Cheating Lessons

Chapter OneShow me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.-- Knute RockneBernadette Terrell came home from school and caught her mother snooping in her room.It was an accidental bust. Bernadette got home at 3:30, her usual time, wolfed down a handful of cookies, then headed upstairs to drop her backpack on her desk the way she did every afternoon. She knew it was her mother's day off because the old Suburban stood in the driveway, and overhead the vacuum cleaner droned.As she reached the stairs, the roar of the vacuum stopped. Thick carpet deadened her footsteps in the sixteen seconds it took her to climb the stairs and cross the hall to her room, which today smelled faintly of Lemon Pledge. Martha Terrell had her back to the door and was busy reading the application essay Bernadette planned to customize for every college on her list.Bernadette's eyes narrowed. Her room was always the cleanest in the house, through no choice of hers. She gave her mother five seconds to get more deeply incriminated before she said softly, "I'm home."Only a guilty person would have screeched like that. Pages scattered as her mother collapsed into the desk chair."Bernadette Terrell, are you trying to give me a heart attack?" Martha patted her blouse in the general vicinity of her left breast. "What were you thinking?"Bernadette let her backpack thud to the floor. "I'm thinking you should stop spying on me.""I was notspying,I was cleaning. If your papers are so terribly confidential you shouldn't leave them lying around in plain sight." Martha abandoned her haughty tone. "You aren't really going to send this, are you?""What's wrong with it?"Martha picked up the pages around her feet. "Well, let's see. 'The entire Pinehurst case was a stinking mess of half-truths and distortions. They gave us a rookie debate judge who thought "negative" was a blood type. She claimed the first affirmative had an appealing speaking manner, but I thought he sounded like a Hitler Youth.'" Martha's eyebrows lifted almost to her hairline. "What'swrongwith it? It's too harsh, that's what. I'm not saying you shouldn't write about debate -- I know you love it, and God knows you're good at it." She flicked a hand at the tops of the bookcases lined with plaques and trophies. "But you're not debatinghere."Bernadette moved a stack of folded laundry off the bed and sat down. She was one of the five best high school debaters in Michigan. This did not impress her mother, with whom she had yet to win an argument. "Our guidance counselor said we should let our personalities shine through."Her mother threw up her hands. "Of course! But not yourtruepersonality. God bless us!Iknow you hate Pine-hurst,Iknow you can't stand to lose at anything, but ranting about it on paper isn't very attractive."Shepointed a finger at Bernadette. "You catch more flies with a teaspoon of honey than a gallon full of vinegar.""I don't want flies.""Colleges, then." Martha leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. "If your own mother won't tell you the truth, who will? And the truth is, sweetheart" -- she sighed here, as if a terrible secret were being dragged from her -- "you are too critical. Your father and I are worried about it."Bernadette gave a gasp of part outrage, part grudging admiration at her mother's nerve. She was too critical? If that wasn't the pot calling the kettle black, as Martha herself liked to say. And Bernadette's father thought she was perfect -- he often told her so."Youare.Of everyone. If a person can't spell every little word perfectly, or doesn't realize you're quoting poetry -- and they better get the poet right if they know what's good for them -- you write them off. You treat them like, I don't know what,servants --on probation."Bernadette lay back and pulled her pillow over her head. "I'm not listening," she said into its comforting softnesCappo, Nan Willard is the author of 'Cheating Lessons' with ISBN 9780689843785 and ISBN 068984378X.