The walk to class was intense. Everything was ready. I was ready.

I walked in and to my complete astonishment the whole classroom had been rearranged into about five columns running about six desks deep. Even better, was that Senora V was allowing us to pick where we wanted to sit. Boom. To the back for me!

Other than sitting in the back where I could easily peek down at my wonderfully public cheat sheet, there was another critical obstacle I would be able to overcome with the ability to select my own seat. Senora V had two different tests, an odd numbered test and an even numbered. Obviously this is a tactic many teachers employ to prevent cheating by way of peeking at a neighbors test answers. Your neighbors answers, won’t help you if you have separate tests.

The scantron we stole, and my cheat sheet answers were from an odd numbered test, seventeen. I needed to receive an odd numbered test. So I started counting from the right side of the class and selected a seat near the other guys in the back of the class. Most importantly, seat five. This stroke of luck has sealed a certain victory. Now all I had to decide was what I wanted to score exactly.

“Hey man, did you memorize the answers?” Derek asked smugly.

“Nah man, the binder. The answers are on the binder at my feet.” I replied.

“What?” He was confused.

“I’ll explain later. What are you doing?” I asked.

“Under my shirt.” He patted his stomach so I could hear the crackling of his cheat sheet.

“Alright man. Good luck. No snitching.” I wasn’t real confident about his plan.

“Ok class, it’s time to begin. Put everything away.” Senora stood up with a stack of tests. “Oh my, you boys can’t possibly think I would let you all sit by each other, right?” The way she said it definitely made me wonder why we would all overlook her splitting us up.

“Senor Jordan. Come sit up front.” She pointed at one of the two desks closest to hers.

“She chose to move me? What!?” I thought to myself completely baffled.

“Ok.” I responded out loud. I grabbed my binder and backpack and calmly did just as I was told. I sat down in the desk directly facing hers. The distance between our desks could not have been more then three yards.

I quickly began counting from the right side of the class again to see if I remained in an odd seat. Seventeen.

“Thank God.” I thought relieved. Then immediately felt guilty for thanking God in the assistance of my crimes.

This whole new seating situation was actually even better now than the situation I had originally chosen for myself. I still had my cheat sheet, and now I’m sitting directly in front of the teacher in a seat she moved me to! How could she possibly ever accuse me of cheating once this over with? As if someone could cheat directly in front of her. And that was precisely what I was going to do. HAHA!

As Senora was giving the final instructions I was already imagining the look on her face when tomorrow she has to write an eighty six for my final grade. She’s going to know I must have cheated, but will have absolutely no way to prove it. This is so perfect.

“Ok class, good luck, and no talking.” Senora said as she walked from the center to the left side of the room.

“Wait. What? That side?” My mind began racing.

Before I could even count for myself my test hit my desk. Fourteen. An even number. All my answers are no longer any good. I started to panic.

“Hey switch me tests.” I whispered a silent demand to the person behind me.

“No.” The expected response.

“Ah crap. Really? Really? All this planning. All this work. The most ingenious cheating strategy I could possibly come up with and to lose with it based on a flip of the coin. No. There has to be another way. I must be able to do something.” These were the gist of my immediate thoughts.

“You know… It doesn’t really matter what test I received as long as my scantron ends up in the odd numbered test pile to be corrected. I need to write an odd number. But I can’t just write an any odd number on the scantron. What if whatever number I write ends up being noticed as a duplicate number by Senora?” There is a way around this I began to realize.

I began counting. There were thirty six students. On my scantron in the box titled “Test Number”, I wrote thirty seven.

I reasoned that writing a duplicate number could result in me getting busted much easier than writing a number that is one figure over the actual class size. After all, even if Senora noticed thirty seven and knew there were only thirty six students, could she prove a day later that I didn’t actually receive test number thirty seven? Probably not. She had more than thirty seven tests because her other classes were larger so maybe thirty seven actually did accidentally get mixed into the middle of the tests before she passed them out. Or at least, this would be my alibi.

Senora stood at the front of the room audibly giving questions. The first ten or so questions the class had to answer based on Senora’s audible statements. It was an oral part of the final. I didn’t listen to a single word she said. I looked down at my binder, counted to about thirty and then checked a box. Then repeated this over and over again. I remember trying not to laugh or smirk as the thought of what I was accomplishing became more awesome with each circled answer box.

I easily cheated through the first half of the test and began working on honestly completing the second half of the test. It was going to be way to hard to flip the paper over in front of Senora. I reached down a few times to try slowly sliding it, but there was no sly or silent way to pull it out and slide it back in. So, I was going to have to do the second half the old fashioned honest way.

Then it happened. The unplanned perfection to the plan. Derek had completed his test. He started trotting down my aisle whispering out loud how easy the test had been. Surely it was a part of his act that the test was easy and that everyone else should know how he felt about it including Senora as he was the first of anyone to complete the test. Then Derek tripped and tripped good.

“Whoa!” Derek was surprised by his near fall and everyone else who saw him stumble chuckled.

“Are you ok?” Senora asked a little stunned.

I laughed and reached down, grabbed my binder and slid it back to where it was sitting before Derek had tripped over it. Not only that, since there was laughter and noise I managed to not only slide my binder back to my feet but also pull out my sheet, flip it, and slide it back in as I had planned all along.

Derek and I had not talked about tripping over my binder. He genuinely tripped over it and opened up my perfect opportunity. And an opportunity I seized.