L. L. Owens

This stinks. I’m sitting here in detention, and I didn’t even do anything. I can hear Dom saying all clever-like, “Oh, Mike, of course you didn’t do anything. You never do.” But the thing is, I really didn’t!

So why doesn’t Ms. Crawford believe me? She didn’t see me cheat on my math test. (That’s what I’m in for, sort of.) Nobody saw me cheat, because I didn’t do it. All I did was stand up and stretch right before turning in my test. I was probably the third or fourth kid to finish, and I felt pretty good about it. I was shocked when I saw Ms. Crawford jump out of her chair and practically lunge for a scrap of paper near my foot.

“What’s this, Mike?” she asked, scanning the paper.

I had no idea, so I shrugged and said, “I have no idea.” I checked my pockets and tried to think of what it might be. But I couldn’t come up with anything that could get me in trouble.

Ms. Crawford held up the paper so I could read it. There were some fractions turned into percents and a graph or two. I also saw scribbling about mean, median, and mode. It was all stuff covered on the test. Someone had made cheat notes.

“Whoa, that’s not mine,” I said. I never thought Ms. Crawford would accuse me of cheating. That’s not my style.

“It fell when you stood up,” she said. “It looked like it might have come from your back pocket.”

“Maybe I was sitting on it or something, Ms. Crawford. It’s not mine, though.”

“Then how do you explain it, Mike?”

“Well, like I said—it’s not mine—so I can’t explain it.” That did not come out the way I meant it. I mean, I meant it like the truth, but Ms. Crawford shook her head like I meant it all sarcastic. I knew I was doomed.


Excerpt © 2003 CHEF.

© 2003–2006 L. L. Owens
All rights reserved.