“Yeah.”
“I’ve never stopped.” I inhale again, searching for the courage to say the rest of it. “I’ve helped you for years, changing answers here and there. Rewriting your papers. Just enough that I hoped no one would notice but you’d never get another D.” I force myself to watch him as the expression on his face moves from confusion to comprehension to outright horror. “I’m auditing your sociology and game theory classes so I know exactly what you have to do to maintain your GPA. I’ve changed answers on your worksheet questions and on your ungraded midterm.”
At first, he doesn’t respond. He merely stares at me like I’m an alien bug that he’s never seen before—an awful ugly one that he’d like to stomp.
“You’re cheating.”
I nod.
“And you’ve been cheating for me since the eighth grade?” There’s a vicious, ugly tone in his voice. Disgust, disappointment, full-on anger. It’s all there. “Fucking middle school?”
I start crying, not because of my pain, but because of the anguish in Jack’s voice. It hits me in the solar plexus like a blow. He turns and slams his hands on the top of the hood of the Jeep. “Since fucking middle school?” he repeats with a shout. “I must be the dumbest fuck in the entire world. I couldn’t even pass out of fucking middle school without your help?”
“No!” I cry and reach for him. He jerks away.
“Why are you telling me?”
Here it is. Jack’s perception of himself demolished and my next suggestion will crush him even more. “I think you should get tested. I think you have a learning disability. If you’re tested,” I rush on even though he starts protesting, “if you’re tested and the results confirm it then you can do alternate things, like take an oral examination or instead of writing a paper, doing a presentation of your findings. You could have more time do your assignments. Have take home exams instead of timed classroom ones.”
“You want me to go and get some test that says I’m retarded? Who needs that when I have you,” he sneers.
It’s my turn to jerk back. “Don’t say that. There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing’s wrong with anyone like you. If you could see these kids at the center—”
He cuts me off. “Is that why you are doing that grant work? To make you feel better about yourself? About your cheating? I never fucking asked you do to this!”
He jerks his hands through his hair, pulling on the ends. As if he can’t stand to look at me, he turns away and stalks over to the slide. I wrap my arms around my middle, trying to keep all my inside parts from falling out through the big gaping holes created by this whole damn mess.
“I know you didn’t ask.” I say to myself. “I know.” I wait for the rest of it to sink in for him. The minute that it does, he comes charging back, stopping only a few inches from me.
“I could lose my scholarship over this. I could lose my team. Fuck, I could ruin the team’s chances for a National Championship.”
His litany of all the negative repercussions flay me open but he isn’t saying anything that I haven’t already thought about.
“Look, I know I should have told you before. I wanted to stop. I did, but I didn’t want you to lose your eligibility. That’s why I did it.”
He makes a disgusted noise in his throat. “So you’ve wanted to stop cheating for me, but I’m so fucking dumb that you couldn’t.”
The injustice of it made me want to scream but mostly I am tired. Tired of doing the dirty work. Tired of feeling guilty. Tired of everyone not acknowledging the real problem of Jack’s disability. Tired of myself for enabling him.
“You're right. I was wrong to do this. I thought it was the right thing—” I cut myself off. Did I ever think it was the right thing? Yes, probably years ago before I knew better, but not now. It hasn't been right for a long time, but I still did it.
I try to search for another answer, but keep coming up blank. The only answer was to not start in the first place. But when you’re twelve, and your mom comes to you saying that the one thing that you can do that will make her proud is to help your brother? No problem, you think, because your brother hung the stars, and you’re happy to do these seemingly small things. Because you love your family and you want their approval. You want your mom to look at you with the same glow of pride that she gives your brother.
And you don’t think about the consequences until it’s far, far too late.
Jack is tired too. His shoulders slump in defeat and that's what breaks me.
“Do you and Riley sit around and talk about how it's a good thing that I play ball well, because I'm not smart enough to do anything else?”
“No!” I nearly shout. “I never think that.”
His cruel words saw at the bond I didn’t think would ever get broken.
“Jesus, I got to tell Coach.” He drags a rough hand through his disheveled hair.