.”

  I wasn’t sure if Janice was referring to the gym riot or student council running the assembly. Probably both. She was against everything social.

  Janice Beastly was queen of the grumps. Her real name was Beasley, but she was so negative and in-your-face that everybody called her Beastly. It didn’t help that she was built like a wrestler with a voice to match. She didn’t have a lot of friends. None, actually, unless you counted me.

  Even that was only friendship by default. I didn’t like Janice any more than anyone else did, but when she showed up at the start of grade nine, she adopted me. And since her locker was right beside mine, I was stuck.

  Maybe I should have been grateful, because except for Janice, I don’t have many friends either. Not that people hate me. At least I don’t think they do. I’m just not part of any crowd.

  The microphone squealed.

  “Sorry about that,” said the boy standing in front of it. It was Marc Solomon, student council president and one of the most popular guys in school. He grinned. “But now that I have your attention, let’s get this party started. The first thing on today’s agenda is the big gym riot coming up next Friday.”

  Behind him the student council started clapping and cheering, and in a matter of seconds the audience joined in.

  Marc leaned into the mic. “That’s the spirit, Wellington!”

  “Oh, spare me,” Janice muttered.

  Marc held up his hands for quiet. “As always, the riot’s going to be a blast, and this year we’ve added a whole bunch of new events like tricycle basketball, egg toss and a chain-gang relay.”

  “What’s that?” someone hollered.

  Marc grinned again. “I’ll get to that. That and all the other details.” He turned and gestured toward a pretty blond girl standing behind him. She smiled and waved. “Thanks to our student council vice-president, the teachers have agreed to give us gym riot planning time,” he paused, “last period this afternoon.”

  “Hey, that’s my band class!” Janice protested, but her complaint was lost in the roar that erupted around us.

  When it got quiet again, Marc motioned for a boy in the front row to join him at the microphone. Hesitantly, the kid stood up. It was Chad Sharp. I recognized him from French class.

  “Right now, though, I want to tell you about a totally new and exciting feature that’s just been added to the school’s website.” Marc clapped Chad on the back. “And this guy here is the mastermind behind it. For those of you who don’t know him, let me introduce Chad Sharp.”

  There was a bit of applause, and Chad’s cheeks went red. I felt sorry for him. If I had to stand up in front of a thousand kids, I’d probably die.

  Marc gestured for Chad to take over the mic, but Chad shook his head.

  “A man of big ideas, but few words,” Marc said, resuming his spot in front of the microphone. “But that’s okay. The important thing is that thanks to Chad and the parent council, we now have a chat room on our school website.”

  An instant buzz spread through the gym.

  “You heard right.” Marc nodded. “A chat room. Actually, it’s lots of chat rooms. There’s something for everybody. If you want to compare notes about movies or music or the newest fads, you can visit The Hot Spot. For you athletic types, there’s a sports chat room. Want to talk about the stuff going on at school? Go to the Wellington Room. If you just need to let off steam, there’s a chat room for that too. There’s even a Homework Help chat room.”

  Excited pockets of chatter sprang up around the gym, and it took Marc a good minute to get everyone quiet again.

  “There will be some rules, of course,” he said. “This could be a really good thing, so we don’t want anybody messing it up.”

  “What kind of rules?” someone asked.

  “Well, for starters, only Wellington students will have access. Secondly, when you enter a chat room you have to use a nickname. And thirdly, you can’t gross out or talk about other students.”

  A hand went up. “If your identity is secret, how will anyone know if you’re breaking the rules?”

  “Good question,” Marc said. “The office will monitor the chat rooms.

  When you log on, you’ll exchange your student number and e-mail address for a nickname. No one will have access to your personal information except the site administrator—a.k.a. Mr. Barnes in computer science. To everyone online, you’ll be anonymous. But if you break the rules, the office will track you down and you’ll be toast. Any other questions?”

  Hands shot up all over the place.

  “This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Janice grumbled, making it impossible for me to hear the questions and answers. Even a glare from the girl in front of Janice didn’t shut her up. “I can’t believe the principal is going along with this lame idea. Chat rooms are nothing but hangouts for perverts. Anybody who visits them is asking for tro
uble.”

  Titles in the Series

  orca currents

  121 Express

  Monique Polak

  Bear Market

  Michele Martin Bossley

  The Big Dip

  Melanie Jackson

  Bio-pirate

  Michele Martin Bossley

  Blob

  Frieda Wishinsky

  Branded

  Eric Walters

  Camp Wild

  Pam Withers

  Chat Room

  Kristin Butcher

  Cheat

  Kristin Butcher

  Cracked

  Michele Martin Bossley

  Crossbow

  Dayle Campbell Gaetz

  Daredevil Club

  Pam Withers

  Dog Walker

  Karen Spafford-Fitz

  Explore

  Christy Goerzen

  Fast Slide

  Melanie Jackson

  Finding Elmo

  Monique Polak

  Flower Power

  Anne Walsh

  Fraud Squad

  Michele Martin Bossley

  Horse Power

  Anne Walsh

  Hypnotized

  Don Trembath

  In a Flash

  Eric Walters

  Junkyard Dog

  Monique Polak

  Laggan Lard Butts