He and she sat across the table from each other in the middle of the room. When I looked over, she quickly glanced up with that look. You know it. The look where you know something is going on.
Earlier he had handed in his extra credit work for a test they were taking. And then a few moments later, he returned to the hand-in box to retrieve it. Now he was looking at his work closely, comparing it to something she had pushed across the table.
He pulled a clean sheet of paper from the scratch paper pile and began writing, carefully looking at her paper and then writing on his. He did this repeatedly with the back-and-forth, reading-writing action familiar to teachers when an assignment is due.
“Oliver?” He looked up but was silent.
“Are you redoing it?”
“Yes.”
There was no hint of remorse. As if this were normal. As if it were the way we do things, which of course it is not.
“But you can’t redo it … not after you’ve looked at someone else’s work.”
He gave me a puzzled look and sat motionless.
“Just turn in the first one,” I said, which he did, sliding her sheet back across the table, which she quickly folded up and put in her backpack.
Neither of them will get the points.