Don't you just hate it when you're taking a test and your mind is horrifically blank, you feel your heartbeat in your ears and your hands just cramp out? I despise that feeling. I would stare and stare at the paper as if it would magically tell me what its answers are then I would eventually just daydream willing time to fly faster. I was plagued with chronic procrastination. I would take time to look into my notes and glance at mathematical equations and my mind would respond Yeah this is never going to help me in life. I'm going to read a book. It got so bad that my grandmother gave me an ultimatum: Either I get the beating of my lifetime and be shipped off to boarding school or I get A's in most of my classes. You sure know what I chose. No not the ass whooping, the attempt at an A.

I would be danged if I got shipped off to any boarding school ergo I resulted to cheating to help reach my goal. This feat was incredibly difficult at first. There were so many obstacles! There were people who wrote so tiny it was like trying to read braille or Morse code, there were people who wrote so sloppy it was like trying to read hieroglyphics or Russian. Copying off such people was perilous because you had to stare at their paper for so long to decipher their handwriting that you risk getting caught. I then came to a conclusion: I had to find the person with the neatest handwriting ever. I zeroed in on Amy, the smartest student in the class.

Amy was by far the weirdest kid I knew. She was so smart it was eerie. She could work out incredibly difficult mathematical questions in her head which only calculators could calculate. I sometimes suspected she was an alien. She always at an area in front of the class known as: The Red Zone. It was christened so because it was situated right in front of the teacher. You could not sleep, eat or talk to a friend without the teacher noticing. Nobody sat in that area ergo finding a seat beside her was easy. Copying her proved to be difficult.

That girl guarded her paper like it was the Fort Knox. She hunched over the paper, placing her pencil case over all previously answered question. Imagine Gollum from Lord of The Rings hissing "My precious" and that would be a dead ringer for her behaviour. It irked me to no end. There was no way I would let this minx prevent me from getting that glowing A.

The day of the exam arrived.

"Alright class, you have exactly one hour to complete the exam. Begin."

With those words, the class was ushered into silence except the occasional rustling when pages were turned. I jumped straight into business not even bothering to write my name. Okay. You can do this. Self-inflicted pep talks were my thing then. Just stretch your neck. When she wrote an answer, I would stretch, peek, pause, act as I'm mulling over the question then write it down, my brilliant plan was coming together. I could practically see that A on my report card.

I was peeking over Amy's shoulder when I caught her looking directly at me. Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion when she paused and stared me down. If looks could kill I would have been six feet under.

"Stop. Copying. Off. Me." She barked.

My eyes widened and I slowly backed away. I gave her breathing space for about five minutes and paid no heed to her warning. Once again, when she wrote down an answer, I wrote down an answer. Victory was mi-!

"I SAID STOP CHEATING OFF ME!"

All thoughts evaporated like cheap perfume as the class let out a collective gasp. My stomach plunged to my toes and my heartbeat stopped. The teacher turned towards us, rose up looking as austere as a Roman soldier, walked up to my desk, picked up my exam and ripped it half. I remember feeling the eyes of all the children in the class, the temperature of the room dropping below zero and the disappointed look my teacher cast me. Humiliation burned me like never before.

Needless to say, I failed that class with a big fat F. To say I was mad at Amy would be a gross understatement. On the scale of one to ten I was Chris Brown mad, but, I couldn't hold it against her. What I did was wrong and I deserved to be punished. It took me a long time to realize that but I do now, however, to be honest, the reason why I didn't jump her the day after was because I was hurting in places I couldn't even name. My grandmother had been so angry she most certainly did not spare the rod. I couldn't sit straight for about a week.

I learnt a very valuable lesson that day: Don't ever get caught.