Tally

Chapter 6: Lies & Deceit

"I'm dead, I am so dead," Were the words I constantly repeated.

I was sitting at my desk with my hand on my head and face down with my computer. Unfortunately, things didn't go the way that I wanted. Sure I could have possibly passed the test, but I forgot one factor: the grade. I was barely able to achieve forty points, and while it is the passing score for the exam, it also means that I got less than half of the questions correct. This is where my second problem is at. My score was practically horrible.

Now here's the thing, I personally do not care about my own score. It is my parents who care, more specifically my mother. I have a long history of getting bad scores and getting punished by my mother, but this time it is different. Usually, I would be punished for getting grades above sixty but less than eighty, but I probably got less than fifty this time.

"Oh no," I muttered. I have always hated this aspect of my parents. The first was to put me in a school with high standards. One if not the most challenging school available in my area of Washington DC. After knowing how bad I did in my previous school, they'd expect me to be perfect in a school above it. Stupid. The second was that the topic was freaking cartography. I like humanities like economics or business. Who even learns geography in this time and age. My parents should have understood by now that I enjoy specific topics within a sizeable broad subject. The third was the unrealistic passing grade. They can't always expect me to get eighty or ninety percent in every test. I am not the born genius in my generation.

As I continued to fiercely rant to myself about my parents, I heard a little "ding" from my computer. Reacting to that sound, I saw a number "1" in the notification section of my Gmail. "There's no way this is real."

A rush of concern was felt during that one period of time. Expecting the worst, I closed my eyes while clicking on the notification. It was the exam grade. The good thing was that I didn't see my score precisely as the message was a link to a download of my exam paper, but I knew that my score was behind that link. With my skin being crawled, I took a deep breath and clicked the link to the exam paper.

I looked at the page, and I saw red crosses and a few ticks. This already doesn't look good. Scrolling through the crosses were piling up more while the ticks were getting fewer and fewer. I didn't bother checking which questions I was wrong at and which questions I got right. I only cared about my score. Then, finally, scrolling what felt like an eternity, I saw it. All hope was lost at that very moment. I got a score of 41/100.

In despair, I tried to find a solution to this. It was already 5 o'clock at noon. My dad, who typically comes home at around 8 o'clock, and my mom, whom I mainly interact with at 7 o'clock for dinner, are occupied. Regardless, the tension built up, as I knew my parents' reaction if they knew the score I received.

There was only one way I could survive out of this situation, and it is a tactic that I have been using my entire life, "lying." Lying is an act that requires two people, the deceiver and the deceived, due to their gullibility. My only purpose in doing this is that I know that I have more to gain from lying than from telling the truth. Currently, it is 16 past 5, which means I have a long time to fake my grade. Analyzing my situation, the main problem was that the file was in a PDF format and a scanned copy of my paper. This results in any form of typing being ineffective as the shade of color, size, font, sentences, and placement are all too different, causing it to stand out if I ever attempted to. That practically means I cannot change any of my answers for them to be correct. "Damn it," I said, frustrated. Watching for an opportunity, I have found one. Why not change only my score. Parents would usually never look at anything other than their children's score as they expect everything else to be evaluated by themselves unless the child was caught lying.