I'll Stop the World (48)

Bill shook his head. “It’s perfect. She’s going to love it.”

“Let me know if she doesn’t,” Pat said. “I can try again.”

“That definitely won’t be necessary,” Bill said, closing the box and tucking it away in his top desk drawer. “I can’t believe you finished it so early, too.”

“Yeah, well, you know how I work in my garage when I’m feeling stressed?”

“Uh-oh,” Bill said, leaning back in his chair. “What’s up?”

Pat tossed a folder onto Bill’s desk. “I need your advice.”

Bill flipped open the folder. “What am I looking at?”

“That,” Pat said with a sigh, “is last year’s ninth-grade World War II unit test.”

“Okay . . .”

Pat leaned forward and slid the top paper to the side. Underneath was a similar-looking test, this one filled in in neat pencil. Most of the answers were marked out with red Xs. Pat tapped the sheet with a meaty forefinger. “And that is this year’s ninth-grade World War II unit test. Notice anything interesting?”

Bill glanced at the name at the top of the test. “Andrew Reese needs to study more?”

“Look again.”

Bill read through Andrew’s answers, and quickly realized that many of them made no sense. For example, he’d written that the war had begun with the invasion of “the Battle of Britain,” and that one of the leading generals in the Spanish Civil War was “Communism.” It didn’t take long to figure out what had happened. “He answered the questions from last year’s test on this year’s test?”

Pat nodded. “You know how I was reading that book by William Shirer this summer?”

“The one with . . . the cover?” Pat never went anywhere without a book, but his attempts to hide the cover of that particular book had been a source of constant amusement for Bill that summer. Pat had taken to carrying it around in a padded leather Bible case in order to mask the large offensive symbol on the front. Bill had made a habit of teasing him about it any time he saw him paging through it at the community pool, asking him how he was enjoying the “Good Book.”

“Well, it was fascinating, so naturally, I wanted to incorporate some of it into the unit. I’ve been using the same tests for the past few years, but I decided to rewrite it this year so I could reflect a little bit of the new material. Same format, same number of questions, but I changed up the order, rephrased some stuff, introduced a couple new things. Nothing major. Should’ve been about the same difficulty level as the last one.” He sighed, shaking his head. “And then this happened.”

It was easy enough to fill in the blanks. “So Andy got a copy of last year’s test, memorized the answers, and just filled them all in without actually reading the questions,” Bill surmised.

“Oh, it’s worse than that. If it was just one kid cheating, I mean, it sucks, but I’ve dealt with that before. But this . . .” Pat readjusted his position in his too-small chair, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees, fingers laced together. He glanced at the door to Bill’s office before lowering his voice. “Bill, I don’t think it’s just Andy. I went through all my other classes, and I don’t know for sure, but I just . . . have my suspicions that something is going on. That’s what I needed your advice about.”

“Do you have proof?”

Pat shook his head. “Andy is the only one so far that I can prove. I have a few others I suspect. But if I’m right, I doubt it’s contained to just my class. It may be all over the school.”

Bill blew out a long breath, then reached into his bottom desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Bacardi 151. Spinning around in his chair, he grabbed two Styrofoam cups that were stacked next to the coffeepot behind him, then turned back to face Pat. Wordlessly, he poured an inch of rum into each of the cups and handed one to Pat.

Pat took a sip, closing his eyes for a moment to savor. “You know it’s a big deal if you’re breaking out the good stuff.”

“I just . . .” Bill shook his head. “If word gets out that we’ve got a school-wide cheating scandal, that’s going to be another blow to Diane’s campaign.”

Pat wrinkled his forehead. “How’s that?”

“You know Gibson has been attacking her education plan every chance he gets,” Bill said. “He’ll say it’s ridiculous to invest more money into public education and increase teacher pay when this is what’s already happening in our schools. Then he’ll say the only way to curb cheating in high school is to agree to his proposal to increase the police budget, so that kids will have more incentive to follow the rules.”

“That’s ridiculous. If anything, schools need more support to—”

“It won’t matter. Parents will want someone to blame, and Gibson won’t have any trouble making this Diane’s fault. Especially since her campaign manager is married to me, and this is happening where I work. I know how men like him think, Pat. If Diane pushes back, he’ll say she’s just trying to protect Veronica’s husband. If she doesn’t, he’ll say it’s because she knows he’s right.” Bill sighed. “Any chance we’ll be able to keep a lid on this, at least for a little while?”