Even Score

In the sixth semester of my college life I cemented the lesson that one does not always have to work hard to earn good results in life, as proven by the A’s that two of my dumbest classmates got again in their finals exam last semester. Pardon me. I’m not the type to call people names, but Rodney and Kyle might be the worst sorry excuse of a student I’ve ever met, and I grew up in public schools in one of the poorest parts of the city. They can’t even stay awake in class for longer than ten minutes; it’s like they have a sink stopper in their brain that they unplug when class starts, and their consciousness drains out their pretty, empty heads. I could almost always hear the pop of the plug coming off as soon as the professor started talking.

But they weren’t always getting such high grades. They only started shooting up in the third semester. From pretty much flunking their entire semester, these two rich students suddenly got B+’s and above. I thought that maybe their dads finally had enough and assigned them a strict tutor or something, but if they did, none of it showed when the professors asked them basic questions or in pop quizzes during class. Their brilliance seemed only to show in the finals.

Anyway, they got A’s again in nearly all subjects last semester, and A-’s for the rest of them. Graph Theory was among those subjects, and I doubted they even know what vertices even are. Everyone knew that they’re cheating in their exams, but no one seemed to want to do anything about it. Except for me. I couldn’t just let a blatant show of academic flagrance like this keep on going, not when so many students, including me, work so hard to earn their grades honestly.

Two semesters ago, I strained my ears during the exam to see if I could catch little whispers here and there, rythmic knocks on the table, some periodical coughs or sniffs, anything that could count as a signal. But I heard nothing of note, the classroom was dead quiet, save for scratches of pens and pencils, and the occasional shuffling of papers. Besides, I couldn’t think of any smart students in my class that’d be willing to share their answers with them.

So I figured that they must obtain their answers through a leaked answer sheet of some sort, perhaps from a corrupt professor. And since they’re getting good grades on all subjects, then if they indeed manage to obtain a leak, that professor must’ve waited until all his colleagues have submitted their exam papers before he can start copying them.

So I decided then to ask Ms. Hana about it. She’s a tall, young woman with a fair complexion and a perpetual smile on her face. She’s the exact image of a model teacher; capable, disciplined, respectful of her students. I’ve confided in her several times in the past regarding my frustration with the campus for not doing anything regarding the obviously suspicious grades of Rodney and Kyle. She said that she’s doing her best working with the staffs to get to the bottom of this. I trusted her, but I also needed to start investigating myself if I wanted any real progress on this.

So that semester, after our class ended that day, I walked to her desk as she was gathering her stuff. “Excuse me, Ms. Hana, can I ask you a question?”

She looked up from the desk, smiled and said, “Yes, go ahead, Alan.”

“Do you know who among the professors are usually late in submitting their exam papers?”

She stared at me for a few seconds, before shaking her head with a frown, as if willing her focus back. “And why do you want to know that?”

I’ve prepared an answer for this. “I just wondered if it’s perhaps Mr. Ahmed. The questions he asks are so inconsistent with what we learned in class, I wondered if he perhaps wrote them last minute and forgot to cross-check with his curriculum.” I knew of her fondness towards him; I often saw them chatting in the staff cafeteria. I was hoping to provoke an answer with this and based on her answers next, it seemed she did take the bait.

She shook her head, out of sternness this time. Her usual smile is gone. “You can’t talk about your professors like that. But no, it’s definitely not Mr. Ahmed. He’s usually one of the more punctual ones, in fact. It’s instead Mr. Roger who’s always… Held up when it comes to submitting his papers.” She shook her head, as if guilty for even admitting that out loud, before continuing, “while other professors typically submit theirs on Wednesday the week before the exam, he always does it on Friday afternoon, practically a few minutes before everyone leaves the office.”

That’s very unexpected. Mr. Roger was a quiet person, he’s curt in his lectures and out of class conversations, and he gave off this gloomy, but serious and strict aura about him. I never thought that he’d be tardy in his responsibilities, but at the same time, it strangely felt fitting that if a professor were to leak exam answers to their students, it’d be him.

“But before you get the wrong idea, let me just say this. He’s a very respected senior professor among us, and if he decides to take his time writing and refining his exam papers, I can see nothing wrong with that,” she added with a nod, her smile resurfacing on her face.

I nodded. I felt guilty for manipulating an answer out of her like this, but I was glad to get both the answer I was looking for, and the confirmation of her integrity and loyalty towards her coworkers.

A semester after that, I decided to do a stakeout. After retracing some of the professors’ steps during the exam period, I noticed that those legal-sized brown envelopes that contain the exam papers only appear in their hands after they leave the faculty room. Like most students, I’ve been there plenty of times before. At the end of that long corridor of cubicles there’s a handful of doors. I figured that one of those leads to an archive room of some sort, and that must be where they store the papers the week before the exam starts. And outside the faculty room, there were rows of benches that surrounded the campus garden for students to lounge on, and that’s where I planned to do my stakeout, pretending to read a novel as I watch the traffic to and from the room.

Alas, I was too late. That Friday I had a meeting with the press club until about 8 PM, and by the time I reached the garden, the lights in the faculty room had been turned off, leaving only the pole lights flanking the path to it. All the professors must’ve gone home already.

But I didn’t want to give up. There’s still a chance that Mr. Roger, or whoever did it, would come and copy the papers during the weekend. There are no CCTVs in the room—some paranoid professors insisted that they’re an invasion of their privacy, or so I heard—so someone could potentially come in, do the deed, and leave with the copies. So I stayed there until Monday. I only went back to my dorm after I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, to catch a few hours of sleep and grab some meals.

During that period, I saw no sight of Mr. Roger, or any other professors or staffs, except for Ms. Hana on Sunday morning, which surprised me. She was carrying a big satchel bag that looked heavy. She only entered the room for a brief moment, with no apparent changes on her luggage. Curious to see what she was up to, I intercepted her walk back to her car in the parking lot.

“Good morning, Ms. Hana, need help with that?” I said, smiling as I extended my hand.

She jumped and gasped. “Oh, Alan! Please don’t sneak up on me like that,” she said, patting her chest.

I grinned, “Sorry. I saw you walking with that big luggage of yours, and thought I should help.” I extended my hand again, this time reaching for her bag. I silently prayed she wouldn’t pull back. To my delight, she didn’t. 

“Oh you’re sweet. Thank you,” she said as she handed me the sling.

“These are just my clothes. I was on my way to stay over at my sister’s next week, but I forgot some stuff at the office.”

I nodded. I didn’t open the bag, but based on the softness that I felt from outside of the bag it does seem to contain only clothes. I feel a bit silly now, but also relieved. I walked with her to the car, and said goodbye once I put the bag in the backseat.

That day I stayed there on the park bench for the rest of the day, and saw no one else entering or leaving the building. During the exam the next day and the rest of the week, I tried once again to listen carefully to the class for any indications of Rodney or Kyle signaling to another student, but as expected, I found nothing. Yet they managed to ace their exams anyway. I decided that the leak, if there is indeed any, must happen in Friday.

And so now, a semester later, the Friday before the exam week, I was back at the bench. I’ve canceled all my appointments with my friends and the club, and I have no class today, so I was free to do this all day.

The faculty room seemed busy all throughout the day, which was understandable. The hubbub started to calm down at around 3 PM, which not long after I saw Mr. Roger entering the room, with that familiar brown envelope in his hand. It seemed like Ms. Hana was right, he really does submit his papers late.

He didn’t leave until 6 PM, at which point my heart was pumping rapidly from anticipation. I was so sure that I’d catch him red-handed; I imagined carrying stacks of stolen exam papers, no doubt stored in some nondescript container to hide it. But that image never came. Mr. Roger left the faculty room with nothing in his hands, not even his leather suitcase that he usually carried.

I sighed, and slouched on the bench, feeling my energy evaporate through all the pores in my body. Even entertaining the idea that he scanned the papers so he could carry the data in flashdrive that he could pocket, by my count there should still be some professors and other staffs in that room, and there’s no way he would have the time or the opportunity to do that without being caught. This meant that my hypothesis was wrong, and I had to start over again with my investigation.

A few minutes after that, I saw Ms. Hana entering the room, once again carrying the same satchel bag she brought last semester. I heard the click of the puzzle snapping together in my head, and my heart beat harder than it was before when I waited for Mr. Roger.

I waited until she walked out of the room half an hour later, all the time trying to calm myself down and ignore the thickening mist of dread that’s washing over me.

As I saw her slender figure leaving the room, turning her head left right, I rushed over to her, falling into her brisk footsteps. “Evening, Ms. Hana. Staying over at your sister’s again?”

Her whole body jolted as she snapped her head to look at me, and she actually shrieked this time. “Alan! How many times have I told you to stop sneaking on me like that!” she said, as her face contorted in anger and… fear.

I tried to sound as friendly as possible, but I failed. “I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s already dark and I thought I should walk you again to your car, and carry your bag like last time.” I reached towards the sling of her bag again.

And as expected, this time she pulled back. No, jumped back. She almost slapped my hand away, but she stopped herself. “No, thank you. I can carry this by myself.”

I inhaled a deep breath, before I said the things I dreaded to say, “There’s no clothes whatsoever in there, is there?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but she could only stammer, “I, I… what?”

I pointed towards the faculty room. “Your clothes are in your office right now, right? You just brought it here today as an excuse for carrying that big bag in case someone asked and checked, but afterwards you swapped it for something else when you leave.”

“What are you talking about?” Her eyes widened, and she clutched her bag even tighter than before.

“And then tomorrow, once you’ve done what you needed to with that something, you can bring it back here, swap it out again with the clothes in you left yesterday, so that all the time that bulky sack of a bag doesn’t look too suspiciously empty.”

She said nothing now, only staring at me with a slight frown on her eyes, mouth slightly agape.

“I thought it’s weird that you know it’s Mr. Roger specifically who’s always late in submitting his exam papers. No matter how attentive you are, you can’t be as certain as you were when answering my question a year ago, unless you knew that for a fact.”

She can now no longer meet my gaze, her shoulder slumped, and her fair partially covering her face.

“So my guess is that during the week before the exam, you periodically check to see if all the professors have submitted their papers. Since you,” my voice caught in my throat, and I had to take a second to calm my breathing.

“Since you planned on copying all those papers in one go to reduce suspicions, you had to wait. And time and time again, you noticed that it’s Mr. Roger’s that’s always missing until the last minute. And that,” I exhaled a trembling breath, before I could continue.

“That is how you know who’s always late in submitting their exam papers. And that is why, even if you refuse to show me the contents of that burly bag you’re carrying right now, I can go inside the office, find your pile of clothes that you probably left on the floor behind your desk, and, and…” I inhaled sharply, and steeled my voice.

“And report you to the dean for selling leaked exam answers to Rodney and Kyle, or perhaps to some other students as well, for the past two years.”

Ms. Hana is now crouching on the floor as she broke down crying, bawling unintelligible apologies and repentance, and I’ve never felt more hollow in my life.