Daniel Crams for the Test

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Daniel Crams for the Test

By Robert Scorby

Daniel very rarely turned in his homework. He never studied for eighth his grade history class, for eighth grade science, or for any other class, for that matter. He would have failed completely, would have failed every test, would have been placed eternally in summer school hell, had it not been for one thing: Daniel Summers could cheat. He was a Master.

Daniel had such skill that he could sit at his desk, way in the back of the classroom, and, with exceptional stealth and eyesight, filch test answers with ease. With his head propped up by the thumb and first finger of his left hand, his third, fourth and fifth fingers spread slightly open and relaxed—which allowed for a slight crack, enough of a viewing window for his hidden eyes to peak through—he was set to do his dirty work. Any student sitting in front or to the side of Daniel, unless truly skilled at covering their answers, was vulnerable to his intellectual thievery. And, even if a student was fairly good at covering answers, Daniel was fast. He was able to scan in milliseconds, before a student’s non-writing hand could move back down and cover them. Daniel didn’t need to waste time trying to steal answers from students who, unless they cheated too, would most assuredly write down the wrong answers. He knew who the good students were. But, he was so skilled at cheating, he would often scan the challenged students’ answers, as well, just to see how poorly they were doing. Daniel thought that anyone looking at him hunched over, with his hand to his forehead, would only see a boy in deep concentration, trying his best to get a good score. He always got a couple answers wrong so it wouldn’t look too suspicious, especially for a boy who didn’t turn in his homework.

For Daniel, cheating was his way of learning. By cheating, he actually retained a great deal of the information that he was supposed to have learned in the first place. A week after taking a test, he could take the same test, and, even if the questions on his second attempt were mixed up in a different order, he could still pass it. More than once he had been asked to retake a test due to suspicion—although no teacher had ever actually caught him—that he might have cheated on. He never did as well the second time, but he always did well enough to convince the investigating teacher that he was innocent, that he must have studied. As it was, with the aid of cheating, he was getting mostly As. But even if Daniel was able to fool his teachers, there always remained an underlying suspicion among the other students.

Daniel was enamored with a young girl named Jenny King Silbin. He thought that she was the prettiest girl in school. She was in the same grade as he was, but she didn’t have any of the same classes with him. They met one day when she noticed that he was staring her while she sat under the shade of an awning in the lunch area.

“Can I help you? Why are you staring at me?” she asked.

He was staring at her because he was lost in a romantic dream about what it would be like to kiss her, or to kiss any girl for the first time. He had not yet had that pleasure. She had startled him with her question.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was just wondering what you were studying.” Daniel answered off the cuff. She told him that she was studying history. She said she was going to have a big history test the next day and that she was just awful in history.

“I’ve got a test in history tomorrow, too,” said Daniel. “Who do you have for history?”

“Mrs. Feldon.”

“Me too,” Daniel declared. “I bet we’re taking the exact same test.”

“Are you any good at history?” she asked.

“Well, actually,” Daniel bragged, “I usually get As on my tests.

A smile beamed from her face. “What are you doing this evening?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Why?” All of a sudden Daniel was practically out of breath. Was she going ask him to help her study?

She did ask him for help. She wanted him to come over to her house and help her prepare. “Please? Please? Please?”

“Well, when you ask like that, sure I’ll come over, if you don’t live in Montana or somewhere far. I don’t have a car. I’ll have to bike over.” Daniel regretted having said this. All of the cool kids had cars. In truth, he thought, he would have bicycled to Kauai to spend time with her.

She told him that seven o’clock would be a good time to come over and wrote down her address, which turned out to be just down the street from where Daniel lived. He laughed to himself. He didn’t even know that she lived so close to him. She also told him that her parents wouldn’t be home, that they would be out very late attending a party.

Daniel Crams for the Test

By Robert Scorby

“Can I help you? Why are you staring at me?” she asked.

“I’ve got a test in history tomorrow, too,” said Daniel. “Who do you have for history?”

“Mrs. Feldon.”

“Me too,” Daniel declared. “I bet we’re taking the exact same test.”

“Are you any good at history?” she asked.

“Well, actually,” Daniel bragged, “I usually get As on my tests.

A smile beamed from her face. “What are you doing this evening?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Why?” All of a sudden Daniel was practically out of breath. Was she going ask him to help her study?

She did ask him for help. She wanted him to come over to her house and help her prepare. “Please? Please? Please?”

Looking at her watch, she said, “Oops, I’m getting late for my next class. I have to go.”

“Me too,” sighed Daniel.

“See you tonight, then?” she asked, as much a declaration as it was a question.

“Cool. And, by the way, I’m Daniel.”

“I know,” she responded. “I’m Jenny King.”

“I know that, too,” he said.

They both turned and walked away from each other. Daniel immediately thought to himself, “And, I am the King of Good Fortune. At her house. Her parents won’t be home until late. She knew my name. And just imagine, she needs my help.” He felt electrified. He had goose bumps.

And then it hit him like a rock in the head, “Wait a minute. Shoots. She needs my help in history. I can’t help her in history. I cheat.”

There was only one thing Daniel could do if he wanted to help Jenny King Silbin; he needed to go home and study. Since school got out at three o’clock, he would only have three hours to study. But considering the payoff, he was up for the challenge.

During the same lunch break that Daniel and Jenny King were talking about getting together to study, some of the students from Daniel’s history class were having a meeting. They were fed up. They knew Daniel was cheating. Harry, one of the real brains of the class, was complaining that it wasn’t fair because Mrs. Feldon graded on a curve, so Daniel always gets the same high score as the best students, the same high score as he gets.

Oliver, one of the other students, had an idea. His plan was very simple; and it would prove that Daniel was cheating. Mrs. Feldon would give the test as usual, and all of the students would behave the same, except that they would all put down the wrong answers. This way, if Daniel was copying, which they were all certain of, they would catch him because he would also have the wrong answers.

“What about Mrs. Feldon? “Rita asked. “Should we let her in on it?”

“Hell no!” said Mark.

Monty jumped in, “Well then, we’ll all fail the test.”

Judy had a solution to this conundrum, “We could tell Mrs. Feldon about the plan after the test. She’ll understand.”

“Yea,” replied Rita, “She won’t flunk us then.”

They all decided that if they did all flunk, it would only be one test. They could handle that. The vote was unanimous.

Not all of the students in the class were in on the plan because not all of them could be trusted to keep it secret. Mary, one of the students Daniel always copied from—she sat right next to him—even made up a little cheat sheet and passed them out to the group. The participating students would all have the same wrong answers for Daniel to copy. She told her confederates that this would help them to make their case to Mrs. Feldon, that they were only trying to catch Daniel, that they had failed the test on purpose.

“This will really mess Daniel up,” she declared. “It’ll actually be fun. He so deserves it.”

Daniel was anxiously shaking as he knocked on the Jenny King’s solid oak door. His mind was still on the fantasy of getting his first kiss. He wondered how he had gotten any studying done at all with the way his stomach was turning over and over thinking about it.

The front door opened and there was Jenny King’s beautiful young smile. She invited him in and asked that he remove his shoes. She said that her mother wanted to keep the new carpet clean. Daniel felt a bit shy about taking his shoes off, thinking that his socks probably stunk. He removed his shoes as directed. It seemed okay; his socks didn’t smell that bad—his smelly feet would not ruin the whole deal. Somehow, though, Daniel felt a bit naked without his shoes.

Jenny King was impressed with how well Daniel knew the history material. They sat and studied from seven-fifteen until nine o’clock. Then, Jenny stopped, looked up, and asked Daniel if he would like something to drink.

“Sure,” he replied. “What’ve you got?”

“Well, there’s Coke, orange juice, bottled water, or . . . we could drink a little bit of my father’s bourbon.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No joke. My dad will never know. I’ve done it before. You up for it?”

Daniel hadn’t had any experience with alcohol apart from taking sips from his parents’ drinks when they would occasionally have company. He certainly had never drunk straight bourbon before. But his fantasy of getting closer to Jenny King led his brain into declaring his delight at the idea. Jenny King disappeared into the back of the house to get the bourbon.

Daniel felt himself shuddering again. He was about to drink and maybe even become a little drunk for the first time in his life, and with Jenny King Silbin. And then. And then. Maybe he would finally get his first kiss. Daniel was caught between excitement and terror. He was on pins and needles, doing all that he could to calm his breathing and trembling. He was scared, but he knew that he had to drink. The last thing that he wanted was to be rejected because Jenny King thought he was a wimp.

Daniel was envisioning the two of them lying on Jenny King’s soft, carpeted floor, hugging, kissing and letting their shoeless feet touch. Daniel had no real plan for manifesting this dream, but he knew that the opportunity was at hand.

They did kiss. They kissed goodbye. That’s all. Just a goodbye kiss. For Daniel, it was one of the most awkward moments of his life. He wished that he had not drunk so much. His head was beginning to swim around; yet, the bourbon hadn’t seemed to affect her at all. While kissing Daniel, Jenny King had used her tongue, something Daniel had never heard of before; he had never even imagined that tongues could be used while kissing. He even felt the exercise to be a bit amoral. Jenny King scared him. Right then and there, Daniel knew that Jenny King was way too wild for him, way out of his league.

“Thanks for the help. I’ll probably still flunk, but I appreciate your help. Be careful riding home.”

Daniel was pretty sure that she was internally laughing at him for not having his own car, for having to bike to and from her house.

“You don’t want to get pulled over for driving under the influence.”

“I’m fine. See you in school,” Daniel said as he precariously fumbled with the lock on his bike. He finally unlocked it, put the lock in his pannier, and rode off.

His bike ride was harrowing. He swerved back and forth. Luckily, he didn’t have far to go and there were not many cars on the street.

Daniel arrived home at about ten thirty. His parents usually went to bed at about ten. The house was quiet; the television was not on; these were good signs. He awkwardly unlocked the front door. When the door opened, it banged as it swung around, hitting the inside wall. He had pushed it too hard. Daniel waited. He listened. His parents, who slept in the last room down the hall, made no sound; another good sign. He slowly closed the front door and turned the lock latch. Then, holding onto the doorknob, he reached down with his free hand and slipped off his shoes. He almost fell forward as he did this. Unlike Jenny King’s house, his family wore shoes inside, but the house had hardwood flooring that squeaked and cracked when walked upon. Even bare feet could make the wood squeak a little. He figured taking his shoes off would help.

Daniel held his shoes in one hand and did his best to aim his body toward the hallway, which was twenty feet from the doorway, across the family room. He proceeded to walk, step by step, trying to be as quiet as possible. It was a bit of a balancing act, but he was able to reach the entrance to the hallway without too much trouble. Daniel did his best to settle himself. His next task was to make it down the hall to the basement door, which was right next to the doorway to his parents’ bedroom. The basement door opened to a stairway that led down to a hallway that, in turn, led to his bedroom.

He put out his free hand, the one without his shoes, and used it to glide along the wall in order to help keep his balance. He did his best to keep his body in an upright position. And even though it had been over a while since he had drunk the bourbon, he seemed to be getting drunker by the minute. Daniel didn’t know that one doesn’t gulp bourbon down like soda pop, like the tough guys do in the movies. Nor did Daniel know that it would have been a good idea to eat something before drinking.

Daniel had almost made it to the basement door when he heard his father’s voice.

“Daniel, is that you?”

“Yes, dad. Sorry I’m so late. I was studying.”

“Is that all?” his father asked.

“Yea, that’s all, just studying. I’m going to bed. Goodnight Dad,”

Daniel wondered what was his father driving at. He couldn’t see how his father could possibly know that he had been drinking, and was, in fact, drunk. He thought that he had been quiet enough not to arouse suspicion.

Daniel opened the door to the basement, closed it behind him, and, holding on to the banister, made his way down the stairs. Once he reached his bedroom, he stumbled across the pitch black room and fell onto his bed.

That’s when the room began to spin. At first Daniel thought this to be kind of cool, something on the order of a rollercoaster ride that spins one upside-down. But, then the vomit came. It shot all over the floor next to his bed. Climbing out, bumping his knee on the floor, he positioned himself on all fours, and desperately tried not to continue vomiting. It was to no avail. He haphazardly sprayed a sea of smelly, slimy throw-up across the whole of his floor.

His floor was always messy and covered with his thrown-off clothes, his school books, the various types of shoes that his parents were always shelling out money for, his small record player and records, his model airplane, his Star Wars spaceship, his fake leather jacket, his grandfather’s war medals, and various other boyhood treasures.

When the room stopped spinning and he began to feel well enough to get up off of the floor, he was able to turn on his bedroom light. He doesn’t know how he did it, but he had managed to miss all of the items on his floor. Patches of vomit filled in the open spaces between his treasured junk. By the time he had cleaned up the mess and settled himself back down on his bed, he noted that he only had two hours left to sleep before having to get up and go to school. At seven o’clock in the morning his alarm clock screamed at his headache. With the largest pain in his brain that he had ever felt—sick as dog, as they say—he wanted to roll over and go back to sleep.

When Daniel went upstairs, it was seven thirty. He tried to avoid eye contact with his father who was standing at the top of the stairway.

“Daniel,” he called out.

“Yes, dad?” Daniel tried his best to look like he wasn’t the wreck that he felt he was.

“Thought I’d take you out to breakfast this morning.”

“Gee, dad, that’s great, but I have to leave for school.”

“What’s your first class?”

“PE,” Daniel responded, knowing quite well that he was planning to cut his first two classes and sneak back downstairs to his bed through the basement window. He had already left the window ajar. He would sleep a little longer, and hopefully wake up feeling better. He wanted to get to school by third period in order to take his history test. Daniel wasn’t going to miss this test. After all, he had studied for it and had even taught the material to Jenny King Silbin.

“Well good, you can miss PE. I’ll write you a note.”

Daniel was going to suggest another reason for not going with his father, but he couldn’t think of one. And besides, he could tell that his dad was going to get his way about this. “Okay, but we need to leave soon.”

With a wink to Daniel’s mother, who had been listening and watching the whole conversation, Daniel’s father said, “I’m ready. Let’s get our coats,”

As he sat in the booth across from his father, Daniel wondered what this was all about. His father had never taken him out to breakfast, just him. And his father certainly had never taken him out of class for something as unimportant as going to a restaurant. He could only suspect that his father did, indeed, know that he had been drinking, and that this breakfast would come with an intended lesson, much like the lesson a father teaches to his son who gets caught smoking his first cigarette: making him smoke a whole cigar. One thing was for sure: Daniel did not feel at all like eating the omelet his father had ordered for him.

“Eat, Daniel,” his father said. “Eat your omelet.”

Just the thought of eating eggs made Daniel sick. His head and his stomach still hurt like hell. He did his best to hide the fact that he was hung-over, but he was so nauseous it was practically impossible. He picked up his fork and ever so slowly began picking at the food. If this was a lesson, then the only way to beat it was to join it. It took all of his determination to finish eating the eggs.

Surprisingly, throughout the meal, his father never said a word about drinking. Just idle chitchat. How’s school going? Does he have a girl friend? Is he going to play sports in high school? That sort of thing. Uncharacteristically, Daniel didn’t have much to say—something his father commented on. Daniel never asked and never got a definitive answer as to his father’s motives. But it seemed obvious.

His dad dropped Daniel off at school just in time for his second period class. It was time for his math class, but Daniel decided not to go, he would skip the class, rest behind the bleachers, and then go to history. After have an uncomfortable rest, still feeling hung-over, Daniel headed for his history class.

As he walked into the classroom, he felt a weird vibe coming from the other students. Some of them were looking at him, staring, side-eyed. He thought that he must look pretty bad, pretty sick. He took his seat in the back of the room, and settled in for the test.

He began the test quickly, rushing through the first page. It was easy. He really did know the material. Just for the fun of it, or perhaps out of habit, Daniel looked across the isle at Mary’s paper. To his surprise, Mary had written different answers. Daniel knew the material so well that he thought she must have accidentally written down the wrong answers. He looked over at Mark. He noticed that Mark’s answers were different from his too. Mark had the same answers that Mary had. He quickly looked back over the answers he had filled in. He truly believed that his answers were correct, but he couldn’t reconcile the idea that his answers were different from Mark’s and Mary’s.

The same thing happened with the next three pages. Daniel was completely baffled. It actually made him feel a little sicker, kind of like seasickness, where your eyes, below deck, staring at stationary walls, cannot reconcile what your body is feeling as the boat rises and falls with the waves. Daniel’s tortured mind was getting more and more perplexed. He wondered if his hangover was clouding his thought process, that it was him who was writing down the wrong answers.

He decided to lightly pencil-in the answers of the other students’ next to the answers that he had written, the answers he was fairly sure were correct. This way he could decide whether or not to change his answers at the last minute. He continued to write what he thought to be the correct answers in their appropriate places.

Daniel finished the last three pages and sat staring at his paper. He had to make a decision, and fast. He only had three minutes left until the bell would ring. If he was going to switch his answers to the penciled in ones, it was now or never. His other choice, of course, would be to leave the answers he had written in the correct places where they were and erase the penciled-in answers.

Quickly, Daniel looked at the test sheets of the students who always wrote in the correct answers. He checked out five of the students’ tests. They all had the same answers! What was going on here? Was he in the Twilight Zone?

Daniel had to admit that if all of the other smart students had gotten the same answers, his answers must be incorrect, even though he had studied and thought that he knew the material. It never occurred to him that a trap had been set up, that a game was afoot.

He decided that he would change his answers. But, just as he was about to erase the first one, the bell rang ending the period. Daniel had forgotten that the clock in this classroom was slow.

“Okay, class,” Mrs. Feldon said. “The person in the back row, hand your paper to the person in front of you. I’ll have your scores tomorrow.” Daniel knew that he didn’t have time to do any switching, so there was nothing he could do but to quickly erase the penciled-in answers, letting the leaves fall where they may. Just in time, he finished erasing the pencil-in answers.

Still feeling sick, Daniel decided to cut his classes for the rest of the day. He got home, snuck downstairs, and eased himself into bed.

By dinnertime, Daniel was finally feeling better. He was even hungry.

The second he finished eating, he excused himself from the table began to check his history book for the information that led him to believe that his answers were correct. According to the book, the answers he wrote in the correct spaces were correct. His confidence rose. Still, the whole experience made little sense. How could so many of the other students get the same wrong answers? Daniel knew that if he did not pass this test, it would be a first, one that could not be explained coming from the boy who had always gotten As.

The next day, Daniel found himself sitting amongst the chitter-chatter of the other students in his history class. Mrs. Feldon brought the class to order and began to announce the test scores. As she read the scores, Daniel had to admit to himself that he was happy to hear that all of the smart students flunked the test. Mrs. Feldon’s brows buckled as she read these students’ scores. Daniel’s score had not been read yet. The scores were read in alphabetical order and since Daniel’s last name was Summers, his name came last. Many of the students turned and glanced at him, and quickly turned away. They smiled at each other. They knew that the truth would now come out. Here was Daniel’s day of reckoning. And, when the students who were in on the scheme told Mrs. Feldon about their deception, she too would know that Daniel was scum of the earth, that he was a big fat cheater.

Then Mrs. Feldon stopped just when Daniel’s score would have been read and began speaking. “Because so many of you had real difficulty with this test, I’ll personally hand the them back to you at the end of the day. After school, I will need all of you to come to room 7A in order to get your paper and talk to me about your score, everyone, that is, except Daniel. As usual, he got an A. But, much to my surprise, he was the only one. You students who usually get great scores must have really struggled with this test. Daniel, I’ve got your test graded and ready. You can pick up right after class. You don’t have to wait until after school.”

After class got out, Oliver asked with a contemptuous smirk, “How’d you pass the test, Daniel?”

“I studied,” Daniel said.

“Yea, right. You’ve never studied for a test in your life. How did you do it? You usually copy from us. You always cheat. You’re a born cheater,” exclaimed Mary.

“I don’t. I didn’t. I tell you, I studied,”

Then Mark said, “Well, we don’t know how you pulled it off, but don’t tell us you studied. That insults our intelligence.” Mary, Oliver and Mark walked away in disgust.

“What kind of an experiment, Mary?” Mrs. Feldon asked.

“Well, we all know Daniel has been copying off of our papers. We see him do it all the time. So, a lot of us decided to write the wrong answers in order to catch him in the act.”

“You, what?”

“Yea, how else were we going to catch him?”

“He didn’t need catching. He always does well on tests.”

“That’s because he always cheats.”

“Well, he obviously didn’t cheat on this test.

How do you explain the score on his test today?”

“I can’t. I don’t know how he did it. Maybe he had a cheat sheet, or something. One test out of a hundred doesn’t mean he doesn’t cheat.”

“Oh, I think it does.

Here’s what I’m going to do. First of all, I want you to tell me all of the names of the participants who were involved in this—as if I can’t tell by the scores. Then, as a punishment fitting this crime, you will keep the scores you’ve gotten, you will not be able to go on the fieldtrip to the observatory, and you will each get a week in detention.”

“That’s not fair. You can’t make us miss the fieldtrip!”

“Oh yes I can. I’m very upset with what you did to poor Daniel.”

“Poor Daniel,” Mary muttered under her breath.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Mary replied sheepishly.

“For that you get two weeks in detention.”

Mary was about to say something else when Mrs. Feldon said, “Don’t argue with me or it will be a whole month.”

On the way home, Daniel smiled to himself. He had gotten a legitimate A, had his first kiss, albeit an awkward one, he had survived his father’s cruel lesson, and for the first time that he could remember, he felt like an honest, normal kid.

From then on, Daniel always studied for his tests. He started doing his homework, and throughout his life, he was to get many kisses, far surpassing his early fantasies.