LS #38, Karen's Big Lie

This is one of my very favorite Little Sister books. Maybe even my favorite. It starts out in school, and Ms. Colman tells the class they are going to start having timed math quizzes. I loved Mad Minute Math quizzes when I was young. I loved tests and quizzes of all kinds, actually. Unfortunately, I don't get to take the quizzes, Karen does, and Karen is a little annoyed, because math isn't her best subject, and she has to count on her fingers to answer the questions. She gets a 68 on the first quiz and resolves to look for her flash cards and drill a bit, but of course by the time she finally digs them out, she doesn't actually feel like studying. When Ms. Colman gives the second quiz, Karen only figures out the answers to three of the problems before she looks over at Ricky's paper and decides to copy his answers. There is an illustration of this in the book and their desks are pushed so close together it would be almost impossible for her not to look at his paper, I'm just saying. Also in the picture Karen is so not subtle while looking at his paper that I don't know how people three classrooms away didn't catch her.

Ricky is handsome as hell in this picture, too. I can see why Karen would want to pretend marry him. Also I know I only took a photo of half the page, but nothing is drawn up at the top there.

Hannie is getting good grades on the quizzes. She tells Karen and Nancy that she's been studying, and asks if Karen has. Karen admits that she has not, and explains that the quizzes are unfair because they are timed. If they could take all day to do them, she'd be able to count on her fingers and get every answer right.

Karen gets an 80 on the quiz she copied from Ricky. She told us she answered all the problems in the first column and about half in the second, and we know that she got two wrong answers on the three she filled in by herself. Ricky finished the whole quiz and got a 90. Hannie got a 94. So the difference between half a column filled in and having those answers filled in but some wrong is apparently ten points. I can't make the math work out right for this to be so. Maybe Karen filled in more than half of the column and is as inaccurate with fractions as she is with addition. Really if she filled in one and one half out of two columns she shouldn't be able to score higher than 75%.

Karen does some half-hearted studying with her flash cards, and vows not to copy from Ricky again, but the next quiz is a subtraction quiz, and she's not getting enough answers so she copies again. She is cheating off of her pretend husband. I suppose it's marginally better to cheat off of him than cheat on him. Ha ha. Hannie is pretty cold to Karen at recess after the subtraction quiz. On Monday, when the quizzes come back, Karen gets a 90. Hannie tells her on the playground that she saw Karen cheating. Karen calls Hannie a liar, but we all know who's lying.

(Karen. Karen is the one who's lying.)

Karen gets a 100 on the next quiz, but she doesn't do her own work, because Mommy had company over for dinner and Karen didn't have time to look at her flash cards. That bitch. It's like she wants Karen to cheat.
The next time they have a quiz, though, Ricky is absent. Karen panics and says she is going to barf and needs to go to the nurse. The nurse lets her lie down until school is almost over. The next day Ricky comes back to school, and Ms. Colman has the two of them stay in and make up the quiz. Karen isn't sure what to do with Ms. Colman staring at them, but luckily another teacher comes by and Ms. C gets distracted enough that Karen can copy Ricky's paper. She grades the quizzes right there, and the kids both got the same score, and Ms. C asks them if they're copying, and they both say no. Karen is so upset that she misses a day of school with vague symptoms. When she comes back, Ms. Colman gives them another quiz, and Karen resolves not to cheat. She counts on her fingers a whole bunch and doesn't even finish half the quiz. Then she confesses that she has been cheating. Lisa and Seth punish her by not letting her watch TV for two weeks, and Watson and Elizabeth punish her by taking away her allowance for two weeks. Then Karen and Hannie make up.

Meanwhile, there is a boring subplot where David Michael wants to get a "buzzsaw" haircut, or a piercing, or a tattoo, and gets told no. David Michael complains that his friends will think he's a baby if he can't have the haircut, tattoo, or piercing. You know, because all of their parents would certainly allow it. He tells Karen he got a tattoo anyway and shows her a dragon on his shoulder. Karen somehow does not at all question how a 7 year old would get a tattoo, and thinks it's real. In the end it turns out it was a temporary tattoo and it faded away. I guess even in Stoneybrook where they pierce young teenagers' ears with no parents around they won't tattoo a second grader.

The best part in this book, and there are a lot of good parts, is when Karen confesses to Ricky that she's been cheating and he's mad for like two seconds and then he's like "Okay. Then I forgive you. After all, you are my wife." I hate to be the one to tell you this, Rick, but there's an old saying. Once a cheater, always a cheater. I bet they're pretend divorced by the end of third grade, but Karen will probably still collect pretend alimony until at least 6th.