AS MUCH AS I WOULD have liked to tell Zukowski about all that had happened that summer, the truth is, I’d gone to great lengths to avoid talking about anything relating to Akersburg those first few years at Claremont. And I do mean anything. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m ashamed of where I’m from or anything like that, but I could only take so much of Bilmore and Hamilton busting my balls about the way I talked. So when they kept up their My Fair Lady routine all the way through Halloween—The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain—I started to feel that maybe I ought to just throw in the towel and hop on a Greyhound back home to Dad’s.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen. But I did forbid Mom from coming within ten blocks of school. I tried to explain to her how the parents of the other kids at Claremont don’t talk like we do: how the DuPont kid has this way of talking that makes everything he says sound smart, how Bilmore gets ferried back and forth from school in a black sedan, and how Hamilton lives in a penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park. Not to be mean or anything, but just so she would know that these were high-class people she was sending me to school with. You’d think she’d have understood, based on the amount of time she spent with the Blumenthal twins, but honestly, she didn’t.
She didn’t even have the sense to change out of that black-and-white maid’s outfit the Blumenthals make her wear when I met her on the day of The Nutcracker. Shortly after we took our seats, I leaned over and hush-whispered for her to at least have the good sense to keep her coat on until they dimmed the lights. Talk about embarrassing. It was starting to seem like she was doing it on purpose.
• • •
A FEW DAYS later, I was sitting in class humming Tchaikovsky’s “Russian Dance” when Mister Yamaguchi sent me to Mister McGovern’s office even though I instantly apologized and told him I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. It was just such a catchy number. You can imagine my surprise when I got there only to find Mom sitting in front of his desk wearing that same full length Windermere coat, nodding—a little too eagerly, if you ask me—as Mister McGovern gave his Sermon on the Mount about all that it means to be a Claremont boy.
Mister McGovern stopped talking at the sight of me standing in the doorway. He pointed to a chair and told me to have a seat, then informed me that certain irregularities had been discovered on my last Japanese exam. Which—I’m not going to lie—troubled me immensely. Aside from Clyde, Mister McGovern was my biggest fan in the place. He held me up as a kind of modern day Horatio Alger.
Now, of course, I’m not saying you did anything wrong. But just as a formality, would you mind telling me how you arrived at this answer here?
Mister McGovern held out my exam.
Mom elbowed me. Go ahead, cupcake. Tell him.
Yes, Huey. Just walk me through your thought process.
Thought process? I’d scribbled six different verb conjugations and their associated gerunds in little itty-bitty characters on the back of a grocery receipt on the train ride into school the morning of the exam. When I just sat there staring wide-eyed at the blue booklet in his hand, amazed that Mister McGovern even knew kanji and hiragana—who knew?—he turned to another page.
Tell you what—how about we try another one instead?
I cleared my throat. I had nothing—absolutely nothing.
My God, Huey! Don’t tell me you cheated!
I know, I know, I know. Cheating kind of defeats the purpose of going to a place like Claremont. But for crying out loud, everyone does it. Okay, maybe not everyone. But Zukowski doesn’t need to, and Lichenberger studies so damned much only because he’s paranoid he’s going to be written out of his grandfather’s will if he doesn’t. And to make matters worse, Mister McGovern had the nerve to come off like I was the only student in the history of the place to ever cheat.
Mister McGovern sat back and frowned. You want people to think that’s the only way someone like you can get ahead in life? Is that what you want?