On Monday morning, while Pablo comes to school to undergo strength training, he comes across Ethan, alongside a few other football teammates:

“Ethan, it’s time. On Friday afternoon, you agreed to have our answers to the long questions run by Nadine and her quiz bowler friends on Sunday” Pablo asks the strong safety.

“Nadine forwarded our answers to Gerard, who then told me that you helped Carrie solve these problems!” Ethan is about to scold Pablo. “Why did you help Carrie with these problems?”

“Audrey made me do this, and passed these off as previous years’ test items! Audrey and Carrie are both on the basketball team, and Audrey was seemingly the go-to for her to ask for academic help after-hours!” Pablo starts feeling like he’s accused of crimes.

“But yes, we have their blessing to put the answers in the toilets” Ethan goes to the library to print three copies of the Algebra II test answers, multiple-choice and long-answer.

After he prints the copies of the test answers, he folds the papers and places one copy each behind a toilet bowl in the boys’ bathroom and, later, the disabled’s bathroom. Which has a single bowl, complete with all the trappings reserved for disabled’s bathrooms.

However, after leaving the disabled’s bathroom, Ethan has some concerns in mind. I wonder if Nadine will happily plant a copy of answers into the girls’ bathroom, since, even with a hall pass, I can’t bank on the girls’ bathroom being empty while the test is underway. Nor can I bank on any of my teammates’ girlfriends being willing to do so. And Audrey doesn’t hit me as someone who would do it, nor would Nadine. Maybe I should just ask my friends in that section to use the disabled’s bathroom during the test, regardless of gender.

But then Ethan goes around to ask other footballers in Algebra II on mobile, other than Finn or Pablo. Most of them being in the weight room, Pablo quickly overhears his teammates receiving the request from Ethan for help planting the third copy of the Algebra II test.

“It wasn’t enough that you and your girlfriend helped mine review for this stupid Algebra II test! Ethan had the gall to ask for help to plant the answers in the girls’ bathroom!” an angry Finn yells at Pablo, with his face turning red, ready to get at his throat.

“Please, stop, you two!” Virginie, a female user of the weight room, implores Finn and Pablo, her left eye on Finn.

Virginie makes Finn realize that he has been disruptive towards other users of the weight room. All three leave the weight room and meet outside that room after putting their regular clothes back.

“OK, I’ll stop, but on one condition: if you can please hide this paper in the girls’ bathroom…” Finn begs Virginie, hoping that she will accept to hide an exam answer key somewhere inside the girls’ bathroom.

“If it’s what it takes for you to stop yelling…” Virginie sighs, while yanking the manifest of Algebra II answers away from Finn.

Who is she? It seems like Finn knows her, but she’s neither a quiz bowler, nor a basketball player, since I never saw her at basketball games, Pablo ruminates, while wondering who she is, and how Finn came to know her.

“I wonder who she is… probably someone else’s girlfriend I never interacted with much” Pablo asks his teammate after the quarrel over planting answers to a test in the bathroom.

“Virginie. Valter’s girlfriend, a year older than him” Finn then gives one last set of instructions to his Algebra II friends over social media on mobile about when to go to the bathroom and in which toilet stall.

As the bell rings, and people go to their respective classes, Pablo wonders why is it that Ethan seemingly trusted Nadine for reviewing answers to long-answer math questions over Virginie. My guess is that Virginie is only a little better at math than Carrie. Nadine, while, in quiz bowl, is mostly an arts and literature player, is likely accelerated in math, too, just not in my Algebra II section if she’s taking it.

However, this time around, the morning announcement about the Leesville Spring Invitational is delivered by Scott, playing on the A-team:

“On Saturday, the Venomous Agendas’ quiz bowl A-team won the Leesville Spring Invitational, while the B-team took third!”

In Nadine’s Algebra II section, which is going first for the day, she feels pressured to sit in the front row, but to avoid the corners. And she feels nervous since she knows a lot of other people will take seats based on where the handful few at the top will sit. And certainly Finn and Carrie, who would rather be seated next to each other, even in tests.

“The test begins now” the Algebra II teacher signals the start of the test.

While Finn is burning with a desire of wanting to get the test over with, the same holds of a great many students in the section. Yet, somehow, for all the time he spent over the weekend studying for not only this test, but also the ACT, the defensive end starts having intensifying headaches only a few minutes in.

His hand raised, he asks to go to the bathroom, hoping that the teacher will give him a hall pass so that he can go out and read the solutions that his teammates lovingly crafted on Friday afternoon for the benefit of the sections taking the test today.

“I need to go to the bathroom, please” he tells the teacher when the teacher comes to him a few minutes in.

“Here’s your hall pass” The teacher hands him the hall pass, without suspecting that Finn supplements an actual need with cheating off a document planted in the bathroom.

While Finn goes to the boys’ bathroom, he tries to remember in which toilet stall Ethan planted the answer key. He frantically looks behind and underneath each toilet bowl for what could potentially look like a folded answer key. I really hope that a glimpse of the answers is enough for me because I think I shouldn’t spend too long in the bathroom… his stress levels start increasing.

But when he finally locates the answer key Ethan hid underneath the far stall’s toilet bowl, the defensive end sighs, while gazing the answer key for the first time. And, at the same time, taking a dump.

Speaking of which, he feels like he only has the time it takes to take his dump to read as much as he can of the answer key to then put it back for future use by his friends and other interested parties. I need to read this carefully but as soon as this dump ends, I need to put it back, Finn thinks, while he reads the step-by-step solutions to the long problems as well as the answer choices for the multiple-choice questions.

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And, upon returning to the classroom, Finn hands over the hall pass. When he’s seated again, he tries to copy down what he read in the bathroom stall, with the lottery question being done just fine.

Meanwhile, another student leaves for the bathroom. However, since there is only one hall pass for the whole section, not everyone can go to the bathroom to get their hands on the solution.

What’s going on here? In past tests for any other course, people didn’t use the hall pass as a relay baton the way people do now, Nadine seems puzzled by what seems to happen in this test, even though she has complete confidence in her answers. And not simply because Ethan made her, and her friends, run their solutions through them under the guise of “previous years’ questions”. Either the teacher simply re-used a previous teacher’s long-answer questions, although not necessarily from the same previous year, or Ethan made me complicit in cheating without realizing it. Not sure what to think of that…

Then comes Carrie’s turn to go to the bathroom. Her turn comes later than she would have liked, but Carrie makes her turn to the bathroom quick since she only urinated without doing much with the answer key Virginie planted in the bathroom. Just glance at it quickly, but she feels relief that she still remembered how to solve the problems given to her on Friday night.

It’s then that, with the classroom steadily emptying of students who finish the test before the end of the scheduled time, Nadine leaves the room to go to the library.

By the end of the first period, however, Nadine meets Ethan and doesn’t seem very happy with the goings-on in Algebra II. Her face is glowing red…

“Ethan, something’s not right. You made me and my friends double-check your answers to review problems, which you claimed were questions from previous years’ tests! Yet these are too similar to the ones in today’s test!” Nadine yells at and confronts her boyfriend.

“Honey, it’s perfectly normal to look at previous years’ tests to study for a test. I think you might have done so yourself, albeit for other courses!” Ethan retorts.

“For some reason, there seems to be a lot more people going to the bathroom today than in past Algebra II tests! Did people suddenly become more aware of their bodily needs? Has air quality changed from Friday?” Nadine keeps yelling, feeling that Ethan might have a ready-made excuse.

“Are you implying that I made you cheat? If so, Nadine, it’s probably the hidden pressures of your academic performance eating you alive!” Ethan

“I was in no way implying that I am cheating on you, much less that you made me cheat on you. However, people wanting to cheat off me is nothing new to me, even before the B team earned a HSNCT berth! It just doesn’t feel the same as previous attempts to cheat off me!”

“What’s going on here?” Pablo asks his teammates after hearing them argue in the distance over the math test Nadine just took.

“Nadine believes that I caused others in her Algebra II section to go to the bathroom to cheat on the test!” Ethan summarizes the core issue, while looking embarrassed to admit it.

“I get it, there’s something fishy going on, and it might not be okay, but remember that our opponents, football or quiz bowl, also cheat on coursework, just not necessarily at the same rates, and not the same either!” Pablo warns the couple.

I hear about some people at other schools having their teachers offer them exclusive extra credit assignments, but even that pales in comparison to the rumors I heard floating around some of the football opponents we played this season. Some of them even have their teachers alter grades so their star players can remain eligible to play. If that’s not cheating, I don’t know what that is, Pablo is painfully reminded of his own role in the creation of the answer key in the bathrooms. However, I can’t report Ethan or Nadine because I don’t have the necessary evidence to do so.

All three then walk away from each other, feeling like it will degenerate if allowed to continue. He then returns to Audrey, bewildered by what this fight between Ethan and Nadine revealed to him about the study session on Friday afternoon:

“I can’t believe that Ethan made me supply cheating. Indirectly perhaps, but I guess, I’m not cut out to be a cheating supplier!”

“You had three months to get used to paying the implicit costs of playing quiz bowl! And you probably know as well as I do that, in schools like ours, being a quiz bowler, irrespective of how well you play quiz bowl, means people asking you for help, and even cheat, all the time!” Audrey scolds him.

“And yet everything began when I helped my football teammates study for this test! I guess, one of my teammates secretly turned this into cheating! However, I have no other proof!”

“But enough of cheating. Do you plan on coming to the game tonight?” Audrey asks him, before going to take the Algebra II test herself.

“Yes, and good luck on the test!”

“Thank you” Audrey then kisses Pablo before packing up her Algebra II supplies.

The two go their separate ways, and both Ethan and Audrey go take their Algebra II test. The latter sits in front, as per usual in tests.

Normally, Valter sits in the back row, but for this test, he is seated on Audrey’s right, on the front row, hoping that he would be able to cheat off her whenever the teacher is busy with another student in another row.

Ethan, however, sits behind Audrey, and on her left, hoping that she won’t notice him peeking on her copy while he waits for his turn to get out of the classroom.

However, this time around, it’s Valter who goes to the bathroom first, while Ethan appears to wait until Valter is done using the answer key in the boys’ bathroom before asking for the section’s hall pass, his hand raised.

“Sir, may I go to the bathroom?” Ethan asks the teacher.

“Yes” The teacher hands the hall pass to him, without realizing that Ethan has other aims.

My bladder is filling up dangerously, Ethan thinks, hall pass in hand, and trying to keep his bladder in check until he can get to a bathroom. There’s no telling whether I should go to the boys’ bathroom, which is closer, but the copy will be a little crumpled, dog-eared even, or to the disabled’s bathroom, whose copy will be pristine, he keeps ruminating while his abdominal cramps intensify as he closes in on the bathroom.

He groans in pain at every step, making it clear that something isn’t right with him, and rushing towards the boys’ bathroom as if he had to prevent an opposing tight end from getting to the ball.

Once in the bathroom, he dashes to the far stall, urinates and he then feels some pain relief. Not perfect though, as he searches for the answer key either underneath or behind the toilet bowl. Which he finds covered in dust and less legible than he would have liked.

And he then puts the answer key back where it was, before he goes out to wash his hands, dry them and hit the disabled washroom to put his mind at ease about the long-answer questions. Because the dog-eared parts of the football team’s artisanal answer key were in these parts, at least as far as the copy in the boys’ washroom is concerned.

I don’t care about others’ grades, so long as I keep my grades up and play next season! Ethan ruminates upon reading the pristine answer key, left where he put it earlier this morning and devoid of any traces of dirt or dust. But I mustn’t dally too long here; I might be denying someone else a trip to the bathroom!

However, he focuses on the long answer questions because he feels confident enough about the multiple-choice questions not to fret over them. So as he feels the clock ticking in on him, he, once again, puts back the artisanal answer key behind the disabled washroom’s toilet bowl.

Meanwhile, most students in the Algebra II classroom are oblivious to what Ethan is doing with the hall pass. However, that doesn’t prevent the teacher from wondering what was going on in the washroom. And yet, he makes his triumphal return, with the answers from their artisanal answer key ready to be written down on his copy.

And a few more people end up using the bathroom beyond Valter and Ethan, but Audrey still isn’t convinced that any of them went to the bathroom to cheat on that test. However, she feels confident that she did just fine on her own; after all, she did tutor Carrie on Friday night.