Cheating Lessons: A Novel (4 page)

“The Classics Bowl is a big deal.”

“It’s only cable, Dad. Nobody watches it.”

“Every agent in the Southfield office will watch it or I’ll know the reason why. The NCS Classics Bowl! Their headquarters is right across from my building, you know.” Bernadette knew. “This’ll look good on your applications, kiddo. Especially if you win.”

Her father had lost his job four years earlier when half his firm’s workforce had been “downsized” into unemployment. In the eighteen months he’d been out of work they’d spent most of her college fund.

“Bernadette and Nadine are both on the bowl team,” Martha informed him. “If the other kids read half as much as those two, Wickham is in like Flynn.” She handed three plates to Bernadette to set on the table.

“Oh, we’re in.” Bernadette thought of Lori. “I don’t know about Flynn.”

Martha turned from the stove to stare at her in accusation. “This
is
Pinehurst, am I right? Didn’t I read something about you wanting to help them build character through defeat?”

Bernadette didn’t answer. Sure, but . . .

Her mother sized her up as though she were a new client with dubious HMO insurance. “You can’t wear your hair like that on TV. It’s as limp as this dishcloth.”

“Eh. They don’t give points for hair, Martha.” Joe Terrell smacked Bernadette on the bottom with his rolled-up
Wall Street Journal.
“She’ll look great on TV, giving ’em hell.”

Bernadette’s smile was forced. She wished she could be as confident as her parents. Her delight at this morning’s announcement had slid, by degrees, from amazement into doubt, and at this moment teetered just this side of disbelief. What if there’d been a mistake? If she could just know for
certain
that the Wickham Wizards
deserved
their win—that it was a genuine, true win, no mistakes—she’d phone Aunt Cynthia herself.

CHAPTER FOUR

Some people built castles in the air. She constructed hers

from mashed potatoes, which kept down demolition costs.

—Sarah Sloane,
Borrowing Privileges

T
hat was Monday. Tuesday at lunch, Nadine produced a clipping about the Classics Bowl from the
Detroit Free Press.

Bernadette had expected coverage in the
Creighton Courier
(The Latest News About Your Life and Car). But the
Free Press
was big time.

“Yeah, look, it’s all about Phoebe Hamilton and how she started the Classics Bowl. They list our names.
And
Pinehurst’s.” Venom crept into Nadine’s froggy voice.

“So?”

“So—Glenn Kim’s on it. Uriah Heep, remember?” Nadine’s black eyes gleamed. Glenn Kim was the second affirmative on the debate team that had beaten them in January. Two affirmative speakers set the terms in a debate round. The written case they presented in the first eight minutes was what the negative side then tried to tear to shreds. While Bernadette and Nadine had developed two different cases they could defend at any time, their preference was to attack. “What I wouldn’t give to humiliate him. You can tell he’s really Korean. Probably grew
up
speaking it, and how tough is that?”

Bernadette didn’t think it such a hanging offense. But she was happy to foster this animosity. If Nadine had a teensy flaw, it was that she sometimes lacked the killer instinct. “A piece of cake. Anyone could do it.”

“You’re not going to like this,” Nadine said, and lowered her voice as if to reveal a dark secret, “but one time I heard him say something to his partner about . . . Twinkies.”

Bernadette studied Nadine in some perplexity. Then her mouth dropped open in fury. “He called us
Twinkies?
You mean as in cupcakes? Bimbos? Why, that conceited horse’s—”

“Not
us.
Me
.
A Twinkie is yellow on the outside, white on the inside. An Asian who thinks she’s white. Get it?”

“Oh.” Bernadette never thought of Nadine as Asian. She was not convinced. “Maybe he was just telling the blond guy what he brought for lunch.”

“Nope. It was a slam. I’ve heard it before.”

“Well, good. Fine. All the more reason to annihilate him in the Bowl. Not to mention that he looks like his underwear is monogrammed.”

Nadine chuckled and slid the clipping across the table.

They’d made the Suburban News section. In a boxed aside, the paper had printed Mrs. Hamilton’s response to a question from a recent Business Education Forum. A teacher had asked whether the difficult Classics Contest and Bowl questions didn’t pose a risk of injuring student self-esteem.

Mrs. Hamilton had replied: “Self esteem is a by-product, not a goal. If we fail to introduce our children to what the best minds through the ages have found wise and true, they will leave school barely able to grunt but feeling good about it. Instead of whining about the rigor of the test, teachers should be held financially responsible for their students’ performance on it.”

They’d printed her picture. White hair stuck out from her head as she stood staunch against the winds of academic laziness.

Bernadette whistled. “I bet that teacher
crawled
out of there.”

“Crying,” Nadine agreed. She waved at someone over Bernadette’s shoulder. “Don’t look now, but Lori Besh is coming this way.”

“Is this seat taken?” Lori balanced her tray on one palm.

“Ralph Fiennes is joining us, but you can sit here till he comes,” Bernadette said.

Lori slipped out of her letter jacket.
“Wickham”
was emblazoned on the back in white on dark green. It might have been designed to set off her auburn hair. She slid into her seat. “Oh, I love him. I’ve seen
The English Patient
four times.”

So had Bernadette. (Extramarital romance was surprisingly easy to watch when the male lead made your bones melt—and besides, the lovers died in the end.) She regarded Lori with more interest.

Today little metallic fish swung from her ears. The left fish dangled beside a tiny silver ring and a plain diamond stud. From her strong, slender fingers ending in silver-flecked polish to the reddish hair pushed casually behind her ears, Lori projected an easy, Amazonian elegance.

Even her food was camera-ready. Her tray held a bowl of canned peaches, carrot sticks in a paper cup, and a dish of steaming acorn squash flanked by two glasses of orange juice.

She saw Bernadette staring. “Orange Day,” she explained. “If I only eat certain colors it helps me keep the calories down. You know?”

“Absolutely,” Bernadette replied. “I do that, too.” She dumped cherry Jell-O onto her mashed potatoes and stirred in just a pinch of mushroom meat loaf gravy. “Like, today is Puce Day. You know?”

Nadine winced.

“That’s gross, Bernadette. Sometimes I can’t believe you’re so brainy,” Lori said.

Bernadette arched an eyebrow Malory-style. “What do you care about my brains, Lori?”

“You’re a
Wizard
now. I want us to win. You think we can, don’t you?”

Her earnestness made Bernadette squirm. “Why not?”

“Good. Because I just canceled out of the Governor’s All-Star Pompon Competition. Turns out it’s the same Sunday. But I don’t care—I’d rather be a Wizard.”

Nadine looked suitably impressed. Bernadette arranged her own features into insincere admiration. “Well,” she began, “I for one am grateful for it. Cheerleading’s loss—”

“Pompon,” Lori corrected.

“—sorry,
pom
pon’s loss is the Wizards’ gain. How would we handle those tough questions on literary gymnasts through the ages—ow!” Nadine’s kick almost broke her ankle.

“Hey, did I tell you what my dad said about Spic ‘n’ Span?” Nadine asked. Mr. Walczak was on the school board. “This Classics Bowl thing puts her in the running for a Lifetime Achievement bonus. The board gave seven thousand dollars to the last principal. And Standish retires in June.”

“If they’re giving out bonuses they should give one to Mr. Malory.” Lori pulverized a chunk of carrot between small white teeth. “
He’s
the miracle worker. I love how he’ll say stuff in Latin and then go, ‘As you all know.’ Yeah, right. Like we
know,
” she crowed. “I love that.”

Bernadette loved that, too. It was one of her favorite things about him.

“I always feel like I’m watching PBS in his class. It’s not like he’s really
handsome,
” Lori went on, “but he’s
attractive.
”

“Anthony says he’s probably gay.” Nadine sent a sly look toward Bernadette.

Bernadette gasped. “What Anthony Cirillo knows about sex would fit in a pinhole with room left over,” she snapped. “And Mr. Malory even let him drive his Porsche around the parking lot! Anthony is a creep.”

Nadine’s deep laugh drew glances from other tables. “Bernadette’s got a thing for Malory,” she told Lori.

“I respect his mind,” Bernadette said stiffly.

“
I
think he’s drop-dead sexy, not that he’d care. You can tell he’d only go for someone supersmart.” Lori sipped her juice.

Bernadette was smart.

“Someone who’d rather read than eat,” Lori continued.Bernadette looked at the gray mound on her tray. She’d much rather read than eat that.

“Probably someone incredibly built,” Lori said blandly. “Like, say, a college professor who models lingerie part-time.”

She smiled sweetly and let her eyes stray briefly to Bernadette’s sweater, which would have fit the same on a ninth-grade boy.

Bernadette looked back with wary respect. “Have you ever read
Prometheus Bound?”

“Hmmm—nope, must have missed that one,” said Lori, with an amused look at Nadine.

“Me, too.” Nadine had the same faithful note of amusement in her voice.

“
Death Comes for the Archbishop
?”

They shook their heads.

“Bleak House? Macbeth
?” Bernadette persisted.

“I just finished
Don’t Open the Door.
About a girl whose stepfather, you know, uh, abuses her?” Lori gave a questioning little pause. “At the end she shoots him. And in the sequel she turns into a drug addict from all the pressure. I can’t wait to get it.”

Bernadette counted the fluorescent light strips on the ceiling.

Nadine rushed in. “I liked
No Tears for Karen,
where this girl gets cancer. You know?” She might have been Lori’s clone. “Her boyfriend drops her, and even her best friend won’t go to the mall with her because she’s bald.”

“Bald! That would be the worst.” Lori shuddered.

“You guys.” Bernadette balanced a spoonful of puce potatoes on the rim of her plate. “I’m talking about
real
books. Like
Anna Karenina,
which you raved about for weeks and don’t pretend you didn’t.”

Nadine hesitated. “I did like it.” To Lori she said, “It’s by Tolstoy. Do you know it?” Bernadette snorted, but Nadine ignored her. “This woman, Anna, has a darling little boy and a pretty good husband—for back then, anyway—only she falls in love with this soldier and they have an affair, which is a huge scandal, and she gets kicked out of all decent Russian society.”

Lori’s blue eyes brightened. “That’s just like
Hope Springs Eternal!”
she cried. “It’s on right after school. Alicia has a three-year-old named Corey, who everybody thinks is her husband Blake’s son but he really isn’t, and then she falls in love with Kenyon! Only he’s not a soldier. He’s a pediatric neurosurgeon.” In the silence at the table she drained the second orange juice. “I didn’t know Tolstoy wrote stuff like that. I mean, you hear
War and Peace
and you figure,
bor
ing. Maybe this Classics bowl won’t be so gruesome after all. I’m lucky at tests, but still—” She seemed to debate whether to address Bernadette or Nadine, or even to speak at all. She went with Nadine. “I really,
really
want us to win. I have pompon trophies all over my room. But I never won anything for being smart. You know? Not even a spelling bee.” She smiled wistfully. “My mother would flip. She says I’m a true space cadet.”

“What does your father think?” Bernadette asked, remembering her own parents’ pleasure.

Lori’s face froze. “Nothing. He’s dead.” Her voice had gone tight and brittle.

“Sorry,” Bernadette mumbled. She had been crushing a packet of saltines with her spoon and now she tilted her head back to pour cracker crumbs into her mouth in noisy embarrassment.

“Don’t be. Even if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t care about this stuff.” But all animation had vanished from Lori’s face, and for an instant she looked like a different person. She looked—bleak, Bernadette thought. Lori slipped her purse strap over her shoulder and stood up. “Anyway, you gotta admit,” she said in her normal, cheerful voice, “it would be cool to win. See you.”

Along with the cafeteria’s male population they watched her carry her tray to the assembly belt. Her lithe figure moved the way Bernadette imagined Cleopatra had walked among her subjects.

“I like her.” Nadine took a long, thoughtful sip from her Diet Pepsi. “As for you—way to go, Miss Congeniality.”

“Excuse me for not sucking up like
some
people.”

“Being pleasant is not sucking up.”

Bernadette made a pffft noise. “ ‘Orange Day.’ Come on. And you never read
No Tears for Karen.”
Her clumsiness about Lori’s father still troubled her, and made her tone sharp.

“So what? I could have. It didn’t sound any dumber than
Look Under ‘C’ for Corpse.”

“Sarah Sloan books might raise Lori Besh’s IQ to triple digits.”

“She can’t be too dumb if she scored in the top five. Besides, to get in Malory’s class you had to be recommended.”

“She has two outstanding recommendations.” Bernadette cupped her hands in front of her chest.

“She can’t help how she looks.”

Bernadette’s reply would have earned them a sportsmanship penalty from any debate judge. “She can help being a twit. She reminds me of that awful Jillian person in eighth grade.”

Nadine’s quick grin showed that she remembered very well how she had first met Bernadette.