Mr. Summerfield was a short, bearded bear of a man. He looked as if he could twist open a fire hydrant with his bare hands. He smiled often and spoke in a soft rumble. I liked him, and I think he liked me, although he graded insanely hard like many of my teachers. I was earning a B+, could maybe raise it to an A-by graduation. This had no bearing on getting into college; I was already accepted to UVA and was going to visit the following week to meet one of the English professors. But just before Christmas, Mr. Hodges had told me that I was being considered for a Copen scholarship, a prestigious award granted by Blackburne to a graduate of high academic caliber who would attend a college or university in Virginia. I couldn’t help but fantasize about what it would mean to win the Copen and to see my parents’ reactions when I told them that they didn’t need to pay my tuition. My GPA was strong, but most of my classmates had strong GPAs, and several of them were applying to Virginia schools as well.
I don’t believe I consciously considered the Copen as I looked down at my physics notebook. And I’m not trying to justify my actions. I knew what the honor code was, and I had signed up to live under that system. After three years at Blackburne, it had become second nature to me. Fritz had been elected as a prefect by our classmates, and I had seen him after he had come back from the three Judicial Board hearings held that year, two of which resulted in guilty verdicts and student dismissals. Fritz had looked tired, pained, suddenly adultlike, and I was a little in awe of what he must have had to do in those hearings. It had brought home to me the seriousness of the honor code and the consequences of failing to live up to it. I would have said, up until that point, that the honor code was one of the defining factors of my life.
And it was, though not in the way I would have thought. Because after accidentally seeing my physics notes and realizing that I had made an error on my test, I erased my previous answer and wrote out the correct one with an easy deliberateness. Then I moved on to the rest of the test. Within fifteen minutes, I had finished. I closed the test, placed it in my physics notebook, and put the notebook in my backpack. Then I read the assigned chapters from Light in August until the bell rang and Fritz came back from his study session and we got ready for bed.
The next morning, I woke up, went to breakfast, and then walked down to the physics lab, high-fiving my lab partner, Jeb Tanner, before taking my seat. Mr. Summerfield came in just before the bell with his thick textbook under one arm. “Tests, gentlemen,” he said in his soft, deep voice, and we were pulling our notebooks out of our backpacks when the enormity of what I had done hit me like a sheet of flame from the sky. I sat there, the test in my hand, my lips parted as if I were about to sip from a cup. I had cheated on my take-home test, the one we were about to turn in. Dazed, I looked around, noticed boys making sure their names were on their tests, one or two frantically scribbling. I put my test down on the desk and looked at it. The question I had cheated on was on the second page. Change it, I told myself, followed immediately by Leave it alone—how could he tell? My mind darted back and forth between the two thoughts like a herring trying to avoid a pair of sharks.
“Now, boys.” The deep voice had an edge to it. Despair fell on me like a fog. It was too late now. Jeb, sitting in front of me, turned around, expecting me to hand him my test so he could pass it up. Slowly, I did. He turned away, and I looked at Mr. Summerfield at the front of the room, praying he wouldn’t be able to detect my dishonesty. I felt like I had the word cheater branded on my forehead. I was violating everything I had pledged to believe in, and I was doing it easily. And for what? The Copen scholarship? Was I mercenary enough to do this for an extra hundredth of a point on my GPA? But behind these thoughts, in a dark, hidden corner of myself, a small voice muttered about the ridiculous stupidity of that test question. Was I going to potentially lose the Copen because of my inability to perfectly solve a problem about falling blocks? And my classmates—Fritz included—didn’t need a scholarship. Their families skied in Gstaad every winter and would purchase their sons brand-new BMWs upon graduation.
“Hey,” Jeb said. I looked up, startled. Jeb was holding out my test. “You forgot to pledge it,” he said.
Forcing a smile, I took the test back. The pledge—“I have neither given nor received any unacknowledged aid on this work”—was usually written on everything we turned in, a restatement of our contract with the honor code. Jeb was smiling patiently. I picked up my pencil, wrote out the pledge, and then hesitated. This was a second chance. But what could I do? Jeb was waiting, and Mr. Summerfield was pacing at the front of the room, collecting tests. Change it! No time!
“Boys!” Mr. Summerfield barked, and Jeb snapped his head around to look at him. As soon as Jeb turned around, I lowered the pencil to my test and signed the pledge. As I did, my pencil lead broke.
“Mr. Glass, we’re waiting!” Mr. Summerfield said. Jeb turned back to stare at me. I handed him the test with a muttered, “Sorry!” Then I looked at Mr. Summerfield. “Sorry, sir,” I said. “I’m sorry.” Mr. Summerfield grunted and received my test; then he put the stack down on his desk and moved to the whiteboard to begin a new lesson.
I have no idea what Mr. Summerfield taught us that day. Instead, I remember sitting in my chair facing the board, stunned in the wake of my success at cheating, and terrified of what it might bring about.
CHAPTER FIVE
The dew-beaded bricks muffled my footsteps as I walked to Huber Hall the morning of my first day of teaching. The Hill was shrouded in a wet fog from the river that made the walkways and the Lawn glisten in the dawning, pearl-gray light. A fertile odor hung in the air, wet grass and straw and muddy river combining to suggest that the day was not merely beginning but being born.
It was five minutes to seven as I pushed open the door to Huber. Twenty minutes remained until the bells would ring to awaken the students, but I wanted an hour to work alone in my classroom, and Gray Smith had offered to take my morning dorm duty. I’d spent a fitful night, and a little before six o’clock, when I had realized that I could no longer pretend to be asleep, I had risen from my bed to shower.
Huber was known as the Tower of Babel since all languages were taught there. If you sat in the hallway during the school day, you could hear Latin, German, French, Spanish, and English all vying for your attention. However, what most people noticed was its gallery of photographs. On either side of the main hallway hung black-and-white pictures of smiling young men, boys almost, standing in officers’ caps and khaki uniforms or pilots’ leather jackets. The captions underneath each cheerful face proclaimed them as Blackburne graduates who proudly entered the armed services during WWII and died in combat. Here was a lieutenant fresh out of the Naval Academy; there an army fighter pilot with a tidy crew cut and a wool-lined leather jacket. They were part of the background, faces that hung silently in the crowded halls during the day, unseen among the turmoil of school life. That morning, however, I was keenly aware of the frozen features of those young men gazing down upon me as I walked to the stairwell at the back of the building and went downstairs to my classroom.