Rejected

4: Prank No. 1

Sam sat his desk, waiting for the math test to begin. Across the room, Gabriel shot him a smirk, then flicked his eyes in Jess's direction. Is he going to prank her right now? Seems kind of risky with the teacher a foot away.

But Gabriel didn't do anything and the math test began. The teacher, Mr. Zachariah, began to pass out papers. "You will have 35 minutes to complete the test. The entire thing is in multiple choice, so you should have no problem. Please mark each answer on the bubble sheet and for the love of God don't write on the test papers."

Sam looked at the test packet. It was three pages long, front and back. There are six questions on each page, then that means that there's 36 questions in total. That's a little under a minute per question-

"When the testing period is over, you will swap papers with the person next to you. We will then peer-mark each other's papers." What's with this school always peer-marking? "Any final questions before we begin?"

No one said anything.

"Good. You can turn over your packets and the test will begin." Mr. Zachariah set his timer and the students began.

Flipping over his paper, Sam started on the problems. Number one: if point A is at (-3,4) and point B is at (-4,6) and these two points are connected by a line, what is the Y-intercept of the line?

What. Sam quickly drew a coordinate plane to try and figure out what this was. Why will I ever need to know how to do this in real life? I have never heard my dad use the term Y-intercept ever in my life!

Now let's skip to Gabriel, who was struggling.

~~~~~~~

Gabriel chewed on the edge of his pencil. He was about halfway through the test with 10 minutes left. It was crunch time.

He sped through the next page, doing all mental math. Speeding through the next ten questions, he only had a page left as the timer buzzed.

Crap. The test was over. "Alright! No more writing! Swap papers and get out a pen."

Gabriel scribbled down a few half-hearted answers and passed his paper to the kid next to him, Jess. He took out a pen and an eraser and smiled to himself. Prank number one, go.

Gabriel knew that Mr. Zachariah never checked over peer-marking; he only looked at the grade at the top of the page.

Of course, Gabriel had no reason to prank Jess; he only had beef with Jo. But, for Sam's sake, he couldn't pass up this golden opportunity.

"Alright, class, number one is (0, -1). Number two: 367 pencils. Number three: Y = -2/3 + 2x ."

As Mr. Zachariah was calling out answers, Gabriel was erasing Jess's and putting in new ones with a pencil, mimicking her perfect handwriting. Then he marked it with his pen and wrote the correct answer in his handwriting. Jess was too intent on marking Gabriel's test to notice.

Of course, Gabriel didn't change every one. That would be too obvious. He changed two for every three or so questions. It was brilliant.

When Mr. Zachariah finished rattling off answers, Gabriel totaled up Jess's score. She got 7/18, a little more that 33%.

He handed Jess her paper, his face emotionless. "You didn't do very well."

She gave him his paper. "You did okay." He got a 84%, above average for him.

He watched Jess as she took in her score. "This is impossible." She whispered to herself. "There must be a mistake."

Gabriel knew that she would never suspect that he had changed her answers. To her, he was probably a, in Jo's words, "nobody with an addiction to sweets." There was no reason for him to want to cross her.