Read Online What the Moon Said by Gayle Rosengren - Free Book Online Page A

yard yet. She still hadn’t arrived when the bell rang.
    That’s when Esther knew she was in trouble.
    On Fridays they had an arithmetic test. Miss Larson wrote all the problems on the blackboard. But Esther couldn’t see the board well from her seat. Last week Bethany had copied the problems for her before she started her own work. But Bethany was absent.
    Esther entered the little schoolhouse with a sinking heart. She slid behind her desk and looked desperately at the blurry white marks on the blackboard. But they were impossible to read.
    Miss Larson led the class in the Pledge of Allegiance and then told them to begin their tests.
    Esther’s hands began to sweat. Everyone else was hard at work copying problems. Esther squinted and squinted, but the chalk marks on the board remained fuzzy white squiggles. They hardly looked like numbers at all. The minute hand of the clock on the wall had never clicked so loudly before. One minute after another was slipping away. Soon Miss Larson would say “pencils down, class” and collect their papers. What would she think when she saw Esther’s blank sheet? Tears prickled her eyes. There had to be something she could do!
    Then she felt her seat shift as Wesley leaned heavily forward on the desk behind her. Wesley! Why hadn’t she thought of him before? Quickly she scribbled him a note and dropped it over her shoulder onto his desk:
Wes—will you please copy the problems for me? I can’t see them. Esther.
    A minute later she felt a tap on her back. She reached behind her and grabbed the folded square of paper. It said:
Yes. If you give me the answers to the fractions. Wes.
    Esther hesitated. It would be wrong to give answers to Wes. But he would lose time helping her. And there were probably only a few fraction problems on the test. Esther squirmed in her seat. She knew she was making excuses, but if she failed her test, Miss Larson probably wouldn’t want Esther to help teach!
    Another loud click of the clock’s minute hand made up her mind. Esther signaled her agreement to the plan. The problems were copied and solved. And the answers to the fractions were passed back to Wes. A minute later, Miss Larson said, “Put your pencils down, class.”
    Esther heaved a big sigh. She’d finished just in time.
    All was well, or so Esther thought, until Miss Larson called Wesley and Esther to her desk two hours later.
    â€œI want to know who copied from whom on the arithmetic test,” she said. Her beautiful face was one deep frown. Her eyes were not warm and friendly as they usually were. She was angry—and at Esther, who had never, ever made a teacher angry before!
    Esther’s knees wobbled. Her voice came out a shaky croak. “I-it wasn’t like that, Miss Larson—at least, not exactly,” she tried to explain. “I can’t see the blackboard. So Wes copied the problems for me. And to th-thank him I gave him the answers to the fractions. That’s all.” She was hopeful the explanation would redeem her in her teacher’s eyes. After all, she hadn’t
gotten
any answers, she’d only
given
them.
    But Miss Larson did not seem any better pleased. “Cheating is cheating, no matter if you’re giving the answers or receiving them. I’m very disappointed in both of you. You will each get a zero on the test and you will stand at the front of the class for the fifteen minutes until lunch. And Esther, next time you ask someone to copy something for you, make certain their eyes are better than yours. Wesley copied three different problems wrong. It was when you both had the same mistakes that I knew something wasn’t right.”
    Wesley gave Esther a lopsided grin she knew he meant to be an apology. But Esther could not grin back. She was clenching her teeth together to keep from crying. Her throat felt like it would burst with trying to keep back sobs. And her face and ears were