“I thought Wallum wasn’t going to let you leave during study hall anymore.”
“No, that’s my other study hall, with Hutton. Wallum couldn’t care less what I do. Let’s go.”
Paige was the only kid I knew who could finagle two study halls into her junior schedule.
“It’s because of my back surgery,” she had explained, thumping the brace that wrapped around her ribs like an iron corset.
I wasn’t sure how a procedure she had undergone months ago warranted an extra study hall in an already cush scholastic schedule. Not that my own academic load was anything to complain about. Thanks to some sketchy correspondence courses and a class at the local junior college, I had crafted a senior year of the stuff that dreams are made of; starting with a leisurely second period and ending just in time for lunch.
Just the same, Paige and I often found it necessary to make time for some extra-curricular activities during school hours. To rectify the problem of having dozens of unexcused absences, we subsidized our poor attendance with forged parent notes from our mother’s stationary or more recently, using the computer lab to create bogus doctor’s notes. Usually from phony psychiatrist or gynecologists to deter questions.
We missed a lot of class, but my high school was not exactly known for its academic excellence. Before I enrolled, my parents and I had taken a tour of the building after school hours. As we walked through the corridors, we had to step over the piles of backpacks that were slumped against the walls and spilled out onto the floor. My parents thought it was charming that there were no padlocks on the lockers and that the kids felt comfortable leaving their belongings unattended in the hallways. I secretly wondered why none of these kids had any homework, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut.
It turned out that some of the teachers did assign homework, but not much. We could usually get our work done during the lulls of Bible class, or by hunching over during chapel and scribbling down the answers on a paper braced against our knees.
Because academics were not much of a concern, Paige and I spent our time making up ways to entertain ourselves. When we weren’t perfecting our Packman skills on Paige’s personal arcade machine, we spent hours swimming in her giant backyard pool, conducting cannon ball contests from the diving board. Other times we would dress in head-to-toe camouflage and shoot army men with BB guns, lying on our stomachs in the grass like snipers. Riding a wooden sled down a flight of stairs was another favorite past time. For safety, we suited up with kneepads, swim goggles, and bike helmets and cushioned the hard tile floor with an oversized beanbag.
Sports were another great way to cut out on school and since most of my friends were on the volleyball team, I decided to become the manager. Initially, my main responsibility was to field loose balls from going into the stands, but that changed once the coach realized she couldn’t make me stop kicking the volleyballs. At any opportunity, I would charge one of the unsuspecting white orbs and just kick the hell out of it, watching it admiringly like Phil Mickelson observing a fairway drive as it flew through the gym like a rocket and then smashed against the far wall with a satisfying smack.
I was soon relegated to the top row of the bleachers with a video camera where I was supposed to film the games. I tried to make this more interesting by adding my own personal pre-game interview, half-time analysis, and post-game breakdown, staring myself.
“This is Kristin Stallings with WATV and we are just moments away from beginning one of the most exciting volleyball games in school history.” I would narrate, my fist shaped like a microphone, “I tell you, the Mustangs really have their hands full tonight!”
After Paige was sidelined with a back injury, I quit the manager job. But we would still go to all the games, riding stick horses and brandishing homemade wooden swords that sported the word “KILL” in bold red capitals. We would raise our weapons and hack at the air every time someone on our team spiked the ball. After victories, we would gallop around the court a few times, whooping and hollering in triumph.
“What classes did we miss yesterday?” Paige continued as we strolled down the hallway towards the computer lab.
“Just fifth. No wait, we took an extra long lunch so yours needs to cover sixth, too.”
I waved my pass to the teacher listlessly sitting at a desk and took a seat at one of the electronic dinosaurs in the lab. As an amateur, I had begun this life of crime by using Wite-Out to alter the date and time of an authentic doctor’s note, but this proved to be tedious and time-consuming. I soon graduated to creating my own notes from the school’s computer lab after we had returned from our exploits.
My first attempt should have gotten me canned, having signed the name as “M.D. Jacob Parker.”
“This doesn’t look right,” the elderly secretary had said, peering carefully at the clumsy forgery. “Shouldn’t M.D. be after the name?”
“Oh that,” I said, with a dismissive wave of the hand, “it technically can be written both ways, although you’re right, most physicians prefer to sign their name in the more traditional method.”
She looked at me, a disbelieving gleam in her hard black eyes and I stared right back at her. If there’s one thing I learned from Ferris Bueller, it’s that only the bold survive and if I was going to get caught, it wasn’t going to be by this old girl. It was a close call that almost ended my career in counterfeits in its infancy.
While we waited for the computer to boot up, I looked dully at the kid next to me. He sat at attention, his eyes mere inches from the screen while he methodically converted five pages of handwritten notes into a rectangle of an index card covered in tiny text.
“Government test next period,” he explained, though I hadn’t asked.
“You have Lanier? Print me off one of those,” Paige interjected.
Cheating ran rampant in school. A lot of the boys would write the answers on the paleness of their upper thighs. Pulling up a leg of their cargo shorts would reveal an elaborate tattoo of academic dishonesty. But this kid in the computer lab was truly a professional. With all this commitment and preparation, it was almost like studying.
Finally the monitor blinked to life. I checked my watch, we didn’t have much time. My third period teacher would be expecting me back soon. I had told her I needed to take a doctor’s note to the front office, I hadn’t mentioned that I needed to make the note first.
“Look, we gotta hurry.” I told Paige, “I still need to give Huckabee his keys back.”
One of the luxuries of having our basketball coach for a teacher was he would occasionally give me some cash and the keys to his car. A teammate and I would go on a joy ride to pick up some breakfast while Coach taught the rest of the class economics.
I typed in the date and time and then paused in thought when I came to the name of the doctor’s office. “I’m going to use a dentist. I don’t think I’ve done that this year, what do you want?”
“Good idea,” Paige agreed. “Make mine an Orthodontist.”
“You don’t even have braces anymore.”
“So.” She was too busy trying to staple her cheat sheet onto the underside of her t-shirt to give our mission much attention.
I shrugged and then made the finishing touches to the forgery. I passed the printed notes off to Paige for her to look over. Her editing skills weren’t very good, but then again, they didn’t have to be. The school secretaries never called home or the doctor’s office to verify the absence with our parents or the phony physicians.
“I’ll see you after chapel. We have another TIPs meeting today.” I told her as I powered off the computer and started to head back to class.
Clubs were very popular because they usually met during Bible class. TIPs was supposed to be some sort of drug prevention group, but in actuality it was a big joke. Everyone but the teachers knew that the kids in TIPS were the biggest pot heads in school. Paige and I never touched drugs, but we did enjoy the weekly meetings which took up much of fourth period. We would sit in an empty office, munching on donuts and arguing over which sketch to use for our club t-shirt, eventually settling on a simple black shirt with a giant marijuana leaf on the back. How this slid past school administration, I really don’t know.
Since TIPS only met once a week, Paige and I were also proud members of Spanish Club, Science Club, and National Honor Society to fill in most of the other days with meetings.
On a whim, we decided to make a run for the only club we weren’t members, Student Council. Most of our competitors created posters and campaigned for weeks, while Paige and I barely scrawled out the entry form in time to get our names on the ballet. We weren’t much for shaking hands or kissing babies, but I guess we did enough because we both won our respective races. However, when we found out that our post came with genuine responsibilities and that most of the meetings took place during lunch, we started skipping Student Council, too.
“Aren’t you going to go back to class?” I asked, hefting my backpack over my shoulders.
Paige grabbed another handful of sugarcoated cereal from her feedbag. “Nah, do you just want to go to T&T and get some donuts?”
