The Test Prep Gift My Neighbor's Daughter Gave Me

Chapter 2 The Irregularity Report

Westbrook High had a conference room that smelled like old carpet and burnt coffee. I had been inside it twice in four years, both times for pep rallies about college applications. It looked smaller with Mrs. Calder and a woman from the testing office sitting on the other side of the table.

Eli sat next to me. He kept his hands under his thighs like a kid in church.

The woman from the testing office introduced herself as Ms. Reyes. She had a folder and a slim laptop. She asked us to walk through Monday morning, minute by minute. When we finished, she opened the folder and took out a single sheet of letter-size paper, inside a clear sleeve.

"Eli," she said, "does this look familiar?"

It was the handwriting page he had mentioned. It had a short paragraph of sentences at the top for a student to copy, and beneath it, rows of words in blue ink. The writing was small and neat, slanted to the right, with round curves and a looping g. It was not Eli's handwriting. It was not mine either. I had seen it for years on notes passed in our biology class.

Maya's.

The paragraph at the top was about the value of persistence. Along the margin of the page, someone had written two lines in the same blue ink: "Keep going. You are almost through."

I felt Eli go very still next to me.

"That's not his," I said.

Ms. Reyes looked at me. "How do you know?"

I could feel the shape of the answer in my mouth. If I said the pen came from Maya, I was handing her a motive. If I said nothing, the page stayed Eli's, and there was a paragraph in the file about a student with a placement exam irregularity that would follow him to every application he ever filed.

Maya wanted the scholarship. I understood that now. But this was not about the scholarship only. This was about a fallback. She had spent years being perfect in a house where perfection was the rent. And if she could not get the scholarship, she might need the second path: a demonstrated irregularity that made someone else's win impossible, and recovered her spot.

I asked a question I already knew the answer to. "Can I see the sign-in sheet from the placement exam?"

Ms. Reyes hesitated. Mrs. Calder nodded.

The sign-in sheet was on the second page. Two names in the morning block, in ballpoint: Eli Rourke and Maya Alvarez. Next to Eli's name, the proctor had drawn a small question mark and written, "Sat in wrong seat; check ID."

I put the sheet down.

"Maya Alvarez was supposed to take the test Monday morning," I said. "Her seat was next to my brother's. She signed in, then left. And her handwriting page ended up in my brother's booklet."

Ms. Reyes looked at me with the face of a person who had seen this before. "Do you know why?"

"I don't," I said. "But you should ask her."

Mrs. Calder made a note. "We will."

The meeting ended at 10:15. Outside the conference room, Eli grabbed my sleeve.

"Don't say anything to Mom," he said. "Please."

"I won't," I said. "But you're going to tell me every single thing that happened in that room, and you're not going to skip one part."

He nodded, and we walked out through the front lobby past the trophy case with the dusty wrestling medals. In the parking lot, Maya was standing by her mother's car. She looked calm. Too calm. Her hair was pulled back, and she wore a clean blue shirt. She had dressed for the nurse's office and the front office both.

She saw me and raised one hand in a small wave.

I did not wave back. I walked to our car and got in.

Eli got in on the passenger side. He buckled his seat belt and stared straight ahead.

"She told me to take her seat," he said.

I turned off the radio.

"Start from the beginning," I said.

Eli told me. She had come up to him in the hallway before the exam. She said she felt sick, that she had already signed in, and that if he took her seat, the proctor would not notice because they called names fast. She said it would bring him luck, like the pen. She said he would place into the transfer track, and then she could take the makeup exam. She gave him a hall pass with her name on it. He did not ask why. He wanted to pass so badly that he did not ask a single question.

I listened and did not interrupt. When he finished, I let out a breath.

"She set the seat and the page," I said. "The pen was for insurance. If you looked connected to her, she could say you took the test for her. If you didn't, she could say you cheated with her notes. Either way, she gets a story."

Eli turned to me. "I didn't know. I swear."

"I know you didn't."

He was quiet for a second. "So what do we do?"

I thought about the scholarship. Twelve thousand dollars a year, renewable for four. It would cover almost half of what I would need next fall. I thought about my mother's night shifts and the stack of bills on the counter that never got smaller.

"We get proof," I said. "And then we decide whether she is going to be a person who almost ruined you, or a person who did."

When I got home that afternoon, Maya was sitting on her front steps with a notebook open on her knees. She looked up when our car stopped, and I saw it then: she was waiting for me. She had been waiting all along.

I went into my house without looking at her, and I started writing down everything, every time, every word, with dates and times. The page under my hand was blank, and I was going to fill it up until I had enough.