Free Cheating Lessons: A Novel by Nan Willard Cappo Page B

is,” Mrs. Hamilton said dryly. “No need to answer with a question. You’re not on Jeopardy!”
    The scorekeeper flipped over a card. Twenty points for St. John’s.
    Pinehurst exchanged slit-eyed glances. They all wore their school’s purple blazer and tie, even the lone girl sitting out. Bernadette munched her cookie with a curled lip. Sexist pigs. At least St. John’s had three girls on their team, although people who called themselves “gifted” gave her a pain.
    The tape ran on. Wizard wisecracks came slower and soon stopped altogether as they were drawn into the drama on-screen. Bernadette already knew Pinehurst would win, but for most of the hour St. John’s led. These scoring rules were courtesy of Mrs. Hamilton by way of the Mad Hatter. She jotted down notes in the dark, and felt Lori beside her doing the same.
    A team could earn twenty points by answering an Open question, ten points for a Bonus. The scorekeeper kept a running tally.
    “Name the next line in this well-known poem: ‘The world is too much with us; late and soon . . .’ ”
    Bzzz. A Pinehurst boy answered, “ ‘Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.’ ”
    “Correct.”
    In the dark little room, Bernadette smelled fear.
    During the Champion Round, Pinehurst blew their gifted opponents away. It was just like Double Jeopardy, Bernadette realized. The Champion Round could decide the match.
    The last image on the screen before Mr. Malory snapped on the lights was St. John’s looking like they’d all been run over by the same train.
    The Wizards blinked. The cookies were nothing but crumbs, and so was their confidence.
    “That was fast,” Nadine said. “Wasn’t that fast?”
    “Aah, they missed a bunch,” Anthony said.
    “They did.” Mr. Malory observed their stunned faces. “You won’t.”
    “Mr. Malory, nobody could know all those books.” Lori’s voice had gone high and little. Sounded like the governor’s pompon thing was looking more appealing.
    “Au contraire, Ms. Besh. St. John’s could have known much more. They simply didn’t prepare.” Like Merlin instructing young Arthur, their teacher brandished a rolled-up set of charts that he pinned one by one to the cork strip above the chalkboard. “I don’t believe in ‘gifted’ students. I believe in students who work.”
    Now how did he know there’d be a place to hang those? Bernadette wondered. Behind Lori’s back she poked Nadine. Debaters respected advance planning.
    “Thirty-one categories.” Mr. Malory tapped the first chart. Each box held a word or phrase. “Every Bowl question has come from one of these categories.”
    “How do you know?” David asked.
    “I counted. While you’ve been perfecting the art of portraiture, Mr. Minor, I’ve been studying twelve hours of Classics Bowl tape.”
    The others snickered. David put a hand over the sketch of his latest superheroine, who bore a suspicious resemblance to Lori Besh—if Lori owned thigh-high boots and a laser gun.
    “How do you know they won’t add new categories this year?” Nadine wanted to know.
    “I don’t. But if you learn these inside and out, you can cope with anything they add.”
    The next chart said: 1,000 questions, 92 writers, 297 works. Then a table: novels, 109; plays, 31; long poems, 18; short poems, 72; essays, 10; stories/fables, 33; speeches, 7; bible books, 17.
    “Study this,” he said.
    Bernadette studied her teammates instead. They had a horrified roundness to their eyes, as though Jekyll had turned into Hyde in front of them.
    More charts went up. One listed the names of books and—she squinted—authors. Very small names, typed and pasted on the chart. Hundreds of them.
    “Two hundred ninety-seven works,” Mr. Malory told the quiet room.
    “Oh, good. I hate when it’s more than three hundred.” But even Anthony sounded shaken.
    “You’ve sure gone to a lot of trouble,” Bernadette said.
    Mr. Malory’s smile flashed. “I feel responsible,” he