Free Elliot Allagash by Simon Rich

wrote in his lifetime?”
    I shrugged.
    “A hundred thousand,” he said. “At least. But do you know how many of those were apologies?”
    I shrugged again.
    “One,”
Elliot said. “Just one.”
    He sat down on the couch and stared at the letter for a while in silence.
    “Hey, Elliot, do you think we should maybe get started on posters? Lance already put one up and it’s pretty funny. There’s a picture of Austin Powers, but it’s Lance’s head on the body. He’s saying, ‘Oh, behave!’”
    Elliot did not respond.
    “I’ve discovered some facts that I think you’ll agree are of interest,” he said. “Lance has a variety of reading-related learning disabilities. He’s barely passing most of his classes. And yet he’s managed to maintain an A-plus average in history, his most reading-intensive course. How does one account for the inconsistency?”
    “Lance has learning disabilities? How’d you find that out?”
    “I had James make me duplicates of everyone’s files,” he said, gesturing casually at a cardboard box behind the couch. “Students and teachers.”
    “Oh my God,” I said.
    “Congratulations on the French quiz, by the way, you scored a 91.”
    “Really?” I said. “Wow. That’s awesome.”
    Elliot took a couple manila folders out of the box and then closed it.
    “Ashley is clean as a whistle,” he said, impatiently tossing her file aside. “But I’m pretty sure Lance has been cheating on his history tests.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “Because
I’ve
been cheating on the tests, too,” he said. “I went through everyone’s files. Nobody’s getting 100s, not even Ashley. And Lance is getting 110s! In every exam, Mr. Douglas includes two bonus questions about current events. I always skip them, to avoid suspicion. But Lance has been stupidly answering them, week after week. Last week, he answered a question about the Rwandan genocide. He’s
clearly
cheating.”
    “How?”
    “The same way I am,” Elliot said. “By breaking into Douglas’s desk each Tuesday night and copying down the answer key.”
    Even though I had known Elliot for some time now, I was still surprised by how casually he had confessed to cheating.
    “Maybe he’s just really good at history?” I said. “And, you know, follows the news about Rwanda?”
    Elliot smiled.
    “We’ll find out.”
    • • •
    I was always amazed by Elliot’s knowledge. Not just the things he
knew
, but the things he
didn’t
know. For instance: Elliot could recite the biography of every Roman emperor in history, from the number of palaces they built for themselves to the number of dwarfs they owned to the type of daggers they were murdered with. But he didn’t know anything about the New York Mets, not even which league they were in.
    He could recite Shakespeare’s
Othello
from memory—or at least, all of Iago’s monologues. But whenever I quoted
The Simpsons
, he looked at me with confusion and disgust, like I had broken into some kind of animal language of grunts and squeaks.
    He knew how to trade commodities on the Japanese stock market and detect Michelangelo forgeries. But he couldn’t make a paper airplane to save his life, and he had never even tried to toast a Pop-Tart.
    He knew the functions of all of his father’s companies—whichones made weapons, which ones made chemicals, and which ones made both. He knew the addresses of all of his father’s homes and the number of servants assigned to each of them. He knew the thread count of his father’s suits and the metric dimensions of his indoor Jacuzzi. But he didn’t know his birthday.
    And even though he knew my allergies, my shoe size, my locker combination, and God knows what else, he never seemed to know what I was thinking or feeling. Or why.
    • • •
    I was sitting next to Lance in science when Mr. Douglas marched into our class. He was one of our most laid-back teachers, a former Peace Corps member who played the same three Cat Stevens songs on