Karl’s parents are kissing him good-bye the next day when Lizette returns to the hospital room. She’s wearing a plain white T-shirt and cutoff jeans with the fringes just above her knees. Her legs and arms, which Karl has never seen before, are long, lean, and full of goose bumps. She’s beautiful, he thinks.
A short, stocky man follows her in, wearing a bright blue T-shirt, baggy red shorts, and white socks up to his knees. This can’t possibly be her father (first, how could this little guy have produced such a tall daughter, not to mention her two titanic brothers? and second, he looks ridiculous!) but that’s exactly who he is. Lizette introduces him to Karl and his parents, and the first words out of Mr. Frenais’s mouth, directed at Mr. and Mrs. Petrofsky as he shakes their hands, are, “Sorry to hear about all this trouble of yours.”
Funny, isn’t it, how a lightning bolt can strike from a cloudless sky, when you’re worried about a completely different catastrophe, and leave you charred, with a jagged mouth and only one crooked wisp of hair remaining?
“What do you mean?” Karl’s father asks.
Karl had been recovering nicely from his illness, but now he breaks into a drenching sweat.
Honest, sincere Lizette invents the quickest cover-up Karl has ever seen. “Daddy, you’re confusing Karl with my other friend, the one who got hit by that ice-cream truck. Karl’s fine, he’s just getting over pneumonia. Please don’t scare his parents.”
“Oh. Ohhhhh. Sorry about that. Well-glad to meet you.”
“You had me scared for a minute.” Karl’s father laughs. “Whew!”
Exit the chuckling parents. On with the intrigue.
Mr. Frenais knows all about Karl’s situation. He has come with Lizette to help set up the hidden microphone, the one she bought online yesterday, paying an extra fifteen dollars for overnight delivery. (The mike is a tiny black box with a switch, not much bigger than the nine-volt battery that fits inside it.) Though Mr. Frenais agreed to help, Karl keeps expecting him to deliver a lecture about honesty; the lecture never comes, however.
The mike works best when the mesh screen points directly at the speaker’s mouth. Mounting it on Karl’s nose would be ideal, but since that might not be the best location, secrecy-wise, they experiment with other options.
Placing the mike inside Karl’s hospital gown doesn’t work. “All I could hear was fabric rubbing on it,” Mr. Frenais says. “And stomach-gurgling.” He suggests gluing the mike to Karl’s scalp and concealing it inside Karl’s floppy mop of hair. Sounds a bit silly, but they give it a go. After fluffing Karl’s hair to hide the mike, Mr. Frenais goes out in the hall and listens on his earphone as Lizette says, “So, Karl, I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
He’s still fumbling for an answer when Mr. Frenais comes back into the room with two thumbs up, announcing, “Loud and clear.”
A difficult question remains, though: how to attach the mike to Karl’s scalp? “We’ve got a hot glue gun at home,” Lizette offers.
“I’m thinking this looks like a job for rubber cement,” says Mr. Frenais, and off he goes to the nearest Staples, one town over, leaving his daughter and Karl to… um… er…
The last time we saw them together, Cara had bluntly announced that Lizette cared about Karl so much. Lizette’s electrifying grip on his toe lasted a long time; neither of them could think of what to say next, and Lizette never moved her hand. If the loud guy in blue scrubs hadn’t appeared to collect the garbage, they might still be there, toe in fist; but as soon as he popped his head in and blared, “How’s everybody today?” Lizette dashed out the door.
And now they’re together again, just the two of them, and he knows he has to say something, do something, make his feelings known, or else she’ll think he wants to be just friends.
He summons his courage. He speaks.
“Um, I’ll pay you back for the mike.”
“You definitely will.”
“Thanks for getting it. And for bringing your father.”
“No problem. Glad to help.”
He’s run out of words. She pops a piece of Orbit gum into her mouth and turns her back to him. He’s not sure what that means, but it can’t be good.
Except that it helps: not having to look her in the eye makes it possible to speak again. “I’ve been wanting to say to you-ever since the first day when you showed up at school-I like you so much. But I kind of thought-I think a lot of people thought-that you…”
She keeps her back turned but cocks her ear to make sure she hears the end of the sentence.
“… were gay,” he mumbles, fearfully.
She whirls around. Her face has turned Red Lobster red.
“What?! Why? Because I like sports? Because I don’t wear quarts of makeup, or dress like Cara?”
“No, none of that. I don’t know…“
She stalks over to the door. “I don’t want to act like that, or dress like that. It’s never gonna happen. What’s that got to do with anything, anyway? Does a person have to be like her to be accepted? And you-how could-“
She’s too upset to limit herself to one thought at a time- too upset to speak. It looks to Karl as if she might just run away. Panicking-not because he needs her help with the hidden mike, but because she can’t leave this way, before she even knows how he feels-he blurts out, “I kept wishing you weren’t gay. I’m not even sure anymore why I thought it. I was stupid.”
“That’s an understatement.”
An old man in a wheelchair goes past the doorway, peeking in. When he’s out of sight, Lizette kicks the doorframe with her sneaker and says a quiet, “Ow.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think.”
She’s far away from him, and still angry. Maybe she’s too angry to ever forgive him; otherwise, wouldn’t she come back to him?
The disappointment silences him, until he remembers what Cara said: That’s because you care about him so much.
Powered by the last grain of hope left inside him, he asks, “Was Cara right? About you liking me?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh.” She’s focusing on the little opening in the doorframe where the latch fits in. “I like being around you. I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth- some comment that I have to think about and figure out a half hour later. When you’re not saying something that sends me into a raging fit, that is.”
“That’s the best thing anybody ever said to me.”
Lizette smiles, a long line with a little hook at the end, but she still avoids looking at him.
It would be reasonable to assume that they’ll finally let go of their doubts and insecurities and lunge at each other now. But it’s not that simple, not for these two. When you’re really shy-really, really shy-even this much reassurance isn’t quite enough. [1]
“Tell you what,” Lizette says. “Can we just pretend we didn’t say any of this stuff, till after the test?”
“Okay, but why?”
“Because we need our heads on straight for the next few days.”
Karl agrees. She’s so wise and mature, he thinks.
While they wait for Mr. Frenais to come back with the rubber cement, Lizette wanders back to the hospital bed. Discreetly, she walks two fingers onto the sheet until they reach his hand. There, on his palm, the two fingers do a little Rockettes-style dance. Neither of them knows what to do next-so they’re both relieved when Mr. Frenais walks in with the Staples bag and says, “That was easy.”
A good dad, he pretends he sees nothing as Lizette rockets backward, away from Karl. Then it’s back to business: brushing the viscous rubber cement onto the bottom of the microphone, parting Karl’s hair to clear a narrow runway of scalp, pressing the mike firmly into place, and artfully arranging Karl’s hair around it. While pressing down on the mike and waiting for the cement to dry, Mr. Frenais says, “I’m curious about one thing, Karl.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m wondering, can you tell me, in fifty words or less, why you don’t want to go through life cheating?”
Mr. Frenais has short gray hair that stands straight up. He looks like a retired astronaut, or a little general, and has a rough, hoarse voice-you can easily imagine him yelling orders at his football team-but he asks this question in a kindly way, almost like a minister. That’s good, because Karl knows this is a test, which will either win him Mr. Frenais’s support or provoke his eternal disapproval. As calmly as he can, he thinks and speaks.
“I guess, more than anything else, it’s about what kind of person you want to be,” he says.
“You’re sure that’s the reason?”
With sinking hopes, Karl replies, “I think so, uh-huh.”
“Pretty good answer,” Mr. Frenais says, and takes a break from holding the mike in place so he can shake Karl’s hand. “I was thinking more along the lines of, if you cheat, you have to always worry about someone catching you, and that’s not the best way to live-but I like what you said, too.”
Mr. Frenais’s hand is rough and calloused, but Karl is so relieved, he’d gladly keep shaking it all day.
Mr. Frenais, however, goes back to pressing on the mike, and adds a P.S.: “’Course, all this sneakin’ around wouldn’t be necessary if you’d done the right thing in the first place. But nobody’s perfect. Except my little girl here.”
After a long fifteen minutes, Karl can nod and even shake his head without dislodging the microphone. Both Lizette and her father swear they can’t see a trace of it through his hair. The two Frenaises say good-bye for now; Lizette waggles two fingers, reminding him of her little dance on his hand.
As soon as he’s alone, Karl’s innards swish like dirty laundry around an agitator. What if he can’t get Klimchock and Upchurch to say what he needs them to say? What if he tries too hard and they get suspicious, or if he sweats so much that his hair gets soaked and flat, exposing the microphone? If they see it, they’ll reach in and tear Karl’s liver out. An infinite number of things could go wrong-but worse than any What if is the one thing that’s certain. No college will accept a convicted cheater.
Maybe he’d better start paying attention to those commercials for technical schools, the ones where, each time you learn how to use a tool, it goes in your toolbox.
Lizette calls Mr. Klimchock at the school and Phillip Upchurch at his house, and delivers the message that Karl is still in the hospital, and he thinks he’s too sick to take the test.
They wait together for the first visitor to show up. Each time they hear the elevator bell go dong, they look at each other with a grim sort of gaze, This is it, the moment of truth. Frankly, it gets pretty absurd after a while. A dozen strangers wander past the doorway-a dozen grim gazes-but then, just as Karl lets out a little snort at the comedy of it all, their first visitor shows up.
It’s an Upchurch, but not Phillip.
Randall Upchurch, Realtor and candidate for mayor, could pass for a male model, thirty years later (except, perhaps, for the shape of his head, which reminds Karl of a paramecium). His creamy white suit shows off the depth of his tan-which, to tell the truth, has sort of an orange tint, unless that’s a reflection from his peach-colored shirt. He wears his thinning hair combed straight back, and his teeth are as white as a new ream of paper.
“Karl Petrofsky?” he asks.
Karl nods.
“Randy Upchurch, glad to meet you.”
He shakes Karl’s hand firmly but cordially. Lizette is about to slip out of the room when the other elevator dongs, and they hear a familiar urgent rhythm: Mr. Klimchock’s heavy-footed approach.
Karl and Lizette exchange a panicked glance (Both at once?!) and then Klimchock is there in the doorway in his standard gray suit, frowning impatiently.
Karl’s stomach slides a bit to the side as Mr. Upchurch’s cologne surrounds him.
While Karl’s soul thrashes in a helpless panic, Mr. Klimchock’s frown evolves into a fit of confused consternation. His shining, smooth scalp turns deep pink. He can’t speak.
“Klimmy!” Mr. Upchurch laughs. “How’s the education biz? Still molding America’s future, one pimple at a time?”
Mr. Klimchock’s mouth opens, but no words come out. His cheek twitches.
Another dong-and Samantha Abrabarba enters the room, carrying a small turquoise gift bag. She’s wearing lavender slacks today, and a yellow blouse with a big foofy front. It seems to Karl that she must go through lipstick and eye makeup by the vat.
“I thought I’d have you to myself, cutie-pie,” she says, taking in the crowd. “Mind if I cut in front?” she asks Mr. Upchurch, and hands Karl the gift bag. Inside, a Beanie Babies stegosaurus peeks out, with plaid fur. She leans over and kisses Karl on the cheek while he sends Lizette a scrunch-browed grimace-She’s crazy, I don’t even like her-but Lizette misses the signal because she’s glaring at the floor.
“You’re a popular young man,” Mr. Upchurch says.
No need to reply, because Samantha takes over. “This is peculiar,” she says, eyeing the two older men. “What are you two doing here?”
The assistant principal and Mr. Upchurch dart evasive glances around the room.
“What does Phillip Upchurch have to do with Karl?” Samantha wonders out loud. “And why would Mr. Klimchock come visit you in the hospital?”
Lizette moves to the foot of Karl’s bed and addresses them all crankily. “Listen, y’all-Karl is still sick, in case you didn’t notice. You can’t come in here all together, you’ll wear him out and then he’ll have a relapse. Could we get some cooperation here?”
Samantha gives Lizette a suspicious sidelong gaze. “Karl, why is she bossing everybody around? Do you want to whisper anything in my ear?”
“No, everything’s fine.”
“I smell something fishy. Why would they all be here together?”
Mr. Upchurch lets out an extremely fake guffaw. Mr. Klimchock follows his lead with a strained Hmp hmp hmp.
“You’re not fooling me,” Samantha says dryly.
“Will you please just-be quiet!” blurts Lizette.
“No, and you can’t make me.”
“Young lady,” Mr. Upchurch says benevolently, “we’re just here to visit Karl. We’re not sinisterly plotting anything.”
She leans in close-so close that Karl can smell her mint toothpaste-and murmurs, “What’s going on, Karl? Tell me so I can rescue you!”
“Nothing’s going on, they’re just visiting.”
“Okay, people,” Lizette announces, “here’s what we’re going to do. We’re gonna take turns. Everybody will get to see Karl, one by one, okay? No mob scenes, just nice, private conversations. You’ll all get your turn. Eenie-meenie-minie-mo-you first,” and she points at Mr. Upchurch. “The rest of us’ll wait outside-there’s a bench at the end of the hall. Let’s go. Come on, before visiting hours are over.”
She steers Samantha out the door with a hand on her shoulder, and gives Mr. Klimchock’s suit sleeve a tug as well. Karl’s heart fills with admiration and gratitude.
“That’s one macho young lady,” Upchurch comments. “I assume she’s not your girlfriend.”
“Not exactly. Not yet. Maybe, sort of.”
The unexpected answer amuses Upchurch, but only briefly. Taking his time, he peeks out the doorway, just as his son did. Karl waits for him to come closer before coaxing the words from him-but Mr. Upchurch never gets near him.
“I supposed Klimmy’s here for the same reason I am,” he says, pacing the room. “He wants you to take the SAT and bring up the school’s average. Am I right?”
“Probably.”
“Good to know he and I are on the same page. Listen, I really can’t stay-there’s a campaign fund-raiser over at Chez Shea-but this shouldn’t take long. You’re obviously a very smart young man. I think Phillip must have gotten off on the wrong foot with you. He still has a lot to learn about people skills.”
An odd movement in the hall catches Karl’s eye. It’s Lizette, outside the doorway, hiding from Upchurch, wiggling her thumb at Karl, sliding it horizontally, over and over, above her head. What could this mean? It looks like she wants him to set his hair on fire with a cigarette lighter.
The switch! He turned the mike off to save battery power and forgot to turn it back on.
“Excuse me a second,” he tells Mr. Upchurch, and hurries with his IV pole into the bathroom, where he flushes the toilet, slides the switch, and readjusts his hair in the mirror.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he says, and climbs back into the bed.
Mr. Upchurch turns his back to Karl. “You know why I’m here. Let’s be frank.”
“What? I can’t hear you, my ears are a little clogged. Could you come closer?”
Karl is sweating all over, including his scalp. Will he electrocute himself? Not really: a nine-volt battery can’t deliver a fatal shock. But he learned long ago in the garage that it can give you a painful burn-painful enough so he would have to tear the microphone off his scalp-which gives him all the more reason to sweat.
“Let’s get down to it, Karl,” Mr. Upchurch says, but-can’t he understand English?-he’s still facing the door, making sure no one else walks in.
“Hold on, wait, I wanted to ask you first“-can’t you just turn around?!-“how do you know Mr. Klimchock? How come he got so upset when he saw you?”
Mr. Upchurch snorts to himself. “That’s a long story. But I suppose it might help to share it with you.” He paces the room as he speaks. “Klimmy and I went through school together, just like you and Phillip. Believe it or not, we had some things in common: good singing voices, and a strong interest in Felicia Maniscalco. His interest was more romantic, mine was purely physical. Our senior year, the class musical was The King and I. Everyone knew Felicia would play Anna-no one else could compare. That’s why Klimmy and I both wanted to play the king: to get close to her. But, while Klimmy assumed his talent would win him the part-and he really did have a terrific voice, much better than mine-I wanted it more. I made an arrangement with the kid who was playing the piano during auditions. In exchange for an outrageous fee, he messed up while playing for Klimmy. Your Mr. Klimchock was a high-strung young man; the fumbling piano threw him completely off. He had a fit, right there on the auditorium stage, in front of Felicia and everyone else. It was sad to see.” Upchurch smirks, still tickled by the memory. “So, I played the king, and he ended up playing Tuptim’s secret boyfriend-the monk. I’ll tell you something: bouncing around the stage with Felicia, singing ‘Shall We Dance?’ under the lights, that’s still one of the best memories of my life.”
An incredible thought distracts Karl: he sympathizes with Mr. Klimchock!
“Did you end up marrying her?” he asks.
“Are you joking? She was an airhead. Her talents were all anatomical.”
At this moment, Karl’s main concern is getting Upchurch to turn around and face the mike. But he’s afraid of being too obvious. “I’m not sure I get the point of the story.”
“I’ll be blunt, then. I’m still the same guy, Karl. When I want something, I get it. That includes winning the mayoral race, and getting my son into Harvard.”
Some inner instinct tells Karl that it might help to taunt Upchurch. Maybe then he’ll get mad and spell out his demands without wasting more time.
“Why do you want to be mayor so badly? Are you a megalomaniac?”
Upchurch raises one eyebrow, surprised but not impressed. “No, it’s not about power for power’s sake. It’s about what you can do with it. There are opportunities in this town that have gone to waste.”
“Such as?”
“I can’t go into specifics. But I’ll say this much: after I’m elected, there’ll be a lot more than ducks in Swivel Brook Park.”
This is getting way off the subject, but-Upchurch wants to build houses in the prettiest park in town?!
“I see you’re surprised. Don’t worry, it’ll be very tastefully done. How do you like the name Brookside?”
Nurse Francesca interrupts them with a cheerful “Hi, Karl.” She’s pushing a haggard man with a mustache in a wheelchair. The man’s foot is thickly wrapped in bandages. “Say hello to your new roommate, Mister Prell. Or, excuse me, Officer Prell. He stopped a robbery at the TCBY today.”
“It wasn’t a robbery, it was a drunk waving a gun around,” says Officer Prell unhappily. “I just wish I had bulletproof shoes.”
As Nurse Francesca sets the policeman up in Mr. Hydine’s old bed, Karl and his visitor share a scowl. They have important things to say, private things. How can they talk now? (You had to blab about your real estate projects!)
Karl’s plan is ruined. He’s stopped-defeated-destroyed.
Randall Upchurch, however, won’t let a mere wounded cop foil his scheme. “Excuse us,” he tells the nurse and her patient, “Karl wanted to tell me something in private.”
He draws the curtain all the way around the bed and comes within six inches of Karl’s nose. (Bless you, Nurse Francesca!) “No time for chitchat now,” he whispers. “You’re going to take the SAT Saturday. You’ll transmit the answers to Phillip and the others. He told me about the scheme with the pencil-it’s brilliant. I’ll make it worth your while. Let’s say, five thousand dollars cash, in two installments, one after the test and one after the scores come back.”
“But what if I say no?”
“Then a pack of hungry dogs will enter your home while you sleep and leave nothing but three sets of bones.”
“Um-literally or figuratively?” Karl asks.
Mr. Upchurch gives Karl a long, hard, contemptuous glare-an especially scary experience because of the microphone in his hair. A fresh torrent of sweat pours from him. The tension is too much. He twitches, and that sudden movement undoes the rubber cement’s grip. He can feel the little black box slip a quarter-inch to the side.
“Hey, Karl,” Nurse Francesca calls through the curtain, “in case I don’t see you before you go home, good luck in school and everything.”
“Thanks,” he tells the curtain. “Am I going home soon?”
“Any time now.”
Her footsteps fade away. They’re going to discharge him before he gets Klimchock on tape. But it doesn’t really matter, because Randall Upchurch will murder him when he sees the microphone fall off his head.
“I would take a shower first thing, if I were you,” Upchurch tells him. “You sweat like a pig.”
“Mm-hm,” Karl replies.
“You won’t let us down, right?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Good man. And just to make sure, I’ll be listening from my car across the street.”
That’s it-he’s gone. Karl has escaped the first of the swinging axes, but there’s no time for celebration. He grabs the mike and speaks straight into it, whispering. “Lizette! Come! Emergency!”
“You’re soaked!” she observes as she slips inside the curtain. “What’d he do, hose you down?”
He holds up the little mike. “The glue lost its grip. And they’re going to send me home any minute now. I don’t know what to do!”
Her father didn’t leave the rubber cement, and even if he had, there’s not enough time for it to dry.
Drowning in a sea of despair, banging his bones against the rocks of hysteria, Karl shakes his head and lets out a thin, high squeak.
“Stop it,” Lizette commands. “Just calm down.”
Since he can’t stop shaking his head, she takes drastic action, grabbing him by the shoulders and really shaking him. His head flies around like a bobble-head doll’s.
She keeps her grip on his shoulders even after she stops shaking him. For a moment or three, it looks as if she may crash through the invisible wall and kiss him-but then she lets go and takes the microphone from him. “Let’s just get this done,” she says.
Taking the Orbit gum out of her mouth, she flattens it against the dried rubber cement on the bottom of the microphone and sets it back on Karl’s head, pushing painfully hard. Then she fluffs his damp hair around it. “You’ve looked better,” she says, and hurries out.
She doesn’t get far, though. “Excuse me,” says a friendly old lady, just outside the curtain. “I’m looking for Karl Petrofsky. I have his discharge papers.”
“I just saw him run into the toilet to throw up,” Lizette replies. “He said something about the food here.”
“Oh,” says the pleasant lady.
“Maybe you should come back in a half hour or so,” Lizette suggests.
“I’ll do that. Could you tell him to have someone with him who can take him home?”
“I’ll let him know. Soon as he stops heaving.”
“Thank you.”
Before Karl can fully comprehend his debt to Lizette, a hand yanks the curtain open.
“What was he doing here?” Mr. Klimchock whispers, red-faced.
“He? Nothing. Why?”
Klimchock goes to the doorway and checks the hall, then returns to Karl’s bedside. “I’ll ask again. What was HE doing here?”
The wormy vein appears on his forehead again.
“He just came to visit. He’s a friend of my family-my mother. They know each other from work.”
Klimchock regards Karl with distrust and distaste. “You’re lying. Why would Randall Upchurch come visit you?”
His eyes move right and left, the outward signs of fevered thinking. He takes a whistling, inward breath.
“Phillip is in this with you! Isn’t he?”
Klimchock’s face lights up with glee. If he were a miser, there would be dollar signs on his eyeballs.
“It’s too good to be true. Phillip Upchurch! Glory, glory, hallelujah!”
Karl has never seen the assistant principal this happy. Possibly, no one has. A small but heavy weight sits on his scalp, reminding him of his mission.
“What exactly do you want me to do, Mr. Klimchock?”
“I’ve already told you. This doesn’t change the plan-it just means the prize will be bigger than I ever hoped.”
“Could you just remind me of the details? I’ve been sick, I can’t remember what you said.”
Klimchock gazes at Karl questioningly. He pauses and listens through the curtain as visitors approach the doorway and pass. Then he comes closer, just as Upchurch did.
Unlike Randall Upchurch, though, Klimchock gropes Karl’s chest through the flimsy blue hospital gown. His fingers probe every inch of flesh and bone.
“Hey!” Karl protests. “Stop that!”
“Are you wearing a wire, Karl? Is that it? Are you and Upchurch setting a trap?”
With the hidden microphone held in place only by a soft, malleable wad of gum, Karl states emphatically, “No! And get your hands off me-that’s totally inappropriate.”
Klimchock backs away. “Apologies. I suppose I’m overly suspicious.”
While Klimchock blushes, a wave of confusion and discomfort breaks over Karl. What am I doing?-he can hear the question asked in his own voice, internally but loudly. Observing himself from above, he doesn’t like what he sees. It’s just… sleazy, trapping these two men. Nasty and merciless as they are, he doesn’t want to be the sort of person who lies and schemes to destroy others. Yes, they deserve to be exposed, to be stopped-but look how devious he’s being. The whole thing nauseates him.
Keeping his voice to a murmur, Klimchock begins again. “Can we finish our business now?”
A clamor interrupts him. “There he is!” “How’s it going, Hopalong?” “What did the doctors say, will you ever tap-dance again?” “He needed this like he needs a hole in the foot.”
The boisterous off-duty cops keep teasing Officer Prell- and as they do, Samantha comes storming into the room, rips open the curtain, and says, “I know what’s going on! It’s a conspiracy! You want Phillip to be the valedictorian! You’re pressuring Karl to mess up on purpose, aren’t you? Aren’t you?!”
Before Mr. Klimchock can even process this accusation, Lizette is there, pulling on Samantha’s arm. “You’re crazy! Let them be.”
“You’re in cahoots with them!” Samantha accuses her.
“What kind of person are you? Nobody says cahoots.”
“You’re trying to shift the spotlight, but it won’t work.”
“Young lady,” Mr. Klimchock says, “you’ve misread this entire situation. Believe me.”
Samantha breaks free of Lizette ‘s grip. “I’ll stand by you, Karl. Don’t let them intimidate you. You’re Number One!”
Karl’s heart hasn’t beat for several seconds, at least that he’s aware of. He pleads with her. “They’re not pressuring me! Just go out there and sit on the bench-everything’s okay!”
“I’m not leaving until they do.”
“Please go!”
Samantha shakes her head. “You’ve got him terrorized. I’m warning you two-if you try to cheat Karl out of his rightful place, I swear, I’ll get the story on CNN.”
“Would you just leave?” Lizette says.
“Hello, Mister Petrofsky, are you feeling better now?”
The sweet little old lady with the clipboard is back.
“I just need you to sign these papers for me. I’ll bet you’re happy to be going home.”
None of the four of them says a word. One of the cops calls through the curtain, “Everything okay in there?”
A gurgling comes from deep in Karl’s gut. He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting down his rising gorge. “Karl?” Lizette asks. “What’s going on?”
“Could someone bring me a garbage can?”
Lizette, mistaking Karl’s illness for an Oscar-worthy performance, says, “Mr. Klimchock, will you stay with Karl while I go get a nurse?”
“Of course. The rest of you had better wait outside.”
“I think,” the lady with the clipboard says, “we’d better wait a bit longer before discharging you.”
When Karl opens his eyes again, he’s alone with Mr. Klimchock, surrounded by the drawn curtain. “Well done,” Mr. Klimchock says. “Now let’s finish our conversation before the earth quakes and swallows the entire hospital.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “You have to take the SAT, Karl. You have to cheat again, so I can catch the rest of them. You don’t have a choice. I’ve already offered to keep your cheating out of your school records and to lie to colleges that you’re a top-notch fencer. You can’t say no. Think of your parents. I’m sure it would kill them to see your academic career snuffed out before it began.”
That’s it: Karl is done. He has caught Klimchock in his trap.
“All right,” he says gloomily. “I’ll do it.”
Mr. Klimchock glows. Then he bursts into song-quietly, so the off-duty cops won’t hear, but still in a pure and handsome tenor. “Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles…”
Armed with the evidence to crush Klimchock and Upchurch, both of whom would cheerfully crush him, Karl doesn’t rejoice. Far from it. After all this frantic effort, he would like nothing better than to throw the recordings in the trash. He’s just not the Enemy-Devouring Type; the whole plan disturbs him more and more with each passing moment.
In this state of nausea, he remembers what Lizette said: I wish there were a way for Karl to duck and let them fire away at each other.
Karl wishes there were, too.
Midnight. A ringing noise pokes into Karl’s sleep, annoyingly, persistently.
His cell phone.
Eyes still closed, “Hello?”
“Karl, right?”
The voice belongs to a guy about his age, but Karl doesn’t recognize it. “Who’s this?”
“You can call me the Guru. I’m the master of deceit, the specialist in scams and schemes, the world’s champion cheater. A girl named Cara got in touch with me-she said you got caught, and now you’re planning to sacrifice yourself so you can bring down some tyrannical assistant principal. Do I have the facts right?”
Down the hall, at the nurses’ station, a radio is playing softly. In less than a minute, the guy on the phone has shown himself to be possibly the most obnoxious person Karl has ever listened to.
“It’s a little more complicated than that, but basically, yeah, that’s right.”
“Okay. Free advice: don’t let so-called Nobility fog up your brain. There has to be a better way-but you won’t find it till you expand your thinking.”
“All I’ve been doing is thinking. I can’t see any other way.”
“That’s why I’m here, kid. I’m your crisis hotline, your guardian angel, your personal mahatma. You’ve got to stop letting them intimidate you.”
The Guru’s chattering leaves Karl deeply skeptical. This guy is having way too much fun. He doubts that the self-proclaimed authority will have a single good suggestion to make.
“If you’ve got any ideas, would you please just tell me?”
“Hey, I can’t solve your problems for you. All I can do is open your mind and lead you to the Gates of Wisdom. You have to go the rest of the way yourself.”
If he doesn’t say something useful in the next thirty seconds,Karl resolves, I’m hanging up.
“Go ahead, Guru. I’m listening.”
In the empty air on the other end, Karl hears the sound of a mouse clicking in rapid bursts. While he’s supposedly saving Karl from doom, the great Guru is also playing a game on his computer. Wonderful.
“Okay. First we eliminate self-destruction as an option. Then we think: how can we scare the living crap out of this guy so he’ll leave you alone? I’m not talking about illegal weaponry here. More like butterflies with huge eyes on their wings-give the illusion of great size and menace. What could you say to this fiend that would…”
The rest of the Guru’s blather evaporates into the air, a harmless, odorless gas. He has said the magic words; he has given Karl the answer, without realizing it. Despite the emptiness of his boasts, he was right about one thing: there is another way out.
Karl hangs up and takes the pen and the hospital note-pad from the bedside table. He’s got a great deal of planning to do. Between now and the SAT, he may not have time to sleep.
<a l:href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> Noted psychologist Waldo S. Tutwiler comments: “Among those who fall in love and idolize the loved one, but don’t have a high opinion of themselves, there is a strong and logical belief that the beloved moves on an elevated plane, far higher than the lowly land where they themselves dwell-so how could the adored one possibly return their feelings? The advice I give to my young clients in such cases is that this whole way of thinking is a self-destructive mistake. Yes, I tell them, go ahead and desire the appealing person-but stop thinking you’re a toad by comparison! There’s no need to grovel in the mud. Besides, from a purely practical point of view, this attitude will destroy any chance you may have of forming a real relationship. Stand at your full height and meet the loved one’s gaze with dignity. Then, and only then, will you have a chance at romantic happiness.” [Author’s Note: Learn from Dr. Tutwiler and you may be able to save yourself years of heartache and thousands of dollars in therapy bills. If only Karl could read this!]