The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman (15 page)

“Pamela, seriously. Let it go,” admonished Todd, then turned to Natasha with a flash card. “What was the birthplace of Thomas Jefferson? ”

“Detroit? ” answered Natasha.

“That is correct.” (That was not actually correct. Todd always forgot to take notes, so they had made their flash cards from Natasha’s, which, unfortunately, were terrible.)

“Yay!” Natasha clapped her hands. “Give me another one.”

Pamela interrupted again. “But even aside from that, there’s something fishy about the whole thing. Have you guys noticed that Little Miss Mystery, or whatever her name is, doesn’t even, like, pay attention during practice? ”

“You’re the one who doesn’t pay attention, Pam,” Todd shot back, and then turned to Natasha. “What year was the Boston Massacre?”

“1492.”

“That’s right.”

“Yay! I’m so smart!”

“I really wish you guys were, like, on my side. It’s not too late to—”

“Honestly, honey?” said Natasha, with a glance at Todd, who nodded. “Not to be, like, whatever, but if you’re not going to study with us, can you go somewhere else? We really have a lot to do.”

“Fine!” said Pamela. “I will.”

“It was the Nile, by the way,” said Natasha sweetly as Pamela packed up her things. “Washington crossed the Nile.”

“Actually …” Pamela started to correct Natasha’s answer and then stopped, smiling coldly. “That’s absolutely right. You guys are going to do
great.”

Pamela was shrugging on her pink spring jacket as she walked down the long aisle in the center of the library when she heard the voices. They were coming from the row of potted ficus trees that separated Fiction from Nonfiction, and so at first it seemed oddly as if two of the plants were talking. In fact, it sounded like the two plants were preparing for Melville’s test.

“The French,” said the first ficus. “The answer is, the French and the Indians.”

Pamela stopped walking and tilted her head. She would know that voice anywhere: Bethesda Fielding.

“Huh? ” said the other ficus.

This second voice was even easier to identify. There
was no one in the world who said “Huh?” quite like Tenny Boyer.

So the king and queen of rock and roll are studying for the big test,
Pamela thought.
Whoop-de-do for them.

“Yes, Tenny. You can remember it, because it’s called the French and Indian War.”

“Oh. Yeah. That totally makes sense.”

Pamela rolled her eyes.
Man,
she thought.
I sure hope Melville grades this on a curve.
She kept listening.

“It’s not happening.” Tenny sighed. “It’s all, you know—it’s still all gray. I’m sorry you wasted all this time, just because of Ms. Finkleman’s stupid deal. But it’s too late.”

Ms. Finkleman?

Deal?

“No, Tenny,” Bethesda said, her voice sounding a bit desperate. “We’ve got time. We’ve got twenty minutes. Let’s not waste it.”

“No. I think it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen here. I am going to fail this test. So I’d rather go home and practice my solo. They won’t be having any rock shows at St. Francis Xavier.”

“Come on, Tenny! I, um … I believe in you.”

Pamela covered her mouth to keep from snickering.

She believed in
him?
What a waste of perfectly good belief.

“Bethesda,” said Tenny sadly. “Get real.”

There was a long silence, and for a second Pamela thought maybe Tenny and Bethesda had quietly packed up and left the library. She risked a peek between the two ficus trees. No, there they were, Bethesda Fielding and Tenny Boyer, sitting in total silence, neither looking at the other. Tenny fingered chords on an imaginary guitar, while Bethesda sat with her eyes half shut, looking tired and agitated. But then Bethesda spoke, quietly, so quietly that Pamela had to lean forward slightly to hear what she was saying.

“Tenny,” Bethesda whispered. “I have a plan.”

Bethesda had seen the plan on a TV special about a couple of bad kids who cheat on a test. She couldn’t remember whether they got caught or not, although she sort of doubted they would make a special about kids who get away with cheating. But the thing was, those kids were stupid. Bethesda was smart. And one thing she was certain of, after about a zillion hours of fruitless tutoring, was that Tenny Boyer was smart, too—despite all appearances to the contrary. He just couldn’t memorize facts. At least, not facts about American history.

“No way,” answered Tenny immediately. “No way are you going to get in trouble to help me.”

“I’m not going to get in trouble, and neither are you. We’ve just got to be careful.”

“But …”

“Tenny. It’ll be easy. And, I mean, to be honest? It’s the only way.”

Tenny let out a long, tired sigh. He looked up at the clock. The library was closing in a few minutes. He rubbed his fingers against his exhausted eyes.

“Are you … I mean, Bethesda. Are you
sure?”

“Yes,” said Bethesda. “I am.”

Tenny reached out his hand, and Bethesda shook it. She remembered another handshake, that fateful night in the food court with Ms. Finkleman. Bethesda had promised her that Tenny Boyer would pass Mr. Melville’s class—no matter what. As Tenny stood and crammed his copy of
A More Perfect Union
and his piles of disorganized notes back into his bag, Bethesda gave him a confident smile and a little thumbs-up.

Inside her mind, Bethesda’s fancy lawyer-lady voice delivered a stirring closing argument. So cheating on the Floating Midterm was wrong, said the lawyer lady … or
was
it? Wasn’t it true, as Bethesda had finally figured
out, that Ms. Finkleman had been lying to the whole school about being a rock star all along? And surely she had her reasons.

So now Bethesda was going to do something equally bad—and she had
her
reasons, too. Tenny was too talented! She’d watched him create this whole concert, watched it go from bad to okay to—well, to
amazing.
And now he was going to get yanked out of Mary Todd Lincoln and shipped off to St. Francis Xavier? Why? Because he couldn’t memorize a bunch of stupid facts about the American Revolution?

Through the big window of the Wilkersholm Memorial Public Library, Bethesda watched Tenny get on his bike, wrangle his scraggly mass of brown hair under a black helmet with a Rush sticker on it, and pedal off into the night. It was 8:45, and the library was nearly deserted—though as she stood and stretched and began to pack up her things, Bethesda thought she smelled just the
slightest
hint of lilac.

Meanwhile, in
a high-rise condominium on the other side of town, an unremarkable brown-haired woman padded to the kitchen in her fuzzy slippers to fix herself a cup of tea. When the tea was ready, she padded back into the living room, gently placed the mug on a woven coaster, and sank into her comfortable armchair. She plopped her feet up on the matching ottoman and tried to relax.

But for once, Ida Finkleman didn’t feel like relaxing. She didn’t feel like listening to Mozart. She didn’t even feel like Sleepytime tea. She returned to the kitchen and poured the mug out into the sink.

Ida Finkleman no longer felt like a timid little agouti—not in the slightest bit. In recent days, she hadn’t been
surviving
at Mary Todd Lincoln Middle School, she had been
thriving.
That afternoon, she had led her students
into the auditorium for their final dress rehearsal of the rock show, and there was no doubt about it: They were ready. Watching them play today, she had stopped feeling grouchy abut this whole enterprise, stopped casting blame and being mad. She had just enjoyed it. She was so proud. Watching those kids bang out those three songs, watching them jump and leap and holler and twist and dance around the stage … she couldn’t help herself any longer. She hopped out of her seat and laughed and cheered and clapped like crazy.

Ida went into her bedroom and rummaged underneath the bed, reaching around awkwardly with two hands through the dust bunnies and shoeboxes, until at last she found an old cardboard box secured with masking tape. With her big pair of kitchen scissors, she unsealed the box and riffled through its contents: A high-school yearbook, a Rubik’s Cube keychain, a picture of her and her cousin Sherman sharing a bath as infants. And, yes, there it was: a seven-inch record. “Not So Complicated,” by Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings.

Tucked into the sleeve of the seven-inch was a promotional picture, clipped from a magazine, of Little Miss Mystery and the Red Herrings. Ms. Finkleman sat down on her bed with the clipping and carefully
smoothed it out in her lap. She looked closely at the lead singer in the photograph, who stood slightly in front of her bandmates, glaring at the camera with a fierce punkrock pout.

“Hey, you,” Ms. Finkleman said. She had other pictures of the Herrings, of course, but this was her favorite. Clem just looked so
happy
in it.

Bethesda Fielding immediately knew the answer, but her eyes darted down the list of possible answers anyway. If this had been a test from Mrs. Howell, the incorrect answers would have been total softballs, especially because it was the first question. It would have been, like, A) the Klingons, B) the Dallas Cowboys, and so on.

But this was Mr. Melville. So answer A was Brothers of Liberty, which was sneakily close to being right, and C was Sons of Freedom, which was even closer. But Bethesda wasn’t fooled. Pressing down hard with her
sharpened number two pencil, she circled answer B, Sons of Liberty. Bethesda could have listed additional members of the organization, such as Joseph Warren, Samuel Adams (cousin of future president John Adams), and Benjamin Church, who turned out to be a spy for the British. Bethesda had spent so much time on Project SWT that she knew way more than she needed to ace the Floating Midterm.

That’s when she heard Tenny Boyer tapping his pencil against his knuckle. It was a very quiet sound—if you weren’t listening for it, you never would have heard it. But Bethesda
was
listening for it. Because that little sound would be what turned her from hypothetical cheater to actual cheater.

Tap, tap, tap.

Argle bargle.

Suddenly Bethesda was hyper-aware of everything around her. She smelled pencil shavings and Mr. Melville’s coffee and Marisol Pierce’s lavender shampoo. She felt the cool sensation of a spring breeze as it wafted into the room and rustled the venetian blinds. She watched as Mr. Melville slowly sipped from his mug and turned the page of his newspaper, in what seemed like slow motion. Bethesda looked at the headline, which
said GIRL CHEATS ON AMERICAN HISTORY EXAM.

She blinked. The headline was about city council elections.

Tap, tap, tap.

Staring down at her paper, Bethesda coughed quietly twice. Two coughs for B.

It’s official. Bethesda Fielding, Cheater.

As she moved down her paper to the next question, Bethesda had a fleeting mental image of her father, seated in front of the TV, a giant bowl of Frosted Flakes balanced on his lap, watching a tropical storm make landfall.

Question two was about Benjamin Franklin’s role in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. As she circled answer D (“edited and organized”), she listened for sniffling. If Tenny knew an answer, he was supposed to sniffle a little, as if he, too, had a slight cold.
Come on, Tenny,
she thought.
Sniffle. Sniffle! You have to have learned
something!

Tap, tap, tap.

Meanwhile, in a cramped stall in the second-floor women’s restroom, Ms. Finkleman finished changing her clothes. She emerged from the stall, approached the
smeary mirror, and began putting on makeup. As she applied eyeliner in the exact purple-black shade that Clem had always favored, Ida carefully studied her face in the mirror and was startled by how much she looked like her. Ida smiled to think of how many years she had spent being so certain that she and her sister—her
identical
twin sister!—looked
nothing
alike.

Of
course
they looked alike. They looked so alike that when they were six years old, and Ida wanted to play with her dolls instead of taking her piano lesson, Clem would take it for her, because dotty old Mrs. Davis would never know the difference anyway. Clem would take one piano lesson, go upstairs, change clothes, and go down for another. Later, Ida would thank her sister by feeding her pretend cake she’d baked with her dolls. Then Clem would play scales for an appreciative audience of Ida, Paddington Bear, and assorted Barbies.

She pulled out a tube of lipstick, several shades of scarlet deeper than anything she’d ever worn in her life, and popped the cap off the tube.

*   *   *

Okay,
Bethesda thought.
He knows this one. I know he knows this one.
She could picture them reviewing the flowchart, just two nights ago, the same night he’d broken her microwave trying to make a frozen burrito.
Do it, Tenny,
she thought, circling answer B.
Sniffle! Sniffle!

Tap, tap, tap.

Bethesda coughed twice. Discreetly, she sniffed her sweaty armpits.
Man,
she thought,
cheating is stressful.
Bethesda stretched and looked around the room. There was Shelly earnestly bent over her answer sheet. There was Braxton Lashey chewing on his pen; that kid never learned. Pamela Preston was up at Mr. Melville’s desk, asking him for the pass to the girls’ room. Chester Hu, Bethesda noted, was playing an imaginary bass drum with his foot while he worked.