A Hole in Juan by Gillian Roberts Read Free Book Online Page B

we could do it if you said it was okay,” and so forth. “We already had a test with this other teacher, and the rules say . . . !”
    This had been going on since the start of the semester, and it was growing old.
    I knew they were lying. Of all the faculty, Juan Angel Reyes would be the last person to break a rule, or to suddenly change his mind and give a test he’d told me he was not giving.
    “What kind of exam?” I hoped I sounded only mildly interested.
    “Chemistry, of course!” Susan’s righteous indignation was over the top. Her zeal and tone of desperation made it obvious she was toying with the truth.
    “No, I meant that it was a pop quiz, wasn’t it?” Susan’s jaw dropped enough to please me. She was bright and did well, and I didn’t even know why she’d protest, except for the sport of it.
    Definitely going to be a lawyer. I wondered if she already knew that.
    43
    A HOLE IN JUAN
    Seth Fremont, across the aisle from her, raised his eyebrows and looked amused by the entire performance. Clearly, her plan of attack had been announced in advance. His eyebrows and grin clearly said, “I told you it wouldn’t work.”
    Susan grimaced at him.
    Nita, who’d been watching carefully, turned her head so that the back of it was to Seth.
    I eyed her carefully. Was she the test thief? She seemed hyper-attentive, but I knew her writing, and she surely wasn’t the semiliterate tattler.
    Maybe nobody I taught was actually that poor a writer.
    Maybe the note’s illiteracy was a disguise.
    Maybe Nita had taken the test to help out her boyfriend, Erik. She didn’t need to steal anything, but love does strange things to people.
    Still, it bothered me even more to think that the brightest students in the class were the ones behaving most oddly. “Mr.
    Reyes wouldn’t break the rules,” I said, pushing my advantage.
    Allie’s eyebrows shot up and she rolled her eyeballs up as close to the brows as she could get. She looked like a comic-book drawing of incredulity. “Oh, yes he would. He breaks the rules a lot.” Her words—a challenge, a taunt—were spoken in a stage whisper designed to reach me.
    It reached everyone. I heard a snort of laughter from the right side of the room, and saw more eye-rolling.
    “In the mornings, he breaks the rules.” Wilson sang the lines as if they were the lyrics to a familiar folk tune, but he sang softly, as if he—almost—didn’t want me to hear.
    “ They break the rules. Miss Banks, too.”
    Of course I wanted to know more. Tisha Banks was a student teacher in art. I’d heard that in September Louis Applegate had tried his luck with her and failed. Was it possible that one month later she was intensely involved with Juan Angel Reyes? Why didn’t I know these things—and how did they? And precisely what rules were they breaking in the mornings? Those rules?
    GILLIAN ROBERTS
    44
    I wanted to say, “Tell all.” But I was the teacher, they were the students, and gossip was neither appropriate—much to my sorrow—nor on the curriculum. So I had to pretend to be as naïve and oblivious as they thought I was and squelch their mer-riment by giving out the revised exam.
    We’d completed a unit on Greek drama, reading the Oedipus cycle: Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. They’d seemed to enjoy and comprehend the plays, and the discussions—
    until the great sullen freeze set in—were animated and thoughtful, which made any motive behind stealing the exam even murkier.
    Now, as I spoke briefly about the test, the clique’s members,
    “the team” as they called themselves, exchanged glances, as if reaf-firming that they were all there—Erik and Wilson, Nita and Allie, Seth, Jimmy, Mark, and Susan.
    With all their foibles, I loved this group. Even in a school like ours, where the word academic was . . . academic and generally ir-relevant, our sports leagues were insignificant in the larger scheme of school athletics. We rated the tiniest notices in the