Extraordinary Losers 1 (10 page)

“Really?”

“You and Justin can have an icy can of Coke and a huge packet of potato chips. Each. For recess.”

“Really?! Deal!” he said. I took them out from the orange plastic bag. Leonard saw that the offer was for real. Without hesitation, he dug through his bag for the papers and slammed them on my chest.

“Ooooooooo! Have a lousy recess, Darryl De, doing corrections! Loser.” Justin rushed to grab his Coke and chips. He clicked open the can of Coke, and it let out a tempting fizz.

The two boys sauntered out of the class. With Coke and potato chips in their hands, they vanished, without a care in the world. Justin was so distracted by his Coke reward that he had forgotten all about his water bottle.

At that moment, Janice waddled out of the class and caught my eye.

“Now?!” she asked.

“Yes, now is the only time,” I said. “Please? I need you to help me with something.”

“Oh. Alright then. I guess this will have to wait.” She crushed her double coated chocolate donut back into her pocket.

“You didn't have to lie, you know?”

“About what?”

“About not bringing your calculator to school today.”

“But I had to,” I said. “It was the only way I would get to stand behind the class to catch the cheater bugs.”

“Clever!” she smiled.

“So the pen and eraser that Mundi found yesterday belong to Damien?” she asked.

“Yes. I recognised them the moment I saw them.”

“How?”

“Damien loves to draw a smiley face on all his stationery. And the pen and eraser both had one.”

“How come you didn't tell us?”

“Well, we used to get along really well, Janice. Then he grew taller. And he joined the basketball team. He loved sports and I… well, just couldn't catch up with him. Besides, I am always writing poems and it's too embarrassing for him to be around me.”

She sighed. “So what are you going to do about his cheat pen and eraser?”

“I will pass his pen and eraser to Mr Grosse, but I will never divulge whom they belong to. Can you keep this a secret? Promise?”

Janice sighed again. “No wonder he does well in all the tests.”

Just then, Clandestino and Mundi trooped back from the toilet.

“Just in time,” I said. “Thanks for the two cans of Coke and potato chips, Clandestino!”

“Not a problem!” he said. “I got them at a sale… as they are almost expired!”

We exploded with laughter.

“Yeah, Leonard and Justin were drawn to the treats like fish to bait,” Janice added.

“Happy to help, guys!” he said.

“Did you get the test papers, no?” Mundi asked.

“Oh yes, I am on to something else,” I said. “We have to be quick.”

“Let me see!” Janice said. Flipping through the pages, she wore her most serious monitress face. She held up Leonard's test paper to the rays of light that filtered into 5B.

Out of the 25 questions on the test, there were at least five MCQ blanks that had two numbers. Except that one number was an almost-invisible imprint.

“I can see the imprints, but this doesn't make sense. We erase our answers and rewrite our answers all the time,” she said.

While we were scrutinising Leonard's paper, Clandestino yelled, “Is this Justin's?”

He held up a used Coke bottle like a trophy.

“Yes,” I said. “Justin has been hanging on to this for dear life.”

“Wait a minute… This part doesn't look right, no?” Mundi uttered.

“Yeah,” Clandestino agreed. “Look at the wordings in the ingredients. Those are not ingredients at all!”

“Smelly cheater bugs. No?” Mundi was repulsed. I ran up to the two boys.

“Let me see,” I said, grabbing the bottle for a closer look. Listed under “Ingredients” were math and science definitions. It was like Primary 5 Math and Science for Dummies condensed in a little paper.

Everyone gasped, except for Mundi, who was still shaking his head in disgust. The bottle had every definition needed to survive a Math and Science test!

“I will keep this!” Clandestino said. “This definitely has to go to Mrs Priya. Along with the cheat pen and eraser.”

Janice's eyes were still fixed on the test papers. She marched up, unconvinced. “So! Darryl? Evidence of cheating on Leonard's test papers?”

“Yes, but we'd better put them away. I can hear them coming back now,” I said. “They are about one minute away.”

“That means they are on the way up 40 steps. No?” Mundi said.

We all stared at Mundi, amazed that he had actually counted the number of steps from ground floor to class.

“Quick, everyone, everything back in its place!” I said.

“I'll get it,” Clandestino said. Swiftly, he grabbed the Coke bottle. Like a professional basketballer, he aimed it at Justin's bag. Bending his knees, he flicked his wrist. The Coke bottle landed perfectly inside the bag. Like it had never been touched. Perfect.

“We will continue tomorrow.” I grinned.

CHAPTER 9: WILL THE REAL LOSERS PLEASE STAND UP?

That night I was kept awake, too thrilled from the discoveries of the day… and something else. Why did Damien have to resort to that?

It was 1am. I removed my earphones from my ears. My ears caught the sound of something familiar.

Click, clack, click, clack, click, clack. Someone was on the keyboard typing away. I slunk into the living room. I heard a “hee hee, kee kee”.

“Boo!” I pounced.

“Sssssssshhh!” came the reply.

“Caught you! What are you doing here at this hour, Sophia? You had better sleep. Mum's going to kill you if she knows.”

“Sssshhh!”

“Who are you talking to?”

“Watermelon.”

“You mean the Annoying Watermelon?”

“No!! Just Watermelon. Now go away.”

I caught a glimpse of the screen. There was a chat going on between Sophia and Watermelon:

Sophia: You are soooo cool, Watermelon. LOL

Watermelon: You are too cute and pretty to be true too! LOL. I wish I could see you in person.

Sophia: Let's meet! For REAL this time.

My goose pimples were rising from the mushiness of the chat content. They were mushier than Grandma's gross porridge.

“Hey!” Sophia elbowed me while trying to block the screen at the same time. Then, she typed “BWOM”.

Instinct told me to be brotherly. “You'd better be careful. You know that there are many perverts out there.”

“He's not a pervert. He is always helping me with my Math and telling me jokes.”

“Okay… as long as you….”

“Darryl?? Sophia!?” Mum's voice stirred the midnight air.

“Oh no!”

“Oh no too!”

I sped off to my room. Sophia slammed the laptop shut and skittered after me.

We dived into our beds, buried ourselves in a shallow grave of pillows and blankets and froze.

“Darryl?!” Mum checked again from her room.

Sophia and I played dead.

When we sensed her let up, I whispered, “Pssst! By the way, what does BWOM mean? I have never heard of it.”

“It means Brother Watching Over Me.”

“What?! Okay, goodnight.”

“Goodnight. If you ever leak a word to Mum, I will…”

“I know! I know!” I said. “Promise!”

Sophia giggled herself to sleep that night. I was now more awake than I had ever been. Was Sophia, my 12-year-old sister, falling in love?

The next day, the members of Operation Pants on Fire decided to meet early in school. The cool foggy air made our sleuth operation even more surreptitious. We had arranged to meet in the hall, the busiest place, so that our meeting would look less suspicious.

“Hey, did you bring the erasable pens?” I asked Clandestino. He had a store of pens at home since he was a pen ninja.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Okay, great! I've got the paper,” Mundi said, whipping out a clean sheet of A4 paper. “This paper has the exact same texture as those used for our test papers. No?”

“Good thinking, Mundi,” Janice said. “Let's see…” she said as she placed the piece of paper on the floor. We all huddled very close together on the floor, a piece of paper at the centre of our circle.

“This is unbelievable, no?” Mundi piped up.

“What Leonard does is this…” I wrote down a few numbers on the paper with a blue erasable pen. After that, I erased the numbers and went over them with a different number using the same pen.

“Three seconds!” Mundi cried.

“What three seconds?” Clandestino asked.

“Three seconds you took to erase the number and write the correct one. If the cheaters did that for five questions, they would need 15 seconds. No?”

“Which is the amount of time it takes for Miss Jacobs and Madam Siti to do class control!” I added. “Brilliant!”

Clandestino scratched his neck in doubt. “That's it? Justin and Leonard could have erased their answers during the test itself.”

“No! No! Justin and Leonard are always claiming they have been marked wrongly. Does anyone else do that?” I said. My three friends stared at me.