您现在的位置:首页>>英语泛读教程一>>UNIT 5

Cheating

 

Do you know how one might feel if he or she has cheated in a school test? Read the following and learn some lessons, if any, from the experience of the boy in the story.     

 

I cheated on a unit test in math class this morning during second period with Mr. Burke. Afterward, I was too sick to eat lunch just thinking about it.  

I came straight home from school, went to my room, and lay on the floor trying to decide whether it would be better to run away from home now or after supper. Mostly I wished I was dead. It wasn't even an accident that I cheated.

Yesterday Mr. Burke announced there'd be a unit test and anyone who didn't pass would have to come to school on Saturday, most particularly me, since I didn't pass the last unit test. He said that right out in front of everyone as usual. You can imagine how much I like Mr. Burke. 

But I did plan to study just to prove to him that I'm plenty smart—which I am mostly—except in math, which I'd be okay in if I'd memorize my times tables. Anyway, I got my desk ready to study on since it was stacked with about two million things. Just when I was ready to work, Nicho came into my room with our new rabbit and it jumped on my desk and knocked the flashcards all over the floor.

I yelled for my mother to come and help me pick them up, but Carlotta was crying as usual and Mother said I was old enough to help myself and a bunch of other stuff like that which mothers like to say. My mother's one of those people who tells you everything you've done wrong for thirty years like you do it every day. It drives me crazy.  

Anyway, Nicho and I took the rabbit outside but then Philip came to my room and also Marty from next door and before long it was dinner. After dinner my father said I could watch a special on television if I'd done all my homework.

Of course I said I had. 

That was the beginning. I felt terrible telling my father a lie about the homework so I couldn't even enjoy the special. I guessed he knew I was lying and was so disappointed he couldn't talk about it. 

Not much is important in our family. Marty's mother wants him to look okay all the time and my friend Nathan has to do well in school and Andy has so many rules he must go crazy just trying to remember them. My parents don't bother making up a lot of rules. But we do have to tell the truth—even if it's bad, which it usually is. You can imagine how I didn't really enjoy the special.

It was nine o'clock when I got up to my room and that was too late to study for the unit test so I lay in my bed with the light off and decided what I would do the next day when I was in Mr. B.'s math class not knowing the 8- and 9-times tables. So, you see, the cheating was planned after all. 

But at night, thinking about Mr. B.—who could scare just about anybody I know, even my father—it seemed perfectly sensible to cheat. It didn't even seem bad when I thought of my parents' big thing about telling the truth. 

I'd go into class jolly as usual, acting like things were going just great, and no one, not even Mr. B., would suspect the truth. I'd sit down next to Stanley Plummer—he is so smart in math it makes you sick—and from time to time, I'd glance over at his paper to copy the answers. It would be a cinch. In fact, every test before, I had to try hard not to see his answers because our desks are practically on top of each other. 

And that's exactly what I did this morning. It was a cinch. Everything was okay except that my stomach was upside down and I wanted to die.  

The fact is, I couldn't believe what I'd done in cold blood. I began to wonder about myself—really wonder—things like whether I would steal from stores or hurt someone on purpose or do some other terrible thing I couldn't even imagine. I began to wonder whether I was plain bad to the core.  

I've never been a wonderful kid that everybody in the world loves and thinks is so well, like Nicho. I have a bad temper and I like to have my own way and I argue a lot. Sometimes I can be mean. But most of the time I've thought of myself as a pretty decent kid. Mostly I work hard, I stick up for little kids, and I tell the truth. Mostly I like myself fine—except I wish I were better at basketball. 

Now all of a sudden I've turned into this criminal. It's hard to believe I'm just a boy. And all because of one stupid math test. 

Lying on the floor of my room, I begin to think that probably I've been bad all along. 

It just took this math test to clinch it. I'll probably never tell the truth again. I tell my mother I'm sick when she calls me to come down for dinner. 

She doesn't believe me, but puts me to bed anyhow. I lie there in the early winter darkness wondering what terrible thing I'll be doing next when my father comes in and sits down on my bed. 

"What's the matter?" he asks.  

"I've got a stomachache," I say. Luckily, it's too dark to see his face. 

"Is that all?"

"Yeah." 

"Mommy says you've been in your room since school." 

"I was sick there too," I say. 

"She thinks something happened today and you're upset."

That's the thing that really drives me crazy about my mother. She knows things sitting inside my head same as if I was turned inside out.

"Well," my father says. I can tell he doesn't believe me.

"My stomach is feeling sort of upset." I hedge.

"Okay," he says and he pats my leg and gets up.

Just as he shuts the door to my room I call out to him in a voice I don't even recognize as my own that I'm going to have to run away.

"How come?" he calls back not surprised or anything.

So I tell him I cheated on this math test.

To tell the truth, I'm pretty much surprised at myself. I didn't plan to tell him anything. He doesn't say anything at first and that just about kills me.

I'd be fine if he'd spank me or something. To say nothing can drive a person crazy. And then he says I'll have to call Mr. Burke.

It's not what I had in mind.

"Now?" I ask surprised.

"Now," he says. He turns on the light and pulls off my covers.

"I'm not going to," I say.

But I do it. I call Mr. Burke, probably waking him up, and I tell him exactly what happened, even that I decided to cheat the night before the test.

He says I'll come on Saturday to take another test, which is okay with me, and I thank him a whole lot for being understanding and all. He's not friendly but he's not absolutely mean either. "Today I thought I was turning into a criminal," I tell my father when he turns out my light. 

Sometimes my father kisses me good night and sometimes he doesn't.

I never know. But tonight he does.

 TOP

©2004 高等教育出版社版权所有 (屏幕分辨率:800*600)