Cheater Read Online Free

touring schedule: Princeton and Penn one week; Yale to Brown to Harvard the next, with a possible stop at M.I.T.; and Columbia the first afternoon they can both take off work. The issue of Stanford inspires some teasing. “You wouldn’t really want to put that many miles between us, would you?” his dad asks.
    Karl thinks it over. His feelings are mixed.
    “I don’t know,” he says. “What’s it worth to you to keep me on the East Coast?”
    His mom cuts the joking short. “You need to prepare some questions in advance. How accessible the professors are, class sizes, how happy the students are in general. And you should decide if you want to sit in on a class at each school.”
    “It’ll be good to spend some time together,” his father says. “For once in our hectic lives.”
    Karl sort of agrees, but he also wonders how it’ll be, spending several entire days traveling around with his parents. Part of him already wants to scream, Let me out! I’ll do anything! Just get me out of this car!
    Since he can’t share that with them, he raises a different issue. “I don’t think those schools are going to take me. All I have is grades.”
    His father hunches closer to the center of the table, as if spies from a competing family might be listening in. “I talked to a private college adviser,” he confides. “According to her, some universities would consider your independent work an acceptable substitute for standard extracurricular activities. If it’s impressive enough.”
    “What independent work?” Karl practically spits.
    “Your Mystery Project. What else?”
    Just as he feared.
    “You’ll finish before it’s time to apply, right? You’ve got”— he counts on his fingers—“seven months.”
    “Sure, I’ll finish, but—that’s not—that’s—personal. I’m not doing it to impress a college.”
    “Perfect!” his mother says, and squeezes his hand. “You’re driven by your own passionate curiosity, not by a desire for self-advancement. If they’re impressed, that’s just . . .”
    “Incidental,” his father offers.
    “Gravy.”
    “The icing on the cake.”
    Could they be happier with their brilliant son? Not much. In their different ways, they have both placed all of their hopeful ambition squarely on Karl’s shoulders. His father, a tax lawyer, went to a state college near the Canadian border and has always felt dwarfed, status-wise, by his Ivy League partners. His mother, right-hand woman to Manhattan real estate developer Paul Tralikian, has an M.B.A. from Wharton but considers herself the dimmest light among her siblings, a neurosurgeon, a judge, and a congresswoman. By a happy accident of fate and biology, Karl’s brain turned out to be a more powerful engine than either of theirs, and they have reason to believe (ecstatically) that he will achieve more than either of them ever hoped to.
    And he knows it.
    Is your life so wonderful the way it is . . .
    Lying in bed in the dark, he analyzes the situation this way:
    His parents want him, always, to stay ahead of the pack. But ahead of the pack means all by himself, out there in front of everybody else, looking over his shoulder at people who resent him for being so far beyond them. Is it right to strive to do better than everyone else? Isn’t it a little . . . greedy? Truth is, the whole Number One Student thing disgusts him. Much more appealing than any superachiever are the graceful, confident, beautiful ones—people like Cara and Blaine.
    He remembers her hand on his—cool, and so soft—and her amazing green eyes, and the thin-lipped, mocking smile. The fact that it was pure manipulation doesn’t stop him from wanting more.
    Usually, he falls asleep within ninety seconds of lying down. Not tonight, though. Not even close.
    But each new day is a fresh start, and even with crusty gunk cementing his eyes shut, Karl accepts the sunshine on his face and gladly observes his spirit rising from the muck of yesterday. No,