I considered that for a minute, and glanced at the joint. “Yeah, but you could just, I don’t know, stop smoking so much?”
He looked up at the ceiling, pretending to think, and back at me, shrugging. “But if the valedictorian is worrying about the same shit, then what’s the point?”
Then I had an idea. “Can I ask you something?”
Coop leaned on the stool with his forearms and looked at me like there was nothing else in the world he’d rather do than answer my question. “Shoot, Samantha.”
“How do you get by in school without flunking?”
“Hmm,” he said, drumming his fingertips on his biceps.
“I mean, how do you make sure you pass even when you’re, like…” I glanced at the joint again. “Mentally altered?”
“Well, first of all, I don’t just ‘get by.’ I get okay grades.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?” he asked, and it had been a while since I saw Coop’s surprised face. Probably since we were kids.
“I always look for the names of people I know on the honor roll.”
“Oh.” Coop started in again. Granted, he probably was high, but he was also going deep. “Well, I don’t ‘do’ a lot of ‘work.’” He held up quotation symbols. “I learn what needs to be learned, which is mostly how to effectively communicate that I have learned something, without actually learning it. Do you follow?”
“I do.” I watched this side of Coop with fascination—it was far from the stoner, “I don’t give a crap” person I had assumed he had turned into since we stopped being friends.
“For example,” he continued. “With your memory thing. I don’t memorize things. That takes too much time. Instead, I set up opportunities for… alternative resources. Like phones, or makeup tests, or other kind souls who happen to be near me.”
As he spoke, I thought of the colors on my calendar bleeding together, all the dates, all the assignments, all the moments that I might look away from my paper and look back to see nothing but numbers or words that meant nothing to me, having no one to reach out to and call “time-out,” flubbing test after test until they let me graduate out of pity.
Coop was still leaning forward, watching me formulate. “What is that look on your face?” he asked.
“Can you show me this stuff?”
“What stuff?”
“All these alternative resources you have.”
He tilted his head. “Are you asking me how to cheat?”
I sighed. I didn’t want to say yes, but as Mom always says, “Call a spade a spade.” I have tried doing it the old way, Future Sam, the honest way, where I work hard, and study, and memorize, and look where that got me. Plus, it’s just two weeks out of four years. The morality scale is still tipped in my favor, right?
“Yes.”
Coop smiled and winked, and sure, at that moment, I could see why girls wanted him to be the foundation to their human pyramid.
“Okay,” he said, sliding each tool back into its rightful pocket. “Come over whenever.”
A SCENE FROM PROVINCIAL LIFE: IN WHICH MOM SWITCHES TEAMS (FOR NOW)
Mom is doling out spaghetti in heaping bowls while I take notes on José Saramago’s Blindness for AP Lit and try not to think about how Maddie was still giving me the silent treatment at school. Dad’s on his way home from work. Harrison is taking his computer time. Bette is under the table, cutting out construction paper shapes for god knows what. Davy is also under the table, playing a game she likes to call “Little Mermaid,” where she wears one of Mom’s bras, collects all the forks, and doesn’t talk, only gestures at things with wide eyes unless you pour water into her mouth.
Davy tugs on my jeans, pointing at her bowl of spaghetti, then at Mom near the stove, and then at me.
“What?” I ask. “That’s your spaghetti.”
She points at mine, which is covered in sauce, and shakes her head.
“Oh, no sauce?”
She nods fervently.
“Mom,” I say. “Davy wants to make sure you don’t put sauce on her spaghetti.”
“I don’t play Little Mermaid,” Mom says, sitting down to dig in. “Not after the toilet incident.”
Once, Davy had been so committed to Little Mermaid, she wouldn’t tell Harrison where the toothpaste was, so he splashed her with water from the toilet. Davy looked at me with pleading eyes.
I took a little from my glass of water and poured it on her head. Davy gasped.
“No sauce, please!” Davy said, giggling, wiping the drips from her eyes.
“Can I have a fork from your collection?” I asked.
She took one from the floor. I wiped it on my jeans. Clean enough.
Bette’s voice rose from under the table. “Who’s Stuart?”
I ducked down. She was cross-legged, holding my phone, as casual as could be.
“Give me that.” I reached out.
Bette giggled, shaking the phone. “Stuart says…” she started, staring at the screen. “How about you come to the Canoe…”
“Who’s Stuart?” Mom asked.
“Give me it!” I yelled.
“You don’t have to raise your voice,” Mom said.