Free Cheater by Michael Laser

stretches—not with his arms up in a Y, but down at his sides. Shaking his wrists a bit, a plausible finale to the yawn, he gets the cuff to slide back down over the camera.
    “Uh-oh,” Mr. Imperiale says, freezing the blood in Karl’s veins. “If you’re yawning, I guess I’d better come up with some tougher questions next time.”
    Karl leaves his left arm dangling over the edge of his desk, hiding the bulge in his cuff. “No, I was just up late last night.”
    “Good for you! Human computer AND party animal. Breaking the stereotype, twenty-four seven. You wild and crazy guy.”
    The teacher moves on, murmuring to Conor Connolly, “Remember the Power Rule”—leaving Karl to finish the test and the transmission in peace.
    Climbing the hill toward Sunrise Place that afternoon, past the diamond in Blortsmek Park where a girls’ softball game is in progress, Karl worries that he should have worn different clothes. Cara will be there: what will she think of his dull box-check shirt and his ill-fitting jeans?
    Once he sees which house is Blaine’s, other worries take over. It’s the really big one, made of gray stone, with the giant sloping lawn and the brick driveway that swoops up the hill and around behind. His whole life, Karl has wondered who lived here, and what did they do with all those rooms. (Dive into mounds of gold coins?) But now he’s going to a party here, and his sneakers suddenly look unacceptably soiled, the once-white rubber pathetically worn in front and coming off a bit, and there are frayed threads at the bottoms of his jeans.
    The only path from the driveway to the front door consists of a few small squares of slate set in the grass. It rained this morning, and the lawn is still wet, and now so are his sneakers, from scuffing over the grass.
    Blaine opens the door, chuckling, and explains that no one actually uses this entrance. If Karl feels a bit foolish, the foolish feeling fades fast in the face of the furnishings within. The marble floor gleams, the staircase is a spiral; the life-size photorealist paintings show men in suits doing ordinary things like sneezing and blowing a bubble-gum bubble. Everything here reflects light, dustlessly. When Blaine asks him to take off his wet sneakers, Karl obeys instantly.
    Familiar but incongruous noises from the basement prepare Karl for the sight of Blaine’s amazing antique Fun Land, featuring Skee-Ball, arcade bowling (you know, the kind where you slide the steel puck and the pins fall up instead of down), Ping-Pong, foosball, a pool table, darts, and six friends enjoying themselves.
    Inserting a dime in the old Coke machine, Blaine takes the glass bottle from behind the little window and hands it to Karl. “All hail our honored comrade,” he announces, putting his hand on Karl’s shoulder. Tim tootles a trumpet fanfare on his fist, and the Confederates interrupt their play to hoist their beverages.
    “We thank you, Karl,” Blaine says, “for all you’ve done, and more importantly, for all you’re going to do. Your smartness is matched only by your generosity.”
    “For he’s a jolly good cheater,” they sing, which inspires Karl to inspect his sock toes.
    That’s about it for hoopla. The gathering is low-key, and more comfortable than Karl expected. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes—there are none to be found here. The party actually seems wholesome. Tim and Ian are smashing the Ping-Pong ball as hard as they can, a comic sight until Ian’s paddle whams the table and breaks. (“Oops—sorry, old chap,” he tells Blaine.) SCHOOL IS PUNISHMENT FOR THE CRIME OF BEING YOUNG, says Noah’s T-shirt; he banks Skee-Balls off the left wall of the ramp as he describes his career plans (study Chinese, get recruited by the CIA, destroy the agency from the inside), while Vijay, his audience, chuckles and slides the steel puck. Cara dances sinuously as she aims her darts, like a soft reed in slow-moving water.
    Ever since that afternoon in