“Mary Frances,” my lovely teacher said, “which country has the world’s largest Muslim population—Indonesia or Mexico?”
Up flipped my mental map of world religions. Symbols across the continents, arrows flashing to show the way. It was additionally helpful to know that Mexico had been settled by the Spanish, who generally are Catholics. I knew that Indonesia was the correct answer, and I knew, also, that I would say so. I noticed Dolly on her side staring at me, her little teeth, her pointy bottom teeth on purpose cutting into her upper lip. My father, about six rows back, on the other aisle, was sitting forward, his head down. My mother was looking at Gloria’s lap, and Gloria herself had turned to face the clock. Only William was watching me, his chin up, a slight smile, no blinking. I remembered the once upon a time when he’d told me the story about how our house would come to find me, it loved me that much. Once there was a girl who lived near the end of the world. A place no contestant in the Geography Bee could ever know or find.
“Indonesia,” I said.
“That’s correct,” Mrs. Kraselnik pronounced. The audience clapped, although so long into the contest their tributes seemed halfhearted.
For Amanda: “To visit the ruins of Persepolis, an ancient ceremonial capital of Persia, you would have to travel to what present-day country? Iran or Syria?”
Again, a cinch. “Eye-wan,” Amanda said.
I was asked a question about physical geography with the answer of isthmus, and Amanda had another improbably easy question about what a barometer measures. “You girls are spectacular,” Mrs. Kraselnik said, “aren’t they?” The audience clapped in earnest, a few people cheering. “My goodness, you really are both winners.”
I noticed Dolly again. She wanted to look like a respectable person with the hairdo, like someone who lived in a subdivision. Like the mother of a winner. How was it that Sherwood had married her, so that forever he had to be in public with the former Miss Muellenbach? Dolly having latched on to him for her single and only dream: Adam and Amanda in cap and gown. Her children were going to go to a great college, she always said to customers at the apple barn, maybe a place hidden with ivy. By hook, she said, or by crook. Her children, she’d explain, scored off the charts. A logical therefore kind of question: Therefore, what did I need with a scholarship since I was going to stay on the farm?
Maybe Dolly didn’t just want Amanda to win for the sake of it. Maybe she needed her to win. That’s why she was biting hard into her lip, about to draw blood. Because of the impossible sum. Fifty thousand dollars for national champion, far more than my father and Sherwood ever made for themselves in a year. I began to sweat. Was this what my parents, what William and Gloria had been trying to tell me? And maybe, yes, Mrs. Kraselnik had, too, her whole sermon about putting good into the world meant only for me.
I had to say to Mrs. Kraselnik, “Could you—could you please repeat the question?”
By allowing Amanda, the girl in the business attire, to win, would I, the cheater, in fact be a force for good?
There were a few more rounds, both of us answering without much effort within the twenty-second time period, and yet I was dizzy and warm, the sweat running down my back. The thought I’d had about cheating was insane; I was maybe going crazy, a foaming in my mind. But remember, remember, Mrs. Kraselnik had been practically teary in class when she’d been imparting her message about goodness. She’d been suffering because of what she was asking, because of the enormity of my sacrifice. I had a fever. That was it, I was suddenly ill. I was going to burn up and fall over, my vision failing, Mary Frances soon to go blind. Poor good blind girl, blind and then dead. I felt that in a minute I might die.