Cheating Fate

Chapter 2: High School Heroics

If elementary school was a tragic comedy, high school was a horror movie directed by a clown.

By the time I was fifteen, I had recovered from the trauma of the cement-encased poodle. I had convinced myself that my childhood failures were just statistical anomalies. I was older now. I was wiser. I had acne, which I assumed was a sign of maturity.

My goal for high school was simple: Academic Excellence.

I wanted to be Valedictorian. I wanted the gold medal. I wanted the scholarship that would get me out of this town and into a university where people didn't drink hose water for fun.

To achieve this, I adopted a strategy that was radical, innovative, and completely doomed:

I studied.

While other kids were smoking behind the gym or trying to figure out how to unclasp a bra with one hand, I was memorizing the Periodic Table. I knew the capital of every country, including the ones that didn't exist anymore. I could recite Shakespeare backwards (which, ironically, sounds a lot like German heavy metal).

My nemesis in this academic hunger game was a guy named Chad.

Chad was everything I wasn't. He was tall, he had a jawline that could cut glass, and his father owned the biggest car dealership in the city. Chad’s idea of studying was highlighting the entire textbook in neon yellow and then taking a nap on it.

The final history exam was the deciding factor for the "Student of the Year" award.

I had spent three weeks preparing. I had flashcards. I had timelines. I had dreamt about the French Revolution so much that I woke up one morning screaming about baguettes.

I walked into the exam hall feeling like a gladiator. I sat down. I opened the paper. I knew everything. My pen danced across the page. It was a masterpiece of knowledge.

Chad sat directly in front of me.

Five minutes into the exam, I saw him pull a smartphone out of his sleeve. It was so obvious that he might as well have set up a neon sign that said "I AM CHEATING."

He was scrolling through Wikipedia. He was texting friends. At one point, I’m pretty sure he ordered a pizza.

I looked at the teacher, Mr. Henderson.

Mr. Henderson was a man who had clearly given up on life around 1998. He was reading a magazine about fishing and picking his ear with a paperclip. He didn't see Chad. He didn't see anything.

I felt a surge of righteous indignation. This is wrong, I thought. Justice must be served.

I raised my hand.

"Mr. Henderson?"

The teacher looked up, annoyed. "What is it, Felix?"

"I think there's something you should see," I whispered, nodding towards Chad.

Mr. Henderson stood up. He walked down the aisle. My heart pounded. Justice was coming. The cheater would be caught. The system worked!

Mr. Henderson stopped at our desks. He looked at Chad, who had lazily slid the phone under his thigh. Then he looked at me.

Then, he looked down at the floor next to my desk.

"Felix," Mr. Henderson said, his voice dropping an octave. "What is this?"

I looked down. There, lying innocently by my foot, was a small, crumpled piece of paper.

"I... I don't know," I stammered.

Mr. Henderson picked it up. He unfolded it. It was a cheat sheet.

But it wasn't just any cheat sheet. It was a cheat sheet for Advanced Calculus.

"This is a History exam, Felix," Mr. Henderson said slowly.

"Exactly!" I pleaded. "Why would I have a Math cheat sheet for a History exam? That makes no sense! And that’s not my handwriting!"

"It fell out of your pocket," Chad said, turning around with a look of pure, manufactured shock. "I saw it, Mr. Henderson. I didn't want to say anything because Felix is my friend, but... integrity matters."

Integrity matters. The words hung in the air like a bad smell.

Mr. Henderson sighed. "Felix, I expected better from you. Cheating is bad enough. But being incompetent at cheating? Bringing the wrong notes? That’s just insulting."

"But look at him!" I pointed at Chad. "Check his phone!"

"Leave Chad out of this," Mr. Henderson snapped. "Chad’s father just donated the new scoreboard for the football field. He’s a good kid."

I was sent to the principal's office. I got a zero on the exam. I was given two weeks of detention.

And Chad?

Chad got an A-minus. He became Valedictorian.

During detention, while I was scraping gum off the bottom of desks, I watched through the window. I saw Chad getting into his convertible, high-fiving the football team.

The Universe was teaching me Lesson Number Two:

"The rules only apply to the people who can't afford to break them."

I scrubbed the desk harder. The friction burned my fingers. I wasn't sad anymore. I was angry. But it was a useful anger. It was the kind of anger that fuels engines.

I looked at the gum on my scraper. It was gross, sticky, and stubborn.

Be the gum, I thought. Stick to them until they can't get rid of you.

I finished high school with a tarnished record and a GPA that barely got me into the local university. I left with no awards, no girlfriend, and a deep, simmering hatred for the concept of "fair play."

But I still had hope. University would be different, right? University was a place of higher learning, of intellect, of meritocracy.

Oh, how naive I was.

If High School was a horror movie, University was about to be a psychological thriller. And I was the guy who walked into the dark basement without a flashlight.