Cheater by Michael Laser

Author:Michael Laser
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-12-24T16:51:21.490000+00:00

RULE #9: If you start cheating, don’t even think about stopping. When your grades suddenly go into free fall, what will your teachers think? Maybe I should have called this Rule #1: Don’t start cheating Unless you Plan to keep it UP. If anyone out there wishes I’d shared that little tidbit UP front, all I can say is, Go ahead, sue me.

Chapter 9

Karl has been searching for Blaine all day long, so he can officially quit the Confederacy. But Blaine is nowhere to be seen. Vijay explains why: today was the regional Model U.N. conference. Karl’s announcement will have to wait.

Memories of Lizette distract him all through his last period. That second day of school, when she came up to him and Jonah and Matt at their cafeteria table and asked if she could eat with them—that must have been hard for her to do. But she got past the nervous introductions, and after a while Jonah and Matt calmed down (a girl! at their table!) and they went back to talking about how you could play baseball in the snow if you had a black ball, and then Lizette said, in her swampiest Florida accent, “Y’all talk like a bunch of Yankees,” and they didn’t know if she was serious or kidding until she snickered (under her cap’s visor), and the sight of her front teeth peeking impishly over her lower lip marked the beginning of Karl’s early crush . . . the best part of which, for Karl, was that she laughed at his jokes, like at the assembly where Klimchock announced the removal of all vending machines for health reasons, Karl whispered, “His real name is Mr. Tater—first name Dick,” and Lizette let out such a loud hiccup of a laugh that she got sent to the office.

The way she used to look at him sometimes, with that mischievous, sealed-lip grin, it really seemed as if she liked him the other way. But then she would punch him in the arm and call him Donkey Head, and yell at him for missing the ball when they played Footnis. And there was that time when they saw Beanie Markowsky refereeing a kids’ soccer game in the park, and Lizette sighed and said, “She’s so graceful.” There was just no way to figure her out.

He’s leaving the building as he thinks this—and there, across the street, is Blaine: still in jacket and tie from the Model U.N., leaning against his car in the shade of a locust tree, talking to the cheerleader Nikki Tunis, who’s bathing him in beams of adoration. Blaine seems to be enjoying the worship and gives her arm a friendly squeeze, which encourages Nikki to bring her face even closer to his.

Karl approaches them; Nikki rolls her eyes at the intrusion. “Can I talk to you?” he asks Blaine.

“Is it a quickie?”

“No, probably not.”

Blaine sighs and tells Nikki he’ll call her tonight. She gives him a coy, promise-filled smile (for Karl, there’s a wrinkled nose) and departs with an unnaturally straight back and an oscillating behind.

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