“Give Me An Answer”
By Ashley Barron
“Pssst. Hailey. Hey, Hailey.”
She tried to ignore him. She tried to ignore him with all of her might, focusing her eyes with vicious intensity on the sheets of paper lying on the desk before her. The standardized testing answer sheet, with its countless little circular bubbles waiting eagerly to be filled in, was resting neatly on top of the right page of her State Reading test booklet, blocking the questions from sight. She was halfway done with the test, and there were still forty minutes to go before Mrs. Goodwin would call a halt.
“Hailey. Come on, I know you can hear me!”
The whispered solicitation came again, cutting through her concentration as her eyes flickered across the words of the Dickinson poem printed on the pale white paper. She did not want to look up; did not even want to acknowledge him, but she knew that if she didn’t, he would not be averse to blowing a spitball at her in the middle of the test.
Sighing, she let herself look up, a glare settling itself comfortably over her pale, rounded face as she shoved her mouse-brown hair behind her ear to make eye contact.
Drew waved at her, his innocent smile masking the spark of mischief in his bright blue eyes. His mop of dark brown hair hung into his face and slightly over his glasses, and he pushed it back as he continued to smile and wave.
“What do you want?” Hailey hissed, eyes flickering nervously around to make sure that Mrs. Goodwin was not standing nearby. “I’m trying to take this stupid test.”
“Yeah, I know,” Drew whispered back, nodding eagerly.
“So shut up!” She crossed her eyes at him. “We’re gonna get in trouble!”
“I need your help, though.” His voice was pleading, beseeching; it was the puppy-dog begging voice that he always used when he was trying to wheedle her out of something. His eyes were doing it, too; begging her, their sapphire depths seeming to yank right on her heartstrings with their neediness.
“You need my help with what?” she whispered furiously.
“This question,” he jabbed the eraser end of his mechanical pencil at his own test booklet, which was covered in marks and smears of graphite, despite Mrs. Goodwin’s admonition not to write on the testing booklet. From the corner of her eye, Hailey could just make out the inscription ‘this test sucks eggs,’ scrawled right below the neatly printed text of the Dickinson piece. She dared not look further, though; already a cold, squirmy feeling was developing inside her gut.
“You want me to cheat?” She was glaring at her paper, not at Drew. Anywhere but at Drew. If she looked into those pleading eyes, there was no way she’d be able to resist him.
“It’s just one question,” his voice murmured back. “Please, Hails. I’m gonna fail this test if you don’t help me out, and then my mom will kill me. This could be life or death here!”
“You should have studied!” she hissed. “You should have done the dumb practice booklets! It’s not my fault that you don’t ever do your homework! Now pay the consequences and leave me out of it!” Her pencil was tapping furiously on the answer sheet, spreading little eraser shavings all over the unmarked portion of the answer bubbles. She could feel her hands shaking badly.
If Mrs. Goodwin were to walk over here right now…
“Hailey, pleeeeeease. I’m begging you here!” Drew sounded really desperate, like he was almost about to cry, though Hailey doubted that. He was a spectacular actor, and besides that, he never cried at anything. He had sprained his ankle once, two years ago in the third grade, while they were roller skating, and he had just sat on the ground biting his lip with an expression like he’d eaten too many lemon War Heads, but there had been no tears.
“Shut up, Drew!” Hailey commanded in the loudest whisper she could manage without risking being heard by their teacher or the other students in their class. “I’m not helping you cheat on a state test! Do you know what they could do to us for that?!” Visions of youth penitentiaries and report cards smeared with the red ink that meant ‘F’ swirled across her mind; ‘F’ for failure, for flunky. There was no way in heck that Hailey Greene was going to be a flunky. Not when she already had her entire future as the world’s leading historian and researcher ahead of her. She had not made it to the fifth grade only to be pulled out now and condemned for the rest of her life.
“Hailey, you’re my best friend,” Drew pleaded. “I’ve done a whole bunch of stuff for you! I saved your dog’s life when he almost choked to death on that acorn, remember? I saved his life. And I always loan you my ID when you forget yours! Come on, pay me back for once! Help me out here! It’s just one little question!”
She ignored him, trying to refocus her eyes on the answer bubble for question number thirty-four.
What is the author’s purpose in—
She growled slightly as a foot slammed into the side of her chair, jolting her to the side. It hadn’t been a very hard kick, as far as impacts go, but the implications of the movement bothered her more than the movement itself. If Drew was willing to actually kick her chair to get her attention, who knew how far he would be willing to go?
Against her better judgment, she glanced up and met his eyes, intending to stare him down into intimidation and make him stop bothering her, for the love of Pete. Instead, however, she found herself being drawn in once again by those wide, innocent blue eyes; the same eyes that had broken her down a thousand times until she’d given him her milk or let him borrow a book or loaned him a quarter.
“Please, Hailey,” he whispered. “I need this. Just give me an answer. Just one answer. Then I swear to bejeesus I won’t bother you anymore.”
Swearing to bejeesus was Drew’s most serious oath; his parents had taught him better than to swear to God or Jesus or the Bible, so he swore as close as he could get. Hailey chewed on her lip, pencil furiously tapping the paper once more.
“Thirty minutes, class,” Mrs. Goodwin called serenely from her desk.
Hailey swallowed, and sweated, and wondered what she could do.
“Come on!” Drew prodded, swinging his leg back for another kick to her chair.
“Shut up!” she hissed. “I’m thinking! If you want my help, then be quiet and let me finish!”
Not that I’ll give him my help anyway, right? she mused nervously to herself, chewing on her eraser and then making a face when tiny shavings of rubber landed on her tongue.
Spitting the eraser bits out with distaste, she proceeded to quickly fill in the remaining twenty answer bubbles on her sheet, all the while sweating and tapping her feet as she vigorously turned over in her mind the problem of the still-waiting Drew. She had been watching him out of the corner of her eye—not cheating, just watching him—and she knew for a fact that he hadn’t bubbled in a single answer since he’d asked her for help. Time was getting close now.
“Fifteen minutes,” Mrs. Goodwin reminded everyone.
“Fudge, fudge, fudge,” Hailey muttered under her breath; the closest she could get to swearing without actually saying the dreaded word. It seemed an appropriate expression for her current situation.
If I do the right thing and leave him be, he’ll fail the test… but if I cheat and get caught, I’m doomed. She shivered slightly at the thought. What to do?
“Hailey,” Drew moaned quietly from his desk.
“Quiet in the front, please,” Mrs. Goodwin reprimanded, looking up and scanning the classroom for the source of the moan. Drew instantly fell silent, but his pleading blue eyes were locked on Hailey’s back. She could almost feel their intense gaze burning through her jumper.
Once the teacher looked away, Drew’s whispered supplications began anew. “Hailey, we have like, ten minutes. Please, please, please, just do something. Write me a note with the answer; you don’t even have to whisper it or look! Just please!”
Hailey munched her lower lip, racking her brain for something, anything, that would get her out of this situation.
And then, all of a sudden, there it was; as clear as day: the answer to her problem. Immediately, she felt stupid for not having thought of it before. With the gnawing guilt suddenly fading, she grabbed a piece of paper from her notebook, briefly scribbled a message on it, folded it in half, and held it towards Drew with her hand partially concealed behind her desk.
With relief in his eyes, Drew reached for the paper; before he could even touch it, however, it was snatched from Hailey’s hand by the larger hand of Mrs. Goodwin. Drew released a short yelp. He hadn’t even seen his teacher move.
Mrs. Goodwin was glaring at Hailey, but to Drew’s amazement, his friend seemed perfectly settled; some feat since she had been about to have a nervous breakdown five minutes ago. As he watched, Mrs. Goodwin unfolded the note, scanning it quickly once.
All of a sudden, the teacher’s face relaxed, and she smiled. She smiled. Why was she smiling? Drew swallowed, nervousness clenching his gut. Was she about to exact some sort of horrendous and humiliating consequence on Hailey?
And then, without speaking, Mrs. Goodwin lowered her arm and slid the paper onto Drew’s desk, walking away without a word.
Now Drew was really scared. There was no way Mrs. Goodwin would let him cheat, or let Hailey get away with giving him an answer. Unless… unless she planned to invalidate their tests later?
He supposed it didn’t really matter, since he would probably fail anyway; he was curious, though, as to the answer that Hailey would risk detention and failure for. Slowly, his fingers inched forward and he grabbed the note, pulling it close and eagerly unfolding it. His eyes scanned the words once, stopped; then he pulled back with more caution and read the note again, his bewilderment turning to frustration and anger. He glared over at Hailey, but she was turned away from him, presumably hiding a smile.
Shaking his head, he lowered his eyes and read the note once more, written in Hailey’s neat, precise cursive: Friends don’t let friends cheat on tests.
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