“He’s the best student in the school, and he
even predicted a question!”
The comments lit up praising Chad for being so
awesome.
Chad was loving it, then the cops showed up
and cuffed him.
“We got a tip about some illegal activity that
you may have knowledge of!”
く
Chapter 2
The cop’s voice was cold. You could practically
smell Chad’s panic.
Everyone at the test center froze.
“What’s going on? Isn’t he the golden boy? How
could he do something like that?”
“Yeah, he’s still in high school. They must have the wrong guy.”
“Maybe someone is jealous and setting him up.”
I knew why Chad was freaking out: guilt.
After getting into Stanford early, I had this
weird sense of calm.
My common sense came back to me.
I started thinking about Chad and his life.
<
His parents were professors, sure.
But even tenured professors couldn’t afford
Chad’s lifestyle.
His jacket cost like 10 grand, the watch, 30
grand.
Even his socks were designer stuff.
That’s when I knew he was hiding something.
So, I paid someone to dig into his background,
and it paid off fast.
Turns out, Chad spent his weekends on trips to
the East Coast with an older woman who was in
real estate.
And she was bankrolling everything: his clothes,
his car, his apartment, everything.
But just reporting him wasn’t enough.
<
I wanted to make him eat his own lies.
He loves copying? Well, I’d let him copy himself
into a jail cell.
I wrote the new essay in a weird style and
deliberately left clues for Chad to steal.
Only, what Chad didn’t know was that each first
word of the new essay spelled out all his
secrets.
I was gonna let him rat himself out.
I wanted Sarah and Brittany to see what their
perfect boyfriend was really like.
Chad, about to be dragged off by the cops,
heard the murmurs and pointed right at me.
“It wasn’t me, he’s the one doing all this!”
<
Everyone turned.
Brittany jumped in, defending Chad,
“Chad comes from a good family, his parents
are professors. He would never do anything like that!”
“It’s Jake! He’s just jealous because he’s
jealous of Chad, that’s why he’s trying to smear him.”
People streamed out of the testing center, including Sarah.
When she heard Chad was accused of some
illegal stuff, her face dropped.
“That’s a lie, it can’t be true! I would bet my
reputation and my career that Chad would
never do that.”
She glared at me.
<
“Jake, is this you? Are you jealous because you
were caught trying to cheat off of Chad?”
“You’ve been acting sneaky since the essay test
came out, you should be ashamed of yourself!”
I looked at Sarah and Brittany, barely
recognizing them.
